The back of the cat quilt

Here is the finished back of Jessie's cat quilt. It is made of fabric I bought for this quilt and didn't use for the front as it didn't fit with the other fabric so well - and some of it isn't cats, its dogs or monkeys but I thought it was cats when i bought it! Those are 17" squares with 3/4" sashing. The green outer border will mostly be trimmed off but as I am going to quilt it on the swiftquilter I need a generous edge. Looks like I might get it finished in time for her birthday on 8th November! Yayy!

Jessica's Cat Quilt

Two posts in one day after a loooooooooong drought! (see here for the other one). I know, I'll explain. While Terry was away on a business trip for four weeks, he took my camera. I don't like to post without pictures so I didn't post much, just one I think with a photo taken on my phone. Then as soon as he got back we had our grand-daughters to stay and after that I had minor surgery (all is well, it just took a while to recover from the anesthetic). So I haven't been quilting much and I haven't been thinking too well either! But now I am back doing both.

When my grand-children or my niece's children turn five, they get an "I'm Five!" quilt from me. Jessica is about to turn five and she has asked for cats. Unfortunately, because of all the interruptions to scheduled life we have had this year its not the fanciest I'm Five! quilt I've made but I hope the lovely fabric will make up for it. Here is the unquilted top. I'm going back out to the sewing room now to make a backing out of all the fabric I bought and didn't use in the top!

A Paper Quilt - it just grew!

A few weeks ago, during the school holidays, we had Aimee and Jessica to stay for a few days while their parents took a break from parenting. One of the things the girls love is to have free rein of the craft area. They have a table, a good stock of art supplies and Nana within cooee in her office. One morning they painted beautiful pictures. The next day they decided that the craft area was their office and they needed a door for it. The craft area is in an open mezzanine but I have a curtain wire I sometimes put across when it is in use as a guest bedroom and Aimee decided they could hang a door from that. So, while Jessica continued to paint pictures, Aimee started taping them together to make a door. When Aimee cut holes in paper sheets to make windows, Jessica painted the cutouts with wavy lines which she said were writing.

Essentially, it is a paper quilt - it took the girls two mornings to construct as they had to wait for some of the paintings to dry before they could finish it off.

Here are some of the blocks and both sides of the finished quilt.

Sarah is making progress

I don't have my regular camera at the moment so this was taken on my cell phone, however, it shows the great way the jacob's ladder blocks dominate the quilt. Can you see the colour scheme is brown & cream with touches of blue, green and turquoise. And the quilt has grown a little bigger than the 60x60" one I designed. It will be 84x96" when finished. The white lines across are where the flannelette sheet on the wall shows through. Sarah still has to buy the fabric for those strips and they will be a mix of light and dark batiks. She has raided my stash and completely depleted it of brown and cream for the 5" squares and the larger pieced blocks. I felt that was fair exchange for her company and that of Aimee and Jessica for a long weekend. Aimee and Jessica also sewed jacob's ladder blocks on the sewing machine this weekend, Aimee made hers into a bag and Jessica left hers here for me to make into a bag for her.

Sarah's Quilt

My daughter Sarah needs a quilt for her bed and she asked me to design something in neutral colours, easy to sew but original. This is what I've come up with, a 60"x60" quilt which can be made larger with a border or two if necessary.

When I design using EQ6 I don't bother to scan my fabric as I work with many different scrap fabrics. I use fabric in the design that is close to value and hue to what I have.  I have chosen this range from my large collection of 5" squares.

I intend the design to be a guide only. The rows of plain squares are 5" squares, so they will be easy  - just sew them in a row. Then there are a few strips of differing widths - not too difficult either! The three pieced rows are of 8" finished blocks and 10" finished blocks. they are made up of half square triangles and 4 patches. A few 9 patches could be added for variety or quarter square triangles! Because of the casual nature of the design, if the rows of finished blocks are not quite 60" then a strip added between blocks or at the end of the row will not look out of place. and if the finished row is not 8" or 10" deep then an adjustment to one of the strip rows will take care of that. I have a workshop this coming weekend "Sewing outside the Square" with June Nixey and the blocks I make there I'll give to Sarah for this quilt.