Blogger's Quilt Festival - Original Design - Charm Dash

I am entering a second quilt in to the Blogger's Quilt Festival!  I am very proud of my Charm Dash quilt - given it is my first ever released Pattern - so I am entering it in to the Original Design category!

 

Those of you who have been around here for a while would know I released my Charm Dash pattern about a month ago, but for those of you who are new here (You'll find some captivating information about me and my work up there in the "Who is Ms Midge" section  ^^^^) - here's the low down!  The Charm Dash came to be after the first Aussie Charm Swap I ran, with Kate Spain fabrics.  I was left wondering how to use my 5" charm squares without wasting ANYTHING?  After tossing and turning one night, I spent the morning drawing up a block, which would go on to be the Charm Dash block and a whole quilt!

 

The block is a bit of a mutant churn dash - except that you are using 5" charm squares and not wasting a single inch of fabric.  

 

It is perfect for showcasing your favourite fabrics - and in my case, the Kate Spain collection of prints was a stunning example of how fabrics from a multitude of collections can mix beautifully.

 

I pieced and quilted the whole quilt using my trusty Aurifil #2024 in a 40wt.  The free motion pattern is what I'd like to call "vines", but you can call it whatever you like!

The backing is a very simple on fabric finish - but oh, what a fabric!

This quilt made me believe that I could actually reallllly be original and come up with some of my own quilty ideas!  Which in turn led me to designing my Pavement Puddles quilt.  So I guess you could say it was the start of a whole new beginning!

A BIG thank you to Amy's Creative Side for always putting on a fabulous quilt show!  You can check out the Festival main page HERE.  Make sure you allocate yourself a few hours to get through all the quilty eye candy!  And you can also nominate your favourite quilts HERE!

QUILT STATS:

Designed & pattern made by Me!

Size: 50" x 62.5"

Fabric: Kate Spain Charm squares & White Homespun

Quilting:  By Me on my Bernina

Thread: Pieced and quilted with Aurifil 40wt in #2024

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Large Quilt - Pavement Puddles

I'm being very brave and throwing my hat quilt in the ring Blogger's Quilt Festival!  If you're new here to my blog - WELCOME!  You'll find some captivating information about me and my work up there in the "Who is Ms Midge" section  ^^^^

I have a lot of quilts, yes, but the quilt I'm putting forward for the Large Quilt category is my 

Pavement Puddles.....

I designed this quilt under a little bit of pressure - from myself mostly - to come up with something original for my first ever magazine submission.  I was thrilled with the end result and loved the way the colours mixed from tone to tone and through the cool colour spectrum.  It reminded me of the puddles on the pavement after a sun shower!  I was also incredibly impressed with my mathematical ability...... As I designed the pattern all by myself!

It was also my first attempt at any type of hexagon!  It may not be a traditional hexie - but nobody has ever called me traditional, so I can live with that.....

The backing is a very simple, yet effective layout.

And all of the puddles have been straight line quilted using varying shades of my favourite Aurifil 40wt threads!

I had an absolute ball photographing Puddles......as you can tell from the above photo!  I had a couple of wonderful "assistants" who just happen to be expert bed jumpers!

I said goodbye to this quilt yesterday!  It was gifted to one of my wonderful BFF's for her 40th birthday, and I'm very happy to report that she sent me photos of it last night, settled in to its new home.  

A BIG thank you to Amy's Creative Side for always putting on a fabulous quilt show!  You can check out the Festival main page HERE.  Make sure you allocate yourself a few hours to get through all the quilty eye candy!  And you can also nominate your favourite quilts HERE!

QUILT STATS:

Designed & pattern made by Me!

Size: 51" x 74.5"

Fabric: Horizon by Kate Spain & Peppered Cotton by Studio E

Quilting:  By Me on my Bernina

Thread: Pieced and quilted with Aurifil 40wt in various colours

The pattern for this quilt is published in Issue One of Make Modern Magazine.

The Bonnie & Camille Charm Along WINNERS!

WOW!  I have been completely blown away by the amazing projects everyone has been working on with their Bonnie & Camille charm squares!  It once again cements the fact that 5" squares have a whole lot more value than they are given credit for!  If you haven't already checked out all of the linked up projects, pop over to the linky HERE and have a browse!  Thank you to everyone who participated and especially to the 28 people who have linked up.  You all put yourselves in the running for the fabulous prizes!  Unfortunately, there can only be TEN winners!  Which is pretty good!!!!

So without further ado, here are all the winners (as chosen by random.org):

The lovely Camille Roskelley has offered FIVE lucky participants their choice of ONE PDF pattern from her amazing range - including a couple of stunning new patterns!

