Pencil drawing

Ok, first of all I want to apologise in advance if the following picture offends anyone!

I like to draw, mostly copying paintings and photos etc, although it takes me so long to complete a tiny part of a picture that I just don't have the time for it these days. So this picture is rather an old one. This time around I couldn't think of anything I wanted to draw, so I asked my husband if there was a picture he would like me to copy for him (good way to interest him in one of my hobbies :). So off he goes, and he brings me back an old Conan comic. *sigh* So anyway, I started on it, this bit took me about 6 hours, maybe more - it is about 3 times the size of the original. I don't know when I'm going to find the time to finish it because I'm really taken up with sewing at the moment, so it's languishing in a box under my bed...

D9P update

I laid out the D9P squares and this is the layout I have decided on. It looks quite random but I have tried to have an even sprinkling of brown throughout the quilt, and also I chose the green based squares to be the ones that would be cut into quarters, and I wanted them to match up in the corners and centre of each large square.

After much measuring and cutting, I have been able to get all my points to match up as I sew the strips together, so I am very pleased with that. I have also chosen 2 different coloured cottons with which to quilt it, I'm still working out exactly what I'll do though, nothing too complicated as the quilt itself is very simple.

New Disappearing 9 Patch

The quilt I'm working on at the moment is another disappearing 9 patch for my sister's birthday. I am making it using the 'All you need is love' charm squares. So far I've sewn all the 9 patches together, and today I cut them all into 4. I now have to arrange them all on the floor to see how I'm going to put them together. I have one problem to get around as I sew - not all the charm squares were actually 5" square, which I only discovered as I was cutting the 9 patches into 4. So now I have to try extra hard to match the points...

First quilt finished!

I have finally finished my first quilt, I'm very happy with it. I sewed the binding on with mitred corners and hand sewed it down on the back. The quilting was also all hand done. Now I have 2 more quilts to be working on :)

Quilting WIP

Ok, just for the sake of blogging something I'm going to make a WIP entry each week. No quilting pictures today as I have nothing particularly exciting to show. I've decided to finish the d9p quilt before I do any more work on other quilts, I've only got 4 more blocks to hand quilt and then I'm ready to bind it. I've cut out most of the fabric for my autumn quilt now, it's all ready in plastic bags waiting to be pieced together, first I have to applique the leaf stems on though which is going to take a while, judging by the one I've completed. I'm also thinking about what I can do with the charm squares I bought, maybe just another d9p although I do keep making little drawings of quilt blocks I might experiment with. I think the d9p blocks are really good for showing off the fabric, the simple shapes don't detract from the fabric design. I guess it depends on what I want to do with the final quilt, if I'm giving it away as a present I'd better do something that's not going to take me a year to sew :)

Autumn Leaf Practice Block

I have made a practice block for my autumn quilt just to make sure my templates all fit together. I've never sewn triangles before, so I wanted to have a go at that as well. It turned out well, except that I think I'll iron every time I sew to make sure the seams are flat when they're sewn together. I also made up the applique for the stem, since I have no idea how to do applique! I'm going to have to research that on the internet before I attempt it on my quilt. I cut all the pieces from the same fabric so it's actually really hard to see the leaf design, I had to tape it to a window to take a photo of the outline. Because I'm so new to quilting I don't have a stash of spare fabric or scraps, and so I had to use the one fat quarter that I didn't want to put in the quilt. The blue bits on the fabric are the cat footprints that wouldn't wash out.

Hand quilting progress

Well I have slowly been doing the hand quilting on my flannelette quilt, trying to find some quiet time to sit down and do it is very difficult. I'm getting better with each block I quilt, my stitches are becoming more even and straight. I'm not taking a photo of the back though :)