Finished, Finito, Pronto!

IT'S CHRISTMAS TIMMMEEE!!!!

The Complete Christmas Twinkle Collection

Here it is, the Complete Collection.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. hehehe. It saw me free motion quilting for the first time, and it saw me outgrow my first ever sewing machine and learning how to work with the intimidating new one. It saw a whole lot of fabric and batting purchases. It saw a lot of stress and a lot of hapiness, a lot of frustration and breakthroughs. It saw Autumn and Winter. Four of them are already delivered, four of them to go till Christmas.
Neither of them are perfect by any means, neither of them is as I wished it was. But I know that I'll love them even more when I get there.

Next one will be even better.
Now, if I could only learn to quilt to mke the back look as good as the front... My newest New Year's Eve resolution I guess!

Finished Quilt: Christmas Twinkle number 8! The end!!

I must admit I'm feeling a bit nostalgic.
Also, I'm not really sure what I'm suposed to do with my time now that my goal has been reached.
Finally, had I known I would have some time left, I might have done things a bit diferently, a bit more perfect. There was a point in the process where I had to decide wheter I'd rather have some perfect quilts ready by Christmas, or have them all ready, though not as perfect or at least as detailed as I'd wanted. I chose the second choice.

First of all because the people I made them for are all just to darn important for me to pick and chose from the group which would get one and which wouldn't.
Secondly, I know they know I'm just starting. I bought my first sewing machine in July, I finished my first quilt in August, I started the Christmas Twinkle Collection in October and have since made 8 lap quilts among other projects.
Also, I know some of the faults I see won't be noticed by someone who doesn't look at them as closely as I have been looking. I also know, some will probably be noticed. But I've improved greatly from the first ones, and I intend to keep on improving, This project has taught me a lot.

And hopefully these quilts will show these people just how special and truly important they are to me.

Regarding this last quilt, it wasn't really meant to exist, it was a last minute adition to the list that brought this on. I had very few 12 Days of Christmas fabric left. On the other hand I had just bought new fabric, so it is completely diferent from the others. But I absolutely love it! Bear in mind the next couple of photos were taken at very late hours and no pressing occured prior to them. So no, it's not that crooked, it's just poorly photographed!

The fabrics were Ikea's, 12 Days of Christmas and some recently purchased Freespirit. I quilted it with some straight lines on both sides of the strips, except for the really small strips, which were quilted in the middle. It gives it a cushy look I just love.

Another feature I just love is THIS fabric. I love it so much I've ran out of it. I have to go to Ikea and buy some more. It's a really cute fabric and works very well with a lot of different options.

So that's that, Christmas Twinkle Collection is ready for offering. On to the next!

Finished quilt: Christmas Twinkle number 6!

This is the last squared quilt from the collection. It was one of the first ones to have a finished top, but it ended being one if the last to finish. I think it was due to having all these new ideas I wanted to try, so this one kept getting pushed back. Sad but true.
But here it is, ready to be pressed, folded and gift wrapped.

The fabrics are very varied, we have some Amy Butler, some 12 Days of Christmas, some Ikea. The binding and backing are Ikea and I quilted it in diagonal straight lines. There were three squared quilts, one was in reds, the second was in greens and this one is in light blues. Some people have trouble seeing this color trend, but I'm officially letting you know that is the concept.

Finished Quilt: Christmas Twinkle number 7! Do you Remember...

This quilt?

I was never really sure of how it turned out, it is very different from what I've been doing and I liked the colors, I just didn't think it was me.

Well, since I got a little extra time this weekend, and I couldn't get it out of my head, I just had to do something about it...

So I took a little bit of this:

And this is the final result. It just needs some pressing, which I couldn't bring myself to do as it wasl really late and I was ready for bed. It makes much more of a difference face to face, I assure you. It makes this quilt more youthfull and cheerfull, perfect for a Christmas present!

The fabrics were Ikea and Kate Spain 12 Days of Christmas. I quilted it with simple lines on the white fabric. It's one of the larger lap quilts, but it is intended for a family, so hopefully they will all fit! :)

There aren't enough hours in the day...

Which is a shame, because I could really use them!
Progress has been too slow on my current projects, I feel like I'm taking baby steps when I needed to take giant ones...
Yesterday the binding continued, and Nico managed to sandwich the last quilt.

Sandy's little helper

Also yesterday I got an early Christmas present! Fabric! Yay! :) Also a couple more items, because fabric can sometimes feel very lonely...

I've been meaning to get these purse straps for a while now, so now I have them, just don't really know what I'll do with them, but I'm not worried! I got a couple of cottons and an Amy Butler flannel that winked at me the last time I was there.

Also, the store decided to give me Christmas gifts of their own. Thank you Dot Quilts!

