Saturday 30 May 2015

Competition over - Congrats to the winners

Another competition over and the results are in. 
Well done to all the winners. 

Here are some of the amazing quilts that won. 

Have a click and see their quilts, they are all extremely amazing. I will add the other categories once they appear.

Viewer Choice
No 1
Viewers choice
No 2
Viewers choice
No 3

AmysCreativeSide.com




Thanks once again to Amy for hosting this fun competition.


Have an awesome day!

Saturday 23 May 2015

Voting - My quilts need you!

It is voting time at Amy's Bloggers Quilt festival.


Click on the images and then vote for the quilts shown. There are amazing quilts in all of the categories and it really worth spending some time (after you voted for my quilts :D) and have a look.

Viewer Choice
Small
Rainbow
Viewer choice vote here Small quilt vote here Rainbow vote here

or click  Here and Here and Here and make the little hearts glow red.

Now go to each of the pages and add your vote. I would be really appreciative of a click on my 2 quilts.

I have finished quilting all of the flowers on the granny's garden and have started on the borders. 
AmysCreativeSide.com


Once again thanks to Amy for holding this festival. 



Thanks for voting.

Have an amazing day!

Friday 15 May 2015

The Swirly Quilt

The Swirly Quilt
The swirly quilt was created out of ignorance. This was the second quilt that I had made and my knowledge base consisted of the three dimensional shapes that I had attempted in my first quilt. I knew how to make baby blocks. This is three diamonds that are sewn together to make a hexagon. When I started the design for this quilt, I used what I knew; that was three dimensional baby blocks.  


What I was trying to achieve was a swirl. I did the pattern by finding hexagon graph paper and used Paint to put blobs of color into each hexagon space. This was done many times. This is the final result. The pattern is not glorious, but it is was good enough to follow, to create this quilt. 

The idea for the quilt was to have colors of the rainbow, radiating from the center to the edge with ever deepening tones. There are a few hundred different colors in this quilt. 


The most difficult part was deciding how to do the center. This is what the center looks like. Each color was given a triangle and the six triangles were sewn together to make the hexagon. The reality is that you don't actually see this on the quilt, and if I had known better I would have just had a multicolored block in the center,


As you can see from picture above, this was all hand pieced. I love seeing quilts in the sunlight with the paper still inside. I have learnt to remove paper as soon as possible as when you do it in one sitting, there are always papers that need to be removed when the quilting is happening. I also hand quilted this.


The most joyful part of doing this quilt was that I needed to source all of the fabric needed. The previous quilt was made with the few fat quarters that I had collected over the years as well as the fabric from my husband's old cotton shirts. My fabric stash was bare, and I needed to source fabric in each of the tones that I was thinking of using. I was able to source some hand-dye fabric and I tried to find two fabric for each color graduation. My stash was born. I now have a problem with keeping my stash under control. An addiction to fabric and notions is one that I enjoy, and I don't want to go to any meetings about it either.




The general feel was supposed to be a garden. There are many flower fabrics, as well as critters that you find in a garden. Once I had done the "garden" I built a wall around it to keep the flowers in. This is how I worked out what the border should look like. 

 Looking at it now it could have been a box keeping chaos at bay.  This could have been used by Star Trek as a vortex transporter.



 Here is a bit of the quilting from the border. I added flowers that could be growing over the bricks.



Here is the quilt with the border.

Please vote for this quilt. It really is a silly one, but it does try it's best. This is still the best quilt to sleep under in summer as it is light and breezy and brings the garden and brightness inside.
The brightness is always fun to see in the bedroom.


Look how well it actually achieved being a swirl. The picture on the left was the inspiration for this quilt.



AmysCreativeSide.com



Thanks to Amy for holding this awesome festival.

The Cathedral Window



I wanted to make a Cathedral window quilt as they always look so pretty. I have seen many Cathedral window quilts where the inner parts of the petals were left plain, but after seeing many Cathedrals in Europe, I wanted to emulate the way the glass looked when sunlight poured through them.  A bright example of this quilt is what I was after. I thought a wall hanging would be an excellent vehicle for this design. 



I had collected a large amount of Japanese fabrics and 


thought this would be an original way of using them. I thought the vibrant colours peeking out would be original and add some fun to the wall hanging.
I started by making little squares out of cream fabric. This was partly due to knowing where the piece was going and knowing that cream would meld better with the wall than stark white. I created all of the blocks needed by wrapping each piece of cream fabric around a square of paper. This was quite laborious as each point had to come together and meet in the middle.
All of the blocks needed to be identical. I used the paper to achieve the accuracy needed. I then sewed all of the cream blocks in the format that I had decided on. 


Once I had all of the pieces together, I removed the papers and the whole project took on quite a punkish look. 


