Eye Candy

Last year in March I went to Melbourne for the Applique show at Castlemaine.   It was a wonderful exhibition and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Afterwards I went to "Threadbear", the local quilt shop owned by Corliss Searcy.  What an experience that was.  In spite of owning more fabric, books and patterns than anyone has a right to, I was bedazzled and bought even more.  In particular, I saw a quilt called "Beamish Scrapbag".  I visited the Beamish Museum in 2010 with my mother and I liked the name so naturally I bought the pattern. 

After 18 months of diving in and out of this project I have finally finished the applique centre.

It is about 26" square and is to be surrounded by multitudes of pieced elongated hexagons and tiny quarter square triangles.

 The other notable purchase was a book.  Publishers are so clever.  The best picture in the book is always on the cover.  Don't you find that?  If I don't like the cover picture I can never find anything appealing inside the cover.  On the other hand, so often the best picture is on the cover and the rest of the book is just disappointing.  That goes for quilt books and others.  My new book is no exception.

It is really just eye candy,  or so I thought until I met Pam at the Sydney quilt show .  She was wearing a beautiful cardigan she had knitted in a similar pattern.  She kindly sent me her pattern and it is on the ever increasing "to-do" list.


One of the reasons it takes so long for me to finish projects is that I am always distracted by other things; many of them patchwork related!  For instance, the 3" stars, that are slowing growing in number.

But don't they look cute?  I know some of you don't start a project until the current one is finished, but regrettably that just isn't me. 

Warning! Warning!

They are contagious and they're highly addictive.  Read on at your own peril.

What I'm talking about is 3" finished stars.

I am hand piecing them.  No background fabric has been chosen for them yet, but it will be the same for all blocks, not scrappy.  There is already a lot going on.  The little motifs fit perfectly under the template and then it's fun to hunt for  a complimentary coloured fabric for the contrast.

Drafting the pattern was slightly tricky.  I used Jinny Beyer's advice and folded a 3" piece of paper to get the right size for the star segments.  At 3", accuracy is mandatory.  Who knows how many will make a nice sized quilt.

I've been preparing a few at a time and sewing them in the evening in front of the telly.

Three more for tonight.  You have been warned.

Every Quilt has a Story

It's true.  No quilt is made without at least some drama.  Here is a story of a quilt I first saw 9 years ago.  I work part time in a patchwork shop and get to see lots of quilts; some from beginning to end, others only at a particular stage.

Renee* first came to the shop with 9 dresden plate blocks she had pieced by hand.  The fabric came from her husband's boxer shorts and the quilt was intended as an anniversary gift for him.  There were 9 blocks to represent the 9 years they had been married.  Being fairly new to patchwork she was unsure of how to proceed.  After a short discussion Renee enthusiastically bought a couple of metres of Kaffe Fassett white with jacaranda spots. 

Today, nine years later,  Renee returned.  I immediately recognized the quilt top.  After so long (including a trip to Fiji) the quilt was slightly faded, but still appealing. 

Renee had recently dug out the quilt top and was determined to finish it.  She came looking for border fabric and we discussed the eventual quilting.  It is still intended as a gift for Graeme*, but he is no longer her husband.  He has left Renee and their twin boys.  I felt sad that the happy quilt is now a symbol of broken lives.  Renee said she wanted to give Graeme something to try to make his life a little happier.  I sincerely hope that life brings lots of happiness for everyone in that family.

* names have been changed.

Never Too Old

Finally I found the binding I had made for my Bonnie Hunter Celtic Solstice months ago.  Admittedly I was distracted and was never going to attach it until after the recent show.  Now it's on.

I'm not lovin' it but I'm also not removing it. 


I have always cut my binding 2.5" wide but just recently I have started cutting them 2.75" wide. 

The reason is that I have always struggled when turning the binding to the back of the quilt to sew down.  I found that the binding had to be pulled and coaxed to cover the stitches used to attach it to the front of the quilt.  Not much fun, especially when we are talking about the usual 360" of a largish sized quilt.

So now, when I attach the slightly wider binding, I also move the needle to the right about 25mm.  

 Excuse me for changing units from imperial to decimal, but I am using a Bernina 440 and I think everything on it is decimal.

