Well nearly. The dolly quilt top from ‘Quilting from Little Things’ by Sarah Fielke has been completed just in time for One Monthly goal, October link up
Bit of a dire photo but it’s quarter past twelve in the morning and it’s time for bed. Don’t foget to click on the link above to see some inspiring work over at Elm Street Quilts!
I have actually finished all the alternate squares and can add them to the star blocks
This isn’t all of the blocks as I have already sewn three rows together so they are not included.
I also had a couple of great buys on EBay. First up, 501 Quilt Blocks is a lovely book with a lot of lovely blocks I hadn’t seen before. Some of the applique blocks are a bit twee and the alphabet letters are distinctly underwhelming but the rest are great. I will spend many hours perusing this book
The second book, American Patchwork and Quilting, has more in the way of patterns and instructions rather than blocks. It gives it’s age away by the use scissors rather than a rotary cutter but it is very informative despite that. There are some inspiring antique quilts that might be the starting point for my next scrap quilt
I will be linking up with So Scrappy with everyone else who has joined in this years rainbow scrap challenge, why not pop over and have a look for yourself – and maybe join in next year!
Two blocks finished, posted, and now residing in the Netherlands with Jeltje Van Essen of 100 Roses quilt Shop. Jeltje is running the European part of the Share Jane Project in conjunction with Kim Caskey of Edmonton, Canada who is in charge of the North American group.
Share Jane is…’an international project to showcase the power of working together, share ideas and enjoy results’ You can find the Facebook page here
I only made two blocks as I was unemployed when I volunteered but then got a job which made me fall asleep nearly every night after work! I’m not used to working – well I am now, but I was running out of time so I posted the ones I completed and returned the extra fabric.
There are 3 quilts to be made; one each for Jeltje and Kim to use as teaching samples and one for Moda’s travelling booth. I wonder which ones my blocks will end up in.
I thought B12 was an easy block but it was more fiddly than I thought it would be, in particular the central piece. The points are not exactly the same but Jeltje was pleased with the star flowers and that is what counts.
I really should start my own Dear Jane now but I am still undecided about the colour let alone the fabric!
Also I only recently realised the Share Jane is a pun of Chere (dear) Jane. Oh dear, I am a bit slow ha ha
After all the terrible events that have been happening around the world in Paris, Beirut and Syria to name a few, I didn’t feel like posting anything about patchwork squares or crotchet as it seemed so trivial. So many lives lost and so many lives altered forever. But then I thought back to a few decades ago when the IRA had ceased bombing mainland Britain for a while so I booked and paid for a theatre trip for a large group of family and friends in London. Then the bombing started again. I thought nobody would want to go and phoned everyone. Not a single person refused to go.
The comments were along the lines of; ‘Hitler never stopped us by bombing ‘ (from someone who survived the Blitz), ‘When your times up, your times up wherever you are’, ‘Nobody is telling me what to do’ ‘Don’t let them win’ and so on. Nearly everyone had worked in London during other bombing campaigns so this was no different.
The moral really is ‘Keep calm and carry on’ (WWII poster). The objective of terrorism is to stop you living a normal life. The French Tricolour is flying at half-mast on our town hall to show solidarity with Paris and in honour of Nick Alexander a resident of Colchester who died in the Bataclan attack. Remember the dead and those affected by these terrible events.
But do not tar everyone with the same brush. Nobody attacked me as a catholic when the IRA killed innocent civilians and nobody should attack Muslims for this atrocity. That is what Daesh want, don’t play into their hands.
To carry on as normal then; swamp angel star completed
A few more alternative blocks and the top will be complete.
The applique fans are also nearly ready – just the inner circles to add once I have decided on the layout. For now I have been playing around with the composition, but might stick to the one in the ‘Quilting From Little Things’
The tumbler quilt top is nearly complete but still waiting for one more block for The Global Quilting Project. Four projects are nearing completion and my thoughts are already turning to the RSC16. What are you working on?
A few more photos from the trip to Lacock Abbey used in the filming of Harry Potter. We were there at Halloween and lots of children were following the Potter Trail and trying out games inspired by the book. The very last room on the tour is actually the entrance but the best is kept til last.
It is one of the strangest rooms I have ever been in and is decorated with terracotta figures of wizards, knights and skeletons. The meaning of them isn’t known but the children are all convinced that one of the sculptures is Dumbledore – for obvious reasons!
The sugar cube was put on the goats nose in 1919 by an American student and as the owner, Matilda Talbot, found it amusing it has been replaced ever since!
I managed to prepare a few fans for applique while I was away and finished them when I got back home. Not many left to do now
Now I am getting a good idea of what it will look like when finished. The sewing machine wasn’t neglected either as I made the penultimate block for the RSC15 sampler quilt AND finished putting all my tumblers into strips ready to put the rows together. I was chuffed to see how the colours are working out together as they were ironed ready for the next stage. They were a mixed bunch of fabrics; some I wasn’t keen on, others that were odd colours put in fat quarter bundles and others that didn’t seem to go with anything else – yet here they are, all together and I love it!
It certainly is a mixed bag colour-wise but some key fabrics, like the blue and orange flowers, and a rainbow stripe (not shown) seem to pull all the others together.
