2022 Christmas Countdown - The Candy Man quilt

It's Day 19 of my Christmas Countdown and it's The Candy Man quilt.

A few weeks ago I blogged about a spur of the moment Christmas quilt I had started.  Well, now it's finished and all ready to be used this Christmas. 

The pattern (Watling Street) was designed by Sheila Christensen and is in her book, Quilts with an Angle.  I made my quilt smaller because I only had a limited number of scrappy Christmas fabrics in my stash.  Can you believe I made a whole quilt from stash? Even the backing and the binding? Well I did, and I want to use more of my stash in 2023.  

I've called my quilt The Candy Man because at first I thought of Candy Canes (due to the colours and stripes), but I don't really like to eat candy canes, but I did love performing The Candy Man song on the stage at the Regent Theatre in Dunedin back in the 1970's.  

I quilted this quilt myself using my walking foot. 

A Little Christmas Quilt

I hadn't planned to start anything new before Christmas, but when I was pulling out Christmas quilts to  show Wellington Quilters last week, I realised that I could do with a couple more small Christmas quilts to use as table runners.

So I checked what I had in my stash and found these fabrics: 

They're not all especially "Christmas" but they are red and green and that says Christmas to me.  

Surprisingly I settled on a pattern quite quickly, and was cutting and piecing within an hour of pulling the fabrics.  

I made as many blocks as I could out of the fabrics I had available, and then I joined them into three rows.  Next I put on the borders, and now I've even basted it all by myself! 

I'm going to try to machine quilting this one with my walking foot.  It won't be anything too fancy, but it will hold all 3 layers together. 

The pattern is Watling Street from Sheila Christensen's Quilts with an Angle book. The cutting out was a bit tricky, but the piecing is straight forward if you're comfortable with 60 degree triangles.  

Now I just have to make sure that it's finished before Christmas and I'm not sewing binding down on Christmas Eve.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Happy Birthday

 My youngest son turned 21 this week and I finished his Topsy quilt just in time.

I haven't been able to get outside for proper photos yet, but I took some quick photos when we tried it on his bed yesterday. 

It's the biggest quilt that I've ever made, so I had it custom quilted by my friend Rayna Clinton from Tui Song Quilting in Wellington, New Zealand. We chose the pattern together and I'm really pleased with it.  It's called Snakes Hexagons by Sharon Perry.

I put the wide back Onion Rings by Brandon Mably on the back and I love that too. 

I used the queen size Topsy pattern and used some of my fat quarters, but I added more blocks so the quilt is 100" wide, and almost reaches the floor on a queen sized bed.  All will be clear when we get outside for some photos. I promise to do another post with better photos.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to this week? Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

  

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Topsy Quilt by Sheila Christensen

I told you I got inspired at the Kapiti Quilt Show last week.  I saw Sheila Christensen's Topsy quilt on her stall, and I remembered that I had bought the pattern back in October at our own guild's exhibition. 

I had promised that I would make new quilts for the bedrooms when we had them painted four years ago, so I decided "this is it".  And I started cutting all my blue fabrics to make a quilt for the room with a blue feature wall.  

I'm making the Queen sized version of Sheila's Topsy pattern, and I can get the 12 triangles out of a fat quarter - provided there's no fussy cutting required for pattern direction.  

Here's my progress to date:

I've made all of these blocks from fabrics I already had on hand! Don't worry, blue is the biggest colour in my stash. But I weakened today and went shopping for a few more blues. 

Here's some links to Sheila's Topsy pattern if you're interested in making Topsy too:

Etsy for the physical pattern

PDF for downloads.

The pattern recommends the two triangle rulers above and I'm very glad I've got them.  I already had the one on the left, but I bought the one on the right and it makes cutting the segments so much easier. It's CGRT30 - Half Sixty by Creative Grids.   

There's usually a complication with my quilts, and this time I've decided to make the quilt bigger - more like a King size, but with the Queen sized blocks.  The advantage of this is that I can keep using up unloved fat quarters from my stash, but I do have to make a lot more blocks to keep the pattern nice at the edges and the top and bottom.  

So I'm plugging away here, churning out blocks and covering the lounge floor with them.  Soon it will be time to lay them out and start planning the assembly.  

I do love how quickly this quilt is coming together.  It's a big change from my usual style of quilting, but I'm enjoying it.  And to get this quilt ready for use this winter, I'm going to get it machine quilted.  I've got a backlog of quilts waiting for hand quilting, so I'll take the easier road with this one.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party - note I'm using my peacock colours above! What have you been up to this week? Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

My quickest quilt top ever

As I played around with my Marshal Mystery Quilt blocks last week, I came to the realisation that I would be better off making two quilts, rather than trying to combine all the blocks into one quilt.

I liked the idea of combining the small square blocks into rows or columns, so I looked in my stash for something that I could use as a background fabric.  Spurred on by people who say tell me that I'm so bold with my fabric choices, I used this Michael Millar fabric that's been in my stash for more than five years.  It's very bright, but maybe a young person will love it one day.

I sewed my 4" blocks into rows and bordered them with some black Grunge fabric that I also had in my stash.

I then fussy cut the hexie fabric so that there were two full hexagons width in each column.

It's off getting basted now because I'm going to hand quilt it.

So, I made a quilt top in four days!!! That's incredible for me.  I know the blocks were already made, and the background is just long strips, but it's still very good going for me because I normally spend weeks or months on each quilt that I make.

