Saturday, February 5, 2011

Reverse Sewing

Hands up if you remember the IBM Golfball Selectric.  If you don't, it was the typewriter before word processing.  The best thing about it was that you could push a key and it would delete a whole slew of mistaken letters or phrases.  Revolutionary for its time.  Could someone please invent a similar machine for sewing?  It would be better than using the seam unpicker.  Here is the project in question


It is an old project started in a class with Karen Cunningham.  Click on the photo to get a better idea of the pattern.  I still like it a lot and fully intend to finish it.  Karen called her quilt "Buttercup" and surrounded this centre with an applique border.  She has just started her own blog and coincidentally there is a picture of the complete "Buttercup" beautifully made by Lyn Leighton.  Go over and look at Karen's blog.  I am sure there will be many more gorgeous projects to come.

My dilemma is that I never felt like making the applique border.  So instead I have decided to remove the  setting triangles and border and just add approximately 50 more blocks


Then all that will remain is to work out how to finish it off.  So that is my current project.

Yesterday I took some time off from my present day job of skiing down the slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.  Instead, with my older son as navigator, I set off for the town of Golden and the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum.  I was disappointed to discover that I had just missed an exhibition featuring red and green applique quilts.  My luck turned good though when I hit the LQS to discover a 20% off fabric sale.  A quick stop at CK Media to check out their quilt gallery and then I persuaded agreeable son to travel into Denver with me for the SewExpo.

It was a great day.  We covered almost 400km in the snow.  I discovered a HUGE fascination for Batik amongst the locals, almost to the exclusion of other types of fabrics.  Is that the same all over the US with only little pockets of modern and outposts of reproduction fabric?

Well the slopes are calling.

8 comments:

Julie Fukuda said...

Nothing says you can't change the rules. I don't think I've ever taken a pattern and not changed it.
At the last show I noticed a trend to more hand dyed fabrics.The pre-packed fabrics may have been Japanese. I didn't recognize the names on the packs (that is not strange for me) they may have been store names for all I know.

Nifty Quilts said...

This is a lovely quilt. I'm glad you found my blog, because now I've found yours!

Crispy said...

Oooo pretty quilt!! How wonderful that you have such an obliging son :0) Since I live in such a cold climate, I never could understand the need for skiing, snow mobiling and ice fishing LOL.

Crispy

Joan said...

Lovely quilt. I read you were from NSW - and then skiing donw slopes in Colerado - I got confused :) Must be a story to that?

Carrie P. said...

what a great quilt you will be working on. sounds like you are having a great trip.
The local shops where I live in NC have a great variety of fabrics. Only one out of 4 carries a lot of batiks.

kathyr said...

What a wonderful quilt! I followed your link to see the finished quilt, and I too, could skip the applique and just make the pieced section. Keep us updated on your progress, please!
In my neck of the woods, you can find just about anything in our LQS. Batiks are available, but certainly don't rule. I would say reproductions are the most popular. I'm glad you are enjoying the Rockies, been there many times.

Sharon said...

Hope you are enjoying your visit to the USA. The area I live in has 6 shops and only one carries civil war reproductions. None carry a full line of Moda, some here and there, but not whole collections, only one carries any Kaffe but again, limited. So it just depends on the flavor of the shop owner.

Anonymous said...

Love your idea of finishing the quilt much better. By the way If they ever make that machine I would love to own one!