Hand stitched....

 Freshly added to my Etsy shop Inez&James is this hand-quilted baby quilt that has been given the royal seal of approval from my daughters cat who just had to get in on the shot.

Made from a modern selection of predominately blue and green prints with a theme of pretty butterflies and blossoms just in time for the southern hemisphere spring season. These butterflies have been patiently waiting in my fabric collection for that perfect project  ;-)

 Converging circles have been hand-quilted to give a subtle texture and to break up the straight lines of the simple piecing.

A hand-stamped label attached to the back with a blanket stitch adds the finishing touch...

Available for purchase here..

Amelia's quilt....

 My eldest daughter Amelia turned 18 last month and since it's been a few years since I've made a quilt for her I decided an 18th birthday was special enough to make her one. This year has been a big year for both her and I as she moved out of home and into a Halls of residence in Wellington. She is doing a Bachelor of Arts degree at Victoria University majoring in Film and Theatre. It was so very hard to leave her in Wellington once I had helped move her in but it has been so very rewarding to see her grow and mature into an independent young adult. She loves her new life down in Wellington as a student and loves what she is studying. She has a sign on her bedroom door at home that reads "Sorry out living the dream" and that is exactly what she is doing. I am so very proud of who she is becoming and what she is achieving so far. I can remember when she was just a few weeks old, pushing her along the road and commenting to someone who had stopped to admire her that I couldn't wait to see what and who she was going to grow into. I was eager to see the future her but also enjoying that first time motherhood period. 

When we were choosing items for her new room she had a definite colour scheme in mind of tuquiose, aqua, green. Once all her room was dressed with all her new things it looked fresh and modern which helped me choose a fresh, simple and modern quilt design. It had to be fairly simple as I didn't leave myself much time to complete it.

 All of the prints are from my stash of fabrics so the only purchase was some more solid grey print and the aqua and white spot for the backing.

I gave myself added pressure by being determined to hand-quilt it but I just love the look of a hand-quilted quilt.

 It should keep her nice and warm in Wellington's slightly cooler temperatures with it's inner layer of wool/polyester batting.

And of course a quilt isn't complete without a label. "Inez and James" is my new Etsy shop.

Upcycling ......

 Feeling pretty pleased to have some finishes this week to show everyone. The painted stool took a lot longer than I anticipated but now it is finally finished I am very happy with how it's turned out. It took a good couple of days to sand off the original dirty off-white paint to reveal yet another layer of an ugly wood dark stain. Forgot to photograph some before shots but they were both in well need of a freshen-up :-)

Once it was stripped back bare I applied 2 coats of undercoat then 3 coats of each colour of top coat. Each triangle had to be taped up with painters tape to get those nice clean straight edges so that slowed the process down a lot but so worth the extra time and effort. Then to protect all that painting from wear and tear I applied 3 coats of polyurethane. 

And this stool has been waiting very patiently for its makeover since I bought it way back in January. I just couldn't find/decide on the perfect fabric. The fabric I have used is a Scandinavian print produced by Swedish textile company "Klippan" who only use top quality natural fibres and incidentally use New Zealand lambswool for their blankets. This particular print is 50% cotton & 50% linen and was purchased from "Andshine" on Etsy 

 Just love the way piping gives such a professional look to an item.

And this is what is keeping my hands busy at night. I think I'm nearly 2/3 finished.

The tumbler quilt...version 2

This quilt is the twin sister of Elena's quilt which I finished and posted about back here. I decided that it would not take much more time and effort to cut out enough pieces to make up two quilts, one for Elena and one to sell in my shop. I pinned the 3 layers together on Friday night with no firm idea how I was going to quilt it. Thankfully inspiration came to me over night along with the perfect wet and windy day on Saturday to stay inside and get to work on this modern baby quilt. I'm using 5 different colours of Perle cotton to quilt various sized circles randomly drawn on with a fabric marking pen. 

Unfortunately as cute as Leo our kitten is he is not at all helpful in getting this quilt quilted. Every time he sees the quilt on my lap he seems to think it's an invitation to push his way underneath either to play with the pins or sleep under the quilts warm layers depending on his mood.

