Best Of 2020 Linky Party

Certainly has been a difficult year with lots of changes and challenges both personally and across the world. However, let's not dwell on this...I will focus on my favourite finishes for the year (which did not occur until the middle of the year as I was waiting for my machine to arrive...)

1. The Easy Baby Quilt

This is my own pattern (find the free pattern HERE) that I have done a number of times. Thought it would be nice to use strong primary colours this time.

2. Lana Lemur Quilt

Rather loosely followed Claudia Pfeil's method of background quilting which was a tad challenging but  fun to do.

3. Happy Scrappy House Quilt

Entirely made out of scraps following a Bonnie Hunter pattern. This was the quilt I pieced together while there were restrictions in place earlier in the year. It had been on my list for a number of years and this year it just felt right.

4. Noah's Arc Quilt

Enjoyed quilting this beauty for a friend of mine.

5. Another Scrappy Quilt

Put this quilt together from a Fat Sixteenth bundle of fabric that I had won from Hillstitches Fabric. Absolutely loved the way the colours had been put together. Used an edge to edge design from Urban Elementz to finish it off.

Linking up to the Meadow Mist Best of 2020 Linky Party.

Karin

A Finish

Finished my little quilt with a jazzy striped binding.

Father Christmas brought me a new camera, so I am trialing taking photos at the moment. I so struggle with this, as I was used to my old camera. For the last 6 months I have been taking pictures with either my Iphone or the Ipad as my trusted Nikon gave up its ghost...I know that lots of people do this, but I struggled with that big time, so decided to go for a new camera. Was looking for something fairly basic but with the popularity of the Iphones as cameras there was a fairly limited range. Got a smallish point and shoot camera (Panasonic) and have spent the afternoon going through the manual and trying different things. Must say they packed a lot of features into this small thing and in terms of function it is definitely much more than just point and shoot! My photos are a bit rough as I was shooting in lower light and trying all sorts of weird and wonderful things. There is so much to explore and I have little knowledge of photographic concepts. Have gone straight back to my preferred Nikon setting which is taking photos in the Aperture mode...at least I am used to that!

Anyway, here is the completed quilt.

Using a different spot in the house for taking my shot (working on getting better quilt photos for my ETSY shop). The above is nice but won't do...I need it sharper and lighter than that I reckon.

Camera has a fairly wide zoom and I played around with this a fair bit

Finally worked out how to get a good representation of the colours...who knew that pressing a few buttons could do that.

Close up of the stitching looks brilliant, done on the Bernina Q20 in stitch regulation.

Also did heaps of stylized shots as I am working on making a decent banner (again for the ETSY shop). Put my trial photo as a banner for my blog for the moment...not too bad at all! Well, with that the whole afternoon is gone and all I have done is exploring this little gadget and adults kids are coming around the corner asking what is for dinner!

Karin

Christmas 2020

What a year it has been!

Wishing all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

I was hoping to have some quilty stuff to show today but have spent the last few days cleaning and shopping and more cleaning in preparation for Christmas. Quilting will have to wait until after Christmas. 

Until then, stay safe and enjoy the festivities.

Karin

Working On Some UFOs

Finally finished the Happy Scrappy Houses Quilt and had a bit of fun with the photographing.

...and here is the back

All made out of fabric that I had available in my stash. Very happy with that.

Also finished of my little wall hanging that I quilted a while ago using Bethanne Nemesh' rulers

This is the problem when you leave things for a while...had no binding left, so I had to hunt around for something that fitted this little piece.

Still have a number of other projects left to complete. Maybe I can start the new year with a clean slate?

😂😂😂😂😂

Karin

Small Irregular Grid Quilt

I had fun with the little irregular grid quilt. After much deliberation I decided to do a fun edge to edge design from Urban Elementz, called Daisy Dotz #2

I had bought this a while ago from the Fat Quarter Shop to try out the printed paper sheets. There are 4 sheets at 48in wide in the packet. As I had another project in mind for this, I traced the design off onto my trusted Golden Threads paper. I have done an edge to edge design on the stationary longarm before  and spent some time working out exactly how I wanted this to be placed. With the printed sheets ready to go, that was fairly easy as there are 'helper lines' printed on and you also got the previous row as a ghost design to go by.

Here are some process shots:

Starting off...bit hard to see as I traced the design off with the blue water erasable pen (I am overly paranoid to transfer marks onto the quilt).

Stitched out the first row

I do not attach all of the paper  over the entire quilt at once. Just too awkward to hold and handle...I stitched this out row by row having studied the design and understood exactly how it aligns from row to row. In case you are wondering how I attached this...tried 'Sticky Glue Dots' for the first time! This worked an absolute treat...I attached the dots to the paper and lightly pressed onto the quilt. Had some anxiety as to whether they would be hard to remove from the quilt, but they came off incredibly easy with the paper. 

I removed some of the paper as I went along...this is really easy, all it needs is a little tuck diagonally across and the paper starts separating. The only thing you have to keep in mind when doing this on a sit down machine or DSM is to keep the designs relatively simple otherwise you are going to be there for hours plugging out the little paper bits that get stuck in the points. This design is 6 1/2in and was a delight to work with...nice sweeping lines and easy to remove the paper.

Finished this today and I must say, I love this simple design...looks great on my little quilt.

I used hot pink thread for this quilt (Aurifil 50/2), not my usual choice of colour! However I had basted this quilt before I started and used a hot pink thread for that (so I would see it easily). When I saw the thread on there, I just loved it and chose to do the design in that colour. Just had to be careful in the end taking out my basting stitches as it was basically the same colour.

Back of the quilt

How good does this look!

And my personal favourite

Could have been even better if I had used a higher weight thread. 

Very pleased with how this turned out. Linking up to Freemotion Mavericks over at Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing.

Karin