Fun at retreat and a finish at last!

I did all the grocery shopping on the Thursday before retreat and then wondered where I was going to put my sewing and clothes for the weekend.  There was certainly no room for Judy's stuff ha ha!  But we managed to squeeze it all in.

This time retreat was at Gisborne and so there were lots of different projects on the go.  

This is Annie's dragonfly.

Judy had cut six panels into triangles and had started to place them into a hexie design on the wall.  It looked interesting...

And turned into this magnificent quilt top!

Barb and I were up to no good on the sofa.  I'm slouched and in my pyjamas but, hey, I was comfortable!

Barb was stitching these hexagons together.  She got quite a few done.

 

This was my view as I stitched the binding down on the back of my camera quilt.  And I also embroidered the label and stitched that on too.

This project is Debbie's Alice's wonderland sampler quilt almost finished.  The walls at retreat are great for displaying quilt projects.

This is one of Rosie's projects.  She spent most of her time embroidering balls on a Christmas quilt.

This is another of Judy's projects which started life as a panel.

Kate was working on these foundation paper pieced circles.  She even started sewing them into the back ground.  It looked very complicated!

Here's one Kate brought with her to take to be quilted at Hummingbird Quilting 

After finishing my camera I worked on my Santa cross stitch.  Debbie read my instructions and told me that the print gets washed away after it's been stitched so that put my mind at rest because I was worried about the printing showing underneath the stitching.  My view was of Gail's Kaffe diamond quilt project.

We had a lovely time and it's a bit sad that we're not going back there until May next year.  Still, a few of us are back to Ballarat next month so that's something to look forward to!

After finishing the camera quilt I had to find some way of removing the sticky residue from the fabric from leaving masking tape on it too long during the heat of summer.  I did a search and all kinds of scary liquids were offered up as a solution but I thought I'd try heat.  I used an appliqué iron  which gave off heat without flattening my quilting and a soft toothbrush.

It worked!

Then I found a hole!  It was a tiny hole that I made bigger while I was investigating it.

I stitched a simple patch on top of it.  All fixed!

And here it is all finished.  The lighting is terrible so it looks a bit dull but it's finished at last woo!

 

Hello and...Goodbye

My son's friend recently had a baby girl so I decided to quilt this lovely panel for her as a gift.  The panel is one of a range of designs called Bed Buds by the Devonstone collection.  Not only are they really cute but they're the perfect size.  All too often panels are thin and you have to add to them to make them decent sizes.

I have three panels and I was going to quilt them all at the same time.  I loaded a king sized sheet on the frame and started with the bunny.  I needed to get it finished quickly so once it was quilted I cut it off the frame hopefully leaving the sheet intact ready to do the others.

I used the sheet for binding too.

And messed up the end join in the binding!

And messed up the end join in the binding!  Oh did I already say that?  Ha ha!  

Third time was the charm.  I've only been sewing bindings for thirty odd years.  You'd think I'd know how to do it by now!

I embroidered the label and turned it into a heart shapes appliqué.

Ta da!  Expertly held by my husband, Jim.

I'm going to retreat this weekend and I'm hoping to finish the camera quilt at long last.  I was about to machine sew the binding onto it when I noticed a section of the quilt I'd missed quilting.  Oops!  So I quilted that on my domestic sewing machine which reminded me why I love my quilting frame!

I then stitched the binding on and prepped the label and I'm all set for retreat.  I'll be taking my new Christmas cross stitch and you never know, I might actually do some of it!

And finally, the goodbye.  

Rest in peace little Minnie.

You’d better watch out

You'd better not pout.  Santa Claus is coming to town!  

I was gifted this cross stitch and I decided to start sewing it whilst watching My Kitchen Rules through the PC because I forgot to record it on TV.

Because the Aida has been printed I don't have to think while sewing this.  I don't have to count stitches or anything so it's very easy and will be the ideal project to take to sit n sews or retreats because I'm less likely to go wrong while I'm drinking socialising!

There was a note on the packaging saying No hoop and I thought that meant that the package didn't include a hoop but after hooping it it left a very prominent hoop mark so that might be why there's No hoop!  I've now attached a border around it and it's in a frame so that should cause less damage.  

Although I am enjoying the ease of the printed fabric you can see the colour through the stitches so I'm a bit concerned about that particularly when I stitch the white beard on top of all that pink and red printing.  Ah well.  It'll either work or it won't. 

I rinsed off the blue markings off the camera quilt and had that sinking feeling when I noticed the water was turning black!  I quickly washed the quilt and then dried it and the colours didn't run.  Phew!  I quite like the way the quilting crinkled after the wash.  I'll be attaching the binding next week ready to finish at retreat.

I finished quilting the camera!

Now I have a gazillion threads to bury! I'm going to WASPS sit n sew on Saturday so that'll be a job for there.  I was wondering whether to put the binding on so I can start hand sewing that to the back while I'm at sit n sew but I suspect those threads will keep me busy all day!

My friend uses a canon camera so, of course, I had to personalise it.

I'm not sure what part of the camera this circle is.  The pattern makes it look like a flash but it isn't.  I wasn't sure what to do with it so I was going to do a spiral motif but I couldn't find one and I was too impatient to make one so I just used this motif.

I wanted the centre of the quilt to look like the aperture and I think this was pretty successful.

The coloured segments were a pain in the neck to quilt!  I traced around the shape so I had an idea on my screen of where I needed to position the motif and then I had to keep moving it a bit this way and a bit that way until I was happy with the fit.

I wasn't happy with the position of the green so I unpicked it.  I repositioned it and it looked correct and then when I quilted it again it was wrong so I unpicked it again!  Third time wasn't a charm but I'd had enough by then so I left it.  They're all a bit "wrong" but it was the best I could do.

The smallest parts of this quilt probably took the longest.  I just wanted straight lines to make the grey rectangles look like the ridges on the sides of dials.  It worked but look at all of those threads!  I probably could have designed something so the lines moved continuously from one to the other but I wanted the look of the single lines.

I have to bury all the threads, pull out any basting lines I've left in and wash out any markings before sewing on the binding and a label.  There's still plenty of work to do but the end is in sight and at this rate my friend will have her 50th birthday present by her 53rd birthday!  Better later than never!

Guess what's back on the frame?!

Woo!  Yeah!  I finished burying a trillion threads (the amount of threads grew with each telling) and I put the camera quilt back up on the frame.  I'm hoping I've done enough of the previous quilting to stabilise it enough for the next part which will be the custom quilting.

 

I was in such a rush to get it off the frame last time I left two small sections on either side of the quilt empty.  I thought it would be quick and easy to fill in once I got started.  Ha!  It was neither quick nor easy.  It took me several hours and a lot of swearing!

I'm now ready to finish the rest of it.  I suspect this will involve a lot more hours and a lot more swearing.  I'm scratching my head though because I've forgotten what I had planned to quilt.  I checked through this blog and I'm none the wiser.  Oh dear!