Rainbows!

Well, if he couldn't have a rainbow quilt for himself, Mr. 8 was determined to make one for someone else. When he heard that his new 4 month old cousin was coming to visit, all the way from England, he seized the opportunity! 

The Simply Color Layer Cake that I had in my stash was perfect. He sorted the colours almost completely on his own after I showed him a few examples of other rainbow quilts (okay, I admit that I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to fabric, so I did rearrange a couple of squares with his agreement!). Then he sewed the squares together into rows, and then the rows into a quilt top.

As this quilt is mainly going to be used for the new cousin to play on the floor, we wanted it to be nice and soft. So we followed Svetlana's tutorial for making what she calls a 'comforter'. In other words, baste the front to the batting and then sew, right sides together, to the backing. Then we quilted straight lines through the middle of the squares.

Mr. 8 chose this cute Miffy fabric for the back, which I bought locally a year ago and have been waiting for the right project.

Now it just remains for me to sew on the label and we are ready to gift it when our visitors arrive tomorrow! 

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Le Challenge - Passion!

I have a passion for other peoples fabric scraps! I don't know what it is about them - they are just so much more interesting and enticing than my own box of scraps! Maybe it is because they are fabrics that I have loved, but not bought, and so this gives a little taste of what I have only seen before online.

This hexies in this cushion are made from fabric scraps from others - either from a giveaway, generously given, or bought as scrap packs. I didn't give much thought to the fabrics I was using but instead just took the pile of precious scraps and started making hexies and sewing them together.

My initial plan was to make a complete quilt, but to be honest I got bored and so decided to make them into a cushion to gift to a friend. The back is a Cath Kidston polka dot with a red metallic zipper and the cushion is quilted using yellow Aurfil 50wt (my favourite at the moment!)

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Conquering curves, continued!

This will be the last of the 'Curves' posts for a while, but I wanted to share the final project that I made from Rachel's Curves Class: The Orange Peel Pillow.

This project came with a warning about its trickiness, so I approached it cautiously, making sure that I cut each piece individually and accurately. This time round we were told to pin all the curves, which took forever, but I can see why it was needed. Achieving accuracy was definitely tricky. I didn't unpick any of my sewing, but you can see below that I missed the mark slightly in a couple of places.

I decided, as I didn't have any interfacing, to use a really thin batting and quilted around the edge of the outside orange peels, as well as a few invisible stitches right in the center.

I used the focus fabric for the back and installed a hidden zipper. I think the back is nearly as pretty as the front!

This was a time consuming project, but one where I can happily see the progress I have made in sewing curves. There are more projects from the class that I really want to make, but they will have to wait a while.

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