Friday Finish - LEGO Marvel Superhero Cushions

Back in the new year I coaxed Kristy to put together some LEGO Marvel superhero patterns, because she has awesome paper piecing patterning skills and is queen of all things LEGO.

Kristy has patterns for these guys and more of the team (crew? what do you call a bunch of superheroes anyway??) available for free in her Craftsy store if you want to test them out. As far as paper piecing patterns go these ones are fairly simple, I'd rate them a confident beginner to intermediate. The blocks finish at 10 inches so they're pretty manageable.

I quizzed my nephews on their favourite Marvel dudes, then decided their Dad (biggest superhero geek on the planet) needed in on the action two, and created these blocks.

In true fashion, I then stuck them up on the design wall until I realised that the twins' birthday was fast approaching and I needed to get my butt into gear!

First up, I needed to fix my face painting. Funny story, but it turns out that white fabric paint I found in my stash actually dried clear. With glitter in it. Now I love glitter as much as the next girl, but poor Hulk was sparklier than a Twilight vampire, and that would just never do. So I embroidered over Hulk and Wolverine's teeth with perle cotton and all was good with the world.

Then I decided to quilt with a zig-zag, lightning strike kind of pattern that reminds me a little of those comic book captions... I am happy with how it turned out and I hope the boys like it too.

Finally, I finished up with a solid border and I turned each block into a cushion, also in a solid.

Then I photographed them in crappy light because the weather has been blergh and I haven't been home in daylight hours. Now all I need to do is wrap them and post them before the boys birthday!

Linking up with I Quilt at Pretty Bobbins, Paper Piecing Party at Quiet Play, Needle and Thread Thursday, TGIFF, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop and Friday Finish.

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Friday Finish: The Low Volume Rainbow

I actually finished this baby up a few weeks ago, but life has been crazy and Friday has slipped past numerous times without me posting.

This finish was my February goal for ALYOF and while I didn't get it done in February, it was finished in early March.

This was my first real go at improv piecing, and I love it... it was a fantastic way to use up loads of scraps and hard to use fabrics.

The quilting took forever. It was straight line quilting, but I used seven colours of thread, one for each colour of the rainbow. I took each colour over the corresponding band in the piecing, then into the low volume either side, and horizontally along each band. I love the effect, and how each low volume section is quilted in the colours either side of it. But the thread burying.... OMG. That took forever and ever and ever!!!!

I ended up totally overestimating how much of the low volume improv piecing I'd need for the strips on the front and had plenty left over, so I paired it with some grey solid for a pretty pieced back. Which meant no fabric purchases for the back too.

The only issue I have with this quilt is that it's not totally square, I have no idea why since I squared it up with a ruler when I finished quilting, but I guess the improv nature means it's hard to gauge that it's perfectly square. I'm trying to decide if I unpick some binding, trim and rebind, or if I just accept the fact that it's imperfect, like those people whose shoe sizes are a whole size different.

I'm linking this up with TGIFF over at Blossom Heart Quilts and Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Have a fantastic Easter, and I hope the bunny is kind to you.

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Friday Finish

I'm struggling big time with the whole "February is Over" concept... seriously, where did it go? My February's are always manic, between back to school, back to work and all my kids having birthdays this time of year. I am quite glad to be seeing the back end of this month, to be honest.

I have one measly finish for the month, which I finished a few weeks ago, then never got as far as taking photos of (did I mention February is also a rainy month here?). This is a long standing UFO that I never really felt the love on. I am not really a shabby chic person AT ALL but I got what I suspect is part of a layer cake in a scrap pack and decided to put them together into a lap quilt. I paired them with cream for a very simple block. I quilted in a simple stipple that took only about an hour from start to finish.... gotta love that!

I do really like the finished product, it's turned into a sweet little lap quilt.

Because I am trying very hard to not buy fabric I decided to back it in the cream homespun as well. And I had *just* enough of this dusty pink solid to make the binding so that was meant to be.

This little quilt will be gifted a bit later in the year. Considering I started it with no intentions, I am pleased to have found a good home for it.

I have been working hard at my low volume rainbow quilt for ALYOF, but I'm just not going to get there in February, sadly. I have almost all the quilting done but I have had a headache and been very under the weather this week so I didn't quite get it finished. But I am pleased with the progress I've made and hope to get it wrapped up very soon. I am loving how ALYOF is keeping me focused on finishing particular projects, it really is what I need!

Excitedly, I am starting to feel a bit more like a finisher. As I am getting through the piecing side of things I am making a concerted effort to baste and quilt straight away. In the past I've very often put finished tops aside for a while, and we all know how that turns out... (a bit like the nap I took yesterday afternoon after work lasted until 7pm).

Linking up with TGIFF over at Mila and Cuatro, Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts and Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation.

Hope you all have a productive, fabric filled weekend.

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Friday Finish - Secret Santa

I actually finished this project last week, but it was in transit interstate to my lovely fellow Wombat, Lara, so I couldn't show it off it until now.

As regular readers know, I'm in a paper piecing bee called Wombat Stew. In December, we opted to make secret Santa presents instead of swapping blocks, and I was allocated Lara.

A few of Lara's favourite quilty thing include selvedges, rainbows and hexagons - we are total kindred spirits in that department. So after a quick stalk of her Pinterest, I came up with a plan for a small wall quilt.

 Some block detail:

And a rainbow stripe back:

I had so much fun making this, picking out my favourite prints, playing with my selvedges, doing my favourite type of quilting, testing my new perle cottons.... it was all fun and games up to the binding, which gave me grief due to the cranky sewing machine phenomenon, but it got done.

