Bloggers Quilt Festival - Little Elephant

Just in the nick of time, Little Elephant is finished.  In fact it's been finished since Monday but it's too big to photograph anywhere in the house and the weather has not been helpful.  We tried to take pictures on Tuesday but it nearly blew away,  Wednesday it rained, Thursday, perversely was so bright the photos all looked washed out, but this morning I finally got a couple that will do. 

And the back.

Finished quilt measures 80" by 90".

Fabrics - an assortment of lovely African wax prints, plus Oakshott plains ( oranges from their Ruby Red bundle, smoky blue, the off-whites).  Other fabrics from stash, but not that many oddments in this one.

Wadding is  Sew Simple Ecoblend (70/30 - all recyled materials).  Despite early fears it has not bearded.  Thread is a Sulky 30, variegated greens and oranges - first time I'd tried this and I really liked it.

I started piecing on 26th July 2014.  It had to wait a while to get quilted but that started on 11th January and finished on 11th May (that's exactly 4 months. How neat; I hadn't realised that until right now).

I'm entering this in the Original Design category of the Bloggers Quilt Festival. (voting opens May 22nd) .  If you haven't already, do go and check it out; there's always loads to see.

I'm also linking up with TGIFF, Confessions of Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop, and Richard and Tanya's Link a Finish Friday.  When you only make four quilts a year, you have to make the most of a finish when you get one!

Slowly doing rather a lot

Yes, there's loads of hand stitching going on here today...

A bit of quilting:

A bit of holding things temporarily in place:

And yes, a bit of binding too.

And since all three of these happen slowly, I'm off to sew.  Enjoy your Sunday.

Slow stitching for Sunday

Another update on my hand stitching.  Trying to do too many things at once was taking all the fun out of things, so I have put the denim on hold until I have finished Little Elephant.  I don't mind that quilting takes an age, but do get to a point when I'm ready for a quilt to be done, and I am pretty much there with this one.  This is the most recently quilted bit:

and this, plus the borders, is what I have left to do. Oh, and the binding.  

So I'm putting all my spare moments into quilting.  I have learned from experience, though, that those last bits always take twice as long as I think they are going to, so I'm not getting too excited just yet.You never know, I may be done by the summer!

On a tangent, but appropriate for Slow Sunday Sewing, I have been thinking a lot about holes recently (in fabric) and this has led me to the work of the wonderful Alabama Chanin. I may be the last person on the planet to have come across them, but if you have also missed out, do go and have a look.  I am now pondering the idea of a slow stitched wardrobe...

A quick peek at Little Elephant,

Not much achieved this week, or not in hand stitching terms.  One of the downsides of working on lots of things at once is that I may have done quite a bit, but if the effort is spread around several projects, none of them seem to have progressed that much.  I'm not sure this way of working suits me, but am sticking with it for now and will try not to whinge!

Anyway, here's an update on Little Elephant.  

This is how much I've done.

And this, top right-hand corner, is what I've got to go (plus the borders). In the normal course of things I would be hopeful of finishing in the next month (ish) but as it stands, who knows?

It's a long walk out of the jungle

and there's a lot of quilting to go before Little Elephant is done.  I thought I was getting on well, but having just laid it out and had a good look I have to admit to myself that I'm barely halfway through.  

I thought this might be a good time to reflect on the wadding I am using (Sew Simple EcoBlend - a 70/30 cotton/polyester mix, using entirely recycled materials).  I picked it because it was a recycled material, which really appeals to me and so far have been quite happy with it. It's quite flat, compared to the wool I was using before, but has a pleasant, slightly felty feel to it. Here's a close-up.

It's not quite as beautifully easy to quilt as wool - mostly I notice that every so often it feels almost like my needle gets stuck in there, or that it brings a little bobble of wadding out onto the surface of the fabric.  Not a big deal, I am just picking these off as they appear. For a while I was worried that similar bits were working their way through the fabric unaided, as I was getting bits that looked like this:

Luckily it turns out that these are happening mostly around the edges and I'm sure they are just drifting off the wadding where it is not quite covered at the moment.  There has been absolutely no problem in the areas that are now quilted. Phew.  The quilted areas have a nice drape and sitting under it to work is warm and cosy, so all things considered I will definitely use again.