  I always use a walking foot to attach the binding and I can line the edge of the quilt up with the edge of the walking foot to achieve a nice binding width.

Another long standing method I have recently changed in attaching the binding relates to the corners of the quilt.  I always stopped 1/4" (or however far from the edge I was sewing) from the corner. Made a little reverse stitch and cut the thread.  Then I turned the quilt, folded the binding up and down again to make the mitre. 

It's so much easier and more likely to be successful if I stop the sewing at 1/4" (or however far from the edge I am sewing) pivot the quilt 45 degrees and sew right to the corner.  Then I cut the thread, turn the quilt and flip the binding round as before.  It always works out nice and neat, front and back.  Not like before when it was a dicey proposition.

Seems like you can teach an old dog new tricks.

A Litany of Errors

Are you still there?
Yes, it has been a long, long time since I last posted.
I've been busy.  It seems that's not a popular statement...but it's true.
My time has been spent hand quilting this:

I call it Delilah's Stare.  My contribution to the recent special Red &White exhibition at the Sydney Quilt Show.  You may have seen it earlier.  I started it in February 2012 and you can see its progress by clicking on the labels on the right of this blog under "red and white quilt".

Progress is the wrong word.  Quilting came to a halt as I was distracted by other quilts.   That happens.  When the NSW quilters guild announced a special red and white exhibition I thought I ought to pull the quilt out and continue my hand quilting.  About forty 5" blocks had already been quilted.   How hard could it be to quilt the other 75 blocks and 4 borders.  So, in the wee hours of February, 2015 I confidently entered my 90 sq" quilt into the exhibition and forgot about it.

At the time, I thought the cut off date for the  exhibition  was July 10th, but I was wrong. In March I learned that it was actually June 10th.  In a matter of seconds, I lost a month's quilting time!  Now my attention was focused on finishing the quilt and avoiding serious embarrassment.

There was a small problem but I thought I could overcome it.  Dear Coco, our incontinent poodle, quite likes keeping me company in my sewing corner.  She often curls up prepared to stay with me for many hours.  Well, you probably know what is coming.  She had laid down on my red and white quilt and there were 2 nasty yellow stains that had been left who knows how long ago.

Being the lazy quilter that I am, I use safety pin basting if possible.  Washing the quilt with safety pins in situ didn't seem like something real quilters would do.  So I removed the safety pins and thread basted my quilt.

Are you still there?  The story behind the quilt is long, but may be salutary for you.  Keep reading...

Then I submerged the quilt in cold water and watched as the red colour ran through the quilt.  Yes, I had pre-washed the red fabric.  But it still ran.  A few colour catchers and a few hours later, the red was safely contained in its correct place.  I couldn't tell if the yellow stains were gone but I just crossed my fingers.

I threw the quilt over the line to dry.  Don't do that.  Now I know better.  The wet weight tends to drag the quilt down and distort it.  Anyway.  Once dry I started back on the quilting.  Every 5" square took about 90 minutes.  The same for both the plain and the churn dash blocks.  I couldn't quilt more than 3 a day before my fingers and eyes gave out.

Then I noticed that I was running very low on needles.  I use Piecemaker size 12 quilting needles.  Only those will do.  And I didn't know where to buy them.  Dear Janet from quiltsalott came to the rescue and sent me a packet she had lying around while I waited for a new supply to travel from California to Sydney.

Are you still there?  I know I am being long winded, but finishing "Delilah's Stare" was a long process.

As I got closer to the border I noticed that on 2 sides the wadding didn't quite reach to the edge.  I honestly don't understand how that happened;  of course I had to patch some wadding before I could quilt there.  Each border took a week to quilt.  After washing and binding the quilt I put the label on at 3pm on Wednesday 10th June.  Just made the deadline.

The show was last week.  It was certainly an achievement to get that quilt hung and I have to thank my family for going without my usual attention while I quilted my fingers to the bone.  I have learned a lot, most importantly: do not enter a quilt into an exhibition unless it is close to finish or finished.

You can view quilts in the exhibition here.

