Bee inspired quilt finished

My 'bee inspired' quilt is finally finished!

The 'bee inspired' bee was started by Rachel of p.s. i quilt in 2009.
We were 18 participants from all over the world. This was my first virtual quilting bee ever and I was happily challenged on both methods and colours as the year passed by. I found out that making blocks to other people with their choice of fabric and block pattern could really make me break a sweat, as I was quite nevous to make their blocks as good as I should/could/would. A very healthy exercise!

For my month, I sent out all of my red and white/cream scraps and requested minimum one wonky star from my fellow 17 participants, size max 12 ½''. They could add scraps of their own if they followed my colourway.

So from out of these piles
came THIS:
I am totally in love! I love the scrappy, yet controlled look, the random placement of the stars, the different sizes of all these stars - have you noticed the teeny tiny ones??

A close-up of one of the stars and the quilting in it:
For the quilting, this was an (almost) first dance with my brand new Bernina 820 (Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaww). I will not gloat any more about it in this post, promise! I am just very happy with it, let me put it so.

I have freehand quilted around each star and a spiral in the middle of almoset every one of them. the rest has been filled with doodling, which I found to be fast and quite funny to quilt. Here is a close-up of the back for you to see what I meen:
It was just plain fun to freehand quilt this quilt, as I found that the wonly theme allowed for wonkiness in the quilting itself, which freed me from much of my self-imposed pressure to do thing nice and neat.
I have used 100% bamboo batting, and it is oh so soft and it creates a very nice texture. Not my last time to use this, that is for certain!

Around the borders I chose to freehand quilt information about the bee in handwriting:
(intended for much use and cuddling).
It also contains my name and year of finish, block name, made from scraps and so on. this way I avoided making a label, which I must admit I never get to make :)

Thank you to all you folks out there who made this quilt possible! And I know you had to wait 2 years to see it, but hey - I finally made it. I cannot wait for December when it is envisioned on the couch with me of my bf or our son cuddling underneath it!!!

Baby quilt for Victor

Dear all,

Long time no blogging... I know!

There seem to be a 100 things going on at the same time for me right now: Pregnancy soon to end (in approx 6 weeks), my job to finish off in a nice manner before going on maternity leave (in 2 days - that is because I will use two weeks of vacation before the leave starts). My father-in-law turns 70 next week too, so some attention has been turned that way too and then I have my lovely two quilting bees to focus on as well - I do not complain at all, just a little sorry from me :)

But now it is time for showing off the next baby quilt I have finished today - 1 hour before we left for baby Victor's baptism. Pfew, that was a close cut!!

Victor appered to be a greenish little boy to me, so I chose to make this baby quilt in dusty and light greens, spiced a little with brown and creams. I bought a line of fabrics and added some of my older mathcing fabrics too, in order to get enough variation.

The inspiration is the "Happy Hour" pattern, adapted to pre-cut 2,5'' strips, and then just made even more random.

And how lucky am I??? On his baptism costume and as table decorations, his parents had chosen to add the EXACT same green tones as in the quilt. Amazing!!

I used machine stippling to hold the quilt together and, oh boy, did I have a hard time: I had decided to use a fleece blanket as batting, and for some reason this gave me great grief with thread snapping every 2 inches in some places!!! Grrrr!

Well, I made it to the end and I have decided to erase the experience from my memory.
Note to self: DONT use fleece blankets again!


All in all, I am happy with the result: 39'' x 39''.
And the parents were too :)).

Now I will go lay myself down on the couch - I think I have deserved it. Heh!

Finally I can show you this baby quilt!

Finally, I can show you this baby quilt for my first nephew, who was baptized today, Sunday.
His name is Emil. It has been ready for months, but as it is a gift I could not reveal it before now :)

And finally a baby quilt for a BOY, so obviously I chose to make it in blues, green and a tad of purple. (it is also from this quilt that I have made my header of this blog)

The applications are the creation of my (normally not very crafty) boyfriend. But he insisted on making all sorts of vehicles for the quilt and the motorbike is a symbol for Emil's parents and their common passion :)
So indeed this has become a present from both of us! I might even ask him to make me more patterns for appliqués in the future :)


The quilting is my very first attempt to stipple, and I am very happy with it too - I know that I have shown you later examples of my stippling, but this was my first try *giggle*

The binding is finished by hand on the back. I am not good with hand stitching, so you will NOT get a closeup...


(back)

Next, I must try to use some of my after-Easter holiday days off to focus on the blocks I have not yet finished for my two quilting bees!! Shame on me...

My scrappy blues *updated*

Update:
My scrappy blues have now been quilted AND photographed, so I can show it (partly) to you all.

I have stippled it intensely - remember those blue coins are just 4'' x 2'', as I decided to use my last bits of batting, some of them quite small :) So scrappy blues it is:

I like how the coins seem to pop up from the quilt!Quilting around the blue coins resulted in a brilliant effect on the back too:
Now I need to finish the binding and sew it on - that will take some time, be warned!
But overall, I am pretty happy with this one! Yay :o)

---------
25 January 2009:
I finished this Coin Quilt patchwork top yesterday evening. I decided to name it "My scrappy blues".
Naturally, I wanted to tell the wold (= you) about it immediately but I had to wait for daylight to take some photos...
Facts:
* Blue scraps of all kinds, 45 varieties/2 blocks of each
(some of the fabrics are from my very first attempts, back in 1997!)
* Connected with semi-bleached cotton, that I have recently gotten a huge pile of, for FREE *dancing around with joy*. It is slightly heavier than the rest of my stash, but I think it will work out nicely.
* The blocks are 4,5 x 2,5'', including seam allowances.
* The strips are 2,5'' wide.
* Final size, without binding, is 64 x 42'' (162 x 107 cm)
Gosh, I did not realize I had so much blue - and there are still some blues I have not used!

Also, I tried to use up some of my thread rolls, filling up the limited space I have available - 3 small rolls used :) Consider that a tip free to use!

I have dyed some of the cotton into a dusty blue, perhaps that would do for the backing... hmmmm...