A giveaway!

Edit: You must follow me on Etsy or Craftsy to enter the giveaway. If your handles on blogger and on Craftsy/Etsy aren't the same, please let me know in the comments who you are on Craftsy or Etsy so I can verify. Thanks!

My most excellent cousin just sent me updated photos of Birds of Paradise. She's all done quilting it - she did an amazing job!

I really love the simplicity of the white binding. 

Summer's such a great time for quilters - great outdoor photos! 

Look at that quilting detail! She hand-quilted it, I think. I really admire her patience!

Anyway - to celebrate her new quilt, I'm going to do a little giveaway (my first on this blog!). 

I'm giving away 3 copies of the Birds of Paradise pattern (it's a PDF file, I'll email it to the winners.) To enter the giveaway, here's what you'll need to do: 

1. Follow the Global Nomad Quilt Company either on Craftsy or on Etsy.

2. Once you've followed me on either Craftsy or Etsy, leave a comment on this post. 

3. Leave me some way to contact you to send you a pattern if you win. 

I'll close the giveaway on Tuesday June 18 at noon EST - which gives you a whole week to enter! Good luck! 

Dancing Stars - all quilted and bound

We'd sent Dancing Stars away to be long-arm quilted, and the long arm quilter had sent it back a month or so ago. I finally finished binding it this week - here it is on a bed at my parents.

Pauline, our long-arm quilter really did a great job on this. Without us specifically requesting it, she'd used a variegated thread on the front, which beautifully highlights the bright colours of this quilt.

If you want to buy the PDF pattern, it is available on Etsy and on Craftsy.

Here's why I love this pattern.

- It's an easy way to make up a large quilt - this quilt is 88"x88" (it's being shown on a queen size bed in these pictures.)
- The instructions include an outline diagram, so you can try out your own colour schemes before making this quilt. Make it as colourful or as monochrome as you wish!

Have a great weekend! I brought some fabric to make a quilt, so there could be a bit of quilting in store for me!

Now available for sale - Finlay's Stars

Yes! I did finish the quilt in time! (I might have given myself carpal tunnel syndrome or something in the process though - my right hand is very sore. Ugh.) However, I love making baby quilts as gifts - they are super-distinctive, but piece up and quilt up a lot easier than a larger size. I even got to baste this on my dining table, vs. on the floor, and my back was thanking me!

With Finlay's Stars, the most work was trimming the half-square triangles to the right dimension, but apart from that, pretty smooth sailing. (Quilting was a lot of work though - I painstakingly outline-quilted every windmill-ish shape as well as every star - which makes the quilt look fantastic, but was a lot of work!)

Of course, I did have a lot of help with this quilt - my cat Biscuit was intimately involved in both the quilting and the binding process!

Lots of pictures to follow - this project pretty much took over my life for all of the last week, so I'm going to show several photos of it!

All pieced-up, before adding a border 

Basting on a dining table...

Biscuit *helps* with the quilting...

Quilting detail. With bonus bits of thread, which hopefully came out in the wash... 

|Biscuit *helps* with the binding... (don't worry, I washed the quilt prior to giving it to the mom-to-be!)

Another photo of the finished quilt. I'm pretty impressed with my quilting diligence. 

(I did just mostly steal this post from my regular sewing blog - weekendcrafting.blogspot.com. I rarely cross-post, but this actually is both personal sewing as well as a Global Nomad pattern.)

The pattern's available right now through my Craftsy store - Etsy to follow after the long weekend, I think. (I have to pack, but if I have time, I'll put it up on Etsy tomorrow morning.)

Sneak peek - Finlay's Stars

Dear readers, in my last post, I mentioned I had a baby shower to go to, and a quilt to make for that, inspired by a Moroccan tile.

This is it - Finlay's Stars! (Finlay's the name of the wee one.)

The colours are rather un-Moroccan, since I thought this would double as a rather fabulous Fourth of July quilt. There's one planned blue (the dark one) and several bits of scrap blues, which is a good way to use  your scraps, while still keeping the look of a planned quilt.

Finlay's Stars will go on sale next week. I've no time to write instructions right now, since the baby shower is on Sunday! Eek! I better get to attaching the borders and quilting it. (My least favourite bits of the process, I'm afraid.)

As an aside, I need to learn how to work the settings on my camera. I took photos outside, but it's a cloudy day - the brighter pictures are the manual setting, the darker ones are the automatic, and the true colours of the quilt are somewhere in between.

Etsy or Craftsy?

Dear readers I've a question.

If you buy PDF quilt patterns, which site are you more likely to use? Etsy or Craftsy? Or a third that I don't use?

I list in both places, but I'm curious. Please comment!

Dancing Stars Rangoli - prepare for a colour explosion!

Dear readers, I finally finished writing my Dancing Stars pattern instructions. It took a while! Let's just say it was worth the wait!

Buy this pattern at Craftsy!

Yes, there was snow on the ground when I took pictures. 

This quilt is too large for my clothesline - I need a different quilt hanging solution!

The full quilt outline. This would be really fun in blues and greens too, instead of the pinks and oranges.

I'm now at a bit of a standstill - my pattern testers are otherwise occupied - my cousin is hand-quilting Birds of Paradise, my mom is vacationing in India, and my aunt is making someone a table-runner.

However, I do have a baby-shower to go to, and I thought of an awesome pattern, inspired by a Moroccan tile. So maybe, I should work at that...

Well hello, new quilt pattern!

Buy this pattern at Craftsy!

Ok, you thought you were going to see Phoenix Flight, no? A bit of a wrinkle - a conversation with my aunt suggested a few problems with the pattern, which I need to resolve before it goes out. Hence, a bit of a detour.

Luckily for me, my uber-awesome cousin Priya stepped in (quite princess-like!), and sent me many photos of a quilt pattern she'd been testing for me. Birds of Paradise is made with a 13" block, very scrap-friendly and fat-quarter friendly, and makes up pretty quickly. She made a lap quilt size version. (My mom's working on her bed-size version even as we speak!)

And so, Birds of Paradise is up for sale, instead of Phoenix Flight. The best laid plans of mice and men...

 There's a couple of images of alternate colourways on the Craftsy listing, if you are having trouble imagining it in a different colourway. (Though, y'all are quilters, it's probably a bit unnecessary.)

As always, comments on the Craftsy listing would be most welcome, and I love comments here on the blog as well!

Now - to find a ruler, and to make a plan to sort out Phoenix Flight...