Really Busy

In my recent post I mentioned how an off the cuff comment regarding the busyness of my design made me reassess what I was doing.  To paraphrase Crocodile Dundee (refer to google and Wikipedia if you don't get the reference), "You call that busy?  This is busy."

Of course, you'll recognize my version of Bonnie Hunter's 2014 mystery quilt, Celtic Solstice.  It's back from the longarm quilter.  A close up photo does the quilt more justice

The pattern is busy.  There are 49 blocks.  Half have 32 pieces in them and the others have 42 individual pieces.  And then there is the piecing in the borders.  About 2000 pieces all up.  Don't ask me how many seams, but that is lots and lots of cutting and sewing  (if Bonnie is reading I just want to say I am not whining).  Somehow or other I made more bits than required so I used some on the back

I am very pleased with the outcome, even though my quilt could also be described as busy.

As far as the original "busy" quilt, I am still making more of the 3" hourglass blocks.  The advantage of a design wall is that I can fiddle around with the setting of my blocks before sewing and get a better perspective.  I think this is a better outcome than previously.

It also solves a problem I had at the border. Advice and opinions sought and welcomed.

Finally, I became a primary producer recently with my passionfruit vine reluctantly giving up its precious crop.  Not before I threatened it with being replaced by a more co-operative species.  Still, it was delicious and I expect next year the vine will yield more fruit.

Happy Birthday

A few months ago my sister was looking at my pile of quilts.  It's been a while since I gave her a quilt so I asked her to choose one as a gift.  She couldn't make up her mind between two, but finally she chose Coco's Midnight Garden. 

Then and there I decided to give her the other one for her birthday.

It's a floating four-patch I made some time ago and blogged about here.

To find the post myself I had to trawl back through time.  I knew I'd written about the quilts, but I had trouble locating them.  While I was revisiting old posts I noticed that some of my photos were not like I had originally positioned them.  Some were sideways and some were at the edges of the page.  Many had "faded".   It's official.   Gremlins live inside my laptop!

Anyway and in spite of the internet goblins,  you can see my quilt before it leaves for its new home.  I  labelled it and wrapped it.  Check out the birthday card.

When I saw it, I couldn't resist buying the card.  It is perfect.  All you little sisters out there will identify with me.  Finally, we get to have the last say.

. 

Help

The blocks were all up on the design wall, as you do.

Then my critic walked by and casually offered "It looks a bit busy."

It's not a good picture and I'm sorry about the poor light etc but there is no other picture of the arrangement to show you.  I managed to use a few of the many, many hourglass blocks  I had made previously and was feeling pretty smug.  That was my first mistake.  Smug and design are not a good mix.

Self doubt crept in.  Then I read Audrey's posts.  There are three, all about value in scrap quilts.  I commend you to read them.  Afterwards absorbing her posts,  I felt that I needed to do some tidying up.   It was time to suck it in and remove all but the red/pink hourglass blocks.

Starting to look more controlled but was I losing the scrap nature that I was after?  As well, in spite of having around 400 little hourglasses, there wasn't enough of any one colour range.  It would mean that more of them would have to be sewn.  Not such a delightful concept.

Perhaps adding some more control would improve the quilt.  Still scrappy because lots of different fabrics were used, but not haphazard because some rules were being imposed.

Now the nine patches were all yellow and cream instead of a range of colours.   I'm not sure that scrappy nature of the quilt has been enhanced.

 I do know that the original concept of using up my orphan hourglass blocks has been abandoned.  I find myself sewing lots of nine patch blocks and having to add to an already vast quantity of 3" hourglasses.  My helper meant well...

Before I go I thought I'd show you something I bought just yesterday.

Aren't they cute.  If you aren't able to enlarge the photos they say "A Handmade Gift for You" and "Sewn with Love".   They won't replace labels but I think they will make a nice addition to a couple of quilts that I am giving away.

Out of the Blue

Sometimes you get lucky.  That was what happened recently.  I met a woman who mentioned that her grandmother left her a quilt that her mother had made for her.  That is, she was in possession of a quilt made by her great grandmother.  A little persuasion was all she needed to show off her quilt.


No-one else in the family wanted it.  Really?!!

Imagine the work that went into this beautiful quilt.  Hand quilted.  Heavily.  And well.

