A finish!!!

Yes, I am excited to show you my finished Metro Tiles Quilt!!!  This is a pattern designed by Gourmet Quilter which I have adapted slightly.  Partly intentionally and partly out of necessity!! I finished this earlier today and I am so pleased with it!  It used a QAYG method which I was not familiar with and there were a few learning curves but, I am really happy with the final quilt.  Here is the front....

And here is the back.... 

Which I am pleased with too as I love all the beautiful batik fabrics. Poppy thought it needed comfort testing!! (It passed!!)

I thought long and hard about how to bind the quilt as I wanted to used the same fabric that I had used for the 'grouting' between the tiles but I didn't have enough of it left to make traditional binding with it.  So, I decided to use some leftover grouting strips which had fusible web on one side.  

Instead of trimming off the quilt top as you would when adding traditional binding, I left the seam allowances of the border blocks in place but made sure they were an even width. Then I stitched a 'grouting' strip to the back of the quilt back. The right side of the 'grouting' (ie non sticky side) was placed against the back of the seam allowance of the outer edges of the border blocks. Then I flipped it over and fused the grouting in place on the front of the quilt.  

I then finished the raw edge with a zigzag stitch as I had for the 'grouting' in the rest of the quilt.  It gave me a nice finish on the front which matched the rest of the quilt and a lovely neat finish on the back.

So excited to have this quilt finished!!  Happy Halloween and until next time.... 😊 xx

Another miscalculation and a lesson learned.....

As you can gather from the title of this post, I have managed to make another mistake with the border of my Metro Tiles Quilt.  I won't bore you with all the calculations that you had to read through in my last post but, suffice it to say that I have now learned the lesson not to try and make fabric calculations at the end of the afternoon when feeling tired!!

As I showed you last time, I had planned the original border for my Metro Tiles Quilt (a pattern designed by Gourmet Quilter) as shown in the photograph above and had then managed to miscalculate the length of the rectangular blocks and trimmed them too small.

As I had no more of the fabric (shown above) I was using for these blocks, I had to rethink the whole border and had come up with a nice design which I was happy with.  However, as I had only appliquéd two of the new blocks, I had only laid out the border along one side of the centre of the quilt (photograph shown below).

It looked like it would work perfectly but, if you count the small appliqué squares used there are five down that one side.  Now count the number of those small appliqué squares from the original plan and you will see that I only have 16 in total.  I am sure you can see where this is going.... five for each of the four sides makes 20 so I didn't have enough!!  So it was back to the drawing board and a new design (hopefully the very last) has been decided on.  Here it is...

Actually, I think that this layout is my favourite of the three and, you will see that I was sensible enough to lay all the blocks in position this time round.  As I am really happy with this last layout, I am stitching it together as quickly (but very carefully) as I can before anything else changes!!

Thank you for visiting and have a lovely, creative week! Until the next time.... 😊 xx

Progress and a disaster saved.....

This week I was determined to get a bit more sewing done and the week started very well with me finishing off all the appliqué edges on the remaining blocks for my version of the Metro Tiles Quilt (a pretty design by The Gourmet Quilter).

I then started putting the rows together.  Successfully adding the next row (with five blocks)

and the next (with three blocks) and then the final block in the bottom right-hand corner which completed the centre section of the quilt.

This is a QAYG pattern so each of the blocks has a different backing fabric and the finishing of the raw edge appliqué is the quilting as well. 

I love how the backing and the quilting look.

So far things were going very smoothly and, now that the centre section was complete, I was excited to get the border pieced and added. You may recall that I had already started planning and had finished fusing the appliqué pieces for the border of the quilt which I showed in a previous post. 

When I had laid the pieces out previously I knew that some of the rectangular blocks would need to be trimmed down slightly depending on the final measurement of the centre section. So I pulled them all out ready to trim up.

I measured the centre section of the quilt across in three places and determined that the border length that I needed was 39.5 inches (excluding the corner squares). There are three appliqué blocks in each border piece (again excluding the corner squares) and, using the pattern measurements these are 4 inches square. Therefore 3 x 4 = 12 and 39.5 - 12 = 27.5. Then between the appliqué blocks there are four rectangular blocks, so 27.5 divided by 4 = 6.9 (round up to 7) so each rectangular block should be trimmed to 7 inches long.

I set about busily trimming all the blocks (and here please bare in mind that these blocks are cut from the background fabric shown above and which I had only just had enough to cut the border blocks from) only to remember when I had finished them all that I had altered the width of the border from that in the pattern.  My appliqué blocks weren't 4 inches square but 3.25 inches square. Meaning 3 x 3.25 = 9.75 and 39.5 - 9.75 = 29.75 which divided by 4 = 7.4 (round up to 7.5) so now all my rectangular blocks were half an inch short!!! 

Some cussing and pondering later I came up with an alternative for my border!  I couldn't cut more of the background fabric but I did have some scraps of the batik fabrics that I have been using and also of the cream fabric that I had been using for the backgrounds of the appliqué blocks.  Here is my alternative....

I am actually really pleased with it as it introduces more of the colours from the tiles in the centre section of the quilt.

It does mean that there are a few more appliqué raw edges to finish off but I have been quite enjoying that process and it will keep me out of mischief for a bit longer!!

Have a lovely week! Until next time....😊 xx

Sometimes you need a break....

Sometimes it is important to step away from a project in order to give it your best.  This is what I have been finding with my Metro Tiles Project. (This pattern is designed by The Gourmet Quilter).

There is quite a lot of work involved in producing each of the blocks.  The appliqué shapes are applied using the fusible raw edge method and in the pattern it is suggested that they are finished using free machine quilting.

I chose not to finish the edges in this way as I wasn't sure I would get the finish that I liked, so I have been finishing mine using a narrow zig zag stitch.

This is time consuming and requires a lot of patience, so I have been having breaks between finishing each of the rows of blocks.

It also means that if you have to stop and start, there are ends to stitch in, so as I hope you can see from the photos above, I have been trying to minimize stopping and starting by occasionally stitching over areas twice.

The alternative (where stitching over isn't an option) is creating lots of ends which need to be stitched in and looks like this.....

I have now finished all the blocks for the next row bar stitching in the ends, so I am making good progress.

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I have been keeping my creative juices flowing when I am not working on my Metro Tiles Quilt with a new to me hobby of Art Journalling.  If you are interested to see my latest pages, I have written a separate blog post here.

In other news we picked a most enormous cooking apple from our garden.... it weighed in at 546g/1.2 lbs!!  

Hope you all have a creative week. Until next time.... 😊 xx

New Art Journalling Pages.....

This morning I have written two posts as I think not everyone wants to read about Art Journalling pages on a blog primarily about stitching.  So, here are my latest pages....

I had wanted to add a stem to the page with the pink flower shown below but unfortunately it didn't work very well and I thought I would have to throw the page away.  

However, I painted over the stem and added some new details which covered the mistake and now I am pleased with the page. 

Most of the inspiration for the pages comes from Vicky Papaioannou of Clips n Cuts but some are just pages I have seen on Pinterest.

Hope you enjoy looking at them, I have certainly had a lot of fun making them!