In a pickle

I've been putting off making my bedroom quilt with the big star for ages because I wasn't happy with how I made the HSTs.  You'd have to click on the pictures to open them up and enlarge to really see what I was talking about but I didn't pay enough attention to the direction of the printed pattern when I stitched my HSTs.  Basically I stitched all of my HSTs so the diagonal line was going in the same direction which I thought was perfect.  But once you spin the HSTs around in different directions the pattern in the fabric faces all kinds of directions I don't want it to go!  

In this picture you can (just about!) see that in all the blocks the pattern faces a completely different direction.  Because the pattern is so small I ummed and ahhed about it for ages wondering if I would really notice once the quilt is finished and on my bed but in the end I was fairly certain I'd notice so I have to fix some of those blocks. 

So my next issue was that whilst trying to work out what blocks were correct as I put them up on my design wall I was just getting all confused.  I was turning blocks this way and that and some were falling off the wall which was not helpful! In the end I decided to start sewing the top in chunks.  This way I'd have some parts finished and I'd have a better idea of where I was missing parts.

Here's my first chunk before sewing together.  The pattern in all blocks is facing the correct way.

Here it is sewn up.  Having larger blocks to move around the design wall makes life a lot easier too.

I sewed as much as I could and then checked to see what HST blocks were missing.  I've ended up with six going the wrong way so I'll be unpicking those and restitching the green triangles onto new squares so I get the patterns correct.

It was at this point I realised I'd only sewn half of the lighter green HSTs that are along the edges of the quilt so I have more to do to fix that error.

It doesn't look like much right now does it?  Hopefully it'll get better!

Sick and tired

Of being sick and tired!  Although I've started to get bored now so hopefully that means I'm on the mend!

I've done a little bit of the cross stitch Santa I've been working on for ages.  It might even be finished for this Christmas!

Although now that I'm looking at all that empty space on the back of the cross stitch perhaps I shouldn't be so hopeful of it being completed by Christmas!

I've been quilting.  Just one quilt for a friend.  The ones I made at my living room retreat have been shoved into a cupboard!

This poor quilt top has been sitting on my frame for almost 3 weeks because I've had a disaster after disaster with the tablets and programs I use to run the machine.  It's all sorted now, fingers crossed, and I've managed to finish the quilting.

I used a free pattern from Urban Elementz called Pansies which are nice and simple and I thought went well with the style of this quilt.  It's a sampler made up of a mixture of pieced blocks, appliqués and embroideries.  Peta will now be adding some details which had to be put on after the quilting was completed.

Here's the quilting design on the back.  I asked my husband to take the picture as I was holding it up so I wouldn't get dog hair all over it and the photo isn't the best.

        

I'm going to retreat in Ballarat in a couple of weeks time and I'm wondering what to take with me. I have so many projects to choose from!

All packed up

But not put away.  I came down with some kind of flu and I don't have the energy to put it all away.  The sewing machine was headed to my bedroom to encourage me to hem the curtains at last.  So I'm not sure if this flu has done me a favour haha!

In the last post I had some strips leftover that I wasn't sure what to do with.  I tried out a couple of options.  This one where I rotated each alternate block was what I had in my head to do but it just looked too messy.

So I tried just stacking the blocks and liked it.

Ta da!

I used up all the purple strips to make a baby quilt the same way as the pinks I'd previously made.

After all of that sewing I STILL had a pile of scraps!  There were a lot of pinks so I removed most of those.

And made this quilt which is bigger than the usual stillborn baby size but I figured there would be babies that need it anyway.

I did consider putting all the pinks into one quilt but they just didn't seem to match.

So I added white fabric and made five stillborn baby quilts.

It was a very productive living room retreat.  I made 10 quilt tops of different sizes, 11 stillborn baby quilt tops and two cushion panels.  Now I need to quilt it all but would you believe it?  My tablet that runs the quilting machine has died and I'm continually playing catch up with the US company because of the time zones between us which is very frustrating!

5 days left at living room retreat

 My furry four legged grandchildren left today.  It's going to be quieter, cleaner, more relaxing lonely without them.  But I got my design floor back!

I'm not sure what Debbie was going to do with these cats and they didn't come with any additional fabric which would have helped me think of a design.  In the end I kept it fairly simple and raided my stash for plain homespun.

I needed to make circles and this bowl was the perfect size.  The trouble with it is that I couldn't see through the bowl so I marked the quarters with masking tape.

Then when I put it on the fabric I wanted to mark the lines on the masking tape matched up with the quarter marked creases on my block and I managed to centre the circle perfectly.

I cut a hole 1/4 inch smaller than the marked circle and made small slits all around it before pressing on the marked circle line.  Ta da!  A perfect hole in the fabric.

I laid it out to check out the arrangement and then stitched the holes to the cat circles just along the very edge of the hole.  That sounds more confusing to read than it was to do.

I stitched it together and made binding.

I then used up all the pink rectangles from Debbie's box of rectangles to make this little pink and white quilt top.  I have some purple strips I might use to do the same design.

 

I sewed most of the rest of the strips into pairs.

      

The box is almost empty!  There's the purple strips I was just talking about, some strips not quite the right size and some batiks.  I'm not sure what to do with the batiks.  They might end up in my stash.  I haven't decided what to do with the paired strips yet but I don't really want to make another staggered brick quilt so watch this space!