Backdated post to make up for how slack I’ve been, sorry to anyone on the RSS feed! I’m all about quilts this week. This is Emma, I’ve always been terrible at naming my quilts so I figured I need to come up with a standard system for them, I figure each one of them is almost like a child to me, so I wanted to give them proper names and then developed a way to select the names. I explained [...]

I quilted and bound Connor’s red string quilt a few days ago. Echo stitching around the block seams the same as his brother’s version and bound in the same fabric. I ended up using some flannelette from my stash, a bright blue with skulls and crossbones on it. The flannelette I backed it with wasn’t pre-washed and shrunk more than I had intended, making it really crinkley on the front. I don’t mind though, this quilt is going to get [...]

1. It’s very pink, 2. Pink Strings top, 3. string, 4. Spiderweb trial block 1 for my month of Spiderweb Bee, 5. String Quilt Pillow, 6. Spider Web Quilt in Progress, 7. “a little help from my friends” top completed, 8. colorful string quilt, 9. black white + green string baby quilt front, 10. string pieced quilt, 11. Watercolors 1 (WIP), 12. First quilt, 13. IMG_5592 I finished up Connor’s quilt this afternoon during his nap, but bed is calling [...]

I finally took the plunge yesterday during the boys’ naps and did the final applique on Robyn’s quilt. It’s not perfect, but any bedding I would have made her wouldn’t have been perfect either, so it’s fitting. I ended up changing my mind on the pink I’d chosen for the bird’s breast and instead used some shot silk from a grab bag at a car boot that my mum picked up for me ages ago. It’s beautiful, bright pink from [...]

In the last few weeks of pregnancy I finally decided to a theme for the cot set I planned on making for our third babe. Black and white prints from Northcott mixed in with tone on tone blue and orange prints if it was a boy, and a tiny pink leopard print if I ended up delivering a girl. I had both options laid out on my sewing desk, ready for me to get stuck into when I returned from [...]

So far you will have completed Step One – Cutting. Step Two covers the construction of the off centre/wonky logcabin blocks. This is probably the most sewing intensive step of the week, from start to finish it took me about five hours to make 30 blocks, so you’ll want to set aside a good portion of the day, or split it over two sessions. Log Cabin Block Tutorial The Log Cabin block is one of the easiest blocks to make, [...]

A couple of days ago I discovered the joys of paper piecing, it’s something I’d seen before but I’d written it off as being too much work and too time intensive, allow me now to take that all back! I made up Sonja Callaghan’s Gnomlette within half an hour and the results are, if I do say so myself, absolutely awesome. There’s a bit more info about it and some more pictures on my personal blog. Looking around the wonder [...]

ALLITERATION FTW!!! Continuing the Halloween specials, I give you a super cute trick or treating bag, guaranteed to last from year to year no matter what outfit you’re pairing it with I would like to stand up in my own defence before I get into this one, yes, I quilt, but I am a crazy/scrap quilter, I have a phobia of seam matching and precise measurements, so my methods (and finished product!) probably make seasoned quilters and patchworkers shake in [...]

I really like batik and the effect it gives, but don’t have the spare change to buy a proper set up to do batik traditionally, which is why as soon as I saw this tutorial I had to try it out straight away! Tutorial: Flour Paste Batik Level: Easy Time taken: Probably only an hour worth of actual work, but there’s a lot of waiting time as well, this isn’t an instant gratification project! Give yourself a full weekend to [...]

Helen has asked me to spread the word about her new flickr group, Australian Scrap Quilters. She is in the process of organising a swap for people who are interested in making a scrap quilt without spending four years collecting up co-ordinating fabrics. You send off a collection of various 6.5inch squares of 100% cotton from your scrap collection and stamps for return postage, and in return you’ll receive the same amount of squares back to you in the theme [...]