And then to see the quilt signed and dated.  I always do that now.  If you don't, you should.  It was wonderful to see evidence on the quilt of when it was made and by whom.

The label was embroidered by hand.

The colours are not accurate.  The red is fairly stable, although there is evidence that the quit has been washed - a small bit of red has crept into the white.  The tan was originally a green but the dye was a "fugitive".

As I said, you can get lucky.

Holy Fabric

No, that isn't Batman's Robin making a statement.  It is the fabric I used to make lots of fussy cut 5/8th" hexagons.

The repeat is less than 14" across and 6" wide so that only 20cm (8") fabric has produced eight different fussy cut flowers.  Yippee.  Much better than some fabric where a hexagon can be cut every 60cm due to the pattern repeat.

 I don't do that.

 Any more.

A 5/8th" hexagon cut from template plastic is useful to try to cut the exact same piece of pattern 6 times.  A permanent marker guides me to place the plastic so a pencil line can be drawn on the reverse of the fabric.  After a while the black lines get confusing so I have to wash them off.

I have discovered that ethyl acetate (nail polish remover without the acetone) does a great job of removing the permanent black marker.  Next problem: how to remove black marker without also removing nail polish!

Since I have a basket full of white gloves, I have been using them.  You could just as easily wear washing up gloves I suppose.

It is hoped that the  fussy cut flowers will appear somewhere in "Hexagonia" .  Yes, It has been in the dark recesses of the quilterie cupboard, but recently it has seen the light of day while I have been travelling.

Ruthlessless

How about this fabric.  I bought it in London.  Some of it is from designer Zandra Rhodes.  Do you remember her from the 60's and 70's?

I've just come back from 2 weeks in England.  At this time of the year the conversation contains references such as "rather damp" and "quite chilly".  Nevertheless I had a great time travelling the length, not quite the breadth of England.  From Berwick-on-Tweed in the north to the Isle of Wight down south.

Not many quilt references sadly.  You can't drag people off to quilt related things and get away with it every time.  So I save my kidnapping for the must-see occasions.

On returning home, though, I caught up with all the lovely blogs and decided that I must do something about the state of my sewing space.  No before photos.  Just too awful.

I always start at the bookshelf.  Very easy to sort and tidy, although the shelves seem to groan under the weight these days.

 Rather than emptying the bookshelf I added to it.  I brought back Kaffe Fassettt's newest book.

 The pictures are great but I rarely make his quilts.  To be totally honest,  the instructions are baffling.  Am I the only one, or does anyone else find reading the instructions like wading in heavy treacle?  After all this time and so many books I am surprised that the editors aren't capable of making the instructions clearer.

 I also came across these two second hand books and bought them for 3 pounds each.  Bargain.

Throwing out books is difficult.  But this time, the plan was to be ruthless and throw out unloved magazines and ugly fabric.  If you look at the blogpost title, it isn't a typo.  I didn't actually do much throwing out at all.  It appears that I brought in more than I put out.  So I figure I was less than ruthless in the end. 

Should Have Known

Were you wondering what happened to all those 3" hourglass blocks I made?  Probably not.  By the time I made over 400 I got bored.

When I came back to them,  I decided to put them together and get some idea of what the quilt might look like.

Luckily.

Because I discovered something that you, no doubt, already knew.  The point at the corners of each block is very bulky.  Eight seams meet there.   Of course I should have known better and made sure that the seams butted together correctly or "nestled".  Needless to say, I wasn't enjoying putting them together.  More than 400 blocks.

Too many to undo and fix.

So the new plan is to incorporate them into another quilt top.  One day.

Still quilting for my deadline.

Questions only, no answers.

When Barbara Brackman first started her weekly block downloads I was encouraged to join in by Janet.   She powered on.  So too did Kate.  I got distracted when I had thirteen blocks under my belt.
Other things called, until the book was published.  Armed with a copy of the book I started again

But I decided to do the quilterie setting.  So instead of approximately 52 blocks, there was an extra 52 courthouse steps blocks and setting triangles.

