Ginger blossom continues.....

Just a quick check in - so far I've made 17 out of the 24 blocks (photo to follow). But guess who found them all and decided to have an afternoon nap on them! Grrrrrrrr stupid cat.

I initially lay out the 17 blocks last night and realised that it's gonna be a big quilt. Hopefully I should be able to get the rest made over the weekend and possibly sew them all together.

I'm waiting for some more Ginger Blossom fabric to arrive - mainly for the binding but I think it may need a bit more pink in certain blocks. I searched the internet last week (Thursday) and found a UK seller, thinking I would have the fabric over the weekend or Monday at the latest. It still isn't here. BUT some fabric I bought last Wednesday from the US arrived on Tuesday!!

Ginger blossom part deux

I've been a bit of a busy bee over the past couple of days and I'm making good progress on the Ginger Blossom quilt top.

Yesterday I managed to sort out all 216 squares and then set about putting them into groups of 9, trying to mix them so that I had 5 of one colour and 4 of the other. I'm liking the way that the pink and green seem to work well, especially because they all seem so different when you look at them as stand alone pieces, and probably because I wouldn't have thought about using these 2 colours together.

A little later and with a little help from a little helper aka a 2 year old (not so much of a help but a hinderance!) I started to piece my blocks together. This is the first one. So much for my 5/4 rule, this seems to have a lot more pink in it. I blame the 2 year old. ;o)

This quilt should come together quite quickly now that I have sewn rows of 3 together and pressed them all, ready to be made into blocks. Up to now I've made 8 blocks out of the 24 that I intend to make.

I really hope that my friend likes this too as it appears to have an admirer in feline form - stay off the blocks Stella!

Ginger blossom part 1

Since yesterday I have been doing a bit of this:

Some scribbling on a piece of paper and a bit of measuring. Or planning a quilt rather than winging it and making it up as I go along, which is normally what happens here!

I've decided to keep it simple. A quilt made with 5" squares of fabric, random placing of prints, bit of scrappy binding and maybe some diagonal quilting.

So once I had worked out the maths - I started with 18 fqs - I could then begin the cutting. I figured out that each fq would give me 12 5" squares with a bit left over for the scrappy binding. Off I set to work armed with my rotary cutter, which needs a new blade I found out! About an hour or so later I had 216 squares.

After cutting them all out I can now see the benefit of charm packs!

Here is the pile of squares waiting to be transformed into blocks of 9, which will then be stitched together to make the full quilt top, well that's the plan anyway.

Ginger for a ginger

I've been sitting on this little pile of stash for a while, not literally! But I did buy it about 18 months ago, infact it was my first fat quarter bundle purchase. Since then it has been sitting in the sewing room winking at me.

I did use a couple of fq's to make a knitting needle case when I joined a knitting club (that's another story) but since then the rest of the bundle hasn't had any plans, until today.

The bundle is called 'Ginger Blossom' and it is by Sandi Henderson for Michael Miller. The name gave me the idea.

A long time ago, 19 years ago to be precise, another ginger walked into my life. On my first day at University I met my bestest best mate in the whole wide world. And yep, you've guessed it, she has ginger hair (though strawberry blond as she likes to call it!)

We both studied the exact same combination of subjects for our 4 years teacher training degree, been on holiday together several times and we have shared LOTS of laughs and other experiences together.

Since then she has moved to New Zealand and we don't see each other as much as we used to, in fact I haven't seen her for 2 and a half years. Despite this we immediately connect as if it were just yesterday, whether it be on the phone, via Facebook or email.

So this quilt is for her. My friend. The Ginger Wh*re (A university nickname which she never really lived up to!)

Sherbet Pips

As I promised, here it is, my small stash of Sherbet Pips.

I know that most of blog-land has been going on about this collection for what seems like an eternity but I was waiting, patiently I add, before getting my purse out and jumping on the bandwagon.

First came the jelly roll from a seller on Ebay, then after a quick look through all of the prints I decided on the other prints that I wanted to get my mitts on. Looking at the range of colours that the prints were available in I slowly started to chuck half yards into my shopping basket, only to realise that I would need to take out a small loan to purchase said fabric. So I had to whittle it down a little to an amount of fabric, and money more importantly, that I could afford. This little stash is what I ended up with. I love the little dog but I have to say that my favourite is the scarf print.

As you can see I tried to pick and choose from across the entire collection both in terms of prints and background colours. This is going to be used in a quilt for my youngest daughter, Stingo, for when she moves into her 'Big Girl Bedroom' probably sometime later in the year - I have a while to carry on looking at and stroking the stash before I have to chop it up.

The prints were from Sew Fresh Fabrics via Etsy and the solid grey from Seamstar.

Some sewing at last!

Hmmmm, it's been a while since I did any sewing but an unscheduled day off work due to general unwellness has it's perks as I've managed to whip up a quilt back for the wonky blocks quilt I started ages ago. Here it is:

I've used the larger pieces of scraps that I had left over (due to my schoolgirl error in making the blocks too wonky) to make the same size blocks as the front. I'm planning on quilting this with straight lines but all over the place, no repeating, up, down, left, right, diagonal, hey whatever I like. I figure that as it is a wonky quilt so why not go mad! Hopefully I'll get it finished before September* as I want to give it to Digby for her 7th birthday, I think she has probably forgotten that I've started it so it should be a surprise.

*Obviously I want to get it done before then, but this is my ultimate deadline!

A little bit more sewing this afternoon too - Hubby is off on a stag do at the weekend and wanted a pink cloak. I'm not asking why or what for, I just did it.

I've got something to show you!

Before I went off on my jolly holidays I posted about waiting for some Sherbet Pips to arrive, which they did; the day before I flew off. I'll post a picture of my little spree once I have some decent light and have re-charged my camera - we somehow managed to take approximately 350 pictures of various things whilst out of the country. Some good, lots bad, I'm sure you know how it goes! But for now, here's one of the better ones.