WEEKEND ROUND UP!!

Sail Away With Me....

This week has continued to be all about paper piecing/foundation piecing!! I just can't get enough of it and there really are some fab patterns out there!! 

Carrying on with my Nautical theme I found a great sail boat pattern just from whiling away countless hours on Pinterest and Instagram, it was rather small at 6" squared so I set to work enlarging it....cue many glasses of wine and some colorful language but TA-DA 

With a total of 7 separate sections and some teeeeeny weeeeeeny pieces I wasn't quite sure how this block was going to turn out but I have to say with a bit of tweeking and a good iron I think it will be great sailing alongside the seagulls!!

Onto a favorite of mine the Mariners Compass, this really is such a gorgeous block, it comes together so easily and can look so effective depending on color choices and placements. I am not so sure about the black sections or the red actually but for now it can stay as it is. I will see how the rest of the quilt progresses in terms of color, fabric and design before I make any decisions on redoing it.

I will hold my hands up and admit that I did have to unpick a couple of sections here and there but overall I smashed those points!! The more I look at that red the more I am just not sure....

Quilting In The Surrey Hills...

Saturday meant a catch up with my crew for a good old stitch and bitch, they really are a talented bunch

Kerry Q and her sea creatures baby quilt, it is really beautiful in the flesh although driving her quite potty as she did all the quilting with invisible thread and is now at the stage of tying off ends!!

Sue was busy putting together some lovely beach huts in the rather gorgeous Salt Water by Tula Pink

And Caroline feeling thoroughly inspired by all the Modern Bee work that has been going on was dabbling with the rather beautiful Dakota Stars from The Vintage Quilt Revival

If you have any ideas on all quilts/blocks Nautical I would love to hear from you I am still (as always) looking for inspiration!! Leave a comment here or send us an email.

Happy Quilting

Kerry xx

A TALE OF TWO SEAGULLS

2 Seagulls and a Lighthouse

It really has been an age since I have sat down and updated you on my shinanigans, whilst I may have been scarce I really have not been idol!! In fact this very morning I very nearly murdered 2 seagulls.....

I have had a project in mind for quite some time now and have actively been looking for patterns, ideas and inspiration on how to bring this together and move it forward. It had to be a nautical theme and have a fairly muted blue/grey/navy/ palette with maybe a few splashes of red, yellow and white thrown in for good measure.

If you are a regular follower/reader you will know how much I LOVE foundation piecing, I will use it wherever I can!! So when I cam across these patterns I just couldn't resist, it was almost to good to be true. These blessed seagulls soon became the bane of my life!! But I persisted and persisted and persisted... you get the idea. I really had trouble with these ones, I stitched them backwards, upside down, wrong way round and unpicked them more times than I care to admit and in the end one of them I am sure came out looking a bit drunk BUT I did them!

So many of the pieces were rather tiny which was a new challenge for me and whilst these blocks could do with a tidy up I am really proud of them!! 

Then I thought well they weren't that bad really so why not try something even more fiddley with even tinier pieces?? I mean who wouldn't think that right?? Bring on the Lighthouse....

I loved sewing this block, the instructions were really clear and it actually came together rather quickly, which is something I like, each section had enough going on to give a real sense of progress and achievement even though it didn't take long to sew up. The overall effect was really impressive, a block I thought would look good in this quilt has now become one of my favorites and I've found that now I am almost 'building' the rest of the quilt around it.

I have now reached over 2000 views of the blog, thank you so much to all of your for helping me make this dream a reality!! Don't forget you can follow me on various websites to make sure you always know when there has been an update!

Happy Quilting

Kerry xx

NEW YORK BEAUTIES

Triangles, Points and Piecing

It's no secret I spend hours and hours of my life on Pinterest, I mean who needs to iron and dust? Honestly?! It was on one of these 'research' afternoons that I stumbled across a picture of an amazing quilt, it really was just so beautiful I had to investigate further!! Enter Karen K. Stone!! 

The image I found was in fact the cover of Karen's wonderful book Karen K. Stone Quilts, which can be found at many great book stores and quilting suppliers, so can her program for EQ7 as it happens!! The title of the quilt is Cinco de Mayo and I am sure you will agree its just beautiful!!

So with no further ado I decided to drive myself even more crazy with these tiny little pieces of fabric and fiddly little paper sections and embark on a New York Beautie of my own!!! I still have a veeeeeeeery loooooong way to go and so far the design I have chosen is quite simple BUT I am really happy with it so far!

I have a real thing for batiks, so I decided to indulge myself here a little and only use them for this quilt.

The next step is of course to cut out all the tiny pieces of fabric, as this is a foundation pieced quilt they don't have to be very accurate and they can mostly be cut from scraps which is fab because not much fabric is needed. Each section is sewn separately and then sewn together in sections, making a stack of squares!!

The individual squares can then be placed in a multitude of ways to create really eye catching designs, I have been playing around with a few but haven't settled on anything just yet, I am still toying with the idea of adding in some other colors.....

It was very daunting making a start on this quilt but I have to say once I got going I found it really difficult to stop!! I am thoroughly enjoying it and now that I feel more confident I am looking forward to branching out a little and trying some more adventurous sections and borders.

Happy Quilting

Kerry xx

A TRIP TO THE BEACH....

Come Together

This months British Queen Bee is the lovely Catrin, you can find out more about her in both English and Welsh on her fabulous crafty blog. Catrin made the following request for her block, 

"I'd love the overall color scheme to be beach related - blues, yellows, and neutrals - think beach in Summer. Happy with prints or solids, and the "white" of the block can be white / off white / pale neutral." she also very kindly produced this diagram for us...so totally stealing this idea when it's my turn!

The first thing I had to do was pick out the fabrics to use, it really quite amazes me how much I actually have in my stash....(don't tell my boyfriend, or my mother they will gang up and say I don't need to buy anymore!) I saw 'beach theme' and thought eeeeek what on earth have I got for that, I am going to have to go out and get something, but when I actually started to pull things I was surprisingly spoilt for choice!

This block is described as one that "marries the familiarity of sewing squares and strips with the new skill of making quilts with triangles", so the first step was to cut out said squares and strips!

And then sew them together...

The fabrics I chose reflected pebbles, sea foam, the sun, waves and wooden benches...well they did to me anyway! I really like the way this has turned out. Again it is not a block I was drawn to initially and not a theme or fabrics I would have naturally picked for myself but with every block I complete for someone else I end up in more of a pickle about what to do when it is my turn!!!

And here is the finished article and whopping 20" square!

Speaking of finished articles, the first bee block I did was for the lovely Katie, you can find that post here and you can see her quilt top placement below

I can not recommend joining a Quilt Bee enough, I really am having the most fabulous time doing this and learning a great deal about fabric, quilting, sewing and myself! I thoroughly recommend the book to!

Happy Quilting

Kerry xx