Monday 25 January 2010

Working on...

Icarus shawl by Miriam L Felton. Icarus was a silly ancient Greek lad whose father made him a pair of wings out of wood, wax and feathers. He didn't listen to his dad and he flew too close to the sun, and the wax on his wings melted and all the feathers fell off, and poor Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. That cheerful story is behind the design of this shawl - the pattern looks like feathers slipping off the melted wax.



I thought the lovely colours in the yarn (Dream in Color baby lace in Cloud Jungle) looked a lot like the colours in pigeon feathers.



I'm also working on turning an old shirt of my husband's into a dress for Miss M. I've cut it apart, and I'm just working out how I'm going to put it back together again.

Saturday 16 January 2010

Ta Da!!! - Ginger Blossom Lap Quilt

After I had finished the Ginger Blossom baby quilt, I still had half a pack of fat quarters to use, this time from the green colourway. I needed a quick and easy Christmas present, so I whipped up another disappearing 9-patch and backed it with a lovely soft pale green minky fleece.















The designs in this colourway are much busier than those in the pink colourway, so I kept all the sashing, the outer border and the binding in the same chocolate brown so it didn't become overwhelming. I didn't end up quilting it because the minky fleece looked much nicer when it didn't have any other sewing on it. Luckily the fleece fabric sticks to the quilt top so it won't be shifting around too much.



In all, even though I thought that I would love the pink quilt more, I really did like this one when it was finished. And even though it does have flowers on it, it isn't too girly. Luckily I have another Ginger Blossom fat quarter pack set aside for myself! :)

Sunday 10 January 2010

Ta Da!!! - Ginger Blossom Baby Quilt

This is going to be a picture heavy post I'm afraid :) As I mentioned in an earlier post, I completed and gifted this quilt back in early December, but I made sure to take a lot of photos.

It is just a simple disappearing 9-patch design, which I like to use when I want to feature the fabric rather than the design itself. I also machine quilted it, which I've never done before. I thought that machine quilting would be more suitable for a baby quilt since it would hold up better to machine washing, and it was so fast to do - it was all quilted in a day! It wasn't done properly as I didn't bother to hide the ends of the threads, I just sewed back and forwards at the beginning and end of each square, but it does the job :)



























Pattern: Disappearing 9-Patch
Fabric: Ginger Blossom by Sandi Henderson (the 9 FQs of the pink colourway); brown fabric from Spotlight
Batting: Matilda's Own wool/poly blend.