How to Quilt in the Hardware store...

Now I love a hardware store as much as the next girl but when you're there with your husband and your eyes start to glaze over, what do you do?
Well you head off to the paint swatch section of course. Pick out colours that you think match your fabric. Then you take them home, cut them up and play with them!

 

DSQ Fabric Palette

Oh yeah, oops, even though I haven't shown you yet, these are the colours for my DSQ. I did buy a little bit more fabric but I'm really happy with all the solid colours together. I'm saving this quilt to do after Christmas but in the meantime it's so easy to play with the paint swatches.

DSQ Layout

Time to stop playing though, I've been feeling completely unmotivated this week and I need to get back to work.... 

 Apparently Dresden's do not make themselves.  Bugger.

Dead Simple Palette - I've definitely, almost certainly, possibly, chosen this one...

For the Dead Simple Quilt Along I've chosen(my fickle heart has seen others but I'm being strong!) the Autumn breeze as my palette.

Autumn leaf palette by designseeds

Those greys were tempting!

 

Barked Orange palette by Design Seeds

and this is gorgeous but seems more Autumny..

Autumn Breeze palette by design seeds

So this one, definitely this one! Oh yeah. We are approaching summer down here(Yuck!) and this seems the most summery to me, so this one it is. I can make it this Summer and have it ready to use by Autumn! Perfect timing. I do love it but those browny yellows might be hard to find. I might have to go and buy more fabric.  What a shame :)

Can't wait to see everyone else's!

Dead Simple Quilt Along - Choosing a palette

I'm joining in the Dead Simple Quilt Along over at Lily's Quilts and I need to choose my palette. I'm a bit behind as I think I'm meant to have the fabric already but I haven't even decided yet!  I've narrowed it down to these.

A combination of the two above or a combination of the two below? Its coming up to summer here, maybe the two below?

Real Living Magazine October 2011

The first three are from Design Seeds a great site for all sorts of inspiration  The magazine I picked up the other day and love the colours on the front cover.

Solids, prints? Oh what to do, what to do?  I really shouldn't be doing anything else but I figure I'll get it all planned and then do it after Christmas.  It feels like I'm cheating on the SS quilt and the rocketship quilt but I wont tell them if you don't!


Thanks for visiting!



Sew-Inspiration Sunday & Small Blog Meet

Today I've been inspired by Lily, over at Lily's Quilts.  She has some great Tutorials, Quilt-A-Longs and Links AND she is also hosting a Small Blog Meet.  Since I'm a small blog it's a great way for me to meet other bloggers, to read about and to be inspired by what they do.  Hopefully they'll stop by here and say hello too. 

So if you have dropped by courtesy of Lily's Quilts, it's really nice to meet you and I hope you like what you see.  I'm only just getting started and still finding my true style, but I'm enjoying the journey!

English Paper Piecing Quilt-Along!

Now before you get all excited, quilt-along, in this case, means that its going to take A-LONG time to make the quilt.  Get it? Or is that just really bad quilter humour? : )

Ahem, moving on.  I've been wanting to try English Paper Piecing(EPP) for a while now and I've managed to convince Katie, my Sister and Faye(my Mother- in-Law) to play too. Faye is going to do her favourite shape, the hexagon, in a 1 1/4" Size(the length of one side), my Sister is also doing hexagons but the 1/2" size, while Katie will be using 1/2" shapes but I'm not sure yet which ones. 

I'm going to use the 60 degree diamonds in the 1" size.  That's small enough for me! I've chosen some solid fabric to give it a more modern feel.

Fabric for English Paper Piecing

The colours in this photo above(at least on my laptop) are very close to the real colours, in the other ones below, not so much. So feel free to scroll back up to compare. 

You'll notice I've now added a light green to the selection, and now I'm not sure I need the purple but I'm just going to see how it goes. (See how relaxed I am Katie!)

Diamond Peeper, 60 degree Diamond Paper Pieces

For my paper pieces, I chose a 190gsm card, so that its fairly stiff and I can tack the fabric around it, rather than tacking through the paper and then having to unpick all those stitches later. Later I'll have a look at some places I've bookmarked that use this method and I'll share them with you.

 

I also purchased a 1" diamond peeper(that's the pink thing) which you can use for fussy cutting your fabric.  I am using solids for this project  so I didn't really need it but it was really handy to use when cutting my strips to size.

I'm also using my hole punch to punch holes in all the little pieces.  That's so once a shape is surrounded by pieces sewn to it, I can just pop it out and then re-use it.

60 degree Diamonds

I've now cut all my fabric.  Look at all those little stacks, aren't they cute! they just say play with me...

60 Degree Diamond Layout

So I did.  One day I might actually sew some.