Evening stars

The reverse side of C & R's quilt features evening stars in three sizes- 6", 12" and 18". Using this as inspiration I drew the layout on graph paper and numbered the stars so I knew how many of each size to make. After all the stars had been made I took over the living room to design the quilt. I don't have a wall big enough to lay out this design. I try to get a balance across the quilt of the colour values. As well as staring at it a lot, I took photos on my ipad, which helps to get more perspective. Converting the photos to black and white helps to identify areas that stand out.

After I had decided the final layout, I labelled every star on the floor, and on the graph paper. See the little white tabs? This meant I could sort the stars into piles, and had a key to follow, releasing the living room to normal use while I sewed them together.

First finishes for 2015

Yikes! Two finishes in the first week of January!

The first is the sunshine waves blanket. No prizes for how it got the name.

I love ripples, the waviness makes them just that bit better than an ordinary stripe.

I was going to do an all yellow, sunny sunshiney blanket, but it was a bit blah, so I added the blue border which I feel gives it more oomph.

Ripples are so simple I shouldn't really need a pattern, but I have a tendency to get a bit lost at the ends of the rows. For this one I followed the neat ripple pattern on Attic 24's blog. This ripple uses groups of four stitches (4tr, tr2tog x2, 4tr, 2tr increase x2). I usually use the pattern from Nikki Trench's Cute and easy crochet book. This uses groups of three stitches and I find it suits my rhythm of treble crochet better. (3tr, tr3tog, 3tr, 3tr increase). This photo shows the two side by side, and I can't really tell much difference.

The stats.

This was made in double knitting yarn on a 4mm hook. I can't name any of the yarns, as they're a pot luck of whatever yellows I already had. It weighs 370g, and is 75 x100 cm.

Caddy bag

The blanket above was started in December, but this bag is so quick and easy it's a true 2015 creation. I'm guessing I took about 4 hours in total, but some members of my quilting class can whip these out in an hour and a half. I find it a great way of using up the samples I have made in class. (The stars on the pockets are the results of my paper-piecing lessons).

It's not the most beautiful design created, but really is so useful to keep things tidy. Here is a smaller one I use to take to sewing class. I carry my fabrics in the main compartment, and stuff my scraps for sorting into the pockets.

The Jellyfish quilt

In this post I'll explain how I made the starburst side of C &R's wedding quilt. Because of the somewhat squiffy nature of these stars, this quilt was nicknamed "The jellyfish quilt" in our household.

Good old google came up with this free pattern Rainbow stars from mccalls. The instructions were very clear and easy to follow. The sewing however was very difficult.

Each of the stars I made used the same combination of fabrics, but in different positions. This process needs a little bit of organisation, in order to keep the fabric sets from getting mixed up.

I used zip lock sandwich bags to organise my fabrics. Each star in progress was kept in its own zippy bag, and I wrote a key on a scrap of paper which I kept in the bag.

As each step of the process was done, I took the pieces out of the labelled bag, and then put them straight back in when done.  I even carried the sewing from the machine to the iron and back in the bag. 

This system worked really well for me, and amazingly I didn't get any mix ups in the whole quilt.

Where I did fall short though was accuracy. Accurate seams and cutting are essential to prevent your stars from looking like jellyfish.  When my stars were finished they were mostly a bit squiffy in the middle and didn't lay flat at all. There was no way that I could have inset squares neatly between them to make a quilt top.

What I did instead was applique the stars onto a plain brown background.  Because the tips of the stars were also dark brown, I outlined the stars with strips of shot gold fabric. To fill in the huge amount of empty space between them, I made smaller stars and appliqued these on too. What is now glaringly obvious, but I didn't notice at the time, was that I accidentally used a different background brown for some of the stars.

Because of my difficulties with accuracy, and the mix ups with the browns, I wasn't happy with the quilt top. I believe that when something looks "handmade" this should mean that it looks like it was individually made, not that it looks a little bit crummy.  In my opinion this quilt top fell short of the mark. I didn't feel that it was of high enough quality to give as a gift.  However, I didn't want to waste the years of work, or the yards of fabric that had gone into it.  The compromise I made was to use this as the back of the quilt, and to start again with a new and improved top...

C and R's wedding quilt.

In 2007 my good friend C married the love of her life, R.  They didn't have a wedding list, so I offered to make them a quilt. "It might take a year or two" I said.


Seven years later, they are happily still very much in love, and last week I finally delivered their wedding present.

The full story of why and how this took so long will go in another post, but for now I think I will just show the finished product.

The quilt is an enormous king size, and because of the horrible rainy weather I couldn't take it outside to photograph. It covers the whole of my living room floor, and even holding my camera up at the ceiling I couldn't capture the whole thing.

I love this gold binding, and here you get another hint why I was so slow. Yes, it is double sided.

And yes, it is hand quilted.

After so many years in the making I was so very, very anxious when I finally gave it to its intended recipients. To my huge relief, they loved it.