Holiday Sewing

At Last the Wheel of Fortune quilt top is finished. It's not very big but those diamonds were such a pain, I was glad to see the last squares being stitched in.

I had about 20 squares left and a few diamonds and I laid them out and arranged them in a neat little square with the diamonds acting as a border. My no. 2 son, who loves tessellations, asked if he could play with them. He created a fantastic new pattern that I have never seen before. I spent the next day cutting more fabric to complete his idea. Now I will have to be working with diamonds again. I'm not showing his lay out yet. I need to psych myself up to drawing all the seams and pinning them all together. May be a few months away yet.

I also made a square block which I will be sending to Japan to be part of the Tokyo Quilt Festival. It was originally blogged about by Ayumills . The thing I like about this idea is that the block will be joined to other blocks, sent in from around the world. The blocks will be made into quilts which will be shown and then auctioned off with all proceeds going to the tsunami victims. Last show they put together 86 quilts!

What else have I been doing these holidays besides freezing?

I've started a quilt using some of my 30's reproduction fabrics. They have been sitting on the shelf for way too long. I have 19 blocks finished and 11 half done.

I made a couple of pot mitts for a teacher friend who just got married. The teachers all pitched in with money for a big present but I just wanted to add a little something extra for her on a personal level as we team teach our class and I was dying to use some new fabrics I bought.

I added an extra pocket at the back to fit your fingers in to get a better grip but stupidly quilted the mitts vertically whereas had I done it horizontally the mitts would have folded in your hand much more easily. Live and learn.

Diamond quilt is being hand quilted and it is looking beautiful.

Snowball Quilt is stretched.

I guess that is where most of my sewing time has gone. I can't believe I go back to work on Monday. I do have a crochet class to look forward to on Monday night though! Wish me luck.

Signed, Sealed and Hopefully Delivered

I finally finished all the hand quilting on this autumn quilt.

In most of the plain coloured squares I hand quilted outlines of some of the leaves in the fabrics.

I took lots of photos of it because this may be the last time I see it! It's in a postbag, on it's way to Sydney.

So I have signed and sealed the bag and hopefully it will arrive safely soon.

I have never really given away a quilt that has had so much work put into it and I have to say I feel really pleased. I become very attached to all my creations and have always felt like a part of me would be missing if I gave it up yet in this case I am so excited to be sending it off to a family I know will love it as much as I do.

Hand Sewing and some Machine Quilting

It's been a weekend of nothing new.

But also a weekend of working on.

This was the first time I put the binding on a quilt by machine. It was just something I had to try. It looks okay but I think hand binding is so much nicer and for me, it gives me a chance to say good bye to my quilt. I love the final process.

I've been spending every chance I have hand quilting this too. I have decided to give it to my son's girlfriend's family. He has been living with them for the last 5 months in Sydney while he has been studying. They have had to put up with his mess, washing, and for sure, his commandeering of the TV and couch. The have had to watch Aussie rules instead of NRL and I think they are saints. They already had 4 kids and took my boy in without blinking an eye. He took my Marimekko comforter up there and they were saying how they were going to miss snuggling under it while watching TV so I am excited that this quilt will fill the gap. When he comes home in August, this will be finished and in it's place.

I started machine quilting the Bicycle Quilt.

Another round is on the Wheel of Fortune.

I guess it's been a good weekend.

New Skills

I have been a long time admirer of this quilt.

And I have been watching with envy this little baby growing on Cabbage Quilt's Blog

I have little patience for paper piecing but Cathy's quilt was so tantalizing that I kept thinking about it.

On a visit to Amitie,  Judy assured me that if I was very careful and accurate with my templates there was no reason why I shouldn't be able to run this up on a machine.

Here is how it is going.

Not all the joins are perfect and it is still a massive amount of work but it's moving along nicely. I am not sure if I am crazy about the colours. They are just being added from whatever I have in my stash.

Anyway I have learned lots, particularly that where there is a will, there is a way. The friendly unpicker has had a good workout, in fact I think it is blunt and I need a new one.

Waste Not

You know all those corners you waste when you snip off the corners on a snowball?

They make great borders!

Snowball Stress

I've had some Philip Jacobs fabric sitting around for about a year now. I really didn't like it when it arrived and didn't know what to do with it. So yesterday I started cutting it up to make a snowball quilt. I sewed for hours and at the end of it realised how disgusting the colours were that I had chosen. Not the Philip Jacobs but the pink and eggshell blue corners I had sewn around it. It really was awful. All hideously pink and baby blue.

As I slept on it, the family tiptoed around it in disgust. 

Today was unpicking day. Most of the pink and blue had to go. It was replaced with browns, greens and denim blues. 

The unpicking took hours. It was so wasteful but worth it. It's still not my favourite but at least I can look at it!

I hated all the waste from the chopped off corners so I've started sewing them together to add a border.

Echino Bike Quilt

One of the beautiful fabrics my son brought back from Japan was some Echino bike fabric. It is so special, I have been a bit scared to cut  into it. I chose a few fabrics that highlighted the colours of it.

 I cut them into 7.5" squares and made 9 sets of 9 patches.

Cut each 9 patch into quarters,

 rearranged them, and sewed them back together.

It's a bit random but I finished it in an afternoon. I really needed to get something done because last weekend was almost a right off for sewing and I was pining all week.

In between all the grocery shopping last weekend I snuck off to Patchwork on Central . 

"It was on the way home"

They were having a sale.

I had been searching for a backing fabric for my diamond quilt for a few months now and I think I did well.

It's the green one in the middle. $32 a metre reduced to $10 a metre.

