the one {just} 7 months late

My lovely sister had her round-number birthday in June last year and I meant to celebrate it with a very special quilt for her.
As you can imagine, special quilts often mean lots of different ideas considered, rejected, deemed not good enough, reworked, judged too complicated to finish in some reasonable time... you get the idea. In the end instead of inventing something new, I settled for something I wanted to try for some time - big, machine-pieced clamshells, like the one made by Latifah.
As I love quilt maths and figuring layouts/patterns on my own (and also, as I wanted clams that would be 10" (25,4 cm) wide), I drafted and printed my own clamshell template.
And then I started sewing:

So, that was the quilt top sorted, and even with my slow no-pins curve piecing it came together quite quickly, but then followed another long period of choosing the perfect backing, which ended only when I saw this and this. I'm not so much into hearts on quilts, but I just couldn't resist this one.

And finally, "only" 7 months after my sister's birthday, the quilt was finished.

It is lightly quilted following the outlines of the clams, with some shoots in light green thread on a few green clams

and some not-quite-lillies-of-the-valley in white thread on some white clams.

I have to say I'm really happy with it and the fact that my sister likes it makes me even more happy.

Happy New Year!

Before I start the 2017 sewing, I'd like to show you my last quilt of 2016.
If you remember the recipient of the summer quilt, he is a big brother now, so of course his little brother had to get a quilt of his own.
I used some of  my favourite prints from the summer quilt in this one, too, so that they could match a bit, but somehow, probably because of quite a lot of white, it reminds me more of winter.

Triangles sewing - tricky business (for me at least)

Basting, basting... And I'm so proud of (almost) all the points

Ready to be folded under the Christmas tree

OK, the back might have more of a-walk-on-the-beach feel

I'm so happy that I managed to finish it just in time for Christmas. I loved making it and it brings me such joy to know that the recipient's mum likes it, too. (Well, you know, the recipient is a bit too young to give his opinion on the matter).

starry princess and the pea

Hello, it's me... and I have a little quilt to show you.
Here it is, with a rather long name of starry princess and the pea:

The quilt was supposed to be pink for the recipient - a little lover of all things pink, but was to have also a bit of green for her mum who is not as keen on pink. I might have erred on the amount of green, but there is still a lot of pink, right?
Just in case the intended recipient didn't think so, I went almost full pink on the backing. It might not be too obvious, so let me point out that the various fabric strips were inspired by the stack of mattresses from a certain tale.

I may have already made one wonky stars quilt, but somehow the block seemed just right for this quilt, too.

I had lots of fun with quilting - big doodle flowers are very relaxing. I went for simply covering the quilt with the flowers, rather then emphasising each star, but this princess had to have a flower of her own:

And watching my cousin's way of stitching the binding I decided to try it out, although not with pearl cotton but with the same thread I used for quilting, and I have to say, I quite like the effect. I did however stitch the edge of the binding down also using my regular method. As the quilt was for a child I wanted to make the biding more secure.

The little girl who received the quilt might have been a little shy, but she hugged it, ran with it to her bed and then slept under it. And I've heard that after getting up in the morning, she went back to the bedroom to hug her quilt.
This is what I love about quilting.

her secret name is summer night

There's no doubt about it, this is my slowest year quilting-wise.
Still, the first quilt of 2016 is finally finished (and gifted) and might just be my new favourite. Hope you like her, too:

Ever since I finished this quilt for my Grandma, I was planning on sewing a more scrappy version, so when we agreed with my sister-in-law that her new quilt would be made mainly from my stash, with no restrictions on colours, I just had to choose those granny squares. 

I had to buy some more black fabric for the background, but all the colourful squares are from the fabric I'd had on hand. Some of it was in scraps big enough for several squares, some just for one, old and new favourites, bought online or on holiday abroad, or received as gifts... Remembering the people and places related to particular fabrics made the piecing even more fun. 

And then the quilting - I didn't even realise how I'd missed it until I sat down to it. It was such a pleasure to just relax and doodle away. The quilt is quite big, slightly more than 200x200cm (close to 80"x80"), but somehow it was really easy to quilt. I started in the middle and kept the pattern going in a loose spiral, just trying not to sew myself into a corner.
I love the texture this type of quilting gives the quilt after washing.

For the back, I had the idea to create one big granny square. I really wanted to sew this from my stash too, and since my stash fits into one not very big Ikea box, with half a yard being the biggest fabric cut, my colour options were quite limited. Still, I hope it's not too shabby, and there is some Australia and some Wales in there, too, so at least it's made of some happy memories. Also, the centre is my last piece of the fabric I used in the first quilt for my sister-in-law - do you think she'll notice? ;)

I might have mentioned it before, but it's really hard for me to name my quilts. Also, while quilt names sound good to me in English (maybe because I'm not a native speaker of English) they sound really cheesy in Polish. So, unless my sister-in-law reads this post, she'll never know that the secret name of her new quilt is summer night.