Saturday 22 April 2017

Baby Joe's foxy quilt!

I have a Pinterest board I share with my mum where we collect quilt inspiration, it's packed with all sorts of ideas that we want to try one day and when we are stuck for an idea it's the first place we look!

When a colleague of mine told me she was pregnant I knew I wanted to make her a baby quilt and my mind jumped to this beautiful fox quilt I had seen on Pinterest

http://redredcompletelyred.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/fifty-shades-of-fox.html

It was also pretty perfect as she wasn't going to find out if the baby was a boy or a girl but this quilt works well for both...

I think there is a pattern available but I just picked up some squared paper and got to work (as in my usual method - I don't tend to like following the instructions!)

This was my test fox (out of scraps) Which turned out better than expected:



And here is the finished quilt:




I also got the baby a toy fox (LOVE Jellycat toys):



Since I made this there has been a flurry of babies at work so I have at least 4 more baby quilts in progress which I will write about soon!

Sunday 9 April 2017

Baby Clothes Quilt!

Two years ago I spent a year living in the Netherlands.

It was an amazing year and I'm so glad I got to spend some time in such a beautiful country!

While I was there my manager (and friend) lent me her (unused) sewing machine and set me a task; she asked me to turn her daughter's baby clothes into a quilt.

It was a fairly epic task with lots of annoying stretchy fabric and it took me most of the year to complete but the result was awesome (if I do say so myself) and I definitely think it's one of the best things I have made to date...

The whole quilt (except the wadding) came from the clothes, including the binding, and I tried to keep a lot of pockets, buttons, zips and other details from the clothes. We also decided to make the quilt 'two-sided' with one side using a lot of the characters and being a bit more 'baby' and the other being a bit more grown up and fairly plain so that she could flip it as she gets older...

Here are some pics:



Sunday 2 April 2017

Jane Davies 'New England Houses'

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of joining the Gwent Quilters at a workshop run by Jane Davies who uses free machine embroidery quilting to create her 'New England Houses'

I can't seem to find any picture of her work online which is a real shame as it's really impressive!

I had never tried free machine embroidery before but I loved it (even if I got a bit shaky at times) here are some pictures of my efforts:




I had a great time at the workshop and discovering a new technique - I'm definitely inspired to add some more quilts to my 'things to make' list but maybe not so much 'New England houses' but maybe castles or haunted houses or maybe some Dutch houses... We'll see when I finally get round to it...

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