Goals - Setting and Missing

Well hello there! I'm not sure that I remember how to do this blogging business. I could go on about life getting in the way yada, yada, yada but I'm sure that you don't really want to hear it so lets get straight to business shall we?

Today's the seventh of October and the last day that I can link up with Leanne over at She Can Quilt with our finishes from Q3 of the Finish Along. You might remember my goal setting post from three months ago where I listed 18 projects that I wanted to finish during the quarter. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!

I have made progress on some items but only actually finished three - and only one of these qualifies for the FAL as I hadn't started the other two at the start of the quarter.

The list of shame - 

1. Anwen's quilt. Not finished :-( 

I really am struggling to decide on how to quilt this. I think that the main problem is that it's double sided and I really couldn't decide which side to make the front. Soooo.... I've 'unbasted' it and am going to turn it into two separate quilts - one for Anwen's bed and the other as a rather large lap quilt.

Anwen has decided that she want's me to finish the one with her name first and after a lot of deliberation has decided which vintage sheet she would like for the back.

She actually went for the blue sheet at 9 o'clock (not the pink one she's pointing at)

I'm determined to get this one done before the month's out so I'm going to set it as my October goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes over with Shanna at Fiber of All Sorts and Melissa at Sew BitterSweet Designs.

2. Get Shirty. DONE!

Can you see those dark clouds rolling in?

I decided yesterday that I had to get at least one qualifying finish for Q3 so starting quilting during afternoon nap time, got some more done whilst Dadi took Marged for a two mile walk and then just about managed to finish the quilting and attach the binding to one side in time to finish the binding in front of Downton on +1.

I knew that work would take me to Aberaeron and Cardigan today and as both towns have some beautiful spots where a quilt shoot would be possible I bundled the quilt in the car and hoped I'd get a spare minute in which to take a pic. On my way home I was thinking to myself that it was getting darker earlier everyday and before long after work quilt pics would be impossible. I suddenly remembered that I hadn't taken a picture of Get Shirty! I pulled into the next lay-by, threw the quilt on a hedge and took a few snaps before the light completely vanished. Hence three terrible shots of a crumpled quilt that don't show any of the quilting detail.

Although you can't see it in these pictures I've used three different quilting designs in the four main areas (clockwise from top right) stipple, stars, flowers and loop de loop. I also tried a different quilting design in each of the squares including pebbles, checkerboard, organic fmq straight lines and a square stipple.

I used a cream Coats 100% cotton for the front and am happy with the result but regret my choice of bobbin thread.

You can see the quilting a little better on the back

I used a variegated Gutterman sulky in blues and greens. It was far too dark and shows all my quilting imperfections! I think that a lighter aqua/lime variegated thread would have been better or even maybe a lilac to match the border.

This quilt was only ever supposed to be a practice quilt and will be keeping me company on the sofa until I one day manage to make myself a liberty quilt - hopefully my quilting skills will be vastly improved by then.

3. House quilt. Haven't touched this in ages. No reason why not just need to get my bum in gear. - untouched

4. Nephew's quilt. Done!

My first nephew!!!!!!

And received. Proper blog post to come.

5. A quilt for another baby due at the end of July. Nobody knows what colour (pink or blue) this baby's going to be so I haven't even bought the fabric yet. - Baby boy Cian has arrived and I've got a charm pack to start on.

6, 7, 8 & 9 Osian's, Elisa's, Rhys' and Megan's quilts. I think getting even one of these done during Q3 is a long shot but who knows? Yeah right!

10. Mum's quilt. Before the end of the year? Although her birthday is in October. - I bought her some flowers.

11, 12 & 13 Zig Zag quilt, impromptu along and distribution. These have all moved way down the list. Main reason for this is that they don't have recipients, they're just designs that I'd like to try. Nope - not touched them.

1. Charms cut for Zig Zag quilt        2. Fabric for impromptu           3. Inspiration for distribution

Oh, so only 13 quilts on the list. Completely manageable! (boy do I make myself laugh!)

On top of this there are a few other projects I'd like to get under my belt.