A quilt for Elena

 Finished this fresh, modern baby quilt yesterday with the final stage of hand-stitching the binding to the back of the quilt. 

Even though it takes a lot longer I think the soft look of hand-quilting is worth the extra time and a couple of sore fingers from pulling the needle through.

These random wavy lines around the border were harder than I thought. I ended up unpicking my first attempt as it looked too uniform and intentional but I'm glad I persevered because I love the end result.

This quilt was a custom order for a friends first grand-daughter. The overall design and choice of fabrics were left to me to decide as long as it was predominately blue and modern which I hope I've succeeded in. Tomorrow it will be on its way to Ireland...

Hand embroidered cushion designs...

Just added to my Etsy shop are these hand-embroidered cushion designs that I've been working on for a couple of weeks now in between other bigger projects. The front one is my favourite with the two "lovebird" centred flowers plus I love the colour combination of aqua blue and grey. It looks quite at home on this chair too ;-)

 I've had a bundle of Kaffe Fassett prints in my stash for a while now waiting patiently for that perfect project to use them in.  Each print is so unique, colourful and bold, that I decided to just add some simple hand-quilting in a variety of colours using some Perle cotton threads to compliment the colours in the prints.

A simple wave pattern was added to this bold tropical flower print which I think is enough to add texture but not too much to take your eye away from the print. While the hand-quilting does take a little more time and effort it does give me something to do at nights while watching TV :-)

Each cushion has a handmade button and loop enclosure on the back using some of the featured print from the cushion fronts.

These cushions are now available for sale here in my Etsy shop

A custom order.....

About a month ago now I agreed to make a friend some cushions to brighten up her her couches for an open home. It was a Friday afternoon and she needed them by lunch time the next day (no pressure :-)  I like a challenge and a deadline is always good for motivation. She had given me a clear idea as to colours (bright) and design but otherwise trusted my creative intuitions :-) I was immediately drawn to my stash of colour saturated Balinese batiks thinking they would work well with some modern contemporary designs. Two hours into cutting out, at about 5 pm, I decided to have a break and get dinner on but no sooner had I started, the power went off and didn't come back on till 10 pm so no sewing got done but I did get all the cutting out finished before it got too dark to see. 

So the next morning I worked hard to finish them in time but not to how I had originally envisioned them to look like. I made my friend promise me she would give them back to me after the open homes so I could do more work on them. They looked fine to her but I knew they could look much better. I added the hand-quilted circles to the above circle cushion along with a thin layer of batting on the underside.....

....then to these woven designs I added a line of stitching down each fabric strip to not only reduce fraying on the raw edges but to add a little texture.

Then on the back of each one I added a handmade button and loop enclosure.

To see how these handmade covered buttons are made, the tutorial can be found here on Michelle's blog.

Reminding me of summers to come....

 

I started making these cushions over 3 months ago then life events got in the way taking away every spark of creativity inside me so these cushions were put on the WIP pile waiting for me to find some creative energy and time to do the things I love which is to create pretty things for my home and for my online shops.

You may remember in this post I was inspired by these pretty tea-towels which I thought were far too nice to be drying dishes with although they would make for a pretty kitchen accessory.

 

I came up with the idea to make some 3D flowers inspired by the ones on the tea-towel fabric layering them with yo-yo's, felt and buttons.

 

I added some embroidered stems and some hand-quilting with perle cotton for added texture.

I did my usual button enclosure with a collection of different but same sized buttons and a strip of fabric from the front.

I'm not sure which one I like best, the green one here with the rambling vines of flowers or...

....this pretty pink one with the row of flowers. What do you think???

 They are newly listed in both my Etsy shop and Felt shop.

For now they are looking quite at home sitting in my newly re-decorated window seat and are reminding me of happy blooms in a summer garden, a far cry from the torrential rain we have experienced here this week.

Edited to add: Both pillows are now sold.

I am...

