The stockings weren’t hung by the chimney with care

Roll on 2025!

Coming to you live from retreat!

A nice group of us are at The Retreat in Gisborne for the weekend.  It’s been lovely so far! I’m using my iPad to type this and I keep losing my photos when I try to move them so the order might not make much sense.  But not making sense is the story of my life!

On the design wall last night were these wonky star blocks that Judy has been working on intermittently.  She had to sew the last block before we could go to bed last night!  Judy will be adding sashing at some point.

Another one of Judy’s.  This one is a Chip quilt inspired by the scrappy quilt hanging at The Retreat.

Gail is making a Halloween tablecloth.  Judy helped a lot, particularly with the math!  Gail has sewn these segments together and quilted it already!

Here’s Jill’s Gorgeous Georgia.  The pattern continued to disappoint to the very end but it does look great!  Jill has now started on the appliqué part. 

Here are the ladies!

Judy is now working on this quilt.  She’s adding a row of star blocks next.

Kate is enjoying herself making this quilt.  It’s one that a friend started and gave up on.  Kate is finishing it and giving it back to her!  Yes, she’s bonkers!  Unfortunately I’m not the friend but it’s giving me ideas ;-) 

Oh hi Kate!  Didn’t see you there!

Gail is trimming the edges of her tablecloth.

Jill is tracing the appliqué.

Judy’s choosing fabric for her stars.

Rosie has been putting binding on the edges of these fabric segments.  Here’s one pile…

Oh and look!  Another pile!  Mind you, Gail has taken over a whole sofa with her bags and projects!

Debbie is embroidering.

Kate is tearing out foundation papers.

There’s a new quilt hanging up at The Retreat and it’s a beauty!  Abbe made this one for her dad who has recently passed away.  This is hanging in his memory.

So, what have I been up to?  Nothing!  This is where I put my project bag when I arrived on Friday and that’s probably where it’ll remain until I leave tomorrow!

 

Overdue

First of all I must say CONGRATULATIONS to this lovely family on the birth of baby Oliver!  He was overdue and was sternly requested to leave the premises!

Look how cute my quilt the baby is!

Another long overdue project is this camera quilt for my friend's birthday.  It's only 8 month late so far.  Oops!

 So, I had the background all sewn together in my last post and all my content disappeared.  I had to cut out all the appliqué shapes and press them onto the camera...

Match the thread colours...

And blanket stitch the shapes onto the background.

I could barely see where to stitch the black on black shapes so I outlined them with chalk.

Ta da!  Now to quilt...

I don't want to do an edge to edge design so I'm attempting to custom quilt.  Custom quilting and I don't see eye to eye but it would be a shame to compromise with an all over design.  I used a plastic pocket and permanent marker to use as a template for my designs.  I looked at the original pattern and this white circle has been quilted to look like a flash.  My original idea was to design flash lines coming off the circle and after drawing it all out realised that that circle isn't the flash so that idea went out the window.  The flash is the white rectangle at the top of the camera but, it's also where the camera brand goes so I decided to add the brand name rather than a flash.

I scanned the templates and set them as the background in my quilters CAD program.  Then I used the shape to help me add the fill.  I finished the segment first and tested it on my frame to make sure it would work ok.  I was pretty happy with it, adjusted it a little and will position it better on the actual quilt.

I've prepared all my quilting designs and I'll be using those plus a bit of pantograph work to complete the quilting.  The only issue is now I'm ready to put it on the frame at last I don't have any backing!  They say you can't rush a good job... 

Smile! We're getting to the fun part!

(Edit)I have no idea why the content in my post keeps disappearing but it is driving me crazy!

Retreat!

Kate, Judy and I went to Ballarat for the weekend and stayed in a new to us place which we booked through Stayz.  It was an upside down town house so the living was upstairs and the bedrooms downstairs.  This was a little annoying as we had to cart our sewing things up a flight of stairs but once up (and down!) it was fine.  I had taken my cross stitch to work on to avoid having to take my machine up the stairs although I'd hazard a guess that my bag of wine possibly weighed more ;-)

Judy came with me and we met Kate at Millrose Quilting and Gallery in Ballan.  We had a lovely browse around the store and then had a hot chocolate.  One of us may have eaten a lemon slice but as it wasn't me, for a change, I won't dob on Judy her.

From there we went to The Pickled Pig quilt shop in Ballarat and to the French Café nearby to get Judy one of us a red velvet lamington but unfortunately it seems as though they've stopped baking them.

Fear not though, we were able to get our sweet fix at Beechworth bakery.  Where we may have ordered more than we needed.

The next stop was to Gail's Patchwork Emporium which was beautiful, as always.  Whilst there Kate was almost strangled when she suggested we go to Spotlight after previously deciding she didn't want to go there therefore the trip had originally been planned to avoid having to go out of our way to get there.

