What have I become?

I promised a friend a quilt for her birthday and it's just dawned on me that I actually have become everything I thought I'd never be with regards to quilting. I always thought those people with vast quantities of pretty fabric at home and several sewing machines were crazy. I've become one of them!!!

Even more worryingly even though I have a slightly large stash of fabric now I'm struggling to find fabric for her quilt (well, she would want bright and plain ish when I seem to have mostly purple, aqua and pink patterns) I'll have to buy more fabric. Oops.

Ive also, although not totally my fault, become one of those people with several sewing machines. How??
I have my old singer one that belonged to my gran then mum, a brother embroidery machine that kinda appeared when my other gran upgraded her stuff and just randomly sent it with my dad for me from the opposite end of the country, and I have my new sewing machine that I bought just after Xmas and am still trying to work out (in -all fairness I got it because the singer has lost most the fashion disks and accessories that came with it so all I can do is sew in straight lines and zig zags).

Oh well. I'd probably best make like the quilter and sewing addict I've become and make something!!!

The friendship braid quilt is getting there!

Finally, after rather a long time I've managed to get all the braids for my friendship braid quilt sewn.
There is a problem though. Half way through sewing them I switched to my new machine and I've managed to sew the majority of them with a bigger seem allowance then they should have. It's hit the point it's easier to unpick the 2 old ones and re-sew them then the new ones.
The morale of this story? Always check what you're doing. *sigh*

Here's a picture of half of it anyway

An Update - and a resolution

Well It's been a while since I last posted on here.
Since then I've finished my sister's quilt

Finished my Queen's Guide award

Bought a kindle and made a funky cover for it

 ... and made my gran a scrappy quilt for Christmas this year which used leftovers from my 1st quilt!

I've just saved enough money up to buy a new sewing machine so hopefully I can have a go at free motion quilting or at least now it has duel feed and posher stitches than the last one at least make some funky quilts!

Plan for the year...
Make the quilt I promised my friend. She wants it starry and colourful
Finish the friendship braid quilt I started last year
Make a Dresden plate quilt of some sort
Make a sampler quilt using funky fabric (yes, I'm a newbie who didn't start with the traditional making a sampler quilt thing lol)
and finally make the sparking gems quilt from the jelly roll book because it just looks fab.

I think I'll be a busy bee this year if I get all that done and manage to fit in going to work and running a Guide and Ranger unit too!

At a standstill (and not just becasue of the weather!)

I've managed to get the centre block of my sister's xmas quilt made but have now come to a standstill. I don't have enough fabric to make the border and until I get paid from my new job can't afford to buy any (the curse of car mot and insurance both due in December!). I think it looks rather good so far though. Here's a pic I took before I finished sewing it all together.

It's a pity it's so wintery outside now - it was very sutumnal when I started this quilt. Sis likes it though so far :)

I did have a bit of luck too when I won from fabric from sew me happy in a givaway. It's a lovely collection of xmas fabric and because I can't do any more work with my sis's quilt it means I can make something with that instead :)

I'll have to keep the blue one seperate I think as I love it so much and it's a different colour that I think I'll do a mostly blue and white 'snow' quilt for that one.

Any ideas for patterns for a christmas quilt anyone?

Got a square made...

I'm getting on with my sister's quilt now. I think I mentioned earlier it was a maple leaf design - I'm sure not the fanciest of all quilts but for my 2nd one it's rather a large step up from a simple square blocks one.

I've managed to get all the material cut and now am starting to put the blocks together. This is one I've finished.

 

Just got another 4 of these to get done then I can start on the maple leaf squares. Should be fun. Hopefully I'll have these ones done by the end of the weekend but it's a busy weekend. Need to go clothes shopping for my sister's graduation on Saturday and then on Sunday morning I am taking part in a rememberance sunday parade wit hmy Guides and then on Sunday evening I'm going to see the comedian Ross Noble with my friends! What a busy week... must try and get this quilt finished before xmas.

Other exciting new too is that I won a very nice bundle of xmas fabric in a competition this week. Now just need to work out what to do with it. yay!

...and another!

I finally finished the first quilt at the end of September. It's lovely and warm - if not a bit big!
I bought a new quilting pattern book and found a maple leaf design I liked and my sister asked me to make it for her for xmas. I've not started yet but I now have all the fabric (bar the long pieces for the sides) so I think I'll start putting that togetehr soon.
I also made a sock monkey the other day as a trial for a Guide xmas craft. It made me realise just how much I like to use the sewing machine and that the bit of Quilting I don't like is vutting out all the material... oh well... it has to be done!
I guess I'll be updating this soon with lots of pictures of my/my sister's quilt. yay!

Been a while but I nearly have a quilt

Well it's been a busy few months since I last posted and the good news is that I actually did some quilting in it as well as being at the big Girlguiding centenary camp in Leeds with thousands of people from all over the world!

I started making my purple/pink quilt although I've still got to do the binding on it. It uses lots of random fat quarters I got, some random scraps of fabric a friend sent me and some cut up old sheets I found around the house. It's kinda scrappy and not organised but it's my first quilt and I'm actually rather proud of it. I learned a lot along the way and that's whats important.

I had to put finishing my quilt on hold as I'd decided to make some cushions for my gran's birthday and that was creeping up on me!

I found some random material around the house that actually worked rather well with the colours of her living room so decided to follow the patterns for the 3 cushions in my quilting book. It was a rather useful exercise as they all taught me something new. One taught me how to do binding, one 1 I didn't just do stitch in the ditch quilting! and on another I had to try some applique (which I have since vowed never to do again using my sewing machine). They actually don't look too bad from far away :) Yay!

 

I now have to finish binding my quilt and then I need a new project. I have lots of random material downstairs but I don't know what I want to do with it yet. I'm still very tempted to buy some jelly rolls and make that quilt I found the other month. Either that or I should get some tartan fabric and make that quilt that my sister wants. Oh the decisions! 

The other option is to make a quilt for a friend that I promised one to although that also involves buying lots of fabric (and I found some fab fabric to use as she used to be a Brownie leader - hence the owl - and she loves rabbits)

Guess you'll all find out what I do next time I post.

(on a side note: now very happy because Merlin is back on the BBC! I'm attempting to get the machine bit of the binding done by 7 on Sat so I can watch Merlin and do a bit of hand sewing too. I'm loving watching Merlin and recognising all the bits of the castle Ive been to)