The other Marshal blocks are back in a box with the Lollies fabric.  I feel good that I've used half of the Marshal blocks, so will just let the remainder rest for a while.

What have you been up to this week? Feel free to join the Peacock Party by linking up a recent blog post below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Mediterranean Hexagons become Tropical Hexagons

Yes, I finished my Mediterranean Hexagons quilt on Friday, just two days before the 2018 class with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably!

This is the quilt I started in the previous class with Kaffe and Brandon, exactly two years ago.
You can read all about that class in this blog post here.

I'm really happy with the bright colours I chose for this quilt.  I was planning to use black with purple spots in the triangles, but Brandon suggested going lighter and I'm so pleased I did.  The black and white prints allow the hexagons to be the star of the show.

I used wool batting in this quilt, and have hand quilted it all myself.  It did seem to take forever because I quilted three hexagons inside each of the 99 hexagons in the quilt.  Gulp!

I quilted it during the US Open AND the Australian Open. 

For the inner hexagon outlines I used acrylic hexagon templates and my hera marker to mark the lines to quilt along (which you can just see in the photo below). On the outside of the hexagon I just eyeballed it, and the same with the grey triangles.  Life is too short to mark every line (or so I try to tell myself).

I used Aurifil 12wt thread in a range of complementary colours.  I worked out how much thread I needed to quilt each sized hexagon and wrote it down in a book.  This saved me a lot of thread because I hate ending up with short ends which are too good to throw away, but not long enough for a complete round.

I made my quilt the size in the book (Quilts in Morocco).  The hexagons are 3.75' each side, and we all used acrylic templates in the class to fussy cut the fabrics.  You can fin them here on this page at www.paperpieces.com.

I used a tone on tone wide back for the backing, and a black and white stripe for the binding.

I took it along to the class yesterday, and both Kaffe and Brandon admired it.

The pattern is Mediterranean Hexagons from Quilts in Morocco by Kaffe Fassett, but I've renamed my quilt to Tropical Hexagons.  Rather than being the cooling blue colours of the Mediterranean, my quilt is hot colours which remind me of the tropics - think Fiji and Hawaii, and the beautiful flowers of frangipani, hibiscus and bougainvillea.

My finished quilt is 80' x 84'.

Holiday Sewing Part 2 - Liberty Hexies pillow

You didn't pick me as a Liberty person? You'd be right.  I'm not really, but I saw some precut Liberty hexies at the Strawberry Thief stall at the Sydney Quilt Show, and thought I'd give Liberty a try.  I knew I already had 1" hexagon paper pieces at home.

There were 80 hexies in the packet, so I mixed them up with a bit of metallic Cotton + Steel and made a little pillow.  I hand quilted the front piece with a simple line down the centre of each row.  I used Aurifil 28wt because of the fine nature of the prints.  I thought 12wt might be too thick on this occassion.

The top has been finished for weeks, but I just need mum beside me help me turn it into a pillow.  Turns out it wasn't that hard after all, but mums tend to have these short cuts which you usually find out after the event.  This time I could ask first!

I'm very pleased with the result. Here's one last photo to show the scale.

The photo below was my haul from the 2017 Sydney Quilt Show.  I'm trying to use everything so if I'm really good I might be allowed to go back again this year.  I think I'm doing pretty well so far.  I've used at least five of those quilt labels, and I've made Flocks by Night.  I've used the Bloc Locs buried at the back right, and I cut into those Aboriginal prints this week.  Now I've used the Liberty hexies too.  I'm on a roll.

It's Giveaway time and it's hexagons

This giveaway is now closed.
True to my promise last week, it's giveaway time for my blog readers this week. I won't even mention this on Instagram, so that will increase your chances of winning.

I really appreciate the online friendships I've developed through blogging.  I now feel that I have friends all over the world.

So what's up for grabs?  These bright happy fabrics chosen especially for this giveaway, PLUS 50 hexagon shapes so you can try your hand at modern hexies.  You don't have to use these fabrics in a modern hexies project, but I would like to see you use the hexie templates - either for a modern hexies project, or traditional English Paper Piecing. Just a warning - some of these paper pieces have been used, but Paper Pieces make them so well that they can be used multiple times.  I always keep mine and recycle them.

Here's a reminder of what I made with just 31 hexies.

To get you started I'm providing a link here to Nicole's tutorial.  She's the expert at this technique, so you may as well learn from her.  The only thing I do slightly differently is create a template and trim my fabrics to hexagon size, plus a seam allowance.

This giveaway is now closed.

Halloween Hexies table runner

I finished my Halloween table runner the day before Halloween.  Talk about cutting it fine.

I had fun fussy cutting the Cotton + Steel Spellbound fabrics, and a few black and white extras I had in my stash.  The patterns are all from The New Hexagon book by Katja Marek as shown here:

I machine quilted in the ditch because I really wanted it finished before Halloween and I didn't have much time. I had to toss up between white and black stripes, and black and white stripes for the binding.  You'll see that white and black won out.

We had a lot of Halloween visitors last night, in a wide range of costumes.  These were the funniest ones:

Unfortunately I'm related to the giant banana in the middle.  That's a Kiwi bird on the left, and a pink unicorn on the right - of course!  Yes, it's Spring in New Zealand, and it doesn't get dark until after 8pm at the moment, so trick or treating is usually done in daylight.

I was so pleased that I finished my Gingerbread Haunted House in August.  You can see more photos of it here..