The top is now basted and on the end of an ever increasing list of quilts to be hand quilted.  I have only hand quilted one sampler - my very first quilt and I thought it would be fun to quilt each individual block differently.  I am not sure how I will do the courthouse steps blocks.  Suggestions welcomed.

Being an Australian, I deleted some of the more overtly American blocks.  That sounds ridiculous considering it is a Civil War sampler but I would imagine that non-Australian quilters would do the same making a pattern that involves emus, kangaroos and other identifiably Australian  motifs.  Is that right? or have I got it completely wrong? 

I avoid fabrics with the American flag, too.  But then I wouldn't use fabric with an Australian flag either.

I caught this little vignette in Hyde Park. 

The dog could actually walk in the shoes but I asked its owner to hold it up so I could get a better shot of it.   I don't know whether to think how lucky it is or call the RSPCA.

An Afternoon's Play

For some reason I hand quilt only at night in front of the television.  So even though I have an almost impossible deadline mentioned in my previous post,  I still can't force myself to sit down and work on the border quilting during the day.  Beside, it has been unseasonably hot and sitting under a quilt during the heat seems like madness.

So that is how I found myself pulling out a very old project.  It started with the left overs from this quilt. 

The fabric is for the most part from the "Charisma" range designed by Chez Moi for Moda. It's so old I can't remember when it was released.  Possibly 2006.

The blocks are 14" square.  I made a couple of them in early 2010 trying to construct blocks from  jelly rolls.  Even though I had yardage, I cut strips 2.5" wide.  

I still had the sashing fabric, a white on white pattern and before I knew it, there were 6 blocks, then 12.

My "Charisma" stash doesn't seem to grow any smaller.  There will be enough to make an interesting border and a reasonable sized quilt.

Only after putting this post together and previewing it did I realize that I put the middle row, bottom blocks together in the wrong places.  It won't take much to rectify that.  Just a couple of seams and a free afternoon.

 I'll leave you with a funny sign I came across this afternoon.

I hope it made you smile too.

A Very Important Date

Not one to do things in a methodical structured fashion, I find myself frantically hand quilting to a deadline.

November 30th, 2014 to be precise.

On a quilt that I've been making since 2004 (possibly).  It's been so long in gestation that I've forgotten when it was conceived.  Only two more borders,  81" and 92".  That's 173" X 6.5" more to go!!
 

You may not be able to see the pattern easily on the picture above.  That is very likely because you cannot see the pattern very easily on the quilt either.  In my earlier quilting days, I was unaware that the complex patterned fabric I chose for the border would obscure the quilting pattern.

It's a double baptist fan pattern.  Not a single, a DOUBLE.  That may explain why it has taken so long to finish the quilt.  But the other, correct reason is that knowing that the very intense quilting wouldn't really be seen produced a quandary.  After having quilted one border the dilemma was:  

do I undo the quilting and start again with a simpler, more expedient pattern?

or

do I just keep going to the bitter end? 

After much hand wringing and just ten years you can see what I decided.  After all that work, I just couldn't undo it, so now I find myself on a deadline.  Which is where you came in.  More later.  Right now,  I'm back to quilting.                                                          

Rip Van Winkle

Well, that was a good break.

No, I haven't packed up my quilting gear and gone home.  I'm still playing.    Here is my version of Bonnie Hunter's 2013 mystery quilt "Celtic Solstice".  Not yet quilted.

 I know I'm not the only one who has gone AWOL.  While I was away I kept an eye on blogworld;  I just didn't feel like socialising much.  But now I do and I hope you'll forgive the long absence and come back and visit me.

Most of my quilting time has been taken up finishing old projects:

My 3" tumbler quilt.  I used my domestic sewing machine to quilt it myself.  Nothing too ambitious, just outline quilting.

The back of my quilt is interesting.  I had a few left over tumblers so I thought I'd use them up instead of just throwing them into a shoebox along with some other orphan blocks.

Lining them up with the tumblers on the front of the quilt proved beyond me.  But I still like the back.


And of course, there have been some starts too.  The quilt below is for my cousin's first grandson, Finlay.  I'll be visiting family in Yorkshire and Northumberland soon.

I am still financially supporting the fabric manufacturers and the shops.  And a few publishing houses as well.