Thursday, February 24, 2011

Fused! Miss Kelly - Center Piece for My Tweets

Fused! Didn't I just say that for another quilt? :)
Here is the next quilt I'm working on. It is My Tweets by Erin Russek.
This is the center block called Miss Kelly. I absolutely LOVE the colours!!! Can't wait to start stitching! I;ve been bored since I finished the White Christmas quilt.



























Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Quilt Frame

I can not believe it! After 10 years, I finally have a quilt frame!!!! I am sooo excited.

I bought it used online and have it almost all assembled. There are a couple of connector brackets missing for the pantograph shelf. Hopefully, my LQS can order them, or I can buy them at Home Depot. I can not wait to use it! It it 10' long and barely fits in the room.











































My helpers.













My helpers two seconds later.




















Monday, February 14, 2011

It's Finished!!!White Christmas Conclusion

It's Finished! And I love it!
First, here is the original picture that appeared in Australian Quilter's Companion. The magazine is dated July, but I found it at my local bookstore on December 8th (guess it takes a long time for magazines to make it to Canada from Australia!). The designer is Kellie Wulfsohn, who also designed the Meg's Garden quilt I made in the summer. Love her designs!
















The customizations:
1) Size : the original in the magazine was a wall hanging (40" X 42"). I like my quilts to be inbetween lap & twin size, so decided to make the design larger. I used the same size flakes and simply expanded the background. I did this by buying 4.5 metres of backgroung fabric and 2.5 metres of white for the snowflakes (which was way too much! 1.5 would have been enough). My version ended up being 60" X 72:.

2) Pink Star : the original had no "tree topper". I decided to add a star. At first, I was going to add it in white; then thought a yellow star would be lovely. When going through my stash looking for yellow, I came across the pink and was just smitten! The pink was cute and more unexpected than white or yellow.

3) Peace on Earth : From the beginning I wanted to add lettering of some sort. Obvious choices were "Merry Christmas" or "Joyeux Noel", etc. But I felt "Peace on Earth" was, again, less expected. The orinial plan (in my mind), was to place "Peace" on the top of the tree arching downward, and "on Earth" on the bottom arching up, to form something of a broken circle around the tree. However, executing the arch was very difficult to perform precisely, so I settled on putting all the wording on the bottom. I love it!

4) Snowflakes in Corners: seeing as I made the quilt larger, I wanted to add something to break up the "white space" (or in this case, the "blue space") between the tree and the border. L-bracket snowflake formation came to mind. If I had to do it again, I might experiment and put mistletoe in the corners.

5) Scalloped Borders: I felt this quilt screamed for scalloped borders! I love them but had never tried them. I purchased the scallop ruler/template from Quilt in a Day, and it was easy-peasy! I will definitely do it again!

So without further ado, here is my completed White Christmas Quilt (warning - couldn't decide which picture was best, so I have uploaded a lot!)



































The back is super-snuggly flannel!






















I am just thrilled with the outcome!

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Better Than Perfect!

Finished is better than perfect! While this picture probably looks like all the others I have posted lately, it is finally finished!!! Yeah!

Now, onto the quilting!








Monday, February 7, 2011

Almost There

I'm almost finished with the White Christmas quilt. Only 8 snowflakes left to satin stitch down!

Here is a picture of the back that shows the progress. You can see in the bottome right corner the 7 snowflakes that have been done. That means only 8 left!!! WhooHoo!

I have enjoyed this quilt and I think it is going to be lovely, but I am ready to move on. "To what", you ask? To the MY TWEETS BOM offered by Erin Russek. Beautiful, isn't it? I'm really excited about it!!!!