Should go well with this:

I bought these too. Not sure what for.

Fabric is getting cheaper to buy in Australia, but I do love a bargain.

Bloggers Quilt Festival

               It's the Blogger's Quilt Festival and here is my entry.

The quilt was originally a kit.  It came with instructions and the most glorious range of fruity fabrics and checks and stripes. 

I didn't know many tricks of the trade so it is full of mistakes. The knots from my hand quilting are still visible because I didn't know how to hide them between the layers and the binding was put on back to front with awful corners. I didn't use perle cotton so the stitching thread is not as soft as it should be but I don't care!

The kit was was given to me for a birthday by my sadly missed sister-in-law Susan, who died  a few years ago. We used to go to all the craft fairs together, did our first quilting classes together, had sewing afternoons, knitted, stitched and shopped together. We both had a total love of textiles. 

Susan bought me this kit from Patchwork on Central's stall at a quilt show. She knew I couldn't afford it and bought it for my birthday. It's very special because it reminds me of our fun together. 

Flu? It won't happen to me!

My Supplies 

"I never take time off work..

No I don't need the flu shot.."

Wrong!

Actually the flu shots were given out on Thursday at school, a week too late for me.

So I've done only a tiny bit of sewing despite being holed up at home for days. I've just been too tired. Panadol is my friend!

Under the influence of my friend's few pain free hours I sewed on the binding of this little Kimono fabric quilt.

I haven't finished all the quilting but it's moving along slowly.

On the bright side, it's just 4 more school days before holidays so if I can just get through the next few days I will have a much better time at home.

New Fabric and Finished Star

This week brought me a new stash of fabric from Contemporary Cloth . I really didn't want to do it but they were having a sale and I loved the colours and before I knew it, I hit the pay button.

Yesterday was the start of the weekend. I just had to get the star quilt moving because I have all this new fabric to think about. Mini star number four was quickly finished. On an impulse, I pulled out some old Kaffe fabric that had been waiting (about 2 years) for just this moment.

All finished. I am quite pleased because I really haven't enjoyed making this quilt. Too much pink and orange and the grey was very somber but I think the purple ikat really helps.

Stars and Stripes

It was a good weekend for the sewing machine. Two more stars have been made.

One more to go! 

It's actually nearly finished but my friend Rivka came over on Sunday with another quilt to make. She had been planning for months to make her brother a quilt but apart from buying the fabric it just never got off the ground. 

We spent a happy Sunday afternoon cutting, ironing and sewing up these stripy squares. I just kept going, even after she went home and used up as much of the fabric as I could. The best bit was that I didn't pin a thing until I put the final squares together. Rivka will have to put a border on it to get the size a bit bigger. It will be sent to the quilter and hopefully I will get to see it again to add the binding. 

Zigzags or Stars?

I bought some Denyse Schmidt fabric and then decided I didn't like it so much. I started making a zigzag quilt and used  grey that just made the colours die. My fault - bad choice.

Anyway the triangles have sat in a box for 4 months.

This weekend they came out. After playing for a little while with all sorts of patterns I decided to make a giant star out of the triangles.

I still don't like the grey but liked the star idea as a new project.

After sewing it up I realised that the giant corners were going to need filling.

Four mini stars are on the way. The squares are just over an inch so the star is so bumpy! I am still not sure what I will fill in the rest of the gant star with but I like the purple shot cotton I used on the little star.

I love Long Weekends

It's the Labour Day Weekend which means three whole days away from work. My first two days were just ordinary days doing the usual stuff but today has been Diamond Day.

I finished making all my diamonds from my Kaffe Fassett class last night. They lay arranged on my "design floor" all night so I could be sure that all the colours were where they were supposed to be. The trouble with doing that is that it is also the main thoroughfare in my house. My family is so used to my mess that everyone just tip toed around the diamonds with out even commenting. How good are they?
So today, day three of my long weekend I finally got to do some serious sewing and finished the quilt top.

I now know why I do not like diamonds. When you sew them together they defy the usual matching up of corners to create beautiful seams meeting. You have to offset them to one side so that they meet later, after ironing. This is a rather hit and miss thing and the first few I did had to be unpicked several times until I got the hang of it.

I have always secretly wished to make a Lone Star Quilt. I think I will do it via the cheat's way of sewing strips together and then cutting them into diamonds.

Cleaning does Pay.

We have a cabinet maker making cupboards in a few rooms of the house. He is a bit like that guy O'Reilly from Fawlty Towers. He is totally unreliable and disorganised and inclined to make mistakes. He has a very strong Irish accent and half the time I don't understand a word he is saying. So a job that should have been finished before Christmas is dragging on and my house is like a jumble sale with cupboards waiting to be filled and rooms piled with mess.
In the meantime my eldest son has moved to Sydney to do a short course at NIDA for 6 months. His room is not part of the cupboard tragedy but it probably was in a worse state than the rest of the house. So with no ability to control the house mess I decided to fumigate his bedroom. Hours of cleaning, washing, throwing out and dusting has been well worth the while and his room is spick and span and looking fabulous.
So what has this got to do with patchwork? Well I found, packed away in a box, an old dress of mine that I bought about 30 years ago. It was from an African Shop in Surfers Paradise. I hardly ever wore it but I couldn't bare to give it away.
It yielded metres of fabric, once it had been pulled apart, and it put my stripy log cabins together very nicely.

So apart from the satisfaction of having one clean room in my house, I also managed to make this almost entirely from recycled clothing and scraps.

PS I am sorry about the quality of my photos lately. I miss my little Sony. It's touring Japan with my middle son and won't be home till March.