A Finish and a Start!

F finished her little quilt (approx. 12" x 9") yesterday. Thriftily made from scraps from fabric from a skirt that she made earlier in the year, and some gifted stash. Once it had the wadding in the middle she couldn't put it through her machine, so she used my Bernina. By standing up she can manage pretty well, with occasional instructions from me (generally reminding her to put the presser foot down after turning a corner).

G is still piecing a small quilt with squares and rectangles - very much a WIP!

I have started (at last!) sewing down the fusible flowers on my flower tree quilt. It's been waiting for me for a long time, it seems. Not sure how long it's going to take, but ideally I'll get them all sewn down this week and then start on the rest of the quilting on it.

Stay at Home Round Robin

I've added the third block to my stay at home (SAH) round robin.....but I'm starting to wonder if sticking to 'the rules' and have precise cuts around each of my blocks is the right thing. Each block is free pieced, so not much in the way of parallel lines and matching corners, but then I've trimmed each block to the appropriate size after that, rather than leaving the edges wavy and then seeing what needed to happen next, and I'm not sure that it has been the best approach.

I've got three options: scrap it and start again, try and be a bit freer from now on, or carry on with the 'proper' measurements. I'll have to try and decide before the start of next month, but I'm leaning towards the middle approach at the moment.

In the meantime I've used the scraps from the rectangle to make a 'feature strip', which at about 22" long is enough to make into three fabric postcards and an ATC. Nice to use up these scraps like this, and especially nice as Nephew No. 2 can have a fabric birthday card on Monday so long as I finish it tomorrow and the postal service plays the game properly!

New Year? New Technique

Fired up by the start of the new school year I decided that it was time to take on a block that I've admired for years, but never understood how to construct before. Armed with Lynne Edwards' book 'Cathedral Window Quilts' I've now constructed my first two blocks - and followed her advice about turning them into a pincushion. The photos show the project half completed - you then sew the blocks together along the short sides in order to make the second place for a 'window'.

I love how they look. I quite enjoyed making them, but they do seem to take an extraordinary amount of fabric. This pincushion, roughly 4" square, took 2 x 8.5" squares (the green print) and 2 x 3.5" squares (the purple print). I'll certainly consider making more in the future, but I'm never going to tackle a large project with them!

What about you? Are you fired up by the cooler autumn weather or the new academic year? Are you tempted to try new techniques and take on bold projects?

The Kew Horticultural Show

The show, held on Saturday, was lovely. Old fashioned 'village' show, with fierce competition over the dahlias, marrows. and so on. We like to enter a few categories, not for the glory so much as the joining in and spending a day with family who live in Kew.

I won a 2nd place for an applique cushion, but Pally won a brilliant 4th place for her cushion that she'd made using some of my stash (see this post). Aged 11 she was thrilled to beat some 'grown-ups' in the category.

My little stars did well. G won two well deserved second places and a commended, and F won first, second and fourth places - so they received noteworthy places in every category that they entered. F also won something a bit special - the Pat Thomas Cup for Children's Photography. At five years old she is the youngest ever winner, and we are very proud of her. It was worth the three minutes of letting her pull us into the right pose and the two shots that she took (the category theme was 'Family'). F has generously said that G can share the cup, as she was in the photo......

I should also say that Simon won a third place for his grapes, that I won a third place for my lemon curd, and that I had a block from my quilt group Round Robin earlier in the year included in another crafting category second place.

It's fun, and if you have a show in your local village or town then take my advice and join in - it's makes a great day!

Go! Giveaway

Just a quick post to share the info that there is a chance to win a Go! cutter on Jackie's blog here.
Not that I know why I should tell you about it - after all, if you enter it will cut down my chances of winning.....!

I Warned you....

.....that there would be more little woven quilts!

I really like Fragments III (the second photo) - completely lifted by the lovely hand-dyed silk that I bought from Neredah McCarthy (how I wish that she had a web-site or an on-line shop, but I can't find one!). The colours are a little washed out in the photo, but they really are lovely. I also confess to having to use the back of two of the fabrics - my stash isn't renowned for gentle or subtle colours.

I really don't like Fragments II (the first photo), however. I tried cutting fabrics with a rotary cutter, and thought that bright batik against the dark one would look lovely - I was wrong. I added sequins and beads in the centre of the dark squares. That hasn't really helped. More stitching might help but I'm not the person who is going to bring this to life. If anyone reading this would like to try and breathe some life into it, please let me know and I'll send it to you.

Proud Aunty!

I took my sewing machine on holiday last week - and one of my wonderful nieces made this using a silk painting from a kit that she'd coloured. She chose wonderful fabrics to complement it (from my FQ stash, which also travelled with me) and then showed great control of the sewing machine to make this 'Quilt as You Go' cushion cover.

I'm so proud of you, Pal!

Not so much sewing.....

......but plenty of time with family in various guises!

Actually, in truth, last week I hardly managed any sewing, but this week I've managed a little sewing but (so far) no photos!

I've been working on some machine applique / piecing - both fairly simple - and later in the week will help one of my nieces to make a quilted cushion cover using a silk painting that she's produced. She's already chosen some stash fabrics for it.

