And in the meantime...

In the meantime our nephews finally got their quilts.

I wanted the quilts to stay very soft, so they were only lightly quilted around the squares and with vertical (the blue quilt) or horizontal (the green quilt) lines on the panels.
I thought about labelling them for a very long time but in the end decided to simply stitch the boys' names directly on the quilts.

There is still much room for improvement, I know, but I'm happy I decided to do it anyway.

enjoying the process

I usually enjoy every stage of quilt making (well, except basting, which is a bit of a pain).
But the quilt I'm making for my best friend might just be a tiny bit more enjoyable than usual.
So I hope you'll understand my need to share it with you.
I started with designing a quilt with blocks heavily influenced by the abacus block I'd seen here.  (Apparently there had been a tutorial, but the link was no longer active.)
I began in the cool modern way, using EQ7 to come up with three blocks:

and a way of combining them and arranging the fabrics so that after some adjustments it ended up as a kind of reflected rainbow: 

 

And then I proceeded to the equally cool old school notebook method, to note down all the sizes I had to cut from each fabric:

It's been fun to cut - especially the colourful pieces:

and to sew the blocks:

The quilt top is ready now, but I think that's enough photos for one post (not to mention that I still have to take at least a half decent photo of it).

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Fall 2012

I've enjoyed it very much from the time I first saw it, I even participated in the last two editions but this time... I almost missed it.
Almost, but not quite, luckily.

The quilt I'd like to show you today is the one I made for my grandma in the summer.
Those of you who visit my blog have already seen it, but I hope you won't mind looking at it again.

This quilt is very special to me, especially because it was a gift to my grandma and because she likes it.
Also, we had lots of fun with a little photo shoot - I took photos of the quilt and my sis of me and the whole scene. (And my husband was patiently holding the quilt, for which I'm ever so grateful.)

photo by my sis

As for some more quilty/sewy reasons for why this quilt is special, there are many of those, too.
It was my first 100% hand quilted quilt and I loved the process very much. It did take a long time but was very relaxing and somehow felt just right for this quilt.

It was also the first quilt for which I used Y-seams. It came out of laziness really. I didn't want to create long strips of sashing, so instead I used big triangles for the edges, and the way I assembled the pieces left me with no choice but to brave the Y-seams. They weren't as scary as I'd thought.
And finally, although at first sight all the blocks are yellow, the fabric arrangement in each is slightly different and I really enjoyed making sure that no two blocks were identical. 

Let me just add some technical details:

• Quilt Measurements: approximately 50" x 84"
• Special Techniques used, if any: hand quilting, Y-seams
• Quilted by me
• Best category: bed quilt, two colour quilt

(And my entry number is 550, woo-hoo)

And now it's time to get inspired by other festival entries. 

Keep calm

KEEP

CALM

AND

SING

 
And if are not sure how to sing it, here is a little hint:

Coming back to sewing, the letters are almost ready, they just need lots of pressing, and the English paper pieced ones need some more background fabric to become full blocks. As you can see, I resorted to EPP for this K too. I find Ks rather tricky, and since my self-imposed challenge required no peeking how others dealt with them, EPP it needed to be. And a nice change it was, too. 
Now it's back to deconstructing shirts fabric cutting. I already have about a hundred squares: 

I just need... well... about a hundred more.