Tuesday 31 January 2012

I have been waiting for February for months, and it is NEARLY here!!!

I can't believe how excited I am today, February Is my month in the Brit Bee and I have been planning and scheming to come up with a little something to give my girls a bit of a challenge, so I present to you the portrait art quilt!



I would like to get back a series of blocks that represent each fabulous lady in her own style and I am so looking forward to seeing what this talented bunch come up with!

Happy February everyone, I hope my hive is still talking to me in March!

J x

Saturday 28 January 2012

Loggy Blocks

I have waited nearly a week to write this post, but as they are now quite literally in the post it must be time. This month's block in the Brit Bee was some log cabins for Judith who asked us to put a scrap of our own in the centre. I was sent a lovely collection of baby pinks with a dash of red which went perfectly with the scraps I had left over from Felicity's Nine Patch and as usual it was great to try out a new block pattern.

The first one was just me playing about with my favourite fabrics from the package she sent.



and for the second I followed Quilt Dad's tutorial for a Wonky Log Cabin as I intended to do a block with a bit more detail and was hoping to hide and 'inconsistencies' *wink*



And the best bit of completing my January blocks for Judith... Februrary is my turn!!! Woohoo!!!


J x




Thursday 19 January 2012

Block Conundrum

Ooooh, I HAVE been away a while! I have done practially no sewing at all since New Year (unless you imclude fixing the hanging hook on my coat!) but I have had great intentions to start on my next quilt.

Last night I found the pattern I had saved for my Curio quilt and was ready to start slicing fabric, but I'm just not keen on it any more. After much research, I decided that Curio looks best in really detailed quilts and I found one that I think I will end up copying, but I am not quite sure how to do it.

My inspiration is here at Bellet Blog and the following picture is her own quilt.


I love the concentric circle spiderweb with a string pieced diamond shape between. It looks like a mixture between a Spiderweb and a Rocky Road to Kansas quilt. But the bit I can't figure out is how to draw the pattern pieces.

I have been researching Spiderweb blocks and the best I have found is at A La Mode which was sent to me by Kris, but the problem I have is that at this step;

(photograph from A La Mode's tutorial)

I need to split it into 3 seperate blocks (the left and right hand triangles would form segments of 2 spiderwebs and the central kite would be a quarter of a rocky road) so that I can make strings for each segment.

but what do I do about seam allowances? The tutorial has already accounted for seam allowances around the outside of the complete triangle (I presume) so do I just add 1/4inch along each side of the 2 blue lines for each of the pieces?

Advice needed as I think I fried my brain trying to do this last night and I really want to get started!

J x

EDIT: thank you Laura, my package arrived last night and it looks perfect. I can't wait to get started now! X

Tuesday 3 January 2012

Missed Bee Update

Going through a year's worth of photos yesterday, I found some completed Bee blocks that had never been posted.

First off is Miss May's LynneBob Square Pants block from Lily's Quilts, thanks for easing us in gently Trudi!



And I also forgot to post June's Disappearing 9 Patch for Fiona which was a HUGE relief and something that had been on my list for a while :)

Unfortunately my pictures of the blocks are rubbish, but you get the gist, right?!


Do you remember those sunny days that we used to have? I hope we don't have to wait too much longer for them to come back!

J x

Monday 2 January 2012

2011 Year in Review

I thought I would start the year off with a recap of last year, and despite my love of pretty fabrics, I have a greater love of lists and numbers; so I'm going to start with some blog stats.

Total Page Views Each Month in 2011
January        68
Fevruary      173
March          235
April            244
May             84
June             511
July              149
August         253
September    122
October        352
November    341
December     561


Total Views  3093

Top 5 Posts (by page views)
1. Introducing Hans, 4th January 2011                  293 views
2. Christmas is in the Air, 19th December 2011    104 views
3. Subway Art, 17th April 2011                             79 views
4. Winter Stitching List, 20th October 2011           58 views
5. It's On the Way, 7th August 2011                      53 views

The top spot here was not much of a surprise, as a large portion of my page views every day are for this post, I had no idea how much this would spawn, but I guess people like owls! I am so amazed by the second result though, I cannot believe that in less than 2 weeks any post would accrue enough hits to make this list- this is a great advert for linky parties, as I am pretty sure I posted this on Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday and PS I Quilt.

I couldn't even remember what was "on the way" (if you can't be bothered clicking the link, it is Quiltography for iPad) and I am happy to say that it is STILL on the way and will most likely be finished sometime this year ;)

Top 3 Referring Sites

1. judith-ragstobags         537

Awwww, thank you Judith, you have single handedly provided the traffic for a sixth of my page views!!!!

2. ashbyfamilyblog          276
3. google                         123

AND I have had a total of 16 hits from people searching "justalittlestitch.blogspot.com" that's sooooo awesome!


Happy New Year!