At this point I covered bits of batting with all of the bright colours I was going use. Each inter-section was going to have a block inside. This wall hanging is actually quite heavy from all the layers of fabric and multiple layers of batting. I tacked all of the colourful blocks in place. 
Next was to get all of the greys that I had decided to use as the top layer. I needed to visit a few fabric shops to achieve this collection. Each piece of grey fabric is stitched around a small square of batting. 
I used my favorite thing in the world and that is these little red clips from clover. They do everything that you wanted to get done without knowing that you wanted it done. Once they were clipped, they were tacked and then put in a pile. 




The next problem was how to arrange the grey fabrics. Once again a spread-sheet came to my design rescue. This actually took quite a while as there is actually a difference. I see now that it is finished it really does not make that much of a difference. 
Once all of these blocks were done, they were stitched to the quilt.  I then quilted the bottom layer to keep the inner coloured blocks in place. I added little buttons to each intersection to make it shine a bit.
The quilt does indeed have the brightness of sunlight flowing through beautiful coloured glass. The border is a rich gold which   finishes off the wall hanging quite nicely. I made a sleeve at the top of the wall hanging and then all that was left to do was to hang it up.




Please vote for this wall hanging, for although it is made as all quilts are made it will never have kittens snuggle within its’ depth.

AmysCreativeSide.com


Thanks to Amy for holding this awesome festival.


Have an amazing day!




Sunday 10 May 2015

Happy Mothers' Day


Happy Mothers' Day to all the mothers in the world. May you have brought up your children to be as wonderful as you are. I have been blessed with being the mother to two daughters. They are both brilliant and creative. They are both kind and have soft hearts. What more do you need. 


To all that love your mothers. They did their best. Keep the good memories and forgive the rest. I am sure that none of us are as perfect as we would have liked to be. To all the children hopefully your mothers did their best. 




Hope everyone has a great day and gets to do whatever makes you happy. Keep cool and mother on... That almost sounds rude, Hopefully you children will wish you a happy mothers' day, but if not, Happy mothers day from me and Sponge Bob.
Have a good one!

Here is a gorgeous video that I wanted to share. Click on the picture to make it show the video.

Monday 4 May 2015

May the Forth be with you!

Just a bit of funny. Please choose whichever tweeks your funny bone.




Hope you have an excellent 4th of May.
Have a good one
 

Saturday 2 May 2015

Come and have a cup of Tea.


This is just a quick walk through my kitchen to the study whilst I have a cup of tea. This all started whilst having my cup of tea and looking into the kitchen. I realized that I have a large amount of stuff on the walls. This is just a meander from the start of the kitchen through to the study and then a little whirl around whilst sitting on my chair.
As you walk into the kitchen from the rest of the house there are 4 pictures of the seasons. Once again primary colours are present. We have an extra large clock on the wall above the window that faces the garden. I see that the battery on this clock has just run out. Our house needs electronic clocks, Each clock shows a different time. It would drive an uptight family around the bend. We put them to the correct time once a month and then see how it goes.
I don't wear a watch as who needs one if you work on computers and own a cell phone.
This is the actual time. Way to go ninja turtles, I knew you could do it. The cat in the picture looks at us from his perch. Note that there is a barn lurking in the corner of the picture. There are also quilts hanging on the washing line. 

Even when I was doing all of these cross stitch pictures, most of them had quilts in them. Here is frosty the snowman. Over the years he has gathered a whole lot of friends.

I suppose he should go into hibernation, but he sits there year round and enjoys the view of the kitchen.

I like the collection of cows. Most of these have been sitting in the kitchen for a very long time.


To go with the cows on the shelf, I had stitched a whole collection of cows. This one made it onto the wall. One day I may make a quilt out of all of the cross stitch pictures that I have in my sewing room.

This is above the washing up sink. I am now going to turn left and go through the door into the study. The study has the largest collection of stuff on the walls. 


There is no single theme in this room, but rather an eclectic collection of items that show who we are.

At my desk on the one side I have a framed printed cloth. I liked the black piggy among all the other pink ones. Individuality is worth being different. 

These are all happy little piggies.


Above my monitor, I have yet another clock, this one has had three clock inside put into it, and as always it does not seem to be able to keep the time thing going. 

The dragon and the castle was probably the most difficult cross stitch that I ever did. This was one of those pictures where strands of different colours had to be mixed together to add texture to the picture.

Above my daughters desk is a picture that I bought at an "Artist under the sun " show. I really like this. What it actually represents is for each person to decide. I personally can see the sea.  


Now on the next wall is the room's window and above the window there is even more stuff. Well actually only one light in the middle and a dragon in the corner. My sister gave me this dragon. I like the coloured glass that is put in the middle of the tin that the dragon is made of. 
Mood lighting is cool, but the reality is that we have spot light that light up each wall, and we normally forget to switch the dragon light on. The dragon on the corner above my husbands' desk, came with one of his games. It fitted into the general mess of the study. The orange flower thing is my attempt at free form stain glass picture, 


I seem have a deep need to take materials apart and reform them into something else. This could explain why I enjoy quilting so much.
And finally the last wall that has stuff on it. This is by the same artist that did the blue picture.

Hope you have an amazing Saturday and that you have things on your wall that make you feel at home.

Have a good one.


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