Fragments 1

I'm quite pleased with this little quilt now that it's stitched. It's almost worth zooming in on the photo so that you can see the stitching properly - it's a piece that needs you to be up close and personal with it!

It's called 'Fragments I' and includes five little scraps of my late FIL's shirts. I'd like to get a shadow box to mount it into, but in the meantime I've adhered it to some black card.

I can see me making more of these - once the initial weaving is done it leaves easy hand sewing which I can do whilst the girls are engrossed in their own art and crafts.

Stay at Home Robin Part 2

DH brought my sewing machine back from it's service today - hurrah! I celebrated with a few minutes sewing and made a simple Part 2 for Kate's SAH Robin. Quite simple as she says that we might like room for embellishing later.....

Cloth Base or Thread nest?

After a week with no stitching I was more than ready to tackle some textile again.

I read an article by Jude Hill about making cloth bases for small art quilts by weaving fabric strips. Hers looked gorgeous. Easy, I thought. I'll knock one out whilst the girls are Hama Beading next to me and I'll have something to stitch at tonight....... Hmm. As the above photos show, it's clearly more difficult (for me at least!) to get it right than one might have thought!

This was my third attempt at weaving these strips....and I'm still not sure that I'm happy with it! perhaps after some stitching an clever application of other fabrics it will improve. Otherwise I shall put it to one side and try again - it's just too lovely an idea for it not to work!

Here is one that was inspired by the same article (at least I think it's the same, it's certainly in Quilting Arts Magazine). I think that you can see I have a way to go with mine. Wish me luck!

Fun!

I treated myself to a soldering iron (on the way back from leaving my trusty Bernina for a service). I've had a quick experiment with some fruit netting, skirt netting, ripstop nylon and a plain cotton underneath (all from my stash, of course). Seems funny to be sewing with an old fashioned Featherweight and then trying a modern technique out!

I have a feeling that there will be a lot to learn about how different materials react, so asked my online quilting group - the wonderful BQL - to recommend a book. The consensus was FusingFabric which I've now ordered.

Probably not a technique to do with the girls, though, so I suspect that most experimentation will have to wait until they go back to school.

Re-cycling? Up-cycling?

I keep meaning to find out the definition of 'up-cycling' - as I suspect that changing a pile of used dye catchers and some scraps of wadding into purses for the staff who have looked after my girls so nicely this year is probably up-cycling rather than re-cycling (if up-cycling means producing a ' value added' end result).

Very satisfying to produce these purses, wrap them and pass them on! Simple hand sewing with variegated thread on most of them, machine sewing when I started to run out of time.....

I also made this cushion for G's teacher as she's been SO lovely and helpful with G this year - she's been in Owl's class, hence the stitchery.

That's the school year over.....

I'm on my way!

It took me several hours (and several days to recover!) but I managed to get the 'first fix' on my version of Megs Garden. Not a great photo - linen wrinkles and anything that is 'pegged' to the bookcase using book ends probably won't be shown at it's best - but you get the idea.

Unfortunately my lovely Bernina is making very un-lovely clunking noises and needs to go for a service. So no chance to start the FMQ before the school holidays start as I'm pretty sure that my lovely little Featherweight is just too small for the job!

Fusible Flowers.....

Today is the day that I hope to turn all these envelopes of flowers (which resulted in this pile of flower papers from the backing of the fusible stuff) into a quilt top.

I see a lot of crawling about in my future, trying to position the flowers for correct spacing and colour balance........ and then I see an appointment with the osteopath to deal with the crawling about! Wish me luck!

Start 'em Young

In the interests of encouraging G&F to sew - I bought them a little hand cranked machine a couple of months ago.

Last week I decided that it would be nice to give them their own sewing space (which will save me having to get the machine out and clamp it onto the table every time that they want to use it - a win all round!).

I ordered a desk and chair in the Verbaudet sale, excavated a corner of the craft room, liberated a couple of small plastic crates from the loft, and voila! One crate for fabric, one crate for UFO's, threads and other sewing projects for both hand and machine..... If they turn out not to like sewing it won't be because of a lack of opportunity!

Block Made!

I found time yesterday to make my first block for Kate North's stay-at-home Robin. Not sure yet that I won't change it, as I don't like the brighter of the two whites - it's a bit shouty against the others. Could either get out the fabric pens and alter the colours, or re-make with a different fabric.

I plan to use mostly Batiks for this project, but thought that the black and white fabrics would work with them.

Design is from Quilters Playtime by Dianne Hire.

Preemie Baby Quilts

I've been making a small batch of preemie baby quilts for one of my local hospitals - encouraged by another member of the Richmond and Kew Quilters http://www.richmondandkewquilters.org.uk/.

I've produced a pattern (called Four Patch Pleasure) to make this quick and easy 24" square quilt and will try to add it to my blog page......

Four Patch Pleasure 01

Hello!

I've realised that there are some things that having a blog available would be useful for - primarily linking to other blogs - so I've grabbed a simple template and started typing.

What I should be doing, of course, is creating a 6" block so that I can join Kate North's ( http://www.katesquilting.blogspot.com/ stay-at-home Round Robin......