Ta da!

 

 

Almost there!

I've been working on Erin's quilt doing a little bit here and a little bit there.  Often it looked as though I was never going to finish and then all of a sudden it all came together.  Here is it on the design wall waiting for borders.  I changed my mind regarding the borders several times but in the end went with a simple 2 inch yellow border followed by a wider white border.  I decided to do it this way so that I could use up the white binding I made for the quilt that wasn't.

Pinning backing to the quilting frame can be a mammoth job particularly when the quilt is fairly large.  I pinned the top to the back rail, rolled it all on, smoothed out all the wrinkles and creases whilst trying to keep the fabric fairly even and then I pinned the bottom to the bottom rail and repeated the rolling on, smoothed out...

I stepped back to take a picture...and realised I'd pinned the backing on upside down arghh!  In my defence the backing is a white tone on tone so it was a bit hard to see!  So I unpinned and started all over again!

This is the start of the quilting.  My tablet is having a lot of issues so the quilting didn't go as smoothly as I'd have liked.  I also tried out a new for me technique to keep the quilt top square which slowed things down.  I liked the technique so I'll use it again with some modification.  What I particularly liked was getting to the last row and the quilt edge was perfectly straight!

I planned on using a flowery quilting design but I just didn't like anything up against the stars so I went with circles.  It's probably not ideal but it's better than flowers!  At one point I was tearing my hair out trying to come up with a perfect design I even thought about quilting lizards all over it!  Erin likes lizards!  Thankfully that thought lasted all of five seconds.

Here it is all quilted and unrolled from the frame.

Binding next!  It cracks me up seeing this picture of my beautifully neat rolled binding.  It makes me look so tidy and organised!

And my least favourite part!  I had a marathon hand sewing session today because it's the only time this week that Erin is working in the city.  I'm pleased to say it's almost done!  It was rather warm underneath that quilt today!  Phew!

I'll be working on the label next.  I will actually finish this in time!  Yeah!

 

Panic! Don’t panic! PANIC!

 

I don't like to sew my quilts in strips so I sew them in blocks.  That way I end up with only one long seam to sew when I sew two halves together. So, here's my first block.  It's taking forever.  Start panicking!

Oh ok it's coming together.  This is the smaller half finished. Stop panicking!

My injured hand decides it doesn't want to work which makes it very difficult to grasp the fabrics together to pin but it's going ok.

Then I went away for the weekend with my family for my husband's birthday and we had a great time! 

I came back and added to the quilt.  It's going slow but it's ok.  Then I made the terrible mistake of counting how many stars I had left to do!  Yikes gadzooks!  (As my mother would say.  I'd say something a little more colourful) I have eight stars left to sew.  Which means I have a whole third of a quilt to finish!  And that doesn't include the borders, the quilting or the binding!  I have 11 days to finish it!  PANIC!!!!

We also had a second birthday celebration for my husband so that our grandsons could join in. Just call me the Queen of Procrastination!

I'll go and do some more piecing very soon.  Oh!  Is that a pig I see flying past the window?

Twinkle twinkle little star

I finished sewing all my chequered blocks and guess what?! I need 24 star blocks!  So making additional stars to bring my total up to 21 is out the window!

I decided to make Ohio star blocks.  Yeah, there are a few versions of an Ohio star but I can't very well call it the "star with the quarter square triangles that's an absolute pain in the neck to match seams and not cut off points" now can I?  I love this star.  It's so pretty!  But no, there is no way on earth I am making 24 of these blocks!

So I trialled some easier ones.  These are called similar technique to pain in the neck Ohio stars but you don't have to pay too much attention to matching seams or cutting off points.  Yellow centre?

Or white?

Yellow it is.  Although I'm kind of regretting that now.  Ah well.

I have two lovely helpers in my studio.  Wellington is checking my design on the wall to make sure I'm doing it right.  With his eyes closed.

And Minnie is measuring scraps.  With her eyes closed.

It's going well

It's amazing how quickly things come together when you're happier with what you're making!  I've been cracking on with Erin's birthday quilt which is going to be a Double Irish Chain quilt with stars in the plain squares.  My design has 17 stars so I'd like to add four more.  The easy option is to put them on the back!  But I have been weighing up putting them in the border.  We shall see when I get to that part.

This is the kind of mindless sewing that's perfect for retreat.  Particularly when you're drinking wine!  You can of course do a more complicated quilt whilst drinking wine but you're more at risk of needing to use the seam ripper!  Unfortunately, my next retreat is in March so that's too late for this quilt.  But I have to start thinking about what I'm going to take this time.  That part can be harder than packing the car!

So with all this mindless sewing I've been thinking a lot.  Or rather remembering a lot.  I don't have any close family left and because I live in Australia I'm not close to any other UK family members so sometimes I feel really sad that I'm the only one left who remembers my life when I was young.  There's no one to share those "Hey, do you remember when..." moments.  And I do wonder if half of what I remember is even accurate.  But there's no one to ask...

So the solution to this kind of problem?  Make sure you sew your mindless sewing at retreat!  Or with wine.  Hmmm now there's an idea!

I moved my machine next to my quilting frame.  The rails are a very handy sorting system.

This is how my fabric is coming off the roll.  Don't you hate that?  Arghh!  I brought the fabric back to the house to press with the Tefal iron because my Oliso iron, that other quilters seem to love is rubbish.  I hate it with a passion but it just refuses to die!  The Tefal iron did a great job with the fabric and I now have a nice smooth piece to cut out my next strips.