1. A few zipper pouches. Anwen really liked the way I'd appliquéd the butterflies onto Cadi's Quilt and as her birthday is coming up and I have some of the Cocoon fabric leftover I thought I'd make her a zipper pouch. Her friend had her birthday a few weeks back and is still waiting for a pressie and another friend has her birthday two weeks after Anwen. I thought that it would also be nice for Cadi's two sisters to have something to match their sister's quilt. So that's five pouches in total! - I've cut the butterflies out for the applique! 

2. A new bag for me. Done and blogged (but doesn't qualify for the FAL)

3. After moving things around a little at home the little table that used to hold our printer is now next to my corner on the sofa. It was a thrifty find when we first moved in together and the top has seen better days so I thought a little something quilty might do the trick for tarting it up. I might even drag something out of my ancient UFO pile for this one. It will also give me a good opportunity to practice making bias binding and sewing it onto a circular mini quilt. Not even looked at it.

4. Shorts for Anwen. I now have the pattern and the fabric. This is one make I hope to get finished before the end of the week. Autumn's here - this might find it's way on to next years Q2 list!

Hoping to turn a thrifty old skirt into a pair of shorts with the aid of a free (to me) pattern 

5. Shorts for Marged. I seem to have been neglecting Marged recently so depending on how Anwen's shorts go I might try making a pair for Marged out of some fabric from my stash. See as above.

So there we have it. A very disappointing quarter. All that's left to do now is link Get Shirty up to 

And Anwen's quilt to 

Here's hoping for a much more productive fourth quarter!

Summer's Little Hen

**WARNING - PICTURE AVALANCHE AHEAD**

What a strange name for a quilt! It's a direct translation from one of the Welsh names for a butterfly - 'Iar Fach yr Haf' (another name being 'Pili Pala') and as I think it's a cute name for a quilt it's what Cadi's quilt shall be named from now on. Yes I actually got around to writing a proper 'finished!' post for this one.

Last time I wrote properly about Summer's Little Hen I'd gotten as far as starting the quilting but didn't like the way that it was going and decided that me and Mr Seam Ripper were going to spend some time together. It didn't take long, only around twenty minutes as I hadn't gone too far with the straight line quilting. I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and try my hand at some free motion quilting. Now I hadn't done any FMQ before. None.

I had originally planned to practice some FMQing on a quilt for myself made out of thrifted shirts but I didn't have the time, Cadi's been around for around a month now and if I wasn't careful she'd be getting this quilt on her first birthday!

I started on the large square of Madrona Road and tried outlining the flowers.

It went quite well and (for the most part) I managed to keep my stitch length pretty even. I then outlined the central yellow flower and then did a squiggly spiral radiating from that point.

Looking at the pictures now I'm not really happy with this and am very close to getting Mr Seam Ripper out again but this quilt has got it's binding on so I'm going to stop myself.

Then the fun started. I decided to try a loopy design, keeping the quilting quite 'loose' as I didn't want the quilt to get too stiff.

I decided to only quilt the negative space in an attempt to let the butterflies, 'petal squares' and Cadi's Name stand out a little.

It went quite well and I was enjoying myself but I was having trouble moving the quilt around - it felt as if the throat space on my machine was waaaay to small.

But before I knew it half the quilt was done! But then I hit a problem. Quite a big problem...

I ran out of thread so had to leave it there until I could get some more.

Whilst waiting for the opportunity to get some more thread something that had been niggling me really began to bug me. In a big way. Whilst hand sewing I've always had a problem with keeping my stitch length even. You'd think that they'd get steadily longer but no with me the stitches get smaller and smaller and smaller. It looks like this problem has spread to my free motion quilting. If you look at the picture above you can see that as I quilted from left to right my quilting gets denser and denser and denser. I really did want to keep the quilting quite loose but was there were less stitches on the 'loose' side than on the 'dense' side I decided to unpick the loose side. I did it in batches and, in all, I reckon it took me just over three hours! That's a long time. And there was a lot of swearing involved. But overall I'm glad that I did it, I'm a lot happier with the finished article now.

As soon as I'd managed to get some more thread (and I made sure that I got plenty - you can never have enough thread can you?) I set about finishing the quilting. It took me a few hours split into around four sessions over two days. And I took another picture in the middle of the night!