Meanwhile, back with the denim, I have sewed a couple of bigger bits together this week, using some smaller, already stitched bits and some as yet unstitched, which I am now working into.

Next I think I'm going to join these together.

As usual I'm linking up today with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Little Elephant in the hoop

Now that Charley Harper is finished, it's Little Elephants turn for quilting.  I am trying something new with this one; in fact I am trying two new things.  First I am using a different wadding.  I have been using wool, which I love, but am giving Sew Simple Eco Blend a go.  This is a 70% cotton, 30% poly blend and the appeal of it for me is that is made from 100% recycled material.  It has a nice, felty feel to it, and is alright to quilt, but I'll do a bit more before I draw any firm conclusions.  In the meantime, my conscience is happy with the choice!

I am also trying a new thread.  I love using perle to hand quilt but I can't find variegated shades that I am happy with.  I don't want a variegated which includes a lot of white or just varying shades of one colour, which pretty much rules out my usual brands (Anchor and DMC).  I have tried Valdani, which has some really lovely colour combinations, but found the thread a bit soft (for want of a better word).  It tended to pull apart a bit too often for my liking, and this meant I ended up working with short lengths - lots of extra starting and finishing.

So I am giving Gutermann's Sulky 30 a go.  This is what I bought:

It's early days still, but so far am pretty happy with the choice.  When I've done a bit more I'll post some close ups so you can see how the colours work out.

Linking this post to Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching and with Aylin-Nilya for Monday Makers.

Putting Little Elephant to bed

Hooray!!! I stayed up late-ish last night, got up waaay too early this morning, but put all the extra time to good use and got the borders on Little Elephant. Here's a picture on the bed for which it is destined.

And outside on the fence.  It's too big to show the bottom bit properly this way, but put the two pictures together and I think that covers it.  

Now it just needs a back and about 6 months of quilting, but it will have to wait its turn.

Linking up this time with all and sundry:  I Quilt at Pretty Bobbins, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Off the Wall Friday at Nina-Marie's, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop, and Fabric Frenzy Friday.

No more stars for me

A couple of really productive days and suddenly I'm nearly done.  I have to say that I won't be making another wonky star for a while - more than 20 in this and I've had enough of them!  I have a pile of blunt-nosed triangles waiting to turn into borders:

 and once they are on, Little Elephant will be ready to join the queue for quilting.  

I've never had a queue for quilting before.  I need to finish my as-yet unblogged quilt, then Charley is next in line, then this one.  It's funny, but since I decided I didn't care that I was slow, I seem to be getting faster.  

Posting this on Monday Makers at ayliN-Nilya , Show and Tell Tuesday at I have to say, Lets Bee Social at Sew Fresh quilts and WIP Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced.

Dancing elephants

It's me that's dancing, actually, but only metaphorically.  This is the left-hand half (give or take a bit) of Little Elephant done.  I finally worked out where I wanted his little elephant-y fried to sit, and how the other part of the quilt would work.   

There comes a point in each quilt when I feel like I've got the rhythm of it and feel I know where it's going.  That's where I've got to now.  It might not look quite right on it's own, but I thought I'd spare you more oddly skewed pictures of my kitchen floor since I hope I might get the other half wrapped up before

too long.

Linking up with Show and Tell Tuesday , with WIP Wednesday and Let's Bee Social, and I Quilt Thursdays at Pretty Bobbins

Starting something new

Now this is not what was next on my list.  Far from it.  But my list is arbitrary and only in my head, so if I stray off course nobody knows or cares.  I started playing with the wax prints I posted a couple of weeks ago.  

This is usually how I start off - making a load of random bits.  Some might end up in the quilt as they are, others won't, or will be chopped into and changed. At the moment I am thinking I'm not quite happy with the colours - the orange-y tones are a bit too peachy.  I was imagining scorched earth, savannah, like the fabric third from the left on the line below, and these seem too polite somehow.  I'm not panicking as this is just the first pass, but back to stash to see what will help.

As usual, I'm linking up to Anything Goes Monday at Stitch by Stitch.