Wow a Christmas present completed already

 Way back here my Mother in Law decided to try making a quilt. It was gorgeous but when she finished I think that was it!! So I was the receiver of scraps. I have been pondering for ages about what to do. In the end I made two cushion covers to go on the spare bed with the quilt she made.

I do hope that she likes them! I am trying to branch out and do different quilting. So am quite pleased with the result on these. It is so much easier to practice FMQ on small pieces! Will have to do more.

The centre of each block

Two cushions ready for Christmas

Linking to these places

Trying to challenge myself

While away on my quilting retreat last weekend at Living Springs, I had these quilt to finish off quilting and binding.

Because they are all charity quilts I do want to do them quickly, so I end up in a rut and either stitching in the ditch or resorting to my standby of stipple.

By the time I got to the third quilt I decided to try something new. A random flower that had been very well explained in a blog I follow. I have been trying to find it - I thought it was at Cluck Cluck Sew but can't locate the blog post. (if you know it please let me know so that I can link back).

Anyway I decided to do that on what was otherwise a plain strip quilt. It did not take too long for the quilt pattern to be looking consistent, so I completed some single flowers and some doubles.

Yay now that is three more quilts completely finished.

I link to these places

double flower

Single flower

A new quilt is on my bed

Large stipple over the main blocks

Well finally last night I finished the quilt. This was a long time in the making as it languished under my desk for almost a year. Does that happen to you? You almost finish and then for some reason get disillusioned or dissatisfied with it.

But now I am in love love with it. The pattern is so easy to do and when I did it I put a pile of tips on my blog - check out here how easy it is.

I link up to Finish it up Friday - over at Crazy Mum quilts. I love it because it pushes me to finish things. Well I had hoped to link this up as a finish last friday but in my late night haste some things went wrong!!!

The gorgeous scalloped free motion quilting

I quilted this quilt over two nights - till about midnight. The main quilt I just did a very large stipple pattern. But my "piece de resistance", for which I am so proud, is the gorgeous scallop which I free-motion quilted around the edge. I am so so happy with it and it turned out so much better than I hoped. I have been trying not to do the same stipple on everything. But more intense quilting takes so much more time.

Anyway the disaster was the binding. I had 0.5 metre of one of the matching materials to use as binding. BUT it was not enough. I cut it all so I had the right amount of length but that left the
binding too skinny (unless I went for a single layer - which I nearly did - but if you do not double over your binding then it wears really badly and frays quickly). So a big rethink and in the end the only fabric I had that was at all suitable was a $6 per metre sale piece from Quilters Quarters in Rangiora.

I link to some of these places