Gorgeous Baby Quilt Coming Up

I am working on several projects at once...as always! Finished my gorgeous baby quilt top though. This one is for us, however I will write up the pattern for my Etsy shop in due course. For once I did take good notes while I was making it, so hopefully that won't take too long.

It's absolutely gorgeous fabric! Acquired from a local quilt shop that put together a selection of 'Cottage Grove' fabrics from Art Gallery Fabrics for a Fat Quarter bundle. The quality is outstanding and even after washing the fabric, it felt just superb. I complemented this with some Kona Solid greens to make the stars. Really like the combination of the soft pinks and greens. As usual I changed my mind about borders and ended up buying more fabric only to realize that my border fabric was directional and needed to be placed lengthwise on the sides of the quilt top. What a hassle! Had to do some tricky math to work out how I was going to make this go all around the quilt. In the end I did not exactly pattern match as I would have lost inches of fabric doing this and this fabric was not exactly cheap. I got some fabric left from my Fat Quarter bundle and am thinking of putting another little baby quilt together from that, possibly just doing a Charm Square quilt or similar. I think I might still have enough for a smallish quilt. We'll see.

The last few days I have been torturing myself with trying to work out a Zig-Zag border for another Freemotion-quilting workshop. Should have been quite simple and it was until I decided to look at various different dimensions and shifting my Zig-Zag around. I was looking at Cindy Needham's stencil out of her Border package, but then could not work out the dimensions that were used to produce this stencil. I was there for days until I realised how that stencil was structured! I ended up doing mine a bit different and had to take a deep dive into how to make borders fit a particular length of quilt as I will need to talk about that if I want people to be able to follow the instructions for the borders. Got myself utterly confused a number of times (as usually happens with borders for me) and had to really knuckle down and work this out properly. In the end I used my Affinity Designer Pro program to draw my borders out and check the measurements to make sure I can actually explain how I got to the dimensions chosen and apply this to other borders. Always sounds so simple, i.e. just look at the repeat and either reduce or enlarge as you need it...I was there doing fractions galore, but it definitely helped to have  a visual via the drawing program so I could see what I was doing and where my thinking went a bit wonky at times.

Have a little sample project that I will be stitching out shortly to see how much time is involved in that little skillbuilder workshop. This is for the second half of the year so lots of time still but I want to get this done so that I can discuss it further with the shop owner in terms of what she wants size wise. My sample is based on a 2in zig-zag so it will turn out rather small. I am thinking to make it a 3in zig-zag for the workshop as that allows more space for filler designs. We'll see...

Apart from that lots of UFOs and charity quilts waiting to be quilted. My gorgeous baby quilt is next with a special edge-to-edge design and then I need to write up the pattern.

Will try to post a bit more regularly again once I get back to the actual quilting!

Until then...enjoy what you are working on!

Karin

Making Tiny Stars

I am working on a new quilt pattern...very easy, but includes these tiny 4-1/2in stars. Maybe not one of my brighter ideas but it is for a small baby quilt. Need 20 of them in two different tones. Nothing complicated, just a bit fiddly. Have made 12 so far

Have the most gorgeous fabric to go with this...will be all light greenish with soft pink and apricot tones. Looking forward to finishing these tiny stars and starting on the other blocks.

As I get bored very easily, I am also continuing on my scrap reduction challenge. As part of Lisa Calle's Quilters Groove Creative Design Society we are making a scrappy log cabin quilt. Did a few blocks a few months ago but then got side tracked into other things. While I am doing these little stars I am also making scrappy log cabins at the same time. I usually make two tiny stars and a couple of scrappy log cabins.

I think everyone in the group is making them a bit differently. I settled on a random approach in terms of strip width and colouring. A little bit of thinking this through though is required in order not to be left with a tiny, tiny strip on the outside. Spent one evening though cutting some of my strips straight at 1-1/2in, 2in and anything in between. Goes quicker that way and helps me to make sure that I am sewing them on straight. You could of course also make this really wonky and not worry about the straightness of the components but I started off straight, so I thought that I better continue that way. Have made quite a few by now

Layout is yet to be decided...must say that I find the blocks a tad confusing to lay them out as there is just too much going on in terms of colour. Will have to concentrate when it is time to put these together. While I have been doing these I also thought that it would have looked really nice if I had just done one colour. Have seen a red/white scrappy one on the net and that looked absolutely fabulous. We'll see...no doubt I will have heaps of scraps left over even after this exercise.

Back to the tiny stars...

Karin