Happy Birthday Quilt

Not too long ago my fantastic mother turned 60.

My Mum

I wanted to make something really special for her birthday that she could keep and cherish. I have been planning this quilt for about 9 months. The morning sickness and exhaustion of early pregnancy put a major hold on any creative endeavours and then a Christmas trip to the UK and a post Christmas trip to a flooded Brisbane increased my delay in actually choosing a quilt to make let alone buying fabric and actually starting. In January I browsed through my friend Melissa Fox's quilting books and magazines trying to choose a pattern. Nothing felt right and eventually I settled on a Japanese style pattern with large applique circles on it. I then spent months browsing for fabric and found some great options but I just never committed to actually buying. In the end I decided that the pattern was just wrong for Mum. So, on the spur of the moment I went to my trusty fall back fabric store Bird Textile. I was so lucky, in the remnants packs I happened to find some AMAZING large prints that were too beautiful to pass up. I walked out with three beautiful large 'blocks' in blue and a few packs of green and brown remnants to make up the rest of the quilt. Next step, design a quilt.

Two of the three main 'blocks' that I feel in love with at Bird

I browsed online quilt blogs for HOURS and stared at the fabric I had for HOURS and then I asked pretty much everyone around me for advice (even my midwife during an antenatal check up!!). I just didn't 'feel' how the quilt was supposed to look and I was unsure how to best feature and integrate the three main blocks that I had my heart set on. I started making Flying Geese from this great tutorial and the quilt started to feel a bit more focused. I then saw some great traditional Japanese blocks online and decided that they fit in the style of the bird textile prints.

These blocks were a challenge I can tell you! I had seen a picture but had no pattern or measurements so I made them up. I have a full page of scrawled maths in my notebook from trying to figure out how big to cut every strip so that, after the seam allowance was taken into consideration, they would end up being the 12" I needed to fit with my other blocks. Yeah that kinda worked... I then decided that they needed to be 'on point' to really work. This involved yet more maths, thank god for the Internet that helped me work out the formula to come up with the correct size corner triangles. whew. I am not 100% happy with these blocks. They look a bit like something else to me (even though they are not) I won't bias your opinion by telling you but see if you see it for yourselves...

The quilt came together over months of bits of sewing here and bits of sewing there and bits of sewing done by the marvellous Sarah Mac (she made a lot of Geese for me). I knew I had to finish the quilt before the baby was born or Mum would be 70 before it was ever gifted to her. After a few whole weekend sewing efforts I hand stitched the last stitch last night...4 days after my due date. My husband thinks that I haven't been able to give birth until the quilt is finished...I guess we shall see now :)

Gift wrapped at last


The full quilt

oooh draped :)

close up detail

Lovely Bird Textile binding


A happy Mum with her new quilt

Little Birds

It has been a long time between posts. it has also been a long time between projects. Between blizzards, floods, birthdays and growing babies (inside babies and outside ones) I haven't had much time to spend in my spare room or in the blogsphere. I have also felt decidedly uncreative...until this little man arrived in the world.

Hugo Gilbert Tomkins

If that fresh little being wasn't going to get me back in a sewing mood then nothing was. I was given this book for my birthday in December and the quilt I made is from it. I changed the dimensions to make it bigger but generally I stuck to the pattern. Here it is...

The fabric is mostly a Bird Textile scrap pack with a few scraps of Anna Maria Horner (the deep blue) and Tula Pink (the deep red) thrown in. The binding is also Bird Textile who now sell pre made binding (yay).

This was a quilt of firsts for me. Most importantly it is the first time I have tried applique and free motion quilting

Each little bird's body is appliqued on to the fabric with a fusible papery thingy then I free motion quilted around each body (to help secure it) and then added plumes and tail feathers etc. The style is supposed to be 'sketchy' looking and let me tell you there is no way it wasn't going to look sketchy!!! It is going to be a while before I try to free motion quilt a whole quilt.

