So ready!

This, my friends, is how I am feeling currently...

Photo: courtesy of a Facebook share :)

It was my official due date yesterday. As you can tell, I am still waiting; and I knew that my baby would never want to be in the 5% group who came right on their due dates! I feel big-veery BIG- and tired. Having said that, for the last couple of days, I have a boost of energy; I finished my son's quilt and started an improv project with my scraps which I will share once I make a little progress. But I have to warn you: it might be the beginning of a new "almost never-ending" project like my son's quilt. God, I am so glad I finished it!!
Squaring up the quilt was the biggest challenge. I wore knee pads which I used while putting the timber floor when we moved into this house- and yes I did all four rooms by myself. Maybe my knees didn't hurt but I literally rolled on the floor like a whale on the shore trying to go back to the sea!

Here it is.

 I haven't washed it yet; it is 58.5"x77.5". This is the biggest quilt I have ever made.

I first complained about the colour of the thread choice but once I finished it, I really like its subtle look. It doesn't dominate the quilt and lets the colours in the fabrics shine. I am also very happy with the quilt pattern I chose; straight stitching on the stripy area and logs on the negative space worked very well together. The texture is amazing.

I am so in love with this scrappy binding and glad that I finished all the fat quarters I had to make this quilt!

Once I finished it, I called my son and said "look Kuzey! Mummy finished your quilt!" This was his reaction and I am glad I still had my camera to capture that special moment...

"Look monkey! Mummy finished our quilt!" he said to his talking monkey. Love him to bits!

Hope to give you my baby news in the following days.

Till next time, keep quilting. 

Cheers,

Nurdan

Trying to stitch a few blocks

Hi all,
It has been a while since I posted a quilting related post except for the regular Monday Makers! posts.  Before I move onto updating you on what I have been trying to accomplish for a while, I want to let you know that Monday Makers! is taking a little break until after my baby is born. My subscription to Inlinkz has expired last week too-good timing. I have to say that I will miss seeing your projects. I thank you for your participation and support to Monday Makers! You guys are awesome!!

I am in my last weeks of pregnancy; only four weeks to go now unless my baby decides to stay in there until 42 weeks like my son. I am praying for this not to happen! Daily chores are getting harder and harder to do, sleep is almost impossible; therefore, I am always cranky, feeling tired constantly...you know how it is; but all for a good reason lol.

You will remember the quilt I have been making for my son.

I made some progress on quilting it last week. I went to my quilty friend Monica's place (she is super talented, go check her IG!) to use her Sweet Sixteen to finish it. Well, I couldn't finish it because we kept on chatting, but I made some really good progress.

I just did freehand straight stitching on the stripy area with the same variegated thread, Superior King Tut, and I really like the texture and effect it has created. 

I had already finished quilting the grey negative space on my machine.

I have only this small area left to be quilted, then I will move to the binding business-God knows how long the binding will take!

I also managed to finish my July and August do.Good Stitches bee blocks-I know I am very late- and even started making the September one!

The theme was a super soft tulip for July and a super bright tulip for August with a low volume background.

 August tulip

July tulip

For September, our host wanted flying geese with a grey and orange combination. For this one, I decided to do something different than a normal, big flying geese block and did curved paper pieced geese for the first time. 

This block is 6.5"x6.5''. I am making another one to make it to 12.5"x6.5". So far, I really like it and enjoy making it.

I need some technical help. My photos look fuzzy once I upload them to the post. This has been the case for a while. If anyone has an idea about the reason and has a solution for it, can you please share it with me? I really appreciate it. Thank you!

So my friends, here is a quick update from me. I am going very slow here, with everything. I hope to be able to post again soon but can't promise anything to myself at the moment!

Stay well,

Nurdan

Monday Makers!#34

Hi everyone!
Hope the last week treated you well. Mine was emotionally full of ups and downs but I am still alive!

Last week I started a table runner; a project which could be finished quickly. Well...I did finish piecing it in two days but had to make time to quilt it. I also said that I was going to put some more photos with more details about it but I just couldn't do it. Mondays and Tuesdays are really the only days I can spend on quilting and taking some photos; whether progress shots or photos of a finished project. Now that the winter is almost here and days are quite short, there isn't any daylight left to take outdoor or even indoor project photos. The sun sets around 17:40 and by the time I pick up the family and come home, it is already dark. Anyways.
I finished quilting it just an hour ago and I am hoping to prepare the binding and -if my son sleeps a little early- sew it tonight. By this way I will have plenty of time to take some photos of it tomorrow. I am quite happy with the outcome but I want to share more about it, again, hopefully tomorrow
For now, I will show you a progress photo I took yesterday. It gives you an idea about what it looks like. After some gardening, thanks to rain, I had a chance to spend an hour to quilt it.