FIVE winners of patterns are:

Missy Mack

Michelle Hickson

Tootle Jayne

Kristi Kuhne

Joanna King

A $50 voucher to spend on the amazing range of Quilter's Solids at The Oz Material Girls.  

(Part of voucher is to cover postage costs).

ONE winner of $50 voucher is:

Anna Cromie

Live Love Sew has kindly donated a Scrumptious Layer Cake AND a copy of her X's & O's quilt pattern!

ONE winner of Live Love Sew prize is:

Kate (Manic Mumdays)

$50 Voucher AND a Miss Kate Layer Cake!

ONE winner of Fifi's prize is:

Claire Scott

Machine embroidered Towel, hand towel & face washer set, made to order, kindly donated by one of our charm swap members - Meg Pease.

ONE winner of Meg Pease's prize is:

Sue Sews Too

A SIX MONTH subscription to Make Modern Magazine! Please note: You will receive access to the next three Make Modern issues published after you subscribe. If you subscribe after Issue 1 is published on 1 September, you will receive Issue 2 onwards

ONE winner of Make Modern subscription is: 

Melanie Sim

Congratulations to everyone on their amazing projects!  You are truly all amazing and winners in my eyes - and thankfully it was not up to me to choose!!!!  I will be in touch in the next couple of days to organise your prizes!

I look forward to seeing some of you finish your projects, and of course, as always, will be on the hunt for more fabulous charm square ideas!

Bonnie & Camille Charm-Along Linky is OPEN!

I may be a couple of days late - but the Bonnie & Camille Charm Along Link up is now OPEN!  Unfortunately, I did not finish my quilt!  You know the excuse I'm going to use - Tokyo.  I'm looking forward to getting around to basting and quilting this baby, but it may be some time before I get to it!

Now - it's your turn!  Remember - your projects don't have to be completed!  Just link up what you've been able to achieve!  I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone's goodies!

 I have rounded up these amazing Australian sponsors, with fabulous prizes for some lucky charm-alongers!  All you have to do is link up your project at the bottom of this post before 4pm TUESDAY THE 28TH OF OCTOBER, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA TIME, and the winners will be chosen and announced that night here on the blog.

The lovely Camille Roskelley has offered FIVE lucky participants their choice of ONE PDF pattern from her amazing range - including a couple of stunning new patterns!

A $50 voucher to spend on the amazing range of Quilter's Solids at The Oz Material Girls.  
(Part of voucher is to cover postage costs).

Live Love Sew has kindly donated a Scrumptious Layer Cake AND a copy of her X's & O's quilt pattern!

Sponsored prize description coming soon!

Machine embroidered Towel, hand towel & face washer set, made to order, kindly donated by one of our charm swap members - Meg Pease.

A SIX MONTH subscription to Make Modern Magazine! Please note: You will receive access to the next three Make Modern issues published after you subscribe. If you subscribe after Issue 1 is published on 1 September, you will receive Issue 2 onwards

What are you waiting for?  Go forth and link up!

Link up your Bonnie & Camille Charm Projects HERE:

An InLinkz Link-up

Bright Sky QAL - Ms Nightshade

A few months ago, Alyce from Blossom Heart Quilts asked me if I would be interested in joining her Bright Sky Quilt Along?  Sure, I said.  No problem, I said.  And really, it wasn't a problem - I just got my skates on and got the quilt top made incredibly fast! Seriously, this is a super quick pattern to put together! But I then had to leave it languish in my pile of WIP's, because, Tokyo.

Anyway - today is my stop on the quilt along!  So I'm going to show you my version of the Bright Sky pattern.  And it's a colour palette I never really envisioned EVER using!

This, my friends, is Ms Nightshade.

 

Isn't she beautiful?  I was lucky enough to score a big bundle of Nightshade fat quarters from Quilt Jane earlier this year.  I know two females in my life who would die over these prints, I just had to wait for the right pattern to use them in.  And given Bright Sky's big scale pattern, I brought Nightshade out to play.  It took a lot of umming and ahhing to convince myself it was going to work!  I mean - olive, pink and black?  And CREAM?!?!!?  I ordered the solids from The Oz Material Girls (their quilting solids really are beautiful to work with!) and was pleased when they arrived and actually co-ordinated well with the prints.

The next step was to make the cameo of this gothic princess work.  Let me tell you - fat quarters and huge scale prints are not ideal!  It almost killed me not using a complete cameo, but I basically had to fussy cut this baby so that it was pretty much centred.  My fat quarter had the top of the cameo cut off - hence why the bottom is too!  The great thing about this pattern however, is that the centre block just had to be 18" square.  Which essentially means you can make that square up however you please.  You would have seen Alyce's latest version, which she made in to a star, well this one is just a frame around the cameo.  Winning.

