Granny Squares Quilt

It always takes me a while to get round to these popular quilts that are quilt-a-longs etc. 

I've loved the Granny Square quilts from afar for a while now (especially the one Lynz made which was part of our Scottish Modern Quilt Exhibition last year) but never got round to making a whole quilt - until now!

Have you met Hector? He's our six month old Tonkinese kitten, and he is a big bag of trouble!! So of course the minute I finished binding this quilt and put it down he was all over it!

So I guess it gets Hector's seal of approval...
It was my friend and colleague Barbara's special birthday this week so I made her this quilt!

I did have some help. I was first up with our Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild's Bee a couple of months back. We are a big group of 18 quilters so we have divided the Bee into two groups, the Jelly Rolls and the Layer Cakes, except no one can ever remember which group they are in!!

I'm in the Layer Cakes and 8 of the blocks here were made by the rest of the group, I contributed the other 12. Speaking of the EMQG, do you like our new logo? It's over there on the left near the top... My husband designed it for us and I think it's wonderful! And luckily so do the rest of the group :)

I've now got myself an extension table on my Pfaff so I can tackle big FMQ patterns like this. I got the inspiration for this pattern from one of the quilts at FOQ ( sorry no idea who made it, I just go around collecting ideas like a magpie!). But I love how it turned out and will use it again for sure!

It's backed with an Amy Butler fabric (or is it AMH?? God I am getting very menopausal at the moment and my brain has turned to mush!).

It's not a huge quilt (of course I didn't even measure it so have no idea really!), but a good lap quilt/throw size.

Anyway Barbara loves it and there were tears when I gave it to her (which I now expect, so remember that friends and family). It was especially nice because, as she's been working in the shop for the last few years and coming along to lots of classes too, she knows most of the quilters who made blocks for the quilt.

And that's another quilt ticked off the bucket list for me!!

Preparing for Fat Quarterly Retreat 2014

It's nearly that time of year again - yes it's time to head down south to London Town and meet up with all my quilty pals at Fat Quarterly Retreat 2014! Woot woot!!

This year will be extra special (and slightly more stressful) because I am teaching at the Retreat. I am teaching 'Further Adventures in Embroidery' showing you how to do all those pretty stitches above (in just one and a half hours - I hope you all stitch fast!!).

Here I am at last year's event (I have been at all of them so far). I'm on the far right and I look really rather over excited as I'd just scored this superstar group in the Sample Swap. That's Di, Krista and Sonia beside me, all clasping our beautiful swag!

This year I have made 3 patchwork storage caddies for the Sample Swap, each one very different. I have been in a 'using stuff up' mode this month (see my last post), so all these were made out of different scraps. These strips above were from the Feather Quilt, they were cut to the wrong size and had to be discarded. They were perfect for a caddy though and then I thought I'd finish it off with some feather FMQ as a tribute to the original. I discovered it's quite hard FMQing on a tiny piece of quilt!

This lovely strip of square patchwork was from a failed attempt to make a 'too small' patchwork doggie for my Stitch Gathering class this year. I decided to try one of the 'fancy' stitches my Pfaff does and stitched a row of leaves in variegated Aurifil above it. But you really can't tell they are leaves even close up! That row of hand quilting hopefully makes up for it (as well as the gorgeous Maude Asbury 'Maisie' fabric inside and at the bottom!).

This last one is made from left over flying geese from one of my FMQ sewing machine cover workshops. This one looks particularly modern and minimal with just the 2 shades of Kona, so I put a lovely floral fabric inside to flounce it up a bit!
I hope there won't be any fighting over who gets which one in my group!

Lastly here is the nametag that I made for my secret partner Birgit. She has received it now so it's ok to show you the name.
More left over stuff used to make this too! Also I have a new Clover pompom maker and have been going slightly pompom crazy here!
I really like the composition with all the flowers, yo-yos and buttons just on one side, but of course the tag wouldn't hang straight when I'd finished, so I had to sew a 2p piece into the opposite corner to balance it up!

I really hope we get to meet up again or for the first time on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Please come up and say hello to me, I'm really nice and friendly, honest!!