effort- to- impact ratio

It's interesting, isn't it? A quilt with complex traditional piecing certainly creates a lasting impression, but so too can a quilt simple in design yet meaningful & vibrant. I have to say that last year was a real mixture of quilting styles for me. I enjoyed making several quilts for gifts. To me, while the quick & easy sewing made for minimal effort really, these quilts still seemed to have great impact, mainly due to using beautiful fabrics! Gotta thank those designers out there- lots of fresh, new fabrics are amazingly released almost daily! They're very tempting with large graphics & florals, and really too wonderful to contemplate cutting up into teeny tiny pieces!

On the flip side, I also had a few slow burning projects on the go last year, complicated designs with small, fiddly block construction like Gypsy Wife & Retro Flowers quilts.  They were challenging but I was content to take my time and found it extremely satisfying as I slowly worked thru' all the processes.

My first WiP for this year is all about the fabric!
I've always wanted to make a coin quilt, and as I'm on a bit of a stash attack at present, I decided on a scrappy stacked coin quilt! My inspiration came from a combination of a couple of ideas, from here and here. I popped out to see Cheryl at all things patchwork as she has a sale on and I bought a largish piece of AMH's Primrose in Sapphire as the background focus fabric. Back home I started sorting fabrics from my stash, colours that could compliment, and am now in the middle of swapping different sized strips around to get a nice balance-thingy happening!

What are you most happy stitching... great impact with little effort? ... or slow sewing, savouring the process as much as the result? ... or maybe like me, a bit of both! 

Linking up with Lee here for WiP Wednesday

pop on over to see lots more quilty inspiration!

a little old fashioned, but that's all right

So I've started the year off with sewing the binding onto one of my older WiPs. I began this quilt in 2013. My inspiration came from an article in a Quiltmania magazine, 2013. In WW II Britain faced many shortages, one of which was warm bedding, and the women of Canada made lots of comfortable, warm quilts by the thousands. Some quilts are now part of a museum collection and one photo really caught my eye...

quiltmania magazine 2013

I pieced the top using up a scrappy mixture of fabrics from my stash to create a kind of old fashioned and antique looking quilt. And it was quilted by Annette/Wild Cotton quilting.

auditioning for the border fabric

close up of the quilting

But then it ended up buried in the depths of the wardrobe because I felt it was all looking 'too grey.' And you know, sometimes it is good to leave things for a while! When I relooked at it over the holidays I suddenly knew what was missing! I added a punchy bit of purpley- dark red for the binding, et voila... new life to a little old fashioned quilt!

Linking up with Cynthia's "Oh Scrap" linky party here.

a bit more # 25

YOU WEAR IT WELL a little old fashioned but that's all right

- Rod Stewart 

{here's the song}

mission accomplished!

Baby Wrap stats:

Mei Tai pattern here

10 hours to make, over 3 days

Made by my daughter, with me assisting & deciphering pattern! 

oh and Olive let us use Teddy for the test drive! 

Materials - Recycled turquoise wrap and leftover cotton fabric from grandmother's skirt

One baby wrap done ... but still waiting for baby!

Linking up with TGIFF over here @ Soul Blossoms
and with Finish it up Friday here @ Crazy Mom Quilts
pop on over to see lots more quilty inspiration!

it's a wrap!

                                  

                      



Hope everyone had a lovely Xmas day and you are now enjoying all this sunshine & relaxing!
Not too much happening around here on the sewing front.We've had lots of family comings & goings, my son & daughter-in-law have now left for Melbourne :( and we are excitedly awaiting the arrival of the new baby :)

• There is just a wee bit of VERY last minute pre-baby sewing happening! My daughter wanted to use a 4 metre turquoise wrap she had bought earlier to make another different wrap... recycling I guess! We are following this pattern here, the Mei Tai baby wrap, with pages & pages of very detailed instructions! It's a bit confusing, but we've got it all cut out now, using the good old 'measure twice, cut once' best practice of course! 
• Oh, and I won a three-pack of patterns from Sew Sweetness patterns - seriously, some of the most versatile bag patterns out there! I had been busy making my handmade gifts for Xmas this year and just thought I'd join in the fun over here @ santa's sweatshop party .. it was a lovely post Xmas surprise to see that I had won one of the prizes! So much to chose from, not too sure yet which patterns to pick! 
• And that's it... almost a wrap for 2014! When I came to collate a few recent finishes for this end-of-the-year photo shoot, I realized I had actually managed to cross quite a few things of my never ending to-do-list. Many of this year's quilts have been given away to family & friends, I think everyone close is pretty well surrounded in quilts finally... yayee! Time now to start planning for 2015! I'm considering joining up with the '2015 Finish-Along' over here with Adrianne from On the Windy Side. It seems like a good incentive to make a list {yep, another one!}& hopefully get a few more WiPs finished that really do need to get done in 2015! Anyone else going to play along? 

Have a happy & safe New Year! 

extra-special xmas cakes

no, no, no you haven't just stumbled across a foodie blog! This week it's all about Xmas prep, and I thought I'd show you all another of our little traditions. While I'm a bit late with this, today before it gets too hot, I'm making these little extra-special Xmas cakes - they are full of glace fruit, nuts, dried fruit and very little flour. When cut into very thin slices they look like the stained glass windows in a church!
I have just poured the final essential 'ingredient' over them and oiled them. When they are cool I'll wrap them & pop them in the fridge. These little cakes keep really well and and you will find just a little goes a long way. Oh, and they make lovely extra-special gifts too!
I use an old recipe I found  years ago in some magazine, if you want a copy just email me and I'll forward it to you. While it's not exactly the same recipe as mine, I've also attached a link to Annabelle's version here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

'tis the season to be jolly...

Santa Strawberries

Little Olive had one special request for me today.. to make my strawberry Santas for Xmas day! 

How could I refuse! The recipe I used last year worked a treat! I thought I'd share... 

Santa Strawberries Recipe 

Ingredients:

1 dozen or so large strawberries

200g cream cheese

2 tsp icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

a handful of chocolate bits

Directions:

In a bowl mix together the cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla. 

Using a small knife, slice the leafy end off each strawberry so they stand up evenly. Then slice the tip off to make a little hat. Scoop out a little from the fleshy middles.

Using a spoon, place a large dollop (about 1-2 tsp) of cream cheese into top of the strawberry base. Plop the little hat on top. Add another small dollop of cream cheese to the tip of the hat to make a mock pom-pom.

Place two chocolate sprinkles in the Santas "face" for the eyes. Using a toothpick, place two very small splotches of whipped cream down the front of the strawberry for buttons.  If you don't eat them right away, store them in the fridge to keep them cold. Santa doesn't do well with the heat. To serve- dust lightly with icing sugar to look like snow! You're done! It's that easy! 

MERRY XMAS EVERYONE!

lovely lattices in liberty {present WiP}

Thank you all so much for the great turkey tips last week!
And sewing this week? Well, I'm enjoying piecing these HST's in my quieter moments during all the Xmas buildup & fuss! There's something rather soothing about simple repetitive chain piecing, with all those pretty small scale Liberties and mixing up all the soft colours. I spent a bit of time a while back wondering which would be the best background fabrics to use that would create good contrast {more about that later}and settled on using a Kona cream solid. I'm sort of using this idea from here, but have sewn my HST's differently. Here's a quick photo update ...

Linking up later with WiP Wednesday 
where there's bound to be lots more quilty inspiration!

Edit: I struggle with  fmq, but I've been thinking lately that there must be ways to make straight line quilting much more creative! and this liberty quilt top is what I've decided to give it a go on, slowly stitching, just making it up as I go along!