 

I was VERY impressed with my points on the inner star!  It was relatively easy to put together in terms of the bias I was working with, but I was a tad worried during the process!

What I WASN'T impressed with, was how my outer star points ended up!  Completely my fault, and I am dreading having to unpick to fix the problem.  BUT, I can't really not have star points!  I'm thinking the reason behind this minor issue was that the outer star rectangular blocks were a little bigger than they should have been, so I SHOULD have trimmed them down a little before piecing it all together.  Doh. So that is my next step.

Now, a little dilemma I'm having is BACKING.  I searched high and low whilst in Tokyo for the perfect backing fabric - to no avail.  I even had lovely Alyce's help, but nothing.  If you head over to Blossom Heart Quilts today, she is having a little old giveaway - and all you have to do is suggest what fabric I should use for my backing.  I look forward to getting some options!

And just for laughs......here's an out-take from the photo shoot yesterday......

Was a tad bit windy....

I hope you like my version of the Bright Sky pattern!  You can find the pattern HERE and the full schedule of quilt-alongers is here:

Monday 29th September – Choosing Fabrics Tips

Week 1: Centre Star
Monday 6th October – Have Fun With Your Centre Star!
Wednesday 8th October – Echo by Molli Sparkles

Week 2: Piece Outer Star
Monday 13th October – Outer Star Tips
Wednesday 15th October – My Fabric Relish

Week 3: Piece Quilt Top + Backing
Monday 20th October – BHQ
Wednesday 22nd October – Ms Midge

Week 4: Quilting
Monday 27th October – Pretty Bobbins free motion quilting guest post here at BHQ
Wednesday 29th October – A Stitch In Between (Bright Sky mini)

Week 5: Quilting
Monday 3rd November – Elven Garden Quilts free motion quilting guest post here at BHQ

Week 6: Final Linky
Monday 10th November – Linky opens here at BHQ for a week

Voting:
Monday 17th November – Linky closes and voting opens for Viewers’ Choice award
Friday 21st November – Winners announced!

I'm also linking up with Freshly Pieced!

Sunday Stash - The "I've been to Tokyo and bought lots of fabric but am so stuffed I can't show it all to you" edition!

I'm home.  Crawled in to my own bed at 3.30am this morning.  Had a few hours sleep and then have powered on through today - handing out gifts to the kids and husband, sorting all my washing out and then heading to the shops for a SANDWICH!!!!

Tokyo was amazing.  Totally and utterly mind blowing.  I promise I will come back when I am more awake and able to type eloquently.  In the meantime, I leave you with this.....

Approximately 14 kilos of fabric.  That I somehow have to make fit in to my sewing room shoe box.  I may seriously need to destash before they move in.

Needless to say - the fabric shopping in Tokyo is THE BOMB.  Before I almost passed out and lost all energy, I did manage to take lots of pretty photos of these beauties, and will endeavour to have a full blog post featuring them all next Sunday Stash!

Promise.

Winner Winner - Tokyo Dinner!

I know, I know - It's supposed to be winner, winner, chicken dinner - but I couldn't help myself!  You see, whilst this post is popping up on my FB page, your inbox or wherever else you read my posts - I'm in the air on my way to Tokyo!  I am currently sitting here on the computer at home, having just finished my lunch after a last minute dash to my son's high school to - ahemmm - sort out some "stuff".  Kids.  Anyway - I digress!  My suitcase is sort of packed, the house is sort of clean, I have written a plethora of phone numbers and instructions on the fridge for the kids and the husband.  I've weighed my suitcase, then edited it heavily.  It's still rather hefty though.  I'm blaming all the stuff I'm taking over for my Tokyo BFF and her kids AND a couple of realllly heavy magazines for Alyce!

I've booked my excess baggage for my return, and went and exchanged the cash my Mum gave me yesterday to purchase her fabric.  I've transferred money to my credit card to pay for the fabric I will be purchasing for myself.  I think I've got the fabric funds sorted....

Japan must be very excited about my impending arrival, because they've scheduled a SUPER TYPHOON in my honour!  Woohooo!  Ummmmm.......

I think I'm prepared.  I hope I'm prepared.  Nine days away from my family, in a foreign country.  I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't nervous.

Soooooo - I'll see you on the flip side!  Be sure to follow me on Instagram - because something else I've pre-arranged is portable wi-fi!  I'm gonna instagram the s*it out of Tokyo!  And you know I'm going to have some of the most epic Sunday Stash posts in history when I return......