So for today, some quilting and binding are in order. This will be the binding...I think... I'm still not sure, but it will give it character... I'll let you know how it goes!

Exciting Day Ahead!

Hello!

So yesterday I managed to quilt one of the two lap quilts I have to finish for Christmas. I also managed to add the binding to it, though I wasn't able to finish the hand sewn back. I thought of machine sewing it, but frankly it was just too late to be sewing, also I love the look of a hand sewn binding, well not all of it is hand sewn, just one side, you know what I mean! I love the finished look, the fact that there is not a stich in sight, just love it!

I took pictures but now I lost the cable so I hope to find it today. Again, very late in the evening for me.
Today I hope to spend a lovely afternoon with my mom and my sister and do a bit of shopping. One of the items of the shopping list is my Christmas Gift, which this year will be... FABRIC!! I'm giddy with excitment, can't think of a better way to spend shopping time than looking at fabric. Except of course if they dislike fabric I love or vice-versa. That would be very depressing, as I sometimes feel like an alien already due to my extreme love (ok obsession would describe it also) of fabric...

I'm sure it will be a GREAT day. Hope yours is too!

WIP: The Last of the Christmas Twinlke Collection (And this time I mean it!)

Hello.

Hope you had a great weekend! Mine was busy as usual, but I managed some sewing at some very late hours.
This quilt was a very last minute addition to my plans. I had practically no Christmas fabric left, thank goodness for scraps, but the size of them I quickly understood it would look completely different from the others. This is what I came up with:

I felt too tired to press it yesterday, so I'll be doing that today, I've never repeated the same fabric like this before, but I do think it looks good, I must admit I was afraid it would look boring. I guess from what I've been doing lately, you can say I'm in a blue/red phase :) I just love the combination.

I getting these wild ideas for the binding, to just zap some color into it, I'll be trying that today.

Here you can see the detail of the 12 Days of Christmas fabric. I just cut it into strips, with no particular length in mind, and then just sew it back together. The solids are Ikea. The blue fabric is Freespirit and the red one with the polka dots I'm not sure.

Next stop, Quilt sandwich. Yammi! :)

Christmas Twinkle Collection: The Brick Quilt

Hello!

Yesterday I managed to finish the quilt I was working on. It was a bit tricky and I'm still not entirely convinced, so I'll just show you and see what you think :)

I kept the quilting really simple, just some straight lines (well, not so straight in the back but that's another story). It was made with Ikea fabrics, Ikea backing and some Kate Spain 12 Days of Christmas.
It's also the biggest one I've ever done. It's about 60"x45". It's meant for an aunt with two sons, so I kept away from the pinks, just a bit of pink in the back. 

Of course now that it's finished, I've managed to add a new project to the mix. And then there were EIGHT!

WIP: The Brick Christmas Quilt

Yesterday I continued with the Brick Quilt I previously showed you. The last of seven I've been making since September as a part of what I fancily called the Christmas Twinkle Collection.

I must say the first time I ever sat in front of a sewing machine was in June. The first time I sat in front of a proper sewing machine, that was actually capable of doing what I asked, was in November. So I'm very pleased with the results of this collection. It's far from perfect, but I'm still very proud. Yes I wish I could match the top straight lines with the back's wonky lines, but I love them all. And I love all the people who'll get one or who already have one, so they are perfectly matched! And I know they love me enough not to mind a couple of flaws. I have learned something new with each and every one of these quilts and I'm hoping I'll keep on learning for years to come!

So back to the quilt in question, I decided to make a small frame for the back fabric, because frankly it just didn't blend in as well as the previous fabric I've been using. Actually I doubt that fabric would blend as well, seeing as this quilt has a very different color palette than the previous ones, it's all about the blues and the reds, so a pinkish backing wouldn't work. Neither would an orange-yellow-pink-beige one. So I framed it with the blue from the top and I think it worked out great. The only photo I can show you are these, because Nico just wouldn't move. Even if I picked him up, he would just return. Faster than me of course, who would have thought cute chubby cats could be this fast?? His colors actually work well with the fabric ;)

So I'm hoping I'll get to show you more of this once it's finished. I am now at the binding stage. I decided to use the blue from the back frame and just sew it on top. I hope it will work, I'm still not convinced...

Last of the Christmas Twinkle Collection

Hello everybody.

Hope you had a great weekend! By Friday I decided to look at the calendar and got a bit scared... Right then and there I decided that the first thing to be done was to start making the top of the last quilt for the Christmas Twinkle Collection a.k.a. the last top for the last quilt I'm making as a Christmas gift. This one is for an aunt. I was considering using the stripe pattern for the quilt, but frankly I've done so many of those already, and so many squared ones as well, I decided to do a completely new pattern. Granted, it defies the whole "Collection" concept, but it's still a quilt, it's still a Christmas quilt, so I figured it was ok...

