My Small World quilt-along

have you heard about the My Small World quilt-along taking place over on instagram?

I've been watching it unfold over the past month and quietly thought I might like to join in but knowing how much I have on my evergrowing list its only been a thought - that was until Thursday when I walked into my newsagents and saw the Quiltmania Spring Special sitting on the magazines shelf - I was actually quite shocked that there was a copy of the magazine in our little rural newsagents so of course I scooped it up without a second thought !!

which means I'm now going to join in the craze and make teeny tiny blocks and join them all together to make a super sweet quilt - its 33" x 52" so it will make a fabulous wall hanging for my sewing room.

I'm still thinking about what fabrics to use - it will be a scrappy quilt but I did entertain the idea of using my collection of Denyse Schmidt fabrics - I'll think about it more this weekend while I'm trying to get a few must finish projects finished !

If you're interested in checking out this wonderful quilt - the hashtag over at instagram is #mysmallworldqal and you can find all the info you need over at verykerryberry's blog.

Gardenvale Beauty - Blogger's Quilt Festival

The Spring Blogger’s Quilt Festival is happening over at Amy’s Creative Side and I'm excited to be taking part for the first time !!

I recently finished a mini quilt that I designed for an upcoming issue of Fat Quarterly magazine.

The issue will be all about curves and I was lucky enough to receive some of the new Gardenvale fabric by Jen Kingwell to use, so I’m calling my mini "Gardenvale Beauty" and I’m really happy to share it with you.

It’s a variation of a New York Beauty, using two rows of flying geese which are paper pieced.  I really love this little quilt and thankfully it turned out exactly as I envisioned !

I love the stripes that are in the Gardenvale range and I really loved using them for a little bit of impact in the centre of the quilt.

The curves are fairly gentle and with paper piecing the flying geese come together easily.

I did some straight line quilting and outline quilting in the centre, outline quilted the flying geese, and stipple quilted the background.

I’m entering my Garden Beauty in the Mini Quilt category – its going to be hard to pick a handful of favourite quilts as there is so much quilty eye candy on display.

Quilt Stats

Garden Beauty
size: 18" square
pattern: my own design
top fabric: Moda Gardenvale by Jen Kingwell

background and binding fabric: Kona Charcoal

batting: Warm and Natural cotton 
quilting: straight line and stippling
thread: Gutterman white and Mettler #710 (which is the perfect colour for Kona Charcoal!)

I hope you enjoy all of the wonderful quilts over at the Spring Blogger’s Quilt Festival !

Care Circle blocks

its my turn as Queen Bee for the Care circle of do.good stitches for May and also July and as we have a break in June I thought I'd get the blocks for both months done and out of the way !

I decided to use Faith Jones' fabulous scrap plus blocks for July - tutorial available at the Bernina We All Sew blog - they are so easy and effective.

I can't wait to put these together !! but first I need to organise the May quilt - I thought that polka dot circles would be a sweet quilt to make - I had a little one in mind when I chose that theme.

I'm really happy with how mine turned out and again, so looking forward to seeing what the fabulous Care circle girls make !

I'll post a photo of the quilts when they're put together !

linking up to Scraptastic Tuesday with Nicky Mrs Sew and Sow and Leanne She Can Quilt -wow - that's two months in a row !