Time to post to Slow Sunday Stitching over at Kathy’s Quilts, why not take a look too and see what everyone else is working on
Four more blocks completed and on the line – not far behind the rest of the group considering I started in August and not January. It was quite breezy but I managed to get a few shots in between gusts
I returned to the Whirling Geese block and used darker blues, as my mid-blue version was a bit too light. I used the inner block from the orange month to do a second mid-blue block too which is a Twirling Four Patch. It’s more like a pinwheel than the block that is called a pinwheel!
I finished the yellows too. Monkey Wrench is in the original list, however, the second paler block should have been Air Castle but I substituted this block whose name escapes me.
As you can see it is another lovely sunny day which is a welcome return after the last few days which have been cold and grey
Next job on the list was chain piecing the squares I had prepared earlier in the week for the alternate blocks
All the indigo, pink, red, yellow and orange are now in little four or two patches. The good thing about all this piecing is the amount of tumblers that were sewn together too. All are at the very least paired up and about half of those are now in fours. It’s surprising how quickly this Leaders and Enders project is going. It may even be finished at the same time as the Rainbow Scrap Challenge! Now all I need to do is keep up with the Quilting From Little Things and they will all be wrapped up by the end of the year – nearly forgot the Global Quilting Project! Just waiting for one more block and then assembly can begin. Perhaps I will have three full-sized quilts for New Year
These two flowers have travelled round a bit – in and out of a zip lock bag getting a bit wrinkled on the way but now they are finished
They are larger than the previously completed flowers; adding the diamonds gives more design possibilities the idea for which came from ‘Quilting on the Go!’ by Jessica Alexandrakis. This is a very good book for people new to EPP (English paper piecing) or if you have experience, full of good ideas and design projects big and small.
I particularly like the leaves. The stripy material is one that I had doubts about when I bought it; was the colour too acidic? But I love it as the leaves because they set the pink off so well
What are you up to this Sunday? Pop over to Kathy’s quilts if you need some inspiration http://www.kathysquilts.blogspot.ca/ and see what everyone else is up to
Do you remember a certain singer who decided that a symbol would represent him instead of a name? Well that’s how I remembered him after twisting the title of one of his songs. Now that’s what I think of this block. I just kept getting it wrong and the final product is wrong, but I like it the way it is. Nothing to do with the instructions, they were fine, but I have a bad habit of making things late at night when I should go to bed. I am tired and I make mistakes, fortunately it’s not brain surgery!
It was supposed to be Carrie Nation but I completely forgot to add a third purple to the small squares which are supposed to run through the middle, so I played around with the arrangement and made this instead. Not so much Carrie Nation as Frustration!
I was multi-tasking and making more than one block so I could chain piece but things went awry, never mind the end result is going in the final quilt anyway!
Another purple block still to be made yet. Watch this space
Catching up with the sawtooth stars, although the alternating blocks are still to be tackled!
We associate pink with girls ( in the West) but it was not always so as this article by Polly Curtis writing for the Guardian, points out;
“Interestingly Goldacre quotes in the same piece newspaper articles from the earlier part of the 20th century in which mothers were encouraged to dress their boys in pink and girls in blue, proof he says that clothing tastes change over time. He writes:
Back in the days when ladies had a home journal (in 1918) the Ladies’ Home Journal wrote: “There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger colour is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”
The Sunday Sentinel in 1914 told American mothers: “If you like the colour note on the little one’s garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention.”
You can find the full article HERE and there are some other interesting points about stereotyping for toy preference.
My mother wasn’t one for sticking to the stereotypes; I almost exclusively wore blue, one of my sisters had a train set and none of us were particularly interested in dolls. My main interest was making them clothes rather than ‘make-believe’ that they were alive.
I think things are actually worse today – Lego is a prime example – once advertised in the 70 and 80s as a toy for children, now it is segregated into ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ sets.
Compare their philosophy and old adverts to the ‘modern’ ones Here A huge step backwards and making 5 year old girls worry about their appearance rather than just playing with toys is a disgrace
I have neglected my ‘Little things’ challenge as I have been concentrating on the RSC15 rainbow quilt. I started late and have a lot of catching up to do but thought late last night that I would try to get back to my original challenge.
Sarah Fielke’s little dolly is in red, white and blue and is reminiscent of a rebel flag, hence the name. I didn’t really want one that looked like a flag but the diamond shaped blocks made me think of a trellis so I decided to do a flowery theme. I used some fabrics that have been languishing in my stash forever – which is usually a sign that you don’t like them that much! Two of them originally formed a border for the Botanical Gardens quilt but I removed it as it looked better without them.
A few people have observed that there is no ugly fabric if you cut it small enough. Tonya Riccuci has written an amusing post about the quilt she is making from donated ‘ugly’ fabrics here After making this mini quilt I am inclined to agree as I love them all together. I liked them so much I made a scrappy little border to finish it off which is not on the original quilt – a border goes with a trellis don’t you think?
To carry on with the scrappy mood, encouraged by Angela’s quilt-a-long, I rooted out a little bag of left-over binding and found a yellow stripy one that was perfect to complete this little project
I must say that I didn’t take enough care with my piecing as it was late and it was intended for the cat! She has a habit of visiting me when I am sewing and sitting on the fabrics I am sorting through so I thought a little quilt for her to put on the desk (so that I will have something nice to look at too) might keep her out of the way. It is on the desk now and she has decided to sit on my knee!
A little label on the back to finish off. I never used to label quilts but I think I will go back and label the others too as it is easy to forget the details
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