Finished Baby Blanket - Blue Ombre

I love it when everything comes together. So often with quilting you can over analyse every step. I spent ages choosing the fabric, then I spent ages choose what pattern to do, then when it was finally sewn up I spent ages procrastinating quilting it.

Typically I use a regular fleece blanket to act as backing and batting for my baby quilts but this time I used a thin fleecy poly knit. The same one that I used for my softest coco! 

for the front I cut pieces of fabric into stripes and then placed them in a tonal order from cream to dark blue. Then I pieced them together in a spiral. Its a really quick way to make a blanket and I think its super cute looking.

All of the fabrics came from my stash and I was very careful to choose ones that would be suitable for a boy or a girl. I know its predominately blue but and my sister says some girls like blue and some of the prints have flowers on which girlies it up a little bit. 

This was also my first time doing decent mitred corners on the binding of this one. Which makes me feel a bit smug because it means my skills are improving! Yay for learning new things! 

Oh and by the way I spiral quilted it because that's my go to quilting technique! I really should learn something new!

Frankie

xxx

Cheer Up Elephant

This is one of those really silly things I like to make every now and again. Basically I like to leave Rikki little gifts, sometimes it a bunch of sunflowers [he is my sunshine] , once a knitted bunny rabbit, a tray of jam tarts on the stairs, a bag of doughnuts! Basically if he's feeling low or poorly I think its my mission to perk him up! And if I feel low he does the same!

Anyway seen as he's had a pretty nasty cold I decided to quickly stitch him up a elephant to cheer him up!

I used the pattern from this book . The pattern is designed for wovens and made on a machine but I decided to use scraps of fleece and sew it by hand.

It took up a few hours whilst one poorly boy dragged himself to work and the other sat on the sofa feeling sorry for himself.

Construction wise its nothing ground breaking, although if I were to make it in a woven fabric I think I'd actually insert the ears rather than slip stitch them on as the pattern suggests.

He's very soft and cute and definitely cheered Rikki up! although he wasn't impressed with the name I gave him!! Snottersly! Yeah gross I know! I don't have a great track record with giving things names!

What do you do to cheer people up when they are sick?

Much Love

Frankie 

xxx 

Finished Disappearing 9 patch quilt

Yay I've finally finished one of my baby blankets [Well I've finished both of them but I've not written the Blog post for the second one!] So I'm all caught up and I can start my own quilting projects again! Yay! 

So this one is for the first baby that's being born in April, or thereabouts. Its based on a disappearing 9 patch but added some borders.

These pictures are not brilliant because the wind kept blowing and I've been feeling peaky all day, so I just reached the point where I gave up and decided to live with what I've got.

Its quilted quite simply, I basically started at one corner and quilted at right angles so its like a corner quilting technique. Pretty simple but it looks cool and its all pretty flat.

Its backed with a piece of fleece, I don't tend to add wadding to baby quilts just because I don't see it as being necessary, so instead I just use a squishy fleece. This fleece came from b and ms and was part of a two pack of fleece blankets for 3.99 which is far cheaper than buying fabric from a fabric shop.

I also used fleece for the binding which I hand stitched because I'm a sucker for a hand stitched finish!

So yes very pleased especially seen as I did most of it whilst I was really tired and not in the mood for complicated sewing, actually it was quite nice to just do some really simple finishing of a project!

Aren't the owls adorable? The whole quilt apart from the backing came from my stash, although the entire quilt was inspired by the colours from the owl fabric. Mainly I just wanted to keep things really bright and fun and not fall into my usual dark colour palette.

Yeah so there's not much more I can say about it apart from I love it. I just hope the parents of the baby like it as much as I do! I think its fun and modern and doesn't look too homespun so hopefully they will.

Much Love

Frankie

xxx