I decided to make a Brick Quilt (tutorial here, if you wish to make one). Very simple but visually impressive I think. So Saturday night it was all about cutting the fabric, which was quite the challenge, as my rotary cutter is broken, and I only have one, so I had to cut it with a scissor and boy, what a difference!!

It was all about the reds and the blues with a splash of green. I used 12 Days of Christmas by Kate Spain (Once again, I know, what can I say? I'm in love!!) and Ikea fabrics.

By yesterday evening, it looked like this:

It's such an easy pattern to make. It took me about two hours to piece, if you take out all the distractions and interruptions. And although this is the most discrete quilt I've done, colorwise, the white really makes the colors pop and overall I think it worked out great! I randomly placed my bricks, just paid particular attention to the borders, making sure I didn't place the same bricks on top of one another, and of course, I made sure there weren't next to each other in the rows...


I probably wont get to baste it until tomorrow, but I fell I've made real progress this weekend.

All I have to do until Christmas, besides working 7 hours a day, 7 days a week, is to sandwich and quilt and bind two quilts, do the same to a huge bed spread my mom asked me to make for her bed (about 79"x118"!!), and that's about it! Oh, and breathe, I must remember to breathe!!

Finished Quilt: Christmas Twinkle number 5!

Here it is, the fifth completed quilt from the Christmas Twinkle Colection. It was the first one that I machined quilted with my amazing new sewing machine. Using my 1/4 foot meant the squares were a bit bigger than usual, which meant this is one of the larger quilts from the series.

Some hexie action in the back was necessary, as you know. This is the first quilt I've bound with a pattern fabric and I love it!

This is also the last quilt from the series with this fabric as the backing. Can't wait to try the new one.

So 5 down, 2 to go with less than a month until Christmas and a really hectic working schedule. I'll either make it or break it and I'll most probably be sleeping before midnight on the 24th once everything is done. Wish me luck and speed! ;)

The Hexies are back!

Since they were such a hit with one my previous quilt, I decided to incorporate some hexie action into this quilt as well. More on that later.

I must apologise for the bad quality of the latest photos I've been posting. However I can only find time to take photos at night and I seem to have misplaced the battery charger for my camera and so I've been taking pictures with my mobile in order to keep you up to speed, hence the bad quality / lighting of my latest developments.

Also, I'd like to share with you what has become a usual scene from my evenings. As the cold nights become colder, particularly where I live (well, not that cold, it doesn't snow or anything, but we are used to warm weather), there always seems to be a cat under a quilt or on top of it and most times I only notice it as they tend to leave some part sticking out. In this case Nico is sleeping, under the quilt I'm sewing, streched across my lap with his little white mittens sticking out.

Mushi seems to prefer the batting pile lately. She looks like she's sleeping on a cloud. It's just hard taking her picture while she's sleeping because as soon as I come close she'll want to see what I'm doing...

It's great to see they love my new hobbie/obssession as much as I do and take part in their own little ways :)

A brand new Christmas Twinkle

Sunday was my day off and I made sure it was free to make peace with my lovely sewing machine. And I must say we really made up for lost time!
As you might remember, I had a quilt sandwich ready for quilting. It is now quilted and now has an almost finished binding.

 I decided to do some straight line quilting, as I had never tried my walking foot before and was quite pleased with it. I quilted close to the ditch and it made for a nice squared back.

Regarding the binding I decided to go big with the colors and chose this lovely orange flowery fabric. It will be the first time I use patterned fabric for the binding and I must say I am very pleased with the results.

I managed to machine sew the binding to the quilt yesterday, but I also chose to finish it by hand, I prefer the clean look of a hand sewn binding.

Of course this part of the process might have been faster if this didn't keep hapening:

I guess cats really do love quilts! But I also think there was an element of "You've neglected me long enough. Stop paying attention to this thing and look at me please" going on. And so I did, of course... :)

Today I should finish this quilt, I've already bound most of it. I think It's looking great!

This is also the last quilt I'll be making with this backing, I can't wait to try the new one out, I hope i'll be as pleased as I have been with this one.
Also, I don't know if this happens to you but I think with every quilt I finish I learn something new and I'm always really regreteful that I can't take the previous ones back and redo them in order to make them look better with the knowledge I now have. Does that make sense?

I think you could probably put them all next to each other and notice the evolution from one to the other, which makes me real nervous, as I wished they would all be just perfect!

Christmas Twinkle Collection Update

This is where it stands. Two tops done and ready to move on.

