Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Camelot!


Remember yesterday when I told you there was a fourth quilt project I started? This is Block #1 of Camelot!

Sometimes when I'm feeding Olivia in the wee hours of the morning, I'm surfing the web and "accidentally" buy things. After viewing some absolutely drop-dead gorgeous quilts and blocks made from this pattern, one hopped in my etsy cart and travelled all the way from Australia to me.

Camelot is quite a ambitious pattern by Trish Harper which includes templates for sixteen unique circle blocks which are meant to be hand-pieced. Pretty crazy, right? I jumped right in, cut all my fabrics for block one, started the hand sewing and decided I wouldn't have a Camelot quilt of my own for decades with this approach. So I took it to the machine and voila! I think it turned out okay! It's definitely not perfection, but as with most things, I'm trying to take this as a learning experience. And my Y-seams actually lay flat. After finishing Block One, I started looking through the rest of them, and let me tell you, this one is child's play compared to the rest!


But I figure, if I can conquer Camelot, there is not a lot of other piecing in the quilting world I can't accomplish!

If anyone else is as crazy as I am and would like to Camelot-along, there are a few of us in a Flickr group here and you can purchase the pattern here. The more the merrier!

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Oops! I did it again



Yep, I started another quilt. Erm, I might have actually started FOUR new quilts. What is wrong with me? This is a rhetorical question of course ;)

So I'm Swooning again, but I've started the project over with an entirely new idea. My first Swoon block was done scrappy-style in pretty Pam Kitty Morning fabrics, and while I loved it, I realized I needed a pattern for a queen sized quilt to give as a gift soon. Swoon seemed like a great solution, but the fabrics and design weren't right for the intended recipient. But I think these vibrant patterns from the old Amy Butler Belle collection will be perfect and work really well with in Swoon block. I'm excited to see how it comes together. And it feels really good to sew with fabrics I've been hoarding  saving for years.


I'm not quite sure how this one started. I had really wanted to join it the Made in Cherry Quilt-along but all those Granny Squares I had been making were taking up my sewing time.  But I kept staring longingly at my new A Walk in the Woods fat quarter bundle, pulled a few prints to pair with some other  fabrics in my stash and decided they needed to be a new quilt for Olivia. Then the idea came to me to marry them with this project and before I knew it, I was chopping up little 3 inch squares. This is coming together really fast and I think is going to be a wall hanging for her room.


The third quilt was started after I brought out my beloved collection of japanese fairy tale fabrics for Lucy to play with. She had so much fun identifying all the characters from her stories, how could I wait any longer to turn them into a blanket for her? She's getting her very own "big girl" bed soon, so now is the time. I'll be showing you what I'm working on with these very soon.

And the fourth quilt? I'm not even ready to go there yet. I've made the first block of this quilt and now want to do nothing else but sew these up. Let me just make sure I can even pull off block number two and then I'll show you what I'm up to. Exciting stuff.