Back to the winners......  Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter my little giveaway for a copy of my Charm Dash Pattern!  Random.org tells me the winners are:

Check your inbox ladies!  There's a little old pattern awaiting your attention!

And to everyone who has already purchased my pattern - THANK YOU!  I seriously want to email you all individually to say how much I love you and your faith in my ability!  I look forward to seeing a whole bunch of Charm Dash quilts popping up!

Have a fabulous week everyone! xxx

Going Plum Crazy

One thing I have found throughout this quilting world of ours, is how very giving quilty friends can be!  My lovely friend Laura from Quokka Quilts released her very own pattern last week - PLUM CRAZY - and on the same day, shared the news of my pattern release!  Now how nice is that?

So in the spirit of friendship, I'm sharing right back!  Laura's quilt pattern is a great fat quarter buster and if you check out some of her pattern testers quilt tops, you will see how gorgeous it can look in any array of fabrics.

Plum Crazy pattern by Quokka Quilts HERE

I'm contemplating whipping one up using my bundle of Alison Glass prints.  Or you know, just flying by the seat of my pants and pulling an eclectic mix from my stash!  Laura is having a Plum Crazy Hop Along this week, you can check out everyone else's take on the pattern as shown below:

4/10 - Sara @ http://www.SewSweetness.com in Chicago

5/10 -  Serena @ http://Sewgiving.blogspot.com in Perth

6/10 - MR @ http://Quiltmatters.blogspot.com in Canada

7/10 - Teje @ http://nerospost.wordpress.com in Greece

8/10 - Vera @ http://negligentstyle.com in the Czech Republic

9/10 - Alyce @ http://www.blossomheartquilts.com in Japan

10/10 - Katy @ http://www.the-littlest-thistle.com in Scotland

Go check them all out!

Bonnie & Camille Charm Along - Progress Report

The Bonnie & Camille Charm Along kicked off a couple of weeks ago, so today, we're checking in with some of the participants!  Brace yourself for some serious eye candy!

This big beauty is mine!  I decided to keep my project very simple.  A beautiful 9 patch with white sashing.  Easy.

But I couldn't be too boring - so added these little hourglass/bowtie corner stones!  LOVE them!  This is single bed size and once I get myself sorted and finish it, will be added to my ETSY STORE.

Now - on to all the amazingly talented participants....

Emma's beautiful giant star blocks.

Susan has used my Charm Dash pattern for her charms - I feel so special!

Anna's beautiful pinwheels.

Love this grey background on Kate's quilt top.

You know how much I love colour graduation in a quilt top!  This one is by Shelly.

Yvette has "whipped up" this amazing postage stamp quilt top!

Far out brussell sprout!  I ADORE Melanie's project!!!!

Can't go past yummy stars - by Claire.

WOWSERS!!!!  Love your work Kristi!

Kate is mixing it up with green sashing and borders.

No words can explain just how much I adore this quilt top by Sue!

And Meg's Cross quilt top is yummy!

 So, once again, I think this shows just how versatile the charm square can be?  There are even more amazing projects being worked on - check out the hashtag #charmalong on Instagram!

If you haven't already joined in, it's not too late to start.  The linky doesn't open until the 20th of October and will be open until the 27th!  So go get cracking!

Don't forget - there are some amazing prizes up for grabs, including lots of fabulous Australian businesses!

The lovely Camille Roskelley has offered FIVE lucky participants their choice of ONE PDF pattern from her amazing range - including a couple of stunning new patterns!

A $50 voucher to spend on the amazing range of Quilter's Solids at The Oz Material Girls.  
(Part of voucher is to cover postage costs).

Live Love Sew has kindly donated a Scrumptious Layer Cake AND a copy of her X's & O's quilt pattern!

$50 Voucher AND a Miss Kate Layer Cake!

Machine embroidered Towel, hand towel & face washer set, made to order, kindly donated by one of our charm swap members - Meg Pease.

A SIX MONTH subscription to Make Modern Magazine! Please note: You will receive access to the next three Make Modern issues published after you subscribe. If you subscribe after Issue 1 is published on 1 September, you will receive Issue 2 onwards

Pretty amazing yes?  Be sure to go and check out all of the wonderful Australian businesses sponsoring the charm along!

And talking about prizes, if you haven't already entered to be in the running for a copy of my CHARM DASH PATTERN, pop over to THIS POST and enter!  Winners will be drawn tomorrow morning!

I'm linking up - You can too!

freshlypieced.com