French nine-patch quilt progress

I finished making 120 5"x5" nine-patch blocks, and started playing with the French General charm pack squares for the layout for my French nine-patch quilt. I purchased 5 Moda French General charm packs in total: 2 x La Belle Fleur; 1 x Le Petite Odile; 1 x Château Rouge; 1 x Esprit de Noel. I only used the darker background squares. The nine-patches were made from half-yard pieces from the La Belle Fleur and Chateau Rouge ranges.

I am about half-way with assembling the quilt-top now :)

I also managed to start knitting a cardigan. I chose a simple Kaffe Fassett motive from his Pattern Library book. 

Hexagon quilt kaleidoscope pieced backing

I added a border to my Curio hexagon quilt top. I think it finishes it off nicely. I decided to make a pieced back with the leftover fabric. I am trying out a kaleidoscope block template (Kaleido-Ruler) that my mom bought for me. It works great!

Curio hexagon quilt top finished

I finally finished piecing my Curio hexagon quilt made from a moda jelly roll and some additional yardage. I'm still undecided about adding a border. For detailed instructions on how I made the quilt, please see my Curio Jelly Roll Hexagon Quilt Tutorial.

Christmas Joy Runner Tutorial

I finished assembling the Christmas Joy runner made from a charm pack of Moda Kate Spain's "Joy" fabric (25" x 48"). I decided to make snowball blocks from the pinwheel blocks, because it reminded me of Christmas candy or bauble shapes. Quite fun and festive and easy to make! Here are the ingredients needed to make this runner and basic instructions:

Ingredients: 

• 1 charm pack (you need 40 5"x5" squares - 2 squares of each print)
• 0.5 yard of solid white fabric for the background
• 0.25 yard of a coordinating print for the border
• 0.5 yard of fabric for binding
• 1 yard for the backing (it will have to be pieced) or if you want it whole then use 1.5 yards.

Method (using 1/4" seams):

• Select 2 coordinating prints to make each snowball block, make sure one is dark and one is light to create enough contrast, and that you have 2 charm squares of each print.
• Halve each charm square (5"x5") diagonally - thus you will obtain 4 half square triangle blocks from each two same print charm square blocks.
• Make the pinwheel blocks as follows:

• Cut 40 3"x3" square blocks from the white background fabric for the snowball corners.
• Make snowball blocks from each square pinwheel block as follows:

• Cut 6 x 1.5" strips from your background fabric across the width of the fabric
• Cut the 1.5" strips into 15 x 9" segments and 6 x 21.5" segments
• Assemble pairs of snowball blocks by joining them to a 9" x 1.5" strip segment, and then also add a 9" strip segment to the exposed parallel edges. (See finished runner above).
• Then join the pairs of snowball blocks to each other with the 21.5"x1.5" strip segments, also add a 21.5"x1.5" segment to the top and bottom of the snowballs on the edges.
• Cut 3 x 2.5" border strips from the coordinating print across the width of the fabric. 
• Cut one of the 2.5" strips into 2 x 21.5" segments and use the remaining fabric to lengthen the other segments so that you will obtain 2 x 48.5"x2.5"  strips for the borders on the long sides. 
• Attach the short (21.5"x2.5") border strips to the centre panel first, and then the long (48.5"x2.5") border strips to the length.
• You will need about half a yard of fabric for the binding and at least 1 yard for the backing.
• The amount of batting will depend on the batting width.
• Finished size of the runner should be about 25" x 48".

Here is the finished, quilted runner:

Summer Star Quilt top finished!

My Summer Star Quilt top is finally finished! I plan to hand-quilt it, once I get the hand-quilting of the huge Pinwheel Quilt done... might be a while still :) 
Now I can start thinking of a new project... Perhaps I should finish piecing the Chintz Quilt, I was getting bored with following instructions and sewing snowball patches, I think that should try and modify it somewhat to make it more original and creative.

Mom's Delft Snowball quilt top finished

My mom just finished piecing her "Delft Snowball" quilt, inspired by Kaffe Fassett's Wedding Snowball quilt pattern found in his wonderful book "Museum Quilts". Here are some more shots of the lovely quilt.

Shirt-stripe boxes quilt all done!

I got my shirt stripe quilt back from the quilters recently (Dot's Quilting, Cape Town). I chose an all-over stipple pattern because it adds texture to the quilt (and its also the most affordable option at the moment...). I added some diagonal stripe binding by hand, and now its all ready for winter. Here's a close-up.

I've been working on my wedding décor, I've decided to do my own flowers and decorations. I will share some of my endeavours tomorrow. It is autumn here at the moment and the surrounding vineyards have just started to change colours. Glorious!