The production line is starting....

Here is the first cab off the rank so to speak:

It is a disappearing 9 patch design, which looks a lot harder than it actually is. :)  I had had the blocks done for a while but not sized or sorted, I had had a number of intentions for them but they just kept being put to the back of the queue.  Until now.  I love the pink and green combination - I think I have managed to include pretty much all my favourites here although I do love the guitars on the white background!  As my mother in law said to me today - although this is a baby girl's quilt it will still be relevant when she is a child or a teenager.  The prints are unashamedly girly but not too juvenile.  I love the backing material too and the colours work perfectly with the front.

New pretties!

This beautiful bundle of fabric is winging its way to me.  As is this and this.  And maybe a few other things too...but I needed them! Honest. :)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

I love the idea of versatile quilts but for some reason haven't really managed to make one until now.  I think because the baby quilts I have been making are very much baby quilts - novelty fabric and the like, which means no self respecting adult would want to adorn a chair or their knees or a picnic with it down the track. :) 
However, with this latest (completed) project, which I think got finished within a 24hour time period (a record for me!) I started with the challenge of making a gender neutral baby quilt.  This is because it is going to be sold to raise funds for family who are going to Cambodia to do charitable work and I wanted it to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.  So then I thought why not go further and make it appeal beyond the baby market?  The result was this:

It is made from a range of coordinating woven fabrics, which lend an amazing texture and softness to the quilt.  When I first received the bundle of material in the post a couple of years ago I wasn't sure what to do with them as I was only used to using printed quilting cottons and hadn't realised that these were woven.  So it has taken a while to get the confidence to use them as they are quite dense and stretchy.  Here is a detail:


 
Mmmm!  Raspberry and lemon sorbet! The materials and pattern, which make for a bright and cosy baby quilt for either a boy or girl, also put me in mind of picnics in the early Summer and I think it would be just as nice for that purpose as for a baby.  It really made me think - there is no reason that a baby quilt should be put away in mothballs once the little one is toddling, if the quilt doesn't scream baby then there is no reason it can't be used, enjoyed and loved for years to come...

Not waving, drowning

I have a crazy number of projects underway at the moment, which all have a November/December deadline.  There are table runners, quilts and baby quilts quite literally coming out of my ears.  Still, good news is that I will have lots of photos soon as they come off the production line...
Not much time this week for sewing during the day as I have been busy baking and cooking up a storm for my little one's first birthday party this weekend.  I can't believe he is one already.  Happy birthday for tomorrow sweetheart. 

Experimenting

I love colour and I love contemporary fabrics but I haven't really explored the possibility of Australian Aboriginal fabrics until recently.  I am not entirely sure how I am going to use them, whether they will be integrated into a quilt via their colour scheme or if they will feature on their own.  Anyway, time will tell.  Here is what I spent my pennies on:
Desert flowers
On walkabout
I also couldn't resist these batiks, I am much more familiar with batiks and the colours of these ones were eye popping. :)
Orange! Purple!

Flannel Zigzag

Another quilt finished!  This is a quilt made on commission for a friend's nephew.  I don't often work in flannels and this quilt suggested why - despite being a single bed topper it was very heavy by the end when I was binding it.  Flannel also has a bit more give in it than cotton, which also proved challenging.  I actually had all good intentions of completing this quilt for her nephew when he was a *baby*, ahem, last year but then I fell pregnant and had my own baby to distract me...so the baby quilt became a little boy quilt instead - increasing in size to fit a "big boy bed" and benefiting (I feel) from the addition of a bit of red and dark blue to de-baby the the overall feel.

Here it is flapping in the breeze on a windy, overcast day...

 I really like the accents of red in the front, picked up by the stitching and the binding...

A detail of the zigzags sowing the different materials (the seals are my favourite, so much so that I made my label out of the seal print too!  It is visible in the 2nd picture) and the red quilting stitches.  I am really working on making my quilting more interesting and getting away from just doing it in the ditch to be practical...

Project Peanut

I am now at liberty to write about my latest completed baby quilt as it was given to the mother to be today. :)

Here are some pictures of it:

 The design is based on Cluck, Cluck, Sew's Wonky block quilt, which I think has great movement to it.  The centres are fussy cut jungle animals from Hoffman fabric's "It's a jungle out there"  range.  I contemplated using the same range's stripes or circles or something but in the end selected various bright spots and tonals from my stash.  To pleasing effect I think. :)  Finding the blue on blue dot for the sashing, which was *the* perfect match to the blue in the blocks, took some doing but was worth the effort.  It really brings the quilt to life.  So as not to distract from the main appeal of the blocks themselves I bound it in the blue too.

 Here is a close up of one of the blocks showing the quilting I did.  I am getting into the whole double lines design and rather like it, especially for children's quilts and bold designs.  I echoed the double lines within each block as they are quite large blocks which needed something to break up the space...

 The backing isn't pieced as with many of my larger quilts.  Instead I backed it with an orange striped flannel, which will hopefully be hard wearing and cosy for the little man.