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

Thanks once again to Amy for hosting this fun competition.

Have an awesome day!

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

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. 

Once again thanks to Amy for holding this festival. 

Thanks for voting.

Have an amazing day!

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.

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.

Thanks to Amy for holding this awesome festival.

Have an amazing day!

Kathy's Blocks

 I thought it would be fun to start a new hobby. This was the first large quilt that I made.

I stitched all of the pieces by hand and then quilted it by hand.

Enjoy hopping.

Quilt festival

Kathy's Dear Jane

I thought it would be fun to join this festival. This is the Dear Jane that I hand pieced and hand quilted.

I used the English paper method for almost all of the blocks. I went back and appliquéd five of the small circles that I was unhappy with.

This quilt was a true adventure. It took about two years to achieve.

 Here are some photos.

The back of the quilt looks like this.This was when I was adding the three layers together.

Have an amazing blog hop. Here is the festival address:
Quilt festival