Fat quarter swap

I participated in Sew Mama Sew's fat quarter swap again this year. I love doing swaps, the anticipation of what you'll find in the mail, getting to know your partners and choosing fabrics for them and finding new blogs to read and add to my ever growing list of must reads.

My swap partners were:

1. Cat a fellow kiwi
2. Elizabeth from Portland, Oregon
3. Kriste from Texas
4. Dana from California (her blog is set to private)

As you can see in the above photo I received some beautiful fabrics, a handwritten poem, and a sheet of cute owl stickers. I wish I'd taken the time to photograph what I sent but Elizabeth has blogged about it beautifully here.Thanks ladies for being such great swap partners!!

Nearly there....

This is the backing side of my 'quilt-as-you-go' quilt all pinned and ready to quilt in the ditch of the seams but can you see my mistake? So... um.... yeah those pins should be on the right side of the quilt shouldn't they. Great! I thought I was being clever by laying down the backing first so I could make sure it was nice and flat then the quilted quilt top on top. Not a major mistake but before I started quilting I had to take out the pins and put them on the right side.

The actual quilting didn't take too long as it was just long straight rows down all the seams. I have the binding all ready to go so hope to have nice show and tell tomorrow.

A 3rd cushion for Mother's Day

Whipped up this third cushion for Mum yesterday afternoon. I'm very pleased with how these cushions have come out especially this one. Like the other two I machine quilted in the ditch and I think that was all that was needed. They are very traditional blocks and I remember them taking a bit time to piece together. It feels good to make something useful with them and know they are going to a good home. Some of the fabrics I've used in this particular one were from the very first quilt I made and which I gave to Mum anyway.

I'm going to wrap them up as well but just thought they looked good stacked from biggest to smallest and tied with some ribbon.

Wishing all the Mothers out there a happy day!!

Cushions for Mothers Day...

I made these pieced blocks a long time ago now. They were originally meant to go in this quilt but they didn't make the final cut so I put them aside and found them again a few weeks ago when I had a little tidy up in my sewing attic. I thought they would make perfect cushions for a Mother's day gift and go well in Mum's spare room. They measure 12" x 12" and 8" x 8" so they are just little decorative cushions.

I machine quilted them in the ditch, made some cushion inners and added button enclosures on the back. Not bad for an afternoon's work! I have one more to make which I will hopefully finish tomorrow. I'm adding this post to Amy's Sew'n'tell Friday. You can check out everyone else's finishes by clicking on the button over on the right side bar. Have a happy weekend!!

This guy is amazing!!!

Check out this really cool trick!!!

Working on the quilt backing....

Have finished my quilt as you go blocks and manged to get them all sewn together on Sunday. I knew I wouldn't have enough of one fabric or even two to make a quilt back so I chose about a dozen fabrics from my stash that all go together but I no longer like and needed to use them up. I was going to go for horizontal stripes but that was going to end up too 'random' looking ( to use my daughters current favourite phrase), so I cut up 14 1/2 " squares from the larger pieces to match up with the 14 1/2 " blocks on the quilt top. Then I cut smaller squares from the smaller fabric pieces that when pieced together 4x4 make up a 14 1/2 square as in the photo below. When I first cut these smaller squares I made a wee calculation error and made them too big which I guess is better than too small, so had to trim them all (128) to the correct size. I tried to get Amelia on to it yesterday but she found it all a little boring.

I know these fabrics aren't very inspiring but the colours go together nicely and it has made a nice dent in my fabric stash which I can now fill with prettier more modern looking fabrics.

Pretties in the mail!

A few weeks ago I won a giveaway on Jo's blog Bearpaw and yesterday I received this lovely package in the mail all the way from Edinburgh, Scotland. So exciting getting packages in the mail from so far away and knowing there's some pretty fabrics inside! She also included a pretty metal heart ornament that's sitting on top of the package in the above photo.

Aren't these fabrics beautiful! I love them! Thank you Jo! They are a slightly heavier weight than quilting cottons so I think would be perfect made up in a pretty cushion or one of these bags or maybe one of these.

Jo owns a lovely home wares shop that sells amongst other things these fabrics. You can check out her shop here.