Something Old, Something Blue

Not quite all of the saying but I don't have anything New at the moment. That will be next week and you'll have to wait. There is no Borrowed either, I can't remember the last time I borrowed.
Instead a couple of Oldies and both Blue, made about 2004. The first is a Blackbird design.

and a photo to show the quilting. The feather continues around the whole scalloped border.

The next quilt is called Love in the Mist

and a picture of the quilting. It was done with a variegated  blue thread and an overall pattern in the centre.

They are from my early quilting days with not a single piece of applique to be seen. How times change.

Decisions!

When one of my friends returned from London and the V & A quilt show she gave me this postcard of the Sundial Quilt. It has been sitting on view in my craft room ever since. I just love the colours that were used to make it and all the small designs.

Then last December I was given a V & A calendar and February was a close up picture of the Sundial quilt's centre.

 I have joined Karen Cunninham's Correspondence class online and the pattern I have chosen of hers is her Sampler quilt  which is similar to the Sundial quilt.  

I have been trying to decide on fabrics and colours and I've also changed the centre piece. Karen's is made  in a Dresden plate design of hearts. I'm not very fond of hearts. Below is what I've decided on. Pinks, turquoise/teal, cream and chocolate. I also love the block that has the initials and date and I have been working on them this week.

The brown floral in the 4 corners is a really nice fabric but I only had a Fat1/4 of it. How lucky am I, not only to have remembered where I bought it , but they still had plenty in stock, for me to buy more, a lot more. 

I am still working on my Trailing Vine and I have finished the first strip.This is a photo of Megan holding it up at Castlemaine on Saturday. It is a great project for taking out and about although I heard a few murmurs and groans.

A Wonderful Day at Castlemaine

Yesterday morning up early, very early for me. I'm not a morning person. No springing out of bed done here. Linda drove us up to Castlemaine with a stop at Woodend for a coffee. The Applique Society meeting had the lady from Aurifil threads to give a talk and we learned so much about weights and thicknesses of sewing threads including the Lana, wool thread on a reel which I use for hand and machine sewing of felted wool applique. On a large piece of wool applique using it on the sewing machine with a large eye needle and the tension turned down, the Lana thread makes a wonderful blanket stitch around the edge of the piece without biting into and flattening the edge of the wool. On smaller pieces I use it to whipstitch by hand.
The Show and Tell was wonderful. I showed my Aunty Green quilt, the one in my header. There are several people making it and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them in different colourways. Here are a few photos of what I saw.

The first is the Dancing Dollies quilt.

2nd was this small Clamshell quilt.

A version of the Ann Daggs quilt.

This is the centre of a large quilt which really caught my eye.

A small section of another large quilt. I took this photo to show the quilting.

A quilt centre in the making.

All the pieces shown were wonderful.

Keeping up to date

Back at the beginning of November I showed you my blocks from the Canton Village blog's BOM but I haven't shown you the ones I have made since. Here is a picture of the first 5months. The blocks are chosen each month by a different designer but they are all made, using the same 5 fabrics.I decided to use a Layer Cake of Rounneries fabric that I had. It has cream,beige, red and dark pink fabrics and I added a green. I have 5 colours instead of 5 fabrics. 

There is a BOM button on the left side that will take you to the BOM blog page. 

HOT!

Today has been very Hot. I took a photo of our outdoor thermometer 20mins ago and it was on the 100F /+38C. but it turned out too dark to see. Since then the cloud has come over and it has  dropped to 94F/ 34C.  There is a storm due tonight and rain tomorrow. The garden is as dry as a bone.                               

I don't have much to show for a week of stitching. These leaves are taking longer to sew on than I expected.

 

This is an old Thimbleberries quilt I paper pieced many years ago and I 

got it out and put it over the back of the couch. It is nice and bright and summery.

Borders

I have finished sewing the scallops and the borders have been attached. It is bright and fresh and so very scrappy. I used the English Paper Pieceing method and I can now say been there, done that and I won't be in a hurry to return. For me there are better ways to piece. The pattern was well written with clear instruction on how to make each shape and complete the quilt.

This is the start of something new. I have had the Trailing Vines button on my blog for a while now and I have finally made a start. This will be a long time project as this is just the first strip of eleven and the first two branches of 7 on each strip which is 80" long. You can download the pattern for this quilt from the Quiltsalott blog. Janet is drawing up the pattern for it.

The original quilt was made in lighter green vines and pink and lemon leaves. I

have a reason for making mine in these colour which I will talk about later.

I have found it is the perfect project to have while I watch the Australian Open.

More Little Quilts

Not long ago I won a bundle of Sarah Fielke's new fabric St Ives and decided I would make the Made in Cherry quilt. You'll find it on her blog on 6/12/11. The quilt is being made as a sew along on Pins and Bobbins blog in either 60" or 90" size. I didn't want a large quilt so I made mine 20" X 20". It has just to be quilted with the batting and backing it's ready to go.

The next little quilt is from Quilts by Cheri blog. Almost as she designed it. I'm still considering whither I will add the label or not, I like it as it is.

A Little Quilt

I made the 12 Days of Christmas quilt from the Temecula Quilt Co blog . I copied the instructions each day and finished it yesterday.

There are lots of little quilts on offer from shop and personal blogs just now.

Quilts by Cheri 's blog has one going just now in pink and red and Temecula quilt Co has another on offer as a kit but looks simple enough to make out of one's scraps. These are so nice to make after  working on a big quilt.

2012

Happy New Year to you All.  May 2012 be  Safe, Healthy, Happy and include enough hours for all the sewing you want to do.

I was out celebrating the New Year with friends and fell into bed just before 2am. so a catnap this afternoon didn't go amiss. I did a little bit of preparation for the borders of my Antique Sampler but it was 35C and way too hot to do much. Tomorrow is expected to be 40C. so even less will be accomplished.

