Sparky's Mummy Made. . .

It’s been over a year since I gave it to Sparky’s MorMor, but I haven’t updated in so long! I finished the quilt I was making to take on our trip and give to MorMor – I originally blogged about it when I was part way through. I settled on using red and gold fabrics for the hearts on a white background.

We gave it to her in Sweden when we were all traveling together, and it was useful in the Swedish summer!

This quilt was started as part of a mystery quilt-a-long over Christmas 2013. I used mostly red Japanese fabrics, and I am pleased with it. It’s not the block pattern I would have chosen if I’d known which one it was from the start, but doing it this way certainly got it done!

It’s HUGE, so I actually paid to have it quilted, but she did a fantastic job and quilted dragonflies into it. I did the binding in black.

I’m waiting for some fabric to make a quilt for some friend’s new baby, however I’m worried the fabric won’t arrive in time for me to make the baby quilt before we leave on holiday. So I used some fabric from my stash, and finally played with equilateral triangles. It came together much quicker than I thought I would! I haven’t photographed it finished yet (I completed the binding a day or two ago), but this is the top:

This was a quick quilt for a friend’s baby. I kinda wish I’d done something more elaborate, however I just wanted it finished for her before he came!

I’m working on a lap quilt for my mum.  It’s not been coming together well at all!  I know what block I want to use – a heart block that looks like Swedish hearts we used to make for the Christmas tree.  I was going to use bright rainbow colours on a white background, however my husband knows my mum likes Japanese fabrics so thought using some of my red and blue Japanese fabrics would be nice.

Here are the first blocks; I didn’t feel they were quite right from the start:

I wasn’t understanding what was wrong but knew it was the contrast within  the block.  My friend Cathy told me a good way to see this; looking at them in black and white reveals what was wrong:

The deep red and deep blue tones were just too close and didn’t bring enough contrast within the block to see the pattern. This would be true with all the reds and blues I had. So I tried adding a medium grey for contrast within the block

This helped a bit, but still didn’t feel right. I attempted to add some more colour:

(BTW I didn’t realise until today that there was something else wrong with half the blocks above; can you spot it?)

Although I liked the blocks, I didn’t like them with the other blocks. So I decided to try playing with just the red and blues, but this time with slight metallic fabrics:

Hearts Blocks – black and white to check the contrast

Hearts Blocks – colour

Hearts Blocks – detail with a hint of silver

Hearts Blocks – detail with a hint of gold

Hearts Blocks – reds with gold

I think these reds would look lovely with the gold. So what to do? Where to go? Keep going with reds and blues? Do it just red/gold or just blue/silver and grey? Do something else entirely?! Grow a beard and go into hiding?!

A good friend commented on a photo of the mystery quilt I was working on to ask when I was making her a quilt. She’s not just a ‘good friend’: she’s been a friend through some difficult times. She’s been my friend when I’ve probably been pretty impossible person be be a friend with. But she’s crazy enough to have stuck with me, and I appreciate it more than I could tell her. So I made her a quilt.

She wouldn’t give many any ideas of what she’d like other than bright colours and no pink. I had a billion different ideas, and narrowed them down to 2. I finally settled on using the purse strings block developed by My Quilt Infatuation.  (I’d still kinda like to try the other idea; I will some day.)

I decided to use 6 rainbow colours: purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. I decided to use lots of different fabrics just to make my life more difficult. I didn’t know if I’d put the colour blocks around randomly or what, but in the end they wound up in a diagonal rainbow.

You can see all the photos as it was developed here if you are interested. Here are a few progress photos.

The first 4 blocks:

Playing with layouts as I went:

Trying to decided if I should do a border or another row (I did another row).

The top FINISHED:

Quilting on Big Bertha, my dear friend Cathy’s gigantic quilting machine:

Finished!

The backing. I loath orange, and my friend always gives me shit for it. So I always had to do the backing and binding in orange.

It is quilted with ‘citrus’, which is yellow, green, and orange thread, and orange on the verso.