Oops I stitched this piece with the wrong sides together!

Ta da!  These are the blocks I've done so far.  

I suspect the star blocks will take me a bit of time but I'm happy with how it's going.  I also need to decide what star I'm going to sew.  Something easy I think ha ha!

A tale of woe

Do you ever have an idea in your mind and when you start making it the project just isn't coming together like you'd like?  This is my failed project!

I have a charity quilt to quilt so I started working on that.  I had to make a backing and prep the quilt for the quilting frame so I did that and as I was about to put the top on the frame I realised that it's Erin's 21st birthday next month!  So the charity quilt was put aside very quickly! I went wrong several times.  It was so wrong I should have listened to that voice in the back of my head crying "Nooooo! Don't do it!!!"  But I persevered.  

Mistake number 1 was deciding to make a quilt for Erin but make it Jâc friendly so it actually gets used.  It's a quilt for Erin for goodness sake!  Anyway, I know Erin's favourite colour is yellow and I thought that if I make a yellow quilt modern enough it'll work for both of them.  

I leafed through my British Love Patchwork and Quilting magazines because the designs in those magazines are fairly modern and contemporary.  I found four potential quilts and here comes mistake number 2.  I asked my husband which one he liked best.  Oops!

After telling him Erin's favourite colour he decided on this quilt. 

 

It's from this issue of the magazine.

I loved that quilt!  Then I looked at it and I liked that quilt.  I knew I'd love that quilt if I redesigned it.  So I did.

I made it square and I tried to avoid having the points or tails of the arrows next to each other which is ridiculous because I love how the designer has done it!  

Mistake number 3 is that I couldn't get any yellow ombré fabric.  No, that's not entirely true.  I needed the fabric RIGHT NOW so didn't want to order any.  And then I didn't want to pay the price they were asking for it!  I was so desperate at this point I considered dyeing my own!  And I've never dyed fabric before! 

So I went shopping.  I figured I could buy enough plain yellows to make my own "ombré" look.  Mistake number 4.

I cut my strips 2 1/2 inches and I started sewing them together.  I didn't think they looked too bad.  Was that mistake number 5??

In the meantime I decided that while I was cutting strips I'd cut the binding and the sashing.  I made the binding.  This might be mistake number 6 but that's a story for another day.  Mistake 5.1 was only cutting five WOFs and expecting it to be long enough to bind an 82 inch square quilt.  Maths was never my strong point. Or English, French, science, art...

Roll on to the following morning when I am sat on the loo thinking.  OMG!  I have cut my fabric strips 2 1/2 inches and yet my blocks are divisible by 3!  Whilst writing this I have discovered that my math can't be that bad if I've worked that out AND autocorrect wanted me to change divisible to something weird so my English can't be that bad either!  Anyway, mistake number 7.

So what do I do now??  I redesigned the quilt of course!  I made it so that the blocks were even numbers.  Sorted.  If only I knew someone with an electric quilt program...

Mistakes number 8,9 and 10 probably happen while I'm trying to work out how to do a flying geese block.  I know they're easy but these measurements were weird.  What idiot (re)designed this quilt?!

So I drew my markings on the fabric.  It worked out well.

Then I tried making a foundation pieced template for where the points meet the points.  Mistake number 11, 12, 13...

So I just added two flying geese sets.  Getting the points right was mistake 14. 15, 16, 17, 18...

I think you get the idea!  Anyway I put a finished block on the wall and added sashing and...I hate it!  With a passion!  

So, back to the drawing board.  The quilt is for Erin.  She'll be 21 and loves yellow!  So for goodness sake (anyone who knows me will know I won't be saying goodness sake!) make a yellow quilt for Erin and ONLY for Erin!

So I went to Lincraft.  Mistake number 19.  Sorry Lincraft but your quilting fabric sucks. Then I went to my local quilt shop Sew Together  and purchased a huge Tilda Fat Quarter bundle.  For myself.  Oops.  Then I went to Spotlight and was only able to buy 4.6 metres of the yellow I liked.  Will this be enough or will this be mistake number...Uh...what are we up to?

So here is my view as I sew my new quilt together.  That arrow quilt will be fantastic with the right fabrics...

I'm off to a good start!

Blood, sweat and wine

 I swear my MIL is trying to kill me with these Christmas cards!  I've been turning them into wall hangings so that we can have them all on display every year.  I posted about it HERE

  So here is this year's card.  What on earth was I going to do with this one?!  

After realising that I only had red scraps left I decided that the card had to join this set.  

I usually square up the cards, add borders and then sew the backing on with the fabrics right side together leaving a gap to turn the whole thing the right way round.  This card wasn't square!  And it had a photograph so if I turned it through the photo would crumple.  I had to really think about this one!  I decided the best way to do it would be to make it up as planned but without the card part which I then stitched on later.  It's not the neatest but it's done!

It was hot and I stabbed my finger hence the blood and sweat.  I needed the wine afterwards!  I am going to be having stern words with my MIL later!

And here's a photo of my trio of beautiful greys!  My foster, Fluff, is going back to GAP for adoption next week.  She is a fantastic dog, very cuddly and affectionate with enough mischief in her to not be boring (as a teacher once described my boys!) and we're going to miss her.  I wanted to keep her and return my husband instead but GAP wouldn't have him.