Baa!

I know you must be on the edge of your seat wondering what I'm up to next so wonder no more!

My niece, Alice, in the UK is expecting a baby in August and as my husband is planning a trip back there in May I have to get a move on to get a quilt made for her so that he can deliver it.  I found lots of lovely quilts on The Red Boot Quilt Co website and asked my husband which one he liked best.  Jim chose the Counting Sheep one because it reminded him of when Alice was young and they enjoyed Shaun the Sheep together.  I purchased the pattern and realised it's a large quilt so my options were to make the blocks smaller or just make fewer blocks.  I'm not completely daft so I went with the fewer blocks option.

Then I used Word to plan my new smaller quilt.  It was at this point I wondered why I'd paid for a pattern ;-)

I bought my fabrics when Judy and I went on retreat.  I decided to make my sheep using wool felt.  Once I'd bought the felt I then matched the fabrics and luckily Spotlight were doing a deal on fat quatres woo!

Here are my fabrics.  This is the exciting part when nothing has gone wrong.  Yet.

I bought all the wool felt in those colours that the shop had in stock so I thought I'd just make sheep until it ran out.  I actually had enough felt to make the amount in my Word plan but I realised there would be 13 sheep and that's no good!  So I made 12.  I decided not to add the stars.

After working out how many I had of what I coloured in my plan.  

I tried to stick to my plan after that beautiful colouring in job but I did have to change some.  I was getting very confused so I had to lay the bodies out onto the background squares so that I could see what was what.  It didn't help that it took me a while to remember that all the sheep facing one way (A) were now (B) after I'd traced them onto appliqué paper, stuck them onto the felt then cut them out.  

I got as far as this and gave up.  When is May?  

I did have a little giggle to myself when I was prepping  these wool felt shapes remembering another quilt I made with wool felt.   I made a Hat Creek Quilts quilt and the designer, Dierdre Bond-Abel, had instructions for carefully cutting out the felt and lovingly hand stitching it to the background. Yeah, not going to happen.  So I used appliqué paper and steam ironed the living daylights out of that felt before machine stitching it onto my background.  I later ran into Dierdre at a quilt show and she winced when I described the machine stitching part of my (her?) quilt so the naughty part of me then went into great detail about the ironing just to see if she'd faint.  She didn't but it was close I think!

I think once I have the shapes stuck onto the fabrics I'll be able to move more quickly.  And there's nothing quite like a deadline to get you moving!

I've been attempting to do some exercise recently and bought myself a yoga mat.  I unrolled it, got my exercise book ready and when I turned around this is what I found.  So a quick shout out to all you Yoga experts out there...THIS is the downward dog position.  You've been doing it wrong your whole lives!  And no, I didn't have the heart to disturb her so I did my exercise right beside her on the floor.  I bet you thought I was going to say I gave the exercise a miss!  I was tempted...

Quillows

Judy and I went to retreat last week from Tuesday to Friday and it was fantastic as usual!  On the Monday I realised that I had to go shopping for my grandsons birthday as I wouldn't have the opportunity while I was away before I saw them on Saturday.  So my husband and I went shopping.  My grandsons are Super Mario crazy at the moment and I'm sure they had everything Mario for Christmas so what was I going to get them?  They're not ungrateful children but I know if I didn't give them Super Mario something they'd be disappointed.  At the shops my husband went to the toy section to find something that would be fun for the boys but annoying for mum and I headed to the bedding section.  I found a Super Mario single quilt cover which I'm fairly certain they already have and I wondered how I could make something different out of the cover.  I decided on quillows!  A quillow is a quilt with a pillow pockets so you can fold the quilt up into the pocket when not in use as a quilt.

Easy peasy right?  Well kind of...if I didn't have to prep and quilt two quilts in one afternoon that is!

The quilt cover was great as it had good designs on the front and the back so I only needed to buy one.  I thought about quilting them both together but they were just too big so I cut them apart and realised that the fabric wasn't straight.  I did consider quilting them because I was in a hurry then squaring them up afterwards but thought that would be harder in the end.

This is one of the tops on my ironing surface, which is also my cutting surface.  I know I'm lucky to have it but it's a nuisance taking the cutting mat off and putting it back on only to take it off again.  In my next life I'm going to have separate surfaces!  Ooh yeah, more surfaces to pile my mess onto!

I put it on the frame and crossed my fingers all would go well.  

After I managed to turn my tablet the right way up so I could see what I was doing the quilting did go well.  I managed to cut my binding strips out while it was quilting and prep the second top. It took a couple of hours and there was no rest for the wicked and the second top had to go on the frame.

As I was going to retreat and I hadn't packed a single thing I decided I'd gather everything I'd need while this quilt was quilting.  Yeah, right.  The thread broke, then broke again...and again.  The machine stopped randomly and refused to move.  I was tearing my hair out!  By the last line the machine refused to finish the quilting so I decided I'd just cut it shorter ha ha!  In the end I realised only a quilter would notice the last line missing so I left it so both quilts would be the same size.

I swear these quilts almost did me in!

But that's ok because it was time for retreat yeah!!  Judy and I stayed in a lovely cottage on acreage just outside Ballarat.  On the way we went to The Crafty Sewing Sisters in Bacchus Marsh where I bought a lot of felt wool for my next project and we had a cake and a hot chocolate.  We then went to Gail's Patchwork Emporium via a very bumpy and dusty unsealed road through a forest.  Google maps!!  After that we went to Spotlight and then grabbed our groceries and made our way to our accommodation.

Judy took advantage of the design floor while I guzzled a bottle of wine...and sewed on the binding.  After that I had to make the pockets which I made out of the pillowcase.  They weren't the right size so I had to add a border.  Do you think I could work out how wide to cut my border fabric?  I cut it wrong three times!  Hmm do you think there's a link between messing up and the guzzling of the wine?  Surely not!

Well I got both pockets done and most of the binding hand sewn at the back.  Here is the one I finished on my bed at the retreat.

And here is the one on my floor I finished once I got home.

And here are the pillows!  Cute!  And my grandsons decided they were going to be movie night quilts especially once I told them they could stick their feet inside the pocket while the quilt was covering them.  Good luck to mum getting those quilts back inside the pockets mind you!

Judy brought a lot of things to retreat to finish off so in between leaving the rotary cutter uncovered, leaping on the table to take pictures and saving my life when a white tail spider decided I was going to be his midnight snack this is what she worked on...

Next up for me is a baby quilt that will be heading to the UK in May.  I'd better get a move on!