All three colours are very nice but I love the yellow especially.

Now it is your turn to share your finished projects from last week and freshly started ones today!

1.Your project can be anything you start on that Monday as long as it makes you move and be active and creative: a new quilt, a knitting project, scrap booking, cross-stitching, baking-we don't mind yummy recipes!, a gardening project, painting your house!, tidying up the pantry!...This is your Monday and you are the maker of the day!

2. Grab the button from the side bar or put a link back to me in your Monday post.

3. Click on "add your link" and just fill in the required areas. 
4. Please link to your specific post, not to your homepage: We would like to find your post easily.

5. To link an Instagram photo, click the Instagram icon at the bottom of the link-up screen and use the URL of your IG feed as the link (for example, my URL is http://instagram.com/hugabitquilts) Please hashtag #MondayMakers!
6. Please take time to visit other links and leave a sweet comment: We love comments!

7. Share the photos of your finished Monday projects in your next link up- I am hoping you will come back again!: Who doesn't love a sweet, finished project or a "before-after" photo?

An InLinkz Link-up

Layers of Charm with Fat Quarter Shop

Hello everyone and happy Monday (again)! :)

Today's blogpost is about a new Shortcut Quilt project of the Fat Quarter Shop. It is called the Layers of Charm. With this post, I will also reveal my Sweet Darling quilt that I made with this pattern by using only solid fabrics.

The Fat Quarter Shop approached me (and other quilt bloggers) and asked if I would be interested in participating in a blog hop to introduce this new project and I happily accepted it.
They sent us the pattern which had instructions for four different size quilts.
To make a Layers of Charm quilt, you will need one layer cake and one charm pack. It is so quick and easy to make that you can whip up a queen size quilt in a day! I chose to make a crib size quilt and it only took me a couple of hours to put together the quilt top.
Now some photos!

You probably noticed that my quilt doesn't have a binding. I took these photos yesterday when the weather was windy but nice enough to take outdoor photos. So glad I did because today it was really miserable; no sun but really strong wind. The quilt has a binding now in that gorgeous blue in the top right square.

For this quilt, I used the colours that I chose from the 2014 New Kona Cotton Solids layer cake and charm pack. The finished size it approximately 38 inches by 38 inches. You can tell I like bright colours!

When I finished the quilt top, I really didn't have an idea about how to quilt it. I looked at several FMQ designs, spent a fair bit of time on Pinterest searching "quilting negative space". I just didn't find the inspiration I needed nor a pattern that made me say "yes, this one". A few days later when having lunch at work, I just picked up the paper and pen and started sketching and came up with this design I used in the quilting. 

There is quite a bit straight stitching here! Because I only used solids, I wanted to make the quilting dense, let it talk and enhance the quilt pattern. I wanted to bring out the squares that are formed in the centre of each block by stitching a four point star and echoing it around. I created the same star in the very centre of the quilt as there is no square pattern there and made some of the straight lines cross over to the others to make a checkered area. By doing so, I created an attention point in the centre as well. I am very happy with how it turned out!

I made a REALLY good decision by choosing a crib size quilt. Straight stitching takes a lot of time, patience and it shows even the smallest, slightest wonkiness in your stitching, which is widely available on this quilt!

If you want to make the Layers of Charm quilt, the Fat Quarter Shop has a tutorial on their Youtube Channel.
I am looking forward to seeing what others made-so exciting!!

Also, I wasn't able to post the Monday Makers!#25 link because of a technical problem-SOLVED. So, if you have any projects that you would like to share with me and others, come join me and link up your new project you start today and/or a finished one from last week. Why not linking up your Layers of Charm quilt ;-)

1. Your project can be anything you start on that Monday as long as it makes you move and be active and creative: a new quilt, a knitting project, scrap booking, cross-stitching, baking-we don't mind yummy recipes!, a gardening project, painting your house!, tidying up the pantry!...This is your Monday and you are the maker of the day!

2. Grab the button from the side bar- DONE!!- or put a link back to me in your Monday post.

3. Click on "add your link" and just fill in the required areas. 
4. Please link to your specific post, not to your homepage: We would like to find your post easily.
5. Please take time to visit other links and leave a sweet comment: We love comments!

6. Share the photos of your finished Monday projects in your next link up- I am hoping you will come back again!: Who doesn't love a sweet, finished project or a "before-after" photo?

An InLinkz Link-up