A quick catch up.

It's been a bit quiet on the blogging front. I've been finishing old projects and working on lots and lots of presents. I feel a bit funny blogging tutorials for things I've made as presents, but I'm more than happy to answer questions if anyone wants to try any of the below!

So, here's a quick run through of the last few weeks in photos, and not so much a tutorial as an idea shared for a baby shower present you can make.

First up, this top secret present has now been posted, received, and is therefore safe to share. Made for a very good friend's baby, said baby had the nerve to show up 5 weeks early, thus throwing all my plans to have this there for his arrival! It was quite a basic quilt top, but then I decided to try my hand at free motion quilting. Definitely not as easy as I'd hoped it would be. Quilting this thing took...a very long time. And many, many broken needles. By the end, though, I was barely breaking any (as opposed to the first few inches which used up 7 in the space of half an hour).

I love this quilt - simple, bright colours, and the backing is possibly my favourite fabric ever. I may well make this again, but there are a few things I'd do differently...

Finished quilt

Close up of the quilting

Quilt backing

The finished book

 Next up, we have a project that was born out of a baby shower. We wanted to make a collaborative present for the (second time) mum-to-be, and I'd originally thought this would be a blanket. I asked everyone at the shower to draw a wee picture, and was going to turn them into appliques for a fleece blanket. However, the designs didn't really lend themselves to one blanket scene, so I then thought it would have to be a patchwork quilt. And then, the idea of a book hit me.

This one is made of unbleached cotton, and the appliques are as many different textures as I could find, from soft fleece to bumpy corduroy, to scratchy linen. I hope baby likes reading it as much as I liked making it.

First pages
 

Original drawing, and the resulting applique

Giraffe!

I was most proud of the cat's eyes

And finally, a special request for a friend: a couple of rounds of name bunting, for a pair of sisters. I love making bunting.

More exciting (?!) tutorials to come but for now, I have to finish this last thing that's been keeping me busy. I call it the Quilt of Doom and really, that's a story for a whole other post...

What I've Been Up To

You may have noticed a silence on the blog front. That's because I've been working on a project that is completely NOT in the ethos of Sew Bored. This project took me a full week to finish! And so, I am not blogging about it in a tutorial way, but just in a 'here's what I've been up to' way.

I was recently pointed to this amazing blog, and have been in absolute awe ever since. Her stuff is SO beautiful, and so lovely, and she makes it look easy! So when I found this tutorial, I had to give it a try.

I've been wanting to make a blanket for Rosa's bed, and I had a lovely piece of white flannel going spare, and so the project went from pillow to quilt. Essential to Don't Look Now!'s style is free motion quilting, which I've never tried, but I went and bought a free motion foot for my sewing machine and thought I'd give it a bash.

Basically...it didn't go too well. While Don't Look Now! lady uses free-motion stitching along the edge of her appliques...I couldn't. I ended up just doing my usual zig-zag stitch, which worked well enough. The real problem came with the actual quilting. Although by this point I had got a bit more practice (and am actually halfway through free-motion quilting another Top Secret UnBloggable project), I couldn't face trying it on this one too. So I quilted a sun, and some clouds, and some stars and squiggles and so on just to hold everything in place.

 I LOVE the quilt top, but I am not a fan of my quilting. Still, for a practice project I'm fairly pleased, and I've got some ideas to use for next time. And if anyone knows of any classes in free motion quilting...Please let me know!