The back of the quilt and a close up of the little owl

Hugo is a Brisbane baby and I wanted to be able to give the quilt to his Mum in person during my recent trip. I was no where near finished when I boarded the plane in Sydney but the amazing Melissa Fox lent me her machine and expertise for a day in Brisbane to finish it off. I have known Melissa for about 10 years now and we had a big laugh about the fact that 10 years ago we could never have imagined that our kids would be playing together while we sat and quilted together!! Melissa taught me how to machine bind the quilt which I have never done before and also lent me some lovely multi coloured thread (it is a special kind with a special name but I have forgotten, I'll find out if anyone is interested).

The binding and our kids having a stand off over pink luggage

I hope Hugo likes his little quilt as he grows up, in this picture he is a little preoccupied to notice...

Katie, Hugo's mum made this amazing mobile for his room and I think the quilt fits in quite well...

LOOK! A distraction

At the moment I am trying to make a quilt that is making me feel like this:


and my sewing room look like this:

Yes I am actually trying the pattern out with paper first to see if I can manage it. More on this project later if I stick with it and don't jump out of the window first.

So to distract myself from maths and angles that this quilt requires I have been making pretty little things....for pretty little people!

First up a fabric flower that I have turned into a hair slide, this is winging its way to Brisbane for a special little girls upcoming birthday.

This is my first attempt and there are a few corrections I would like to make next time around but on the whole I am happy with the style. I thought these might make lovely broaches as well so watch this space...


I have been wanting to try making a bag for a while now so my next distraction project was the perfect opportunity. I downloaded the free pattern from Made By Rae and in the space of one Lewis nap time I was more than half way there! Half an hour yesterday evening was all I needed to finish this:

It has pleats. It has lining. It has magnetic snaps. It has an interior pocket. I never thought I could make something like this. Thanks to Made By Rae for the great pattern and instructions. I feel ready to attempt a bigger bag soon so that I can fit in nappies, wipes, snacks, water bottles, keys, general crap...

Lewis was quite taken with it as well and he knew just what to do with it!

ps. I'm working my way through my Bird Textile scraps can ya tell?

Pins and needles

Inspired by the talented Kirsten Smith who blogs here, this great tutorial she shared and a week away from my sewing machine, I ducked into my spare/sewing room while Lewis slept this afternoon and whipped up this pin cushion.

My pins were living like this:

and are now much happier like this:


I LOVED using some Bird Textile scraps and am already thinking up other projects to use more!

We spent a wonderful morning today at the local school fair day. I wish I had taken my camera to share the cake stall, pony ride, sausage sizzle etc with you but here is the AWESOME jungle animal portable play mat that we nabbed from the craft stall.

The mat open with the animals and tied up and ready to travel with the animals inside. Apparently the design is based on a type of Japanese bathroom bag.

Here is the LOVELY pile of kids books (and a few adult ones) that set us back about 10c each.

It was nostalgia central as Rich and I compared the differences between an Australian school fete and an English village fair and I was happy to learn that Rich won a cake baking prize as a child. Just another reason that I am glad I married him.

What a good Sunday. How was yours?

The Yen Quilt

Well I have finally gifted this quilt so I can display it without giving it away!

This quilt was based loosely on a coin quilt that I saw in an online preview of a Jelly Roll quilt book. Basically for what I can gather a coin quilt is a quilt that has stacks of 'coins' (rectangles of fabric) in various different patterns. They can be stacked on top of each other or at irregular spaces and they are joined with sashing of a contrasting material. I had decided to use remnants packs from Bird Textiles to make my quilt so cutting 'coins' out of these remnants worked perfectly. Given that I find Bird Textiles to have a real Japanese feel to them I have decided to name the quilt my Yen Quilt (get it? Coin. Yen. yeah?)



When the quilt top was sewn with the sashing in I knew that I was going to struggle to quilt this myself of my home machine, so I phoned a friend. The amazing Yvonne (mother in law of my friend Sarah Mac) quilted it for me using her long arm machine. I think that the intricate stippling really makes this quilt, it is such a contrast from the straight lines of the pattern. I am pretty fixed on the idea of quilting my own projects in the future but I am soooo happy with Yvonne's work on this one.

Here is Lewis 'helping' me prepare the binding.