Citrus rush!

After plowing through my scrap bin it turns out I had rather a few larger chunks of citrus-y type fabrics, so whats a girl to do but make a quilt with them! 

I adapted the Turning Twenty quilt pattern I love so much and used each scrap for only 1 or 2 of the pieces rather than use a FQ to make each block.

It's backed in another Ikea fabric I really like, some spiky graphic flowers :) 

The serpentine quilting gives it great texture! 

I love how the colours glow! 

And another photo of the backing fabric, because I like it That much! 

This one is listed in my etsy shop ready to head out to a new home. 

Later today I will be teaching a beginners patchwork and quilting class at The Singer sewing centre I'm looking forward to meeting local ladies that have caught the sewing bug, I'll let you all know how it goes! :D

Lots of Dots quilt By Green Bee patterns

As quilters we all know that when family or friends announce a new arrival, it's going to be a no brainer that the little one is getting a quilt to snuggle up with. 

Isabelle was no exception!

As soon as Him in doors knew he was going to be an uncle we started looking for bright, modern fabrics and a fun pattern to work from.

I knew I was going to be sewing with Cotton + Steel basics as the colours are fantastic and I'd been itching to break them out of the FQ bundle since they had landed on the door mat

and given that at this point I was pretty exclusively sewing the arcs on my single girl quilt I was happy to go with the curves when Him in doors pointed out the Green Bee patterns lots of dots quilt 

We had a plan! 

I have to say at this point I love this pattern. It is super straight forward, no enlarging of templates and space on the pattern to write notes to myself (i.e. 16 pinky-plumy-aqua wedges, 4 horse wedges, 4 rounded low volume L shapes. It made sense when I was sewing!)  It is a total win. 

The curves weren't too bad to sew, I use the "1 pin in the middle and wiggle the fabric under the walking foot" method. And Starch spray, lots of starch.

If I'd thought about it I would have tweaked the pattern to account for the fact I was using the same fabric for the centre circles, however in my excitement to cut onto the Mustang fabric I didn't think so spent a while worrying about horse butts, thankfully it worked out in the end - live and learn! 

The final layout and, again in my excitement to gift this quilt, the only photo I have of the whole quilt top. 

Backed in baby pink minky dots it is one soft, squidgy and warm quilt.

Due to the Minky doing exactly whatever it wanted while I was quilting it I ended up straight line quilting the whole thing to keep my sanity intact and my swear jar empty. 

The binding a a fun spirograph pattern on a blue background, rescued from a remnant bin without a selvedge so if you know what it is please shout out in the comments as I'd love to get some more. 

I did manage to remember to take a couple of photos of the "Dots" 

Gold, navy and raspberry is one of my favourite colour combinations

Aqua and pink is super sweet and I think the pops of navy stop it being too sugary.

Pink, plum and more pink in this one! 

This quilt was gifted to Isabelle for her birthday on the 10th of September and both Him in doors and myself hope she has many happy years snuggled up with it.

Fairytale Hexagon quilt

Anyone that has been in a flickr swap or bee with me knows how much I love a good fussy cut. This quilt is what happens when I get a collection of fabrics in my stash that are great for fussy cutting and the time to sew up a meeeeelion Y seams.

The way I selected the prints reminds me very much of the Fairytale forest quilt I made a few years back, basically if I like it I'm going to use it! 

The layout gives a nod to the traditional quilt pattern that I always think of with hexagons, Grandma's flowers.

I put my focus hexagons on the wall and then looked to fill the gaps with complimentary coloured solids, I wanted the finished quilt to almost shimmer - super hard to explain, like a cut gem will reflect different colours back at you :)

I machine pieced the top, so much easier with bigger hexies and loved how the back looked so snapped a quick photo before pressing the seams. As a side note if you haven't pieced hexies on your machine and want to, let me know and I'll try and put together a little walk through. It is so satisfying to whip up a hexie quilt at top speed! 

I decided to go with an aqua and white polkadot for the binding, which is machine stitched too, to stay with the soft solid colours in the filler hexagons but still be just a touch different.

I didn't want to distract form the fun fabrics with the quilting so I went with a simple straight line quilting through the hexagons centres creating a diamond pattern, I think it looks clean and modern.

And here it is all finished, photographed in the back lane not the beach as normal as I seem to remember it was rather chilly and no one fancied the walk! 

and a little close up

The plan is to have this quilt listed in the shop by the weekend ready to head off to it's new home just in time for Christmas! 

2 Big Anna Maria Horner quilt finishes

Both of the quilts in this post are Biggies, both finishing at  90" x 85" 

Firstly is my Anna Maria Horner Herringbone quilt. I used this Maureen Cracknell tutorial it was super easy to change the size of the panels. 

It all started with a few strings thrown up on the wall

Once I got going Issabella got interested and her usual brand of

quality control was in full force.

Those panels really did seem to go on for ever!

I am really pleased with how this turned out, and I'm sure Him in doors is happy he finally has a quilt that covers his feet.

The colours in Anna Maria Horner's fabrics really do pop in sunlight :)

This one has been on my bed since I finished the binding, claimed by Him in doors as his own.

The other big finish was a custom request through my Etsy shop, the client loved This quilt but the size just wasn't right for her.

