Just Sew Blossom

June 25, 2012

Moving Houses!

Just thought I'd better pop by and let you know that I've moved my quilting blog home over to Blossom Heart Quilts. We've just recently moved to Japan, and with it, decided to start afresh and commit to making this quilt blogging thing work. I hope to see you all there!

January 25, 2012

Valentines Mug Rug: Candy Love Hearts

Needing to make some goodies for a Valentines Day Swap, I saw this tutorial for a mug rug on Craizee Corners and decided it would be perfect! But I tweaked it a bit so it wasn't so big (and square - therefore easier for this hot and tired mumma!), and so I didn't have to try and find a red that matched the pinks I'd chosen, haha!

I've called it the Candy Love Hearts mug rug... the mix of candy pinks makes me think of those little candy love hearts with messages of sweet nothings printed on them. Awww. This is a great design to show off some geometric-style prints for contrast and fussy-cut squares!

What you will need:
1 - 3 1/2" square of white-based print
2 - 2" x 3 1/2" each of light pink and dark pink
4 - 2" square fussy cut dark pink

Finished size - 6" sqaure.

Sew your pieces together like this - white square to a light pink, the other light pink to a fussy cut square, dark pink to a fussy cut square, and a fussy cut square to each end of the other dark pink...

The usual night time sewing bad lighting!

Then sew together pieces A, B, and C and finger-press the seams open:

Join this to piece D, pressing seams open again.

Damn it!

So, once you quilt and bind (I chose a pale pink and simple stiching in the ditch to show off the geometric prints), it will look something like this:

Here's hoping my Secret Valentine likes it... my second swap ever and I'm a little nervous! I've got one other thing I'm going to try and make to send with it, plus some of the inspiring candy love hearts. Fingers crossed it's received well!

Are you making anything special for Valentines Day?

January 2, 2012

Blogger's Choice Fat Quarter Bundle

Laura at Quokka Quilts has teamed up with the Fat Quarter Shop for an incredible giveaway - to win a Blogger's Choice Fat Quarter Bundle created by YOU! Except it's not just a fat quarter of each, it's a whole half yard of each fabric - 12 prints and 3 solids.

So of course, the problem is choosing which fabrics, where to start, what colours... so I decided to start with Kate Spain (my favourite designer!) and some Terrain. But what colours? What designs? Well, my stash could do with some more orange and purple, so we started with Bloom Seedpod. Then some Stream Aster for something a little less orange. And it just grew from there. I'm a big Moda fan too, but I was brave and ventured outside their ranges to find some gorgeous stuff elsewhere!

I knew that there should be a range of prints within the mix - some big, some medium and some small. Some big and out there designs, and some more simple prints to balance out the mix. As for what colours I went with, there's the obvious orange and purple, but then I picked out the gray in the LouLouThi Fox Trot Stockings to soften the colours up, and added dashes of blue as a coordinating colour to make the orange/purple prints pop and to coordinate with Terrain.