September WIP roundup (Part 2) and a finish

Life getting in the way of good intentions, as usual. Here are glimpses of a couple of other quilt tops I have managed to get together over the past few weeks - I'm going to be doing lots of quilting soon!

First, a large top made with an old American Jane collection (sorry, can't remember which one) with some pin dots included.  The pattern,which I am calling Four patch Star (for my benefit: it's becoming harder to remember which quilt is which...), is from Carrie Nelson's book Schnibbles Times Two.  As usual I have fiddled with the design and made it bigger so it is rectangular rather than square.

I used fat quarters rather than the layer cakes the pattern is designed for, and I have also skipped the borders, and plan to quilt diagonal lines with the walking foot right to the edge.  The blocks are large, 16" square as each four patch measures 8" x 8".

Backing fabric is this fab red polka dot by Sevenberry - not what I originally intended but it spoke, nay, shouted at me as I rummaged through stash. I took a bit of care lining up the dots when joining the two lengths for the backing: not perfect but not too bad and worth the extra pinning!

I will try and get this one layered as soon as I can clear the dining room table of all my paperwork/start of the year admin. Even though I no longer have kids at school this always seems to me to be the start of the year after the change of pace over the summer; I wake up and try and achieve as much as possible before Christmas appears on the horizon and stuff has to be abandoned till January - my second chance to start the year!

Although they are not together yet I have made the large bonus triangles (cut off when making the flying geese units for the Four patch stars) into pinwheels.  I made a few extra pinwheels with a Charm pack of Bread'N'Butter, a more recent American Jane collection, so now I have 42 seven inch blocks.  I fancy setting them with spotty sashing as per this quilt by Red Pepper Quilts, but I need to go out and find the right spot, as I don't have enough of this Sevenberry spot.

The other quilt top which I am pleased to have got together as it has been lying around for even longer, is this one which I am calling Kaffe Fassett Nine patch on point; again, a descriptive rather than an inspired choice of name!

I have a large amount of KF fabric in my stash, acquired quite a few years ago, but part of me is too scared to use it.  I do like the fabrics still; I just feel I should be a bit cleverer or more arty in order to use them effectively....  I also have several KF books, though not the more recent ones.  Time I pushed myself out of my comfort zone in this regard too.  I don't have a backing fabric for this top yet so it may be a while before I show you more of it, but at least it has progressed to the next level.

Finally to my small finish: I managed the not very great task of layering and quilting the small quilt/table topper I showed you in the last post. And last night I stitched the binding down - I used 2" strips for a skinny doublefold binding as it seemed more in proportion to such a small quilt.  

The quilting is just in the ditch, concentric squares every other row: enough to anchor but not to distract from all the little pieces.  Backing and binding from stash.  Linking to Finish it up Friday with Crazy Mom Quilts.  Love the backpack she made.

September WIP roundup (Part 1)

Happy September to you all and back to school/college/university/work.  I am appalled to see that it is over a month since I blogged - where did August go? I have written lots of posts in my head but totally failed to get down to actually hammering the keyboard to share my sewing activities. Apologies and I promise to try harder this term!

So much has been happening recently that I think I will probably break the posts down in to smaller chunks for easier digestion.  Bear with me while we see how it goes. I think I will work backwards to give my memory a chance to recover!

I have been away a few times this month on sewing related treats so I have come back energised and inspired to tackle some new projects, but especially to finish and clear away some old ones; so this week just past has involved digging out a number of WIPs.

I still have the quilting to do but I have managed to get the following tops together:

In reverse order, this was last night's little treasure, a mini version of a quilt in Edyta Sitar's book Friendship Triangles (it still needs a final pressing). I had the trimmed off triangles from a large Thimbleberries quilt stitched together but screwed up in a bag.  After pressing they looked like this, 

and after trimming to 1 1/2" they looked like this. [Please excuse colour cast from camera flash as I took this photo at night].

I played around with the layout but had always been attracted to Edyta's design, Medallion Quilt which is made with 420 x 2" (finished size) half square triangles; her quilt has quite wide borders and measures 59" square.

My 'quilt' is made with what I had leftover which is 184 x 1" (finished) HSTs plus a few neutral triangles to fill in the gaps and make a straight edge. It measures 15" square.  I debated whether or not to add a border and have decided not to, so it is just waiting to be layered and quilted: hardly a massive job! 

My only other comments are that the trimming was well worth it in terms of getting all the points to match, and as well as my Bloc_loc ruler I gave thanks for my tank steam iron and Best Press spray which flattened out all the seams - so bulky in proportion to such small units. 

Here are the before and after photos for one of the quarter segments.

This next top is a little bigger, measuring 27 1/2" x 31 1/2" and was made from a bundle of offcut triangles and strips from a large quilt I made many years ago, which I am embarrassed to report is lying layered and machine basted upstairs, waiting to be handquilted.

I managed to trim the HSTs to 2 1/2" square and there were enough for thirty 4" (finished) blocks of 4 matching HSTs, set 5 blocks x 6, with 3" wide borders cut from the remaining 2 1/2" strips. I thought this block was called Birds in the Air or Flock of Birds but I haven't so far managed to confirm that: anyone out there know?

Backing and inner border/binding from stash plus a wadding offcut means a small 'free' quilt for someone out of a sad plastic bag of bits. My favourite kind of sewing as I feel thrifty and that I am tidying up at the same time as making a mess!

That's all for now. Hoping to post again tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who drops in to look at this blog from time to time - I met some of you at the Fabric Fayre in Great Bookham the Bank Holiday weekend and it was so good to catch up. Keep on quilting!