WIP Wednesday

Hello, hello!

Whew!  What a busy few weeks.  I meant to share my latest updates on my That Cat wallhanging last week but it was simply not meant to be.  However, despite the busy work and life events, I have been managing to fit in a sewing day most Sundays, which has been blissful to resetting that work/life balance.

Nearing the end now, I finally have all of the quilting done.  I straight stitch quilted around each of the orange boxes and around the cat.  I also straight stitch quilted in the borders with a 1/4 inch spacing, like in the original featured in the magazine.

Please excuse the cat hair (ironic, right?)

On to the binding - my favourite part!  So looking forward to seeing this project done!

Linking up to Freshly Pieced:

Finished Friday

Whew!

First week back at work done and a completed quilt to show off to boot - not too shabby!

Diamond Jubilee Jelly Roll Race

And here it is...my Diamond Jubilee jelly roll race quilt.  Started in 2012 in actual race format, this poor quilt top sat folded up and unloved for nearly three years.  In just two months, the borders have been added, the quilting has been stitched and the binding rounded it off.

In the main body of the quilt, I stitched gently rolling wavy lines that intersect periodically.  I wanted to break up the harsh, vertical lines and add some sense of movement.

In the borders, I used FMQ to stitch a playful doodle of loops and hearts.  I also stitched some cursive words into each border - on the top and bottom borders, 'Diamond Jubilee' (one word per border) and then on the left and right borders, 'I love London'.  I used the tissue paper template method (more info here & video links) for all the FMQ and it worked really well.

And then my love affair with binding...

7 Week summer holiday recap:

• Completed tote bag for a friend
• Completed handbag for me
• Completed Harmonic Convergence wallhanging
• Completed Diamond Jubilee quilt
• Completed baby quilt with my friend Ingrid (photos forthcoming)
• Pieced HST layer cake QAL top
• Pieced Red Velvet top

Needless to say, I'm very pleased with my summer projects!

WIP Wednesday

Welcome back!

Well, I have officially returned to work this week and while it's always a bit sad to see the summer holidays come to a close, I will especially miss having all of this extra leisure time to sew and quilt.  There are, of course, evenings (work too late, come home far too tired) and weekends (AKA recovery & errand-running days) but it's just not the same.

So, a quick update on the statue of my Diamond Jubilee jelly roll race quilt.  Saturday morning I got up early and sewed like a banshee to get the binding on this quilt so I could take it to work on at guild.  A wee bit stressful?  Yes, yes indeed.

After guild (and a seriously much-needed nap), I spent the remainder of the afternoon out on the balcony, enjoying the good weather, listening to some Paperclipping Roundtable (nothing quite like mixing and matching your hobbies) and hand stitching that binding down.

While I do enjoy building quilt blocks and seeing a design come together, I think it's hand stitching the binding at the end that I actually love the most and look forward to during a quilt project.

And of course I had some help...

Linking up to Freshly Pieced:

Harmonic Convergence

OMG, I finally finished one of my long-overdue UFO projects!  It's amazing to see what you can get done with the right tools for the job (thanks, Janome!).

Back in 2011, some friends and I had a sewing day together and we whipped up these Ricky Tims harmonic convergence wallhanging tops:

Four years on and after a lot of bother replacing border fabric I wasn't happy with, and this project is now complete and ready to hang.

Once again, we are having terrible summer weather so my apologies for the poor lighting - lack of sun does that...  Sigh.  But it still looks great, I say.

Here's a peak at the backing fabric, which co-ordinated with the prints from the top.  You can also see the large meander quilting here.

And here is the rest of the quilting.  You can see that I did in fact brave trace quilting all of those little mugs - there were 60 of them, by the way.  And I did freakishly well going around them, too, might I add (for a beginner).  And that loopy doodle quilting line is still my absolute favourite - too cute!

I even managed to get the hanging sash on the back to look cute with all the little mugs lined up.  That was a total fluke - there just happened to be a perfect size of leftover material cut from the border print that worked out but when the quilting gods hand you something this perfect, you need to take advantage of it, I reckon.

Mmmm, binding...  I love binding.  It's possibly my favourite part of any quilt project, which I should now be able to enjoy more often, since I have a machine that will allow me to completely finish projects.  Yeah!