Another UFO bites the dust!

I'm on a mission to finish some UFOs this year. One of those is the Blogger's BOM, which were offered for free through the Canton Village Quilt Works blog from September 2011 to August 2012! I made all the blocks but then lost interest in this project until now! Most of the fabrics are Westfalen as are the small printed panels which I bought years ago at the Quilt festival in Tokyo.

 I decided to finish it with the quilt as you go method and first quilted all the blocks individually. There are different ways to QAYG and if you google it you'll find lots and lots of tutorials but I used a method I learned in a Crafty class called Quilting big projects on a small machine with Ann Petersen.

The next step involved cutting the connecting strips for the front and the back. 

A detail picture of how it looks from the front, once the blocks are sewn together. 

and from the back. As you can see I sewed the strips down by machine (similar to sewing down a binding) but of course it could also be done by hand, probably resulting in a neater finish. 

The borders are added in a similar fashion but I used the same fabrics for the connecting strips so they won't be quite as obvious. 

The quilt turned out to be 41 inches (105 cm) square, perfect for a baby or kid's quilt. 

 I really enjoyed the quilt as you go process and will definitely try it again.  Now one more UFO can be crossed off my list, but there are lots more where this one came from...ha!

I'm linking up with 17ufosin2017 again. Wow, we are already halfway through the year!

Cheers

Vreni xx

My first (and possibly also my last) rosette

I've been admiring all the different versions of the La Passacaglia quilts which have been popping up all over the Internet for the last couple of year or so. I have not really been tempted until I saw the quilt which Willyne Hammerstein calls "Ballet with Kaffe" in her second Millefiori book. I started to collect fabrics and ordered the papers and templates. I had the first shock when they arrived, as somehow I wasn't aware how tiny the different pieces are. And then I started to sew and had another shock as it took forever to make just one rosette. I think it took me about 25 hours to prepare and sew all the pieces together. Not really for the fainthearted and definitely not for someone who is impatient like me! I think I'll keep going, at least for a while. Maybe I wont ever make the entire quilt, but I can always use it in some other ways. 

And just when we are enjoying the first real summer days, I'm sewing away on some winter blocks, Scandinavian Christmas by Lynette Andersen to be precise. I've had this pattern for a few years now and every Christmas when I would be in the mood to stitch something Christmassy I usually don't have the time. So I decided to just get it started. I'm enjoying appliquéing  the whimsical characters and stitching the embroidery. 

I also pieced some blocks as I recently read about a lady in Guernsey (UK) who collects blocks which she then puts together into quilts for children's homes in Africa. She wants each block quilted individually as she then sews them together with the quilt as you go method. If you are interested you can read more on her blog here. A brilliant way to use up any fabric scraps or even make a dent into your stash. 

Although I'm a few day late, I'm going to link up with pomegranate and chintz for 17 UFOs in 2017.
Vreni x