I am so happy with how it turned out, there were a few moments when I wanted to keep it for myself. But I know it's gone to a very good home and is most loved - it is always more special when handmade gifts are well received.

In addition to one handmade item, we put in little bits and pieces too.

I broke out my Silhouette cutter to make her this sign and a paper tea set - no idea what she might be able to do with that, but Lara loves teapots and red, so it fits :).

I also sent along a set of quilt row markers I've made, I found this idea on Pinterest a while ago and they're a great alternative to scribbling on tape or scraps of paper to mark your rows.

And some Japanese character tape, another thing Lara likes.

I also sent a little roll of scraps, but this is kind of cheating, because they were Lara's scraps for her bee block - Lara is in both my bees and was queen in December and January, so I popped both her bee blocks in the parcel too.

I wrapped everything up individually because opening it is part of the fun.

And when I took it to the post office, there was my Secret Santa present from the lovely Gemma waiting for me! It would appear my photos of this are on my phone, so I'm stealing a pic from Gemma's post here.

Oh my God, when I opened my parcel I was totally smitten. How amazing is this?



You may have already seem this cushion, floating around the interwebs on places like Aurifil's Facebook and Twitter feeds!!! - and it is totally worthy of the attention. The fabric selection and piecing is beautiful and the quilting is sublime. It is just so beautiful and I am so very in love.

The only problem is that it makes the rest of my couch cushions look very shabby indeed... so I need to get on the task of making more cushions.

Linking up to TGIFF  at From Blank Pages, and Crazy Mom Quilts.

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A Tetris TGIFF

Call me old school, but I loved Tetris back in the day. Such a great, simple game. So of course, when I saw this Tetris quilt along with Melissa at Happy Quilting, I had to play along.

It was serendipitous as I'd just participated in a rainbow charm square swap and I knew I was about to get back four sets of rainbow charms, the absolute perfect number for this quilt. I don't normally work with charms, but I was very pleased with how quickly it came together. 

For the first few weeks I didn't have the fabric, so I just played along with my coloured pencils, designing as I went. Then I got my fabric and got mostly caught up. But then pesky life got in the way and this quilt sat on the backburner for a little while. I managed to finish piecing it a few weeks ago and last weekend I sat down and quilted it. 

I opted for straight line quilting around each 'piece' to accentuate the tetris shapes. I also opted for a simple black border and backing, and for the first time ever I bound it using the backing fabric - easy peasy lemon squeezy!

My first quilt crossed off the 100 Day Hustle list!

This quilt is destined for the spare bed cat's day bed in our study - an apt place for a computer themed quilt, I think.

Linking up with TGIFF. 

And Finish it up Friday at  Crazy Mom Quilts

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TGIFF - Coming soon

It's been a hectic few weeks around here, but I am finally getting on top of the mountains of everything that's been going on lately. Except the laundry mountain, that's still more like a mountain range.

This Friday, I'll be hosting TGIFF - which stands for Thank God It's Finally Finished and right now I'm not sure if that statement refers to a sewing project or the whole school term... possibly the latter. I am very much looking forward to two weeks holiday and hopefully some sewing time.

I am excited that in the midst of the crazy I've been able to get a very long term project finished. I had planned on doing something else for this deadline, but then I looked at my stack of quilt tops and decided I should really quilt something that's been lying around for years (I kid you not).

Come back Friday for full details and some pics of the finish - not sure how good they'll be as we've had rain the last couple of days, but after weeks and weeks of dry the wet is a very welcome change.

See you Friday!

TGIFF

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TGIFF - The Happy Edition

A couple of weeks ago I posted about how I was feeling very grumpy, here. I hadn't done anything creative in so long, I was feeling overwhelmed by the to do list and I just needed to play.

I am happy to report that the quilt therapy worked and I am ready to pitch it to my health insurance company (anything to help fund the stash building!). A couple of nights of sewing and I had this shiny, happy, cheerful little wallhanging all finished.

I started out scouring my Pinterest boards for something that had absolutely nothing to do with anything I have been working on lately and I stumbled across these gorgeous blocks in the most delightfully cheerful colours. This took me to this video, where a totally new-to-me technique was shown. It looked simple enough, so I started playing with fabric combinations and stitching up a storm.

I really love how these 'faux cathedral window' blocks came up and they are very easy, even though they look nice and complex. Some clever fabric folding yields an awesome textured effect for little effort. Each block only took about 20 minutes to stitch up.

I decided to accentuate the natural circles that were forming in the curves, so I spiral quilted them. I free motion quilted it but for once I marked it, which made it much more accurate. The notion that you can't mark when FMQing is a total myth, and it was well worth the time it took to mark up. It was even - gasp - worth the time spent unpicking my dodgy first efforts.

I am entering this in the Sew Lux Fabric and Gifts Texture Competition - it's hard to see it in the pictures but this technique involves fabric folding and the centre pieces have quite a nice 3D effect that is accentuated by the quilting. Fortunately the rest of the family hasn't discovered the 3D effect and tampered with it (you try living in a house where everyone nicknames the yoyos on your bed quilt 'fiddlers' because they're just the right size to poke a finger into!).

I'm also linking up to TGIFF, over at Mama Love Quilts even though I don't know if this really counts as a FINALLY finished as it was a very quick project, but anything that gets me out of a state of creative block and switches me from grumpy to happy is worth it in my book!

Hope your week has been a creative one!

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