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!

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Mirage

 It's finished! And I've called it Mirage.  (If I could insert the blue heart emoji here, I would.)

I love how the colours transition from top to bottom - that was my son's idea. 

The pattern is Topsy by Sheila Christensen, but I've named this quilt Mirage for a couple of reasons.

 Firstly, when I met my husband he drove a 1979 Mitsubishi Mirage and it was blue like this quilt. 

The well loved Mirage - that is not my husband in the photo.

Secondly, my son loves Transformers, and there is an blue Autobot called Mirage.  

This quilt is for my son's 21st birthday, so it seemed appropriate to call it Mirage.  

I do love the blocks where I made the extra effort to pattern match the stripes. 

Although I love hand quilting, I knew long arm machine quilting would work better on this quilt for two reasons:

1. it's for a young man and it will probably need washing more frequently than my other quilts, and

2. it's massive and I didn't have the energy to spend months hand quilting it.  

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. 

Finished size is 105"w x 97"h after washing.  

I used the Queen sized blocks, but added extra columns and rows to make it bigger.  

You can read an earlier blog post about this quilt here. 

I think this quilt will be my most significant finish in 2021. I loved making it, and I'm really pleased that my son loves it too.  

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

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

The Topsy quilt top is finished and I dropped it off to my long arm quilter this morning.  We looked at a lot of quilting designs, and I chose a custom pattern that I'm quite excited about.  I hope you'll think I made a good choice.  

I'm really pleased with how this quilt has turned out.  I loved going through my blue stash and finding all the fabrics that would work.  

My son will turn 21 in July, and this quilt is for him.  As you can see below, it matches the feature wall in his bedroom.  I'm not sure what will happen to it when he finishes university and leaves home.  Will it stay in this room? Or will he take it with him? I don't mind if he wants to take it with him, provided he looks after it and brings it back home if it needs washing. 

My previous post about this quilt is here and it has lots of details about the Topsy pattern designed by Sheila Christensen.  

I enjoyed making this pattern and may well make it again in the future in a totally different colour way. 

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

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