Finished Post and Rail Baby Quilt.

I finished up the post and rail quilt I mentioned in my previous post last night. Have a stack of photos:

A better view of the backing fabric

Pinning the layers together in preparation for quilting (in my itsy bitsy lounge):

This is the first time I've had to piece batting for a quilt (the shop near my work had a tiny bit of woollen/cotton blend batting left when I went in). It's the first time I've used woollen batting before, and the lanolin smell reminded me of my mother's neglected spinning wheel from when I was a kid and of the sheep our neighbour used to herd across our driveway.

I'm really happy with how the finished product came out:

All prettied up with a bow:

As for my other projects on the go, I think I'm going to use the spare batting I have kicking around to fiiiinally get more of the cathederal window quilt underway. It's probably about half done now, so I think another couple of weekend's work will knock it out.

I also sort of threw in the towel with trying to hand quilt the entire rainbow quilt. I've had it sitting on my boyfriend's bed for the last month, and I've done bits and pieces of quilting whenever I went over but after seeing how quickly the baby quilt came together with machine quilting I decided to finish it off on machine this afternoon. It's a bit less than ideal trying to snuggle into a quilt covered in safety pins, and the colours (surprisingly) work well with the lime/purple colour scheme of his walls.

As you can see, my sewing table is very small and the quilt is very big. It's been quite pleasant having it draped across me while I work though, as Wellington has decided to sleet on everything.

Naturally when it came time to attach the binding George was committed to being a jerk helping

Finished photos due soon, when the quilt is actually finished (and when it's on a bed since my lounge is too tiny for a proper photo.) Of course, if the quilt lives at Bernie's house I'll need to make another one for my bed - I happened across some really richly coloured bedspreads from Urban Outfitters the other day, so now I'm thinking maybe a sea of greens or reds and oranges for my next full size quilt.

New WIP

I got my latest parcel from Hawthorne Threads yesterday and was SO excited. I'm making a baby quilt (the one I mentioned in my last post) and I'm so glad the fabric arrived quickly. I got started cutting last night, and thought I'd show off the fabrics I've picked out before posting progress pics.

I'm making a basic post and rail design, nice and bright and in quite neutral colours (yellow, green and orange/red palattes). The design is inspired by this quilt from Red Pepper Quilts. Photos are from my phone, so some are a little funky colour wise, but:

Greens, including Tula Pink's turtle bay and Amy Butler Delhi Blossoms in Lime.



I can't get over how cute the elephant/turtle combo is:



Yellows (or yellow-ish):



And orange/reds, including some of Anna Maria Horner's Field Study and a cute piece from Jennifer Paganelli which was on sale:



Plus this Bohemian Soul for the white accent stripes:



and this for the backing:



I'm looking forward to getting started on and finishing a smaller piece while I'm still chipping away at hand quilting my giant rainbow quilt.

That Quilt I Talked About Last Year

So last November I started making this quilt top. It took slightly longer than I thought and I then folded it up and it lived on the end of my couch for about four months. I fiiiiinally had enough coin to buy the batting and backing fabric (it's a mammoth - 2.4m wide and almost 3m long, so batting wasn't cheap.) I went luxe-ish, nice cotton batting which I'm liking so far (similar to this: Warm Company Batting ), and has made for a really smooth quilt which rolls and folds well. Complicating things further was the fact that the quilt top is bigger than the open space in the biggest room in my house:

George helped a lot, of course.

So, once I had a quilt top I had to find a space large enough to lay it flat and baste together the layers of the quilt, prior to the actual quilting. My lovely boyfriend has a studio about 20 minutes walk from my house so one Sunday night we went there to spread out the quilt He took photos!

I also took a perspective shot, approximately 300 safety pins in:

I opted for the safety pin method of basting, essentially because I am quite lazy and because I'm hand tying the quilt so I don't need to worry about negotiating them with a machine. Speaking of, I think I have some latent masochistic tendancies because hand tying a quilt this size suddenly seems like not such a fabulous idea, 1/30th of the way in. BUT this this is cute as hell and I have it draped over me while I'm working so it isn't all bad.

In new project news, a friend is having a baby quite soon so I just went a little nuts on Hawthorne Fabrics again. I'm excited about working on a baby quilt, just because I'm keen to have something that comes together quickly. I'm also on the look out for a nice fabric to bind the giant rainbow quilt with, suggestions in the comments welcome.