Real Wrestling

Many years ago the Giant Lone Start quilt was all the rage in blogland.  I started one, and then ran out of fabric, then ran out of fleece for the backing, then kind of lost interest, but it has now sat in a box, maturing, for long enough that I'm in love with it again

Mind you, trying to quit it could be a severe test of our relationship - there is an awful lot of it, hence the wrestling!!

I nearly went with Hadley's 3 / 6 quilting - and it wasn't long before I wished I had, but I wasn't going to unsew anything, so I carried on with double echo quilting.  I did each of the diagonals, and the vertical and the horizontal

And as if that wasn't barmy enough, I've gone on to repeat the double echo: so far I've done outside the star, and next I will do inside, and then I think she'll be done!
 

Southern Star

I decided to have another go at the Giant Star , but at a smaller scale than the last one.  I used the Australian fabrics that my lovely S -I-L sent me, first cutting off what I need for the Australian Hexi stars.

I think I need to spend some  time tidying up - I've run out of room in my sewing room

and in Lisa's room,

and my dining room looks like this!

Oooops!

Saturday Star

Well I had a "home alone" day today, waking up to an empty house, and it'll be just me until 10pm ish.

Much as I love my family, this is the best kind of day (once in a while at least!)

So in my pyjamas, over the first cup of coffee, I cut the biggest squares I could get out of my half metre dots.  Then I cut them into triangles.

Then I stitched and stitched and stitched.  Then pressed and pressed.  Then I joined the blocks into strips and then I realised what a beast I had created.  I joined two Ikea fleeces together and sewing the strips together, until I had this:

Isn't it wonderful!  I love this method of making a quilt top - I reckons HSTs aren't too bad when they are big, but these are probably too big, so I started a smaller version - then the iron packed up, so no more today.

(PS, if I turned this over you would see that two Ikea fleeces are not enough, I need to go and get a third!  So no more work on it for now, until I get to Ikea!  I can see errors: the puckered stitches and the mismatched seams, but I don't reckon you can!). 

Waiting for the Weekend

Squishy arrived

8 perfect fabrics for my Giant Star

(again rubbish photos, the colours are more muted than shown.  I'm not using the 3 vertical ones, just the horizontal ones)

Hurry up weekend , I want to get started (suppose I *ought* to give Niki's birthday priority today!  Happy Birthday sweetie xxxxx)

A Little Lull

I haven't blogged much about sewing recently as I haven't really done much.  I think it's due to some fabric that I really want to use (but not sure what to do with it) and a design I really want to make (but don't know what fabric to use). Very disheartening.

Instead I've been despondently plodding with an old UFO from a workshop I did with Jan Hassard and the Richmond and Kew  Quilters in 2011.  I haven't really been feeling the love here either but after 18 months I just decided to get on with it. 

I was so 'bleugh' about everything I didn't take stage photos, but basically I had loads of 1 and 1.5 inch strips in shades of red and black and beige.  I used these to make 36 offset log cabin blocks.  Half had the two narrow sides made of red, 

and the other half had them made of cream.

 (Indoor, flash photos, the cream colour is somewhere between these two shades)


As I made these I pondered my two problems: one being the fabric I want to use, and the other being the quilt top I want to make

This is the fabric: Essential Dots from Moda,

 I love, love LOVE the colours, but feel that the bottom two don't really belong with the other shades, and without them I don't have enough fabric to make anything.

As for the quilt I want to make - it's the giant star that lots of people made a while ago:

This is Katy's version

And this is Nicky's 

Aren't they yummy!  I also fell in love with a version Hadley made a year or so ago, but I certainly don't have charm squares in the right colours

(hope it was OK to borrow your photos, girls xxxx)

I *may* have come up with a solution, I'm off to bed now, I'll let you know tomorrow