The following night was the last day in June and I had set this quilt as my June finish for A Lovely Year of Finishes' and even though it was already quite late I decided that I should (just about) be able to get the binding on before the linky party deadline. I kept the binding very simple, using the same cream fabric as the quilt top with a scrap of Madrona Road on the corner opposite the large square. And even though Marged (who always sleeps through) decided that it would be fun to join Mam on the sofa for an hour or two I managed to get it finished, take a quick photo on the patio in the beautiful dawn light and write the quickest of posts to add to the linky (with around two hours to spare).

Now in that post I promised a proper 'finished!' post and now, twelve days later. here it is.

I learn't quite a lot whilst making this quilt.

1. Before you fuse fabrics together with an iron, check, check again and check once more that your placing them in the right place! I'm still not happy with the placement of Cadi's name in relation to the large flower and the flower looks upside down. I will not be making this mistake again! (Famous last words)

2. Stand back and judge your quilting as often as possible. The more often you judge, the less stitches you have to unpick!

3. Consider how your binding is going to look on the back of the quilt as well as the front. I love the vintage sheet I used to back this one but it's blue on white and the binding is cream and it really just looks wrong. (If I were to choose the binding again I think I'd have gone for the same fabric that I used for Cadi's Name - but kept the scrap of Madrona road)

4. Buy thread in bulk - you can never have too much thread and running out is just a plain old pain in the arse.

I also learned lots of other little things but most importantly I enjoyed making this little quilt. So much so I took it down to the village park for a little photo shoot!

Peeking out the window

Hanging out in a tree

And another tree

You can't really make out the river in the background in this picture so..

I went back down last night and took another one - don't I live in a beautiful part of the world?

Lounging around

And having a bit of fun with another one of my finished quilts (still unblogged!)

A nod to Mr Murray

And lastly my favourite! On the was home from my mum's last night I passed something that I pass every time I go there and hadn't thought of it as a quilt prop before. Light bulb moment! I put the car in reverse and came up with this.

Isn't it cute? And just so British?

Now I've just got to tackle the rest of this list. I don't see much getting done during the next few days as we've got a wedding to attend tomorrow and a very special little girl is turning five on Monday! (how did that happen?)

I've come back as I've just realised that I forgot to show a picture of the back and I forgot to include the quilt stats!

So the full back -

I love this vintage sheet I just wish that I had more that a few meagre scraps left!

 And a close up of it's full crinkly glory -

Quilt Stats:

Name: Summer's Little Hen
Pieced by: Me
Quilted by: Me on my twelve year old domestic Brother
For: Little baby Cadi Mai
Design: Mine!
Fabric: Madrona Road by Violet Craft for Micheal Miller, Cocoon by Valori Wells for         Westminster/Freespirit and an unknown yellow polka dot from the scrap bin at my lqs
Thread: Coats 100% Cotton in 1212, an old spool of Dorma thread in a pale blue and Coats Moon 100% polyester in white in the bobbin.
Size: 36" x 37" (unwashed)

Linking up to:

This week with MR at Quilt Matters and

With Karen at Quilty Creations As Summer's Little Hen is backed with a vintage sheet (you really should head over there - it's a party for making something useful out of poor neglected fabric/objects - and there's a giveaway!)
and 
Amanda at Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday

Dawn chorus

So it's light outside and I can hear bird song yet I haven't been to bed.

That can only mean one thing - I've been up all night finishing my goal for June ALYoF. Madness I know and officially it's July here in the UK but the linky's still open (I hope) so I'm linking up.

So about five minutes ago I finished hand sewing the binding onto Cadi's quilt and it's finished!

I ran outside and took a super quick picture with my mobile (sorry). If I get up before Anwen comes home from school I'll try to write a proper post tomorrow (today) till then

z z z Z z Z Z 

A finish!

Ok, so this isn't a new finish but actually my first ever finished quilt!

Isn't the clematis pretty?

I bought the fabric when I was pregnant with Anwen - five years ago! We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl so we decided on a neutral spotty theme for the nursery. I found this fabric at my lqs.

I still have some in my stash, complete with selvage

It has spots in four different colours so I decided to pair it with four corresponding solids and a white. I bought enough of the spot to make some curtains too.