Between Christmas and the New Year I got all the blocks in place and sewn together.

The trees in the 4 large blocks are my choice and the design for the middle block I borrowed from another quilt pattern I bought last year and haven't made so far.

New

Christmas is over for another year so it is time for a different quilt in the header. As it's almost the New Year, I thought my new quilt would suit the occasion.

We spent Christmas with my DIL's family and had a lovely meal and great company. Melbourne suffered a tremendous storm in the afternoon with golf ball size hailstones and my car is peppered with dents. Others had windows smashed and homes flooded so I got off lightly.

Wishing all who visit my blog a Happy, Healthy and Safe New Year.

The Day before

Wishing you all a Very Merry Christmas.

I was lucky enough to win some of Sarah Fielke  St Ives fabric. It is certainly bright and bit out of my comfort zone but I'm thinking of making a quilt she has on her blog called 'made in cherry' with some yellow and green fabrics added. The pattern is available from here as a quilt along. I want to make mine much smaller, so we'll see what happens.

 

Preparation Day

but first I want to show you the quilt I have made for my Grand daughters. The first one is for Abbie.

and the 2nd one is for Grace.

Abbie's has still to be washed but with Grace's quilt having so much red in it I used the Color Catcher sheets when I washed it and they worked wonderfully. They were red when I removed them from the washing but I had no colour bleed on the quilt. I'm going to give a packet of them to her Mum for future washings.

 I am still working on my Antique Sampler. I'm about half way through sewing the middles of the small squares. Today I picked fabrics for the rest of them. They were all over my sewing table, ironing board and floor. Now I just have to prepare them for paper piecing and sewing.

I had the finished ones out to, so that I didn't repeat the same centre with the matching outer fabric. I could really do with a nice big bench to lay everything out.

Binding - A Very Pleasant Job.

Sewing on a binding means a finished quilt. I like to see my quilts all ready to hang or use. This one was so different. I had the pattern from an old AP&Q magazine for the centre rectangle and although I could see a picture of the entire quilt in the Fabrics of Society book by Annette Gero, I had to make up the pattern for the border if I wanted one on my quilt. I don't usually use bright fabrics but Purples just seemed to appear in the fabric shops all at once and when I saw the Colonial ll fabric range I knew I had to use them. I am delighted with how it looks and may go bright more often.

Today was a lunch and Kris Kringle with the Ruby Tuesday sewing ladies. We had decided beforehand what everyone would bring for lunch and had it at the patchwork shop, Needles & Pins, where we sew. We each brought a wrapped present and took a number. This is what I received. I love it.

and under the cosy

Isn't it beautiful and nobody knew I have a collection of teapots. One day I may even show you some.

Once a Year

Once a year the decorations come out and I get a chance to look at things I have made in years past. This little Christmas quilt I made last year just before Christmas and I had forgotten all about it so it was lovely to hang it up. I must try and get a hanging sleeve/tags on it this year before it gets packed away.

This one is a bit older, made when I went through my silk ribbon stage.The reindeer  and the tree are stitched with wool on a silk background.

This one has embroidery for the outlines, beard, ruff and stars and the rest is painted.

Christmas tree door hanger. This is Japanese pattern and is made from the bottom up so no seams show. It was fiddlely to make but worth the effort.

We are having some wonderful weather just now. Today was 31C. Sunny, bright blue skies does that mean Summer has arrived. I hope so.

December

It's time for the Christmas quilt to come out, hence the new header.


I've also been sewing with felted wool for a Swap.

English Paper Piecing

The Paper Piecing for the 4 larger blocks with this design are now finished. I changed the fabrics around quite a bit before I appliqued them to the background. Some fabrics work so much better than others when it comes to fussy cutting them.
The next 4 blocks have applique.

I've also started on my Antique Prairie Rose quilt. I finally found a green I liked.

It is Moda's Bella Solid - Fig Green and after a couple of days cutting  all the pieces out I have the 1st block ready to sew.  The yellow pieces in the three top flowers are reverse applique so they will finish with a lot less red showing. It measures 28" X 29". 

Progress

I've made a lot of progress on my Antique Sampler. The 9 large blocks have been reversed appliqued and I'm onto making the centres for them.

The 3rd one I'm working on.

These are the 64 small blocks waiting now for centres too. I made 2 of each fabric so the quilt will have every colour in it.

The fabric removed from the centres is used for the 'pennies' that are on the outer border. I got them cut and put the paper behind a few.  A good job to be doing when there's something I want to watch on the TV.

I had kept an old magazine with the page marked of this block made with this background fabric and knowing I had some thought I would make it one day. In the magazine it had been framed. I made the block up a while ago and using my fabric glue stick had stuck it up on the door of my cupboard in the sewing room to be able to see it while I thought what I was going to do with it.

Here is the result. I used every last scrap of the fabric I had and the handles have numerous seams to make them long enough.

ps. I won't tell you how many bags I have in every shape size and colour.

A Wonderful Day out

Today was the Castlemaine Applique Society's quarterly meeting and the show of quilts was magnificent. Here are a few of them.

A Sarah Morrel quilt

Megan's quilt was made with Dutch Chintz fabrics.

This was made with tiny bow tie blocks.

The English Basket quilt

Scrappy Clam Shells

Bev's Red & White quilt

We ate, we talked, we sewed, and I won one of the raffle prizes. Barb Adams and Alma Allen's book,  A Schoolgirl's Work. It has photographs and the history of Samplers from the Spencer Museum of Art and also contains projects to make that have been inspired by the samplers. The samplers were made in the 1700 - 1800's and I look forward to spending time reading all about them.