It's lovely Huw's birthday this week, and he is officially the hardest person to buy gifts for. He's very closely followed by a couple of people, but there is no doubt he wins the award (although I wouldn't know what to buy him for his prize which would make the whole award thing totally pointless...)
I started worrying thinking about what to get him for his birthday months ago, which is when the idea of The Beast started forming. Huw loves campervans, and a few years ago bought a VW T25 called Sunny and I thought it would be nice, and pretty darn practical, to make him a special Sunny quilt.
I bought the basic pattern for this quilt at Jukebox Quilts; it's called Another Day in Paradise. Remember when I made this quilt for Siblings Together I'd used left over pieces of cotton shirts? Well those shirts were tracked down for this quilt. As I needed so many different fabrics for this and no big pot of money to use I used a lot of re purposed fabrics as well as some favourites from my stash. I love giving fabric a new lease of life, and being made especially for Huw and his vintage van, full of history and memories, this project lends itself perfectly to the cause. I've spent a lot of hours putting this together, and the collection of fabrics can't help but make me smile: some of my favourite vintage fabrics alongside modern polka dots, left over project scraps next to remnants of old dresses, cuttings from garish surf shorts neighbouring vintage bandannas - it's all going on!
All 25 vans are intentionally different, and Sunny takes centre square, driving the opposite way to his friends. 50 buttons are sewn on for hub caps, with each van having their own unique set. This required a LOT of button shopping, which I managed to endure (read 'indulge in'). There are also pieces of ribbon, embroidery and a couple of teeny charms to decorate the vans.
There were a few swear words and a fairly substantial sulk in our house a few nights before the big day, when a red kayak bled colour onto two of the vans whilst being washed. As nothing would shift the dye, I ended up having to take part of the quilt to pieces to replace the ruined fabrics and put it back together again. Once finished me and Alfie headed out to the fields to take some photos. Well technically Alfie busied himself using the quilt as a tent, getting his bottom into most of the photos and getting totally lathered in mud, meaning he ended up in the bath as soon as we'd got home. He looked pretty pleased with himself post bath though!
Anyone who knows me can tell you that while I get overly excited about celebrating other people's birthday I actually hate my own. Having said that, this year my birthday was lovely! The arrival of snow put an end to the planned trip to Horncastle, for a good rummage through the antiques shops for vintage treasures, but instead we went to a local-ish garden centre which has both a lovely restaurant and a big selection of crafty/gifty goodies to peruse. My lovely daughter, cee pea, had splashed out on a new SLR camera for her college course the day before, so brought it with her and spent time testing it out...beautiful huh!?
Pressie wise I was totally spoilt! Among the crafty pressies I received were Sarah Fielke's 'Quilting from little things' book and this amazing London notebook from cee pea...
and one of these amazing tape measure bracelet's and a cross stitch tote bag from my lovely friend Kate. My birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so I took the following Monday off work and spent it at Kate's house, cooing over her craft supplies and planning future projects. We have another craft day planned soon and I can't wait!
All the sewing round here recently has been about quilts, and both the Tula Pink Prince Charming design roll quilt and Bust Yo! Scraps quilts are now finished! 
The Prince Charming quilt is heavily quilted. I never planned it to be when I started, but the quilting pattern sort of just 'happened' as I went along. I love this about it, especially as washing and drying the quilt resulted in it shrinking just enough to wrinkle nicely with the quilting.
I chose a plain cream cotton for the backing, which was actually a double sheet I found in the January sales. I had originally planned to piece a backing, but in the end I just didn't want to take away from the simplicity of the design, and as it happens I really like the way the quilting pattern shows up on the plain back. I pieced the binding from the remains of the jelly roll, and doubled the batting under the backing as I hand sewed it down to make it nice and squidgy.
I'm a little bit in love with this quilt: I love the colours and designs of the Prince Charming fabric, but I do wish I'd made it a little bigger. At 45" x 55" it's a small lap size which is fine for me cos I'm pretty diddy and tend to curl up on the sofa, but the bigger people in the house have put in complaints that it's not long enough!
I'm very proud of the self restraint I had with my Bust Yo! Scraps quilt. I promised myself I would spend no money on this (except for the batting), and despite many wobbles and fabric browsing I stuck to my word. The only cotton I had enough of for the background colour was this slate grey/blue, which I wasn't convinced would look okay but which has ultimately grown on me. I think it balances out the pink in the scraps and is probably much more sensible than using white or cream as I'd initially intended.
After much rummaging through my fabric cupboard I found an old single duvet cover which I used for the backing. As it wasn't wide enough I decided to add a wide border all the way round, which breaks up the business of the patterned middle.
The quilting on this quilt is much simpler than the Prince Charming, a mix of single and triple diagonal lines, and again I used a scrappy pieced, squidgy binding to finish it off. If I'd had more of the blue background fabric I think I'd have given it a plain border, but hey I can live with it.
And so, it would seem, can Alfie who has taken ownership of both quilts at the first opportunity! Well, they were freshly washed and dried for his benefit, right?
