Looking for inspiration

Well, time for post #2 on my blog... Are you excited?  I am!

After twiddling with settings and designs most of yesterday trying to make it look 'pretty' - I took most of my alterations off and have left it minimalist - the reason being I realised that most of the blogs I enjoy reading are kept clean and simple, so I'll do the same for now.
(Not to mention resizing my photos to use as backgrounds so they were small enough for Blogger to accept them but big enough not to tile randomly was doing my nut in!)

Anyway, enough of that...

Yesterday I came across a wonderful resource - a webpage of free quilt block patterns, The Quilter's Cache 


I have always admired the big traditional looking quilts, but never imagined I could make one without tearing my hair out and offing my sewing machine out of the window in the process lol!  But I really was delighted to find this page, it has clear graphics and simple instructions which I am confident will lead me gently by the hand to start creating outside my humble scrappy square beginnings.
After having a good nosey at all the blocks on the site, (and deciding not to go in too far over my head!) I have settled on giving the Starflower block a try for my next big quilty project.

In fact, I might make it an anniversary project - since this June 12th will mark my first ever quilt being finished - and gifted to my youngest step-daughter Saffron on her 5th birthday the next day!

I did for a while, toy with the idea of making her another quilt for her 6th birthday this year, but I actually have two pram-quilts on the go (since January !!) for my friend's twin boys to finish and a windmill one I started last August that is sitting un-touched in my 'Works in Progress' bag.  Not to mention at least a dozen other smaller non-quilt projects I should really get on with.

My WIP bag should actually be re-named "My 'I started it then got distracted because it was too hard/I made a stupid mistake I cba to un-pick and start again just now' bag".


Before I go (blog-post writing takes longer than I thought it would!) here are a couple of pictures of Saffy's finished birthday quilt.

 

I used 96 4"squares in total for the patchwork middle, and pieced on really hot-fuchsia pink cotton to frame it.

I free-motion quilted the frame (yes, I squiggled all of it!) and quilted the squares in the middle with straight(ish) lines.
The backing was a gorgeously tactile soft-to-touch woven material that I happened upon by chance in my local Abakhan fabric shop. 
I finished the edge with a wide double satin gold ribbon.


Not bad for a first attempt I thought!

Saffy keeps it at her Mum's house, and tells me she loves snuggling it every day - which gives me a lovely fuzzy feeling in my tummy :-)


TTFN - Emma

P.S.   I have edited this now 4 times in the space of 10 minutes, please forgive my dreadful waffling writing style, I am sure I will get into the swing of this eventually...!