New Quilt Bloggers - Blog Hop

Hurray, it's my turn on the New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop! So a big welcome to anyone stopping by to read as part of that. I'm Sally...

... wife to one (reasonably!) understanding husband, Harry, and Mum to 4 lovely children - Sam, Theo, Venetia and Maria. 

As well as enjoying making things, I love spending time with my children in the beautiful Devon countryside where we're lucky enough to live. Particularly the beaches and rivers near us, as you might guess from the photos!

I've really enjoyed following along with all the previous Hop posts and seeing all the beautiful quilts on show. But I am feeling a bit of a fraud. Largely through reading other Hop posts, I've come to the conclusion that I wouldn't actually call myself a 'Quilt Blogger'! So for my post here, I thought I'd explain all the reasons which make me feel that maybe I don't completely 'fit in'!

1) The actual 'quilting' part of the process is something that I don't usually spend a whole lot of time on - partly because it's not my strong point and I don't enjoy it so much, and frequently because I've run out of time once the top is done! I do, however, love the look of well quilted quilts, so often might try easier options to get this kind of look - like different variations on quilt as you go methods...

Scrappy Quilt

Sunshine Quilt

2) I do love making quilts and there are quite a lot to see in this space. But I think my main love is much more specifically 'patchwork' - I love the creativity of patchwork. Often this might then go into making a quilt, but I'm just as happy if my patchworking makes something very different.

Patchwork Mermaid Skirt

Patchwork Rainbow Mermaid's Tail

Dress from a sari - with a patchwork neck

Rainbow Snails

3) I don't tend to use new fabric too much in my making. New Designer fabric is beautiful, and I am sometimes tempted by gorgeous, new FQs, particularly if I want something very specific...

Morning Has Broken - I used scraps of new batiks for this, although the blackbird is recycled fabric!

... but I much prefer to recycle fabric. Often from clothes, or sheets or blankets. 

Tree Quilt - made almost entirely from recycled fabric.

Mini Patchwork Picture - all from scraps of recycled fabric.

One of my favourite fabrics to work with is wool and I've made quite a few quilts, as well as lots of other bits and pieces, purely from recycled wools. I also tend to use thrifted, old wool blankets as the wadding in my quilt sandwich. 

Wool Applique Quilt

Wool Baby Quilt

Wool Farm Play Mat

I love creating something new and beautiful from something old and unwanted. As well as appealing to my green principles, reused and thrifted fabrics are also much cheaper and I find it helps me to be more creative. Rather than working with uniform FQs, I find myself working with all sorts of shapes and sizes - often very large pieces of sheets/blankets so there are no worries about calculating how much fabric I need, and often odd shapes, sometimes with pockets or other features that I can try and incorporate into my work. I think it definitely inspires and encourages a free and easy quilt making style!

4) Which brings me on to my next point - 'wonky' patchwork! Most of the time I'm really not hung up too much on accurate cutting and piecing! Often the kind of quilts I like to create don't require too much accuracy. But even when they do .....  it doesn't always happen!

Bird Quilt

This bird quilt is one of my favourites, I loved making all the birds...

 

But my corners don't match up and that really doesn't bother me.

5) And lastly, I love making all sorts of other things just as much...

Gnome House and Gnomes

Mouse in a Tea Cup Brooch

Russian Dolls

Wool Pumpkin with Mouse Hole!

In fact maybe this space is best described as a patchwork of all kinds of making rather than a 'quilt blog', so I hope you'll forgive me joining in with the Hop!

And to finish - quilting and blogging tips. I don't really feel qualified to give quilting tips, so maybe more of a request -  give recycled fabrics a go, you might be surprised by what you can create. And blogging tip, aaaghh, again totally unqualified! But when I'm reading other blogs, two of my pet dislikes are:

1. Having to jump through word verification hoops to leave a comment (you can change this in your 'settings')
2. 'Links' opening in the same window - so I 'lose' the page I was actually on (just tick the 'open this link in a new window' box when you create a link). 

They're only personal dislikes though. And a personal 'like', something that makes me want to follow a blog, is when I start to be interested in and care about the writer, their story, their life, their family, their ups and downs. This could be purely through the content of their blog or through comments and replies left between blogs. There are too many incredibly talented quilters out there, who have blogs, to be able to read them all; so beautiful quilts alone aren't generally enough to convince me to follow a blog, I need to feel some deeper kind of connection.

And to leave you all with a question - which, if any, non quilt bloggers do you enjoy reading and following?

Be sure to check out the other blogs (listed below) on this last day of the hop - a great chance to get to know them a little as well as see their beautiful quilts! Thank you.

Sally

 colorgirlquilts.com

 Sew Giving

 Quilting Rainbows 

 Jehnny And The Boys

 Jack's Room

 Sunshine Through The Rain

 A Quarter Inch From The Edge

 Where Jane Creates

 Granny Maud's Girl