The "blue" one

The "green" one

Can you tell the diference??;) The one I made for my sister was the "red" one! I'm hoping to start quilting one of these babies today!

Oh, and Mädchen...

Yours is done too, and I'm ready to show you!!! Here it goes!


Are you ready??





I'm sure you wont mind seeing it ahead of time...




Surprises are highly overrated....

TTTTAAAAAAAAADDDAAAAAHHH!!! ;)

Like it?

All packed up and ready to go :)

It's my friend Joana's birthday today, so another one of my babies is going to her forever home. I hope she loves it as much as I loved making it for her... And I hope Maria loves it too. My cats always love my quilts, so I'm hoping for the same efect. But just in case she doesn't, I'll also be prepared to make her happy ;)

Bought the same ones for my cats and Mushi actually climbed up my legs to get one. Good idea, I supose :)

Work in progress

So with two quilts all bundled up and ready to go, I am currenlty sorting out the next two.
The next one is a square-patterned lap quilt and currently looks like this:

The other is a bit further behind, Nico is keeping an eye on in :)

But, before I left the house, it was looking more like this:

The seventh one, to be honest is a mistery even to me. I will keep it within the two patterns I've used for this collection but since I haven't even cut any fabric for it and I'm not even sure I'll have the time to do it, we'll just have to take it one step at a time and find out is this collection will have 6 or 7 Twinkles.

Moving along quite nicely... My very first Sew&Tell Project :)

This is the first time I've entered Amy's Sew&Tell at Amylouwho: random thoughts from a multi-tasker
Four down, three to go...



The front

The back

For this one I used the same purple fabric for binding, except this one turned out a bit wider, which looks nice. I realise my work is getting cleaner and cleaner, apart from the free motion, which is a great feeling. This is the more Christmassy quilt of them all, I'm a bit sad to part from it. I must say if it weren't meant for who it's meant for, I'm not sure I would! Fabrics by Amy Butler, moda, Ikea and a couple of others mixed in, just like the previous ones. It's a 40"x56" lap quilt.

I decided to just embrace it...

Yesterday was Free motion quilting day for me. I must admit I was stressed. Also, I broke two needles, still don't really know why, but i started experimenting with the tensions and apparently it all worked out.

I think the stress comes from wanting to do a good job, also quilting on the actual quilt is stressfull, I was so afraid to ruin it. At first there was a lot of frustration because what I was doing was not similar at all to some of the lovely work I see on all the blogs I visit daily. Also some arm ache.

But then I just decided to embrace the "free" aspect of it all, and decided to go with it.
The only thing I tried to do was keep it all round and even (not a complete sucess on either part). In the end, it was my very first free motion quilt, before that I had only tried doing this on scraps, it's completely diferent to manage a quilt, even if it is a lap quilt, it's still 40" by 60" or something similar to that.

I tried with gloves and without them (it's so much easier with them) I tried keeping my hands flat and I tried grabing the fabric and ended up with grabing on one end and straightening the quilt with the other so I can see where I was going, I find that if I grab on both sides I lose control.
I tried all speeds and even though a medium speed is more confortable for me, the top speed makes for a better result. Also I kept forgeting to push the presser foot down and so i had to redo the work loads of times. But I'm wiser for it. I hope ;)

The busy front

The back with the hexies

Originally I thought I would quilt around the hexies, but then I realised it would look weird on the front to have that inexplicable unquilted line. And this way, the hexies become much more a part of the quilt, not just apliqueed hexies. This was also an opportunity to enjoy the amazing abilities of my sewing machine. Even with all this fabric it didn't even slow down. Even when I got to the hexies, there were like 5 layers of fabric, because I decided not to trim the hexies because I like them to be bulky but in a good way.

Still, in my amazing ability to complicate the simple, I still thought I had ruined the machine on several ocasions. First, i've already mentioned the needles breaking, which is all very new to me.
Secondly, by the time I finished the quilting, I still had some energy in me to start on the binding, so I decided to sew the strips together. But when I did that the thread would get caught on the bobin holder., this hapened a couple of times. So decided to get "under the hood" also a very dangerous task for me. There was some lint, more than I thought there would be considering I've only had it for a week. Oh, and I also opened the top of the machine to clean the threads that had been left by the previous thread I tried quilting with, as I mentioned.
So anyway, after cleaning I was still geting the same results. So I tried taking the thread out and the fabric out and try a diferent thread on a diferent fabric and THEN I remembered the dog feet were down... And THEN I noticed my stich lenght was in zero... Also, since I changed everything I'm not sure what  exactly did that, but then it started working, and by the time I got back to the fabric and the thread I intended to use, everything was ok at last and so for today we have binding on the menu!

The purple worked so well on the last quilt, I'm going to use it again on this one. I just know she is going to love it :)