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 appliqued the centre of two of the fans and have two more plus the centre to finish. I hope I will finish in time for One Monthly Goal for October.
The lefthand semicircle looks almost black but all the background pieces are shades of purple.
I would get on faster if I didn’t get sidetracked by other projects, both quilting and drawing
More hexie lozenges
Not sure about the blue one, it looks a bit dull, maybe it will improve with the third round of hexagons
A coyote jaw bone for a free course run by Newcastle University, Australia in natural history illustration
Now to check out the rest of the projects for Slow Sunday Stitching on Kathy’s Quilts
It has been a long week at work as I have been covering for the manager and there has been a lot to do, add to that, the absence of a couple of volunteers and I am exhausted. However there has still been time for a little sewing, on three projects no less; the RSC16, Fanfare and another star flower for grandmother’s flower garden. sometimes it is better to relax by ‘doing’ not just ‘sitting’
Looking a bit wonky on the inside of the fanfare block but now it’s time to stitch the centre and cover it up!
I wonder how busy everyone has been over at Kathy’s Quilts? Time to pop over and have a look
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?
My first fan – not on the blog but for ‘Fanfare’ in Quilting From Little Things by Sarah Fielke. This is a weekend of firsts as I also completed the first row for the RSC15 challenge too.
Now I only have 15 more to go. They are 6″ unfinished and I will add a few plain squares for a different configuration to the one in the book. Sarah encourages you to experiment so I did.
The background is lighter than the photograph and I will use more than one shade of purple and perhaps mix them up so the inner circle – to cover the inner raw edges – is different to the main square. All of the ‘fans’ are different colours pulled from my scrap bag. I have been using my scraps a lot lately but they don’t seem to be going down much!
I am trying to finish off all the UFOs that are languishing in bags or boxes and this little dolly is one of them. Instead of making the dolly quilt ‘Peaks and Troughs’ I decided to make a section of the larger quilt that is paired with it – ‘Stars in Your Eyes’
The purpose of both quilts is to teach you how to do ‘L’ and ‘Y’ seams and I should have read the beginning of the chapter where it says ‘L’s are easier then ‘Y’s but I was entranced by the lovely stars on the full size quilt so bypassed the dolly to make a star – intending that it could become a cushion cover. The first lot of photos are over two years old which tells you something.
The first part was easy enough – strip piece five fabrics, fold in half and cut out triangles with the widest part of the triangle ruler on the fold line. When opened out you have diamond shapes to play around with, which I did
The next part involved making a diamond-shaped template for the inset piecing, cutting the fabric and then attaching using Y seams and that is where it started going wrong. I found it in a bag with only one piece set in, rather badly, and a second piece attached by one seam and the inner corner slightly chewed…..It was obvious why I had set it to one side for so long.
Still I had to finish it and it wasn’t so bad this time round. It definitely helped having a better machine and after one false start it was done. No great dramas; the key was ignoring the dots that marked a quarter inch seam and feeling where it was and then marking it. Also I left the needle down the whole time when repositioning the fabric contrary to Sarah’s instructions
On reflection it was on the large side for a cushion cover once squared off so I bound it as it is. A certain furry someone certainly appreciates it!
Now, where are those little fans for ‘Fanfare’ hiding…..
I thought drawing the spiral on the fabric in pen could go horribly wrong – even if it does have 2 sides! An easier and less fraught way is to iron it into place and reposition as needed. After that I put it on the glass table top and tacked it on with very large stitches; simple.
The second difficulty I had was doing the needle turn applique partly because the fabric glue I bought was useless so I used a quilting pin to hold the leaves in place. This didn’t really work as it didn’t hold it flat enough to the fabric. The ends of the leaves, I found particularly fiddly and I did not want to use the freezer paper method. The precision of this method doesn’t go with the naïve style of this quilt.
In the end I tacked the edges under and once the end of the leaf was attached to the spiral there was no need to glue it in place, I just held it with my thumb which allowed for some manoeuvring if need be. In the end I made too many leaves but I squeezed them on anyway!
When it came to quilting, I had lots of embroidery thread but only a couple of spools of perle cotton. I am following Sarah on Facebook so I emailed her to ask if embroidery thread was ok. She kindly replied the same day and said that the stranded embroidery thread would split and to stick with perle. An order on EBay sorted that out.
I enjoyed the handwork for this project and remembered how much I used to like embroidery – I got grade A for ‘O’ level embroidery – don’t know anyone else who has it. Most people don’t know it exists!
This is a very enjoyable project for hand sewers just right for Slow Sunday Stitching, but not if you love your machine.
And the title? Originally this was on a page but I tidied up the page to change this to a link
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