• enjoying some hand-quilting in the lovely autumn sun.
• listening to the distant rumble of  V8's in our town due to this festival happening.
• vacuuming up feathers left by our cats latest catch that they insist on sharing with us.
• still enjoying having my menu planned each week.
• trying out new photo editing sites like this one to replace the soon to be no longer Picnik.
• Slowly getting a not so little gardening project completed that I've been wanting to do for maybe a couple of years now.

Baby boy circle quilt...

 

This is the finished quilt I have been working on this last week and the one I showed a little snippet of in my last post.  It is for the same baby boy that I made these gifts for. I thought after making the ball and bootees I would quickly whip up a simple quilt for him and immediately thought of this quilt but I always like to put my own spin on a pattern and also wanted to incorporate a bundle of fat quarters I had in my stash that included the zoology print by Michael Miller and some coordinating spotty fabrics that seemed perfect for a boy. The idea for the tree came from the Zoology print which has the same simple tree amongst the animals. 

 

The words are done in a Amy Butler stripe and to make them stand out a bit better I used a machine embroidery thread in a bright turquoise to blanket stitch around them.

I was going to quickly machine quilt it but then had the idea of some hand quilted various sized circles to keep with the circle theme I had going on. I found the perfect colours in one of Anna Maria Horners boxes of Pearle cottons and used a Fiskars circle template that I had for scrapbooking to get perfect circles.

 

I couldn't resist adding this sweet little bird to one of the branches which I found in one of my quilting books, and used another Amy Butler floral print.

 

The backing fabrics are nothing fancy but ones I wanted to use up from my stash. I found the 'abc' print and just added fabrics that went with the colours in that print. It felt so good to use these very old fabrics!

The background spotty print is one from Spotlight and the binding print is the same print but the colours are reversed.  We gave the quilt and the other handmade gifts to my niece on Sunday and I think it's fair to say she was very pleased with everything.

Bliss pinwheels!

I finished hand sewing the binding on this quilt yesterday afternoon and took it outside for a quick photo shoot just in time to enter it in the Bloggers Quilt Festival hosted by Amy. For those of you who are regular readers you will know all about this quilt but for those who are are visiting from the  Bloggers Quilt Festival I will give you a run-down on its statistics :-) Oh and welcome if you are new here! You welcome to hang around and have a look at what I get up to.

So this quilt was started with a jellyroll of that pretty fabric collection called "Bliss by Bonnie and Camille". The framed 6 inch pinwheel blocks were originally going to be sewn together to make 12 inch blocks but I decided that they looked better framed individually with the coordinating solids. I also added yoyo flowers to each pinwheel.

I then added a wide border in one of the pretty red prints then machine appliqued a meandering vine with clusters of yoyo blossoms. 

Once I finished the top I was a little stuck on how I should quilt it. I love the look of hand quilting but also like simple straight line machine quilting so I did a bit of each. Another problem that stopped the progression of this quilt was trying to find the right shades of Pearl cotton to hand quilt it in but I finally found the right colours after a lot of searching every time I went out of town. (I live in a small coastal town 2 hours drive from any city with a decent amount of shops.) 

The pinwheels are hand quilted with circles of Pearle thread and quilting cotton to give the idea of a spinning pinwheel. 

The border is hand quilted using the Pearl thread in a meandering line with little loopy flowers to echo the clusters of yoyo blossoms.

Here's a photo of the back to give you a better idea of the border quilting.

For the straight line quilting I used a variegated thread in shades similar to the fabrics.

I used a solid red to bind it which I think frames it all nicely. I always use a double thickness of binding for better durability.

This quilt, which measures 50"x70", is special to me because it's the first quilt I've made specifically to sell in my shop and also it's the first quilt I've made using just one fabric collection. I love how it turned out and would be quite happy to keep it if it doesn't sell. When I made the initial pinwheel blocks I ended up with too many so have made another quilt top (crib size and waiting to be quilted) plus a bolster pillow to match the quilt. 

I do hope you enjoyed reading about the makings of this quilt and thanks to Amy for hosting this fun Bloggers Quilt Festival. I'm off to check everyone elses entries now!