Now, remember, this was before I discovered all these wonderful blogs and tutorials on the interwebby so I started cutting it up into squares and sticking it to cardboard squares with Sellotape!

I still cry when I see how much fabric I used to waste on seams!

Unfortunately this is as far as I got. I really can't remember why I didn't carry on.

So along came Anwen

My favorite pic from that time - I look awful (after 53 hours without sleep I was allowed to) but we both look SO happy!

and the quilt was forgotten about :-( And I never got around to making the curtains either.

So roll on around four years and I was pregnant with baby number two. I would get tired so easily and was in bed straight after Anwen (sometimes I even beat her to it) but I wasn't ready to sleep yet. I needed something that I could do in bed whilst watching telly......I know! I sent Endaf up to the attic to retrieve a shoebox and there was my ready to be pieced quilt. I laid out all the squares trying to come up with a pattern. I decided that it worked better without the white.

So every night I could be found in bed sewing away, piece by piece, row by row until I had a quilt top! (Sorry - no in progress shots - 'normal' people don't take pictures of quilt tops). I was advised by the lovely ladies in my lqs that as I was planning on hand quilting I should go for a 100% polyester batting and a cotton quilting thread (Gutermann hand sewing cotton). I decided that as I'd gone for plain and easy on the patchwork I'd do the same with the quilting.

And then there was the matter of the binding. Due to the baby being upside down I had one or two extra scans but insisted that I didn't want to know the sex so it had to neutral. I didn't want to go with one of the colours that I'd already used but still wanted it to be quite bold. I toyed with the idea of lilac but thought that it would be to girly. In the end I went for a dark purple.

Now I'd never heard of double quilt binding at this point so went through the painstaking task of making single quilt binding. So much more work to make and to attach to the quilt. I'm afraid that I didn't do a very good job of the stitching which wasn't helped by the fact that I thought that I needed to use quilting thread to attach the binding and couldn't find a better match! This was a slow, slow process and I didn't really enjoy it. And that's where I left it because....

Yes hubbie is wearing the same T-shirt! I had this idea that I would change my Facebook profile pictutre from Anwen's baby picture to this one. I even had the same yucky nightie in my bag ready! What I hadn't considered is that all the tubes and wires that come with a caesarean meant that I couldn't take the hospital gown off let alone change into my own clothes :(

Along came Marged! Doesn't Anwen look proud?

Now anyone out there that thinks that they are busy with one child try having two! (how some of these quilty mums with five plus kids manage to sew at all is beyond me). Just the normal work involved with having two children was bad enough but feeding issues meant that I had to wake Marged (and myself) every two hours so finishing that binding was the last thing on my mind. So back to the attic it went.

Then this happened

Poorly baba

When she was sixteen weeks Marged developed bronchiolitis. It wasn't as bad as it looks but they wanted to keep her in to monitor her in case she got any worse. Only problem was the children's ward was full so we were shipped off to another hospital 90mins away from home.

So with no clothes to iron, no food to cook and no floors to hoover I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I sent Endaf into the attic again and by the time we arrived home we had a bound quilt.

I'm trying to vary my photos from the usual 'on the line' suspects

Now I know that this quilt is far from perfect but it was my first (well, first completed quilt. I have two quilt tops under my bed that started life long before this one!) and will have a special place in my heart for a very long time.

But at heart I'm a lazy girl so here's a picture of the back 'on the line'. The wrinkles?
The quilt was fresh out the washer and since it was on the line I took a photo. Did I mention that I'm lazy?

and it's been used. A LOT

We had a mini photo shoot on a rare sunny day.
(Like the dress? I'm going to have to try and find a picture of a super cute baby wearing it around 32 years ago ;-))

I was a nasty mummy and took the egg from her as soon as I'd taken the picture.

in fact it's keeping my legs warm at this very moment.

And that was it. I was hooked. And I know another little girl that could do with a quilt for her big girl bed.......

I've been following the Lets Get Acquainted Blog Hop and realised how important pictures are. I've tried playing around with some of the photos in this post. I'd be grateful if you could leave me some feedback. Thanks.

Linking up to:

this week with Aunt Marti at Thirteen in 13 and  Finish it up Friday with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts