The Stash and Treasure market was lots of fun - plenty of familiar faces and time to chat, and it felt good to pass neglected fabric and books on to new homes. The process of sorting through my stash was really helpful too - I found some things I had forgotten about, and other fabrics that I realised went well together or could be used for a particular project. And there are lots of little pieces of cloth that I have been hanging on to for ages, leftovers from sewing projects, bits of favourites, things I loved but that didn't really go with anything else. I had been hanging on to them was "for quilts" but I never actually made the quilts - the pile of scraps just kept getting bigger. But as I was sorting through I started making some color piles, and realised I had enough to make several baby quilts - which is great, because we're in the middle of a baby boom at the moment, with three friends expecting babies this March and more due later in the year.
So I have been on a cutting / pinning / sewing rampage and have come up with 3 quilt tops in the past week. The first one is blue / yellow, and uses some lovely fat quarters I've been hoarding: Heather Ross gnomes that I received in a swap with Rachel, Marbles from Susie (designed by her too, clever lady) and a piece of Japanese yellow and blue spot from Ellen. I put them together with some plains and - ta da! I had a quilt top. This is 10cm squares, 9 across and 11 down, which means 99 squares in total, but thanks to my trusty fabric cutter it didn't take long at all to put it together.
The second quilt top uses a charm pack of Dream On by Moda. I have never bought a pre-cut fabric pack before, and I don't usually like the idea of making a quilt all from one range (for me most of the fun is picking fabrics) but I instantly loved this range - I'm not quite sure why, because orange and pink florals are not usually my thing, but something about the retro bed-linen inspired prints appealed a lot. But then I wasn't sure what to do with it. I had seen these lovely quilts from Film in the Fridge, but I only had one charm pack and wanted to make a slightly bigger quilt, so I cut 5cm strips of a white cotton drill to frame the squares, and it very quickly turned in to a quilt top.
This third one is for the one of the babies due in March - my lovely friend Anna is expecting a little girl. Her nursery has been decorated in red and white and with a woodland theme so I picked fabrics that will hopefully tie in with that.
I need to pick up some quilt batting, and will hopefully finish these off before too long. I also have three more piles of fabrics ready for chopping and sewing (a red/grey "boy" pile, a green/blue "boy" pile, and a pink/crimson "girl" pile. Apart from Anna, no-one else has found out if they are having a boy or a girl, so I need to cover all possibilities). I'm looking forward to having some finished quilts ready to give to babies as they arrive, and also to clearing some room so I can get on with some other, larger quilt projects I've been thinking about.