So after some back and forth between us we settled upon "similar but different"

So using Pure Elements in Ocean Waves, Patina Green, Verve Violet, and Parisian Blue as a starting point I pulled coordinating Anna Maria Horner fabrics and started cutting.

In all fairness there was no way my design wall was going to manage a 90x86 inch quilt! Sections are the way forward when pushed for space.

The fabrics when all pooled together make me think of a calming spa, very restful and just what is needed in a quilt. 

The quilt is now residing happily at it's new home :)

It was so nice to actually cut into fabrics I have been saving for goodness knows what. I still have enough AMH fabrics to make another 2 king size quilts, and I'm not afraid to use them! 

Overwhelmed and making the most of it!

Well that summer blogging break lasted a bit longer than planned! 
Over the last 2 months I have made a lot of stuff and photographed most of it with the intention of getting it on here with a well worded post...however its been the well worded part thats held me back! Sometimes I don't know what to say other than "hey look I made this!" or "Aren't these pretty fabrics" and that seems a bit show and tell, a touch shallow and a bit like I'm bragging.
But I do love my little blog and I enjoy sharing the things I make without the pressure I seem to be putting on myself to validate why I'm doing it. I also like showing off pretty things simply for the fact they are pretty to me and might be to you too, if you happen to get a new idea for a fabric combination or an idea for a quilt pattern or sewing inspiration all the better :) 
So moving forward I will remember that this little space is mine to do with as I like and you all wouldn't be popping back to say hi if you thought it wasn't a fun place to have a look around once in a while :D

So the last 6 weeks have been really crochet heavy! Noro silk garden and Republic Of Wool sock yarn have been in heavy rotation. The Noro is going to be a simple granny square blanket and is great for killing time on my commute! 

Mighty matter from Republic Of Wool is going to be my Haiku shawl I do think I would have better stitch definition with a solid yarn but I love the pattern and love this colour way so it is what it is :) 

The Smith and Wesson yarn is being held double to make a super sturdy cowl for him in doors Aaaand that last photo is a t shirt yarn that unfortunately I can't find a link for but is being hooked up on a size 10 hook and is aspiring to be a rug! 

In other news from August I went down to Peterborough to see a lovely lady Abbie Williams She created the perfect tattoo for me featuring Issabella! It has so much personal meaning to me with lots of little details that make me smile whenever I see them, if you look closely at the bottom it even has a Lone star quilt block just waiting to be coloured next time I see her :) I will share more photos once its finished! 

September was my birthday too so lots of celebrating was had, I even got a Dave the minion cake! 

And just so that this post has some actual quilting in it, I have been working sloooowly on my single girl quilt, hand quilting each block is enjoyable but not a fast way to work!

With just a few more blocks to make I've started auditioning backing fabrics.

So expect a few more "catch up" posts over the next few days and I hope you've enjoyed this look into the last few month at Chez Issabella! 

* Wordless-ish Wednesday * A catch up from the last couple of weeks.

45p bargain bucket flowers, made me rather happy every time I walked passed them.

Organised chaos, so many single girl arcs!

2 finished of the finished blocks

My "helper" sitting on the quilt as it comes out from under the sewing machine.

A cat tail, a crochet wip & a finished feather quilt. At 90" long we are still working out how to photograph the quilt properly!

A happy hexagon patchwork quilt all done and dusted :) 

Fabric pull for a story quilt. 

Bitten by the Single girl bug, better late than never?

I promise my cat lady tendencies have not driven my lovely man away and I am in fact referring to the outstanding Single Girl Quilt pattern by Denyse Schmidt I will admit that once I realised it was a pdf download I was a goner! 

However I do now feel the need to share photos of Issabella looking smug on my crochet project basket to lull my mad cat lady tendencies back to sleep! 

The first try making this block has forever been removed from existence and shall never be mentioned again.

This is the second run and is going to be a pillow/cushion front for my partner in The Great Pillow Fight Swap if she is happy with it once it's finished (I've started super early to make sure I have time to make another if she doesn't love it - we don't post until September!) 

To be fair that is where the madness started.

Lets just say "portions" of my week have looked very similar to this photo

Sitting in bed, with Issabella, listening to the Eragon audio books being surrounded by a meeeeeelion templates and fabric scraps! 

 They do eventually end up in some semblance of order and when they do they look like this -

My plan of attack has been cut a few of each template at a time then I can move them about/swap them out as I want to.

Given that I want to make this quilt for our bed I'm heading down the quilt as you go rabbit hole again and just to make things extra challenging for myself (cause Im nice like that!) I'm planning on hand quilting the lot of them...So yeah bed sized quilt...we'll see how that goes! 

So there is now a Single girl quilt in the works and a Herringbone quilt, that has stalled due to wadding issues, that shall hopefully be gracing my bed in the near-ish future! 

Issabella, Madam and I shall be having a girlie crafty sewing weekend as Him in doors is off to run this insanity for *Fun* 

"Who the on earth does that for fun!?!" you may well ask

My man does :D 

Hope you have a great weekend planned! 

A quick pop in to say hi!

Well after some mornings doing this crochet malarkey 

On this beautiful quilt (which I will show more pics of soon!) 

 I finished this vintage style turning twenty quilt 

And started another hexie quilt 

Then the sun came out and all crafting stopped :) 

Normal blogging will resume once the sunshine stops shining, we have to make the most of our 3 day summer here in Northern England :)