Spotlight had some bargains and we went to the local Aldi while we were there.  It was at this point I realised I had no idea how to get into our accommodation and I had hot and cold flushes worrying myself silly over it.  I finally managed to bring up the keycode details and flashed them at Kate.  Once at the accommodation I could not find those details ANYWHERE so I had a small panic again but luckily I hadn't strangled Kate at the quilt shop because she remembered the numbers and we were able to get inside.

It was a rather cool weekend at Ballarat.  We had frost which was beautiful!

I worked on my wine greyhound cross stitch and it's looking a lot more like a dog!  I did intend on just filling in blocks of colour but I ended up working on one of the hardest parts where I had to change threads every five stitches or so! Still, I guess I can work on the easy sewing in front of the TV sometime.

All in all it was a great weekend away with chat, laughs and fun with friends. I, of course, did not think to take a single picture of what the other two worked on!  Judy finished a Christmas quilt top and worked hard on a Chip quilt.  Kate finished making a cover all tunic for her next Bali holiday and pottered with another top.

Only 51 sleeps until the next retreat!  Woo!

Phew!

I'm not sure what happened to my post.  Apparently, when you press a few buttons to see what they are you lose all your work!  Oops!  Anyway, if you're just seeing this you'll be wondering what I'm even talking about but that's ok because I have no idea either!

So this post was all about quilting Gail's Steam punk quilt.  Gail had asked me to trim the top to make it even and I didn't want to touch it for fear of making it worse so I ended up quilting the whole top but then adding a basting stitch line so that Gail could trim it square herself. You can see in the picture where the top went wobbly.

The quilting went well except for one row when luckily I ran out of bobbin thread and noticed I'd quilted the wrong row so I had to unpick that which was annoying but entirely my own mistake.  The bobbin ran out of thread on every row and I usually bury the threads while the quilt is on the frame so once I've finished quilting I'm done with the whole thing. I feared these threads would just pop out and show on the backing rather than get buried inside the sandwich so I had to bury them later.  I marked each thread with a piece of masking tape and I was very glad I had done that because they were very difficult to spot!

Here's the finished quilt laid out on my design floor.  I've been trying to think about other ways to display quilts for photos and think I may use a curtain pole with ring clips.

Here is the quilting design on the backing.

And here is where I was up to with my cross stitch picture.  I was getting ready to go to retreat and planned on taking the cross stitch.  I'd been working hard on the fiddly stuff so that I could just fill in blocks of colour and that way I wouldn't have to think about what I was doing too much.

Steampunk

I had a brilliant idea to get me off the sofa and into the studio!  I decided to treat the sewing as a 9-5 job.  Well then I revised it to 9-4 and after waking a few mornings at 9 I tried 10-4.  I've settled on a three hour shift and it starts and finishes whenever I can be bothered.  I've done two shifts of my "job" so far ha ha ha ha!  I don't think I should put this blog on my resume.

My next project is quilting a steampunk quilt top for Gail.  It's a free pattern you can find HERE. Gail picked up EFM and sheepishly handed over Steampunk. Gail wanted me to piece the backing and straighten the top and bottom of the quilt.  I pieced the backing but left the wobbly edge fearing the quilt would end up a small wall hanging if I kept trimming it.

 The backing was a length of 42 inches WOF so I had to cut it in half and sew the two pieces together.  The fabric was lovely so I can't complain about that for a change!  I decided to pattern match the backing and the repeat wasn't too far apart so I didn't waste much fabric.  The backing I ended up with was wide enough for the quilt top but not for my frame so I added a few inches of scrap down each side.  It took longer than I expected but these things always do.  After thirty plus years of quilting I don't know why I'm always surprised at this!

My faithful shadows were on hand to support me. 

Pattern matched and somewhat pressed backing.

I put the backing on the frame.

Then I tackled the top.  Unfortunately most of the seams on the edges had come undone so I had to repair those.

And here it is on the frame ready to be quilted.

I'm going to retreat with Judy and Kate in 17 sleeps.  Not that I'm counting or anything!  So I need a project to take.  I discovered that the townhouse we're staying in is an upside down house so the living is upstairs and I don't want to lug my sewing things up those stairs.  I decided to bring my cross stitch that has been in a box for five years. 

The company I bought the pattern from no longer exists so I can't show you a picture but it's a black greyhound.  I may be a little obsessed with them.

It looks like I have a fair few stitches to go.  

I've pottered with my camera quilt.  I had to make flying geese and I saw a Facebook reel of someone trimming multiple ones at the same time so I gave it a go.  You lay them down partially covering each other with the stitching line lined up with the lines on your cutting board.

And then you cut them all in one go.  Or in my case, a few because my rotary cutter blade is blunt and I need a new cutting board.

Ta da!

I also had lots of bonus HSTs to put in a box and forget about for a few years.

I sewed my flying geese together and put them on my display wall.  It was at this point I realised I'd sewn them in the wrong order.  Grrr!  I did wonder if I could get away with it but after looking at the pattern I think it's better the designer's way so I'll be unpicking one of those rows.  Ah well.

 I wonder how much I'll get done during my next shift...