Friday 29 October 2010

Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2010


Amy's Bridges

And the back: Fassett Bridges


I can't believe it's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival already, time flies.

This Quilt is one of my favorites at the moment, because it happened by accident rather than good planning, just like the best of my quilts usually happen by accident actually.

It is a handmade reversible quilt and the top is called Amy's Bridges and the back is called Fassett Bridges. I still don't own a machine and am still trying to decide whether I should buy one or not.

Making this quilt was an accident because I had some strips of fabric I had no room for and needed to use them up in a quick and simple quilt. I had bought a number of storage drawers for my fabric stash, reorganizing the sewing room completely but realized my fabric was too big for the drawers. It was so neatly folded I didn't want to refold it so I decided to cut strips off and use them instead.

YES, I do feel guilty for cutting into my beautiful fabric just because it didn't FIT. Maybe that shows my obsessive nature. But the result makes up for the little transgression.



same design on the back:


I cut into my whole stash of Amy Butler fabrics and had a really hard time deciding what to do with them. I even asked my blog followers for advice and ended up with a very simple design I call the 'Bridges' pattern. It looks a bit like a stacked coin design and may well have some other name for all I know.

I used strips of Kaffe Fassett fabrics that I also had to cut off in order to fit the fabrics into the storage drawers and used them on the back. (I think I have several quilt snow made with fabrics I had to cut when I reorganized the sewing room.) I used the same pattern on the front and back of the quilts in order to make sure the quilting doesn't look too out of place on the back. Didn't work as well as I hoped, oh well.

I decided to use straight line quilting, my favorite.

The problem with having two sided quilts and hand quilting them, hand sewing everything in fact, is that the quilting on the back never looks absolutely right.

Maybe I am too much of a perfectionist and the appeal of handmade items are those quirky imperfections (???)

Would love to hear your thoughts on that, quilters and friends.

I just don't know how to deal with that once I decide to sell some quilts. Will have to give it a proper think.

close ups:










close ups, quilting on the back








Hope you like it.

Love, Nadine

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Wordless Wednesday








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What the postman brings

Hurrah! My lovely gifts have arrived. Check out these amazing colors. Thanks Marjorie!




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Saturday 23 October 2010

Not long now!

The first few Christmas items are finished. No idea who will get them yet but I am glad I started early this year.

My first 2 Christmas Stockings













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Thursday 21 October 2010

Charlotte's Quilt



I made this quilt for the cutest little angel who was born exactly one month ago.

I haven't actually met Charlotte yet but I am sure it can only be a matter of time.

I tried to make this quilt a bit softer and fluffier than my usual quilts. I hope Lottie will like it.



The back



Sitting on top of mom Rebecca's quilt



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Wednesday 13 October 2010

Finished!










the back:






Hurrah! (sorry, this was supposed to be a Wordless Wednesday post, but I just can't do it, can I?)

Friday 8 October 2010

(Almost) Finished Friday

I decided to use straight line quilting and did it diagonally only to discover (or remember rather) that the squares aren't actually even resulting in lines thst aren't evey spaced. Now I need to decide whether I want to quilt diagonay in the otger direction forming crosses and squares. Hm.





And look what I found on ebay. Gorgeous, aren't they?




Love, Nadine


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Monday 4 October 2010

Off to Fairyland

This is so gorgeous, I've got to show you. I was on the fence about this fabric for so long but it's amazing in the flesh, ... ahem in the thread rather.

Can't wait to use it.



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Friday 1 October 2010

How to quilt?

Finished the basting and binding yesterday but I still can't decide how to quilt it. I could quilt the two sides separately, but how?

I can only do straight line quilting by hand. Squiggly patterns look horrible if done by hand. So either diagonal lines, or outline quilting, echo quilting, that sort of thing. Suggestions please!










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