Colour – NEW EVERY MORNING

Saturday Quilting Bring and Share (91)

January 26, 2020 by Allison Reid

Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share 🙂 Bring along your project(s) and share in some of the inspiration being freely shared throughout the Worldwide Quilting Community. Do join in by clicking on the links and using the comments box right at the bottom of this page. Thank you! It gives me a real a buzz when I see the links have been used 🙂

I had a full-on, very enjoyable day teaching session two of the Beginners Course to the morning and afternoon classes at Purple Stitches yesterday. Amazing to see these patchwork newbies getting to grips with Half Square Triangles and Flying Geese for the first time but already asking such intelligent questions about the craft and planning their next projects!

My Dashing Stars blocks are all pieced and ready to be stitched together. Of course spending a whole day in a fabric shop meant I came home with a couple of purchases myself – I mean it would be rude not to buy fabric in such circumstances! I bought a length of a text print extra wide backing which I think may provide almost enough fabric for the Dashing Stars quilt and the smaller Log Cabin. With Viv’s expert help I also chose the border fabric to use for the Log Cabin quilt. I just can’t get enough of this electric blue Orion fabric by Libs Elliot. It was one of the blue fabrics I used for the quilt I recently made for #2 Son.

That bright electric blue is particularly appealing at this time of year when hours of daylight are in short supply and often very dull. Photographing quilts and fabric is very tricky so apologies if some of my photos look rather grey – I promise I have tried hard to edit them to true colours! I’ve noticed our choices of clothing can become rather dull this time of year. It was a real tonic to see the lady seated in front of me at Church this morning wearing an orange jumper topped with a lovely bright orange Gilet!

And so to the links. I hope you find plenty of interest here:

Were you/are you a fan of the long running TV show Downton Abbey. Carole shares lots of photos from a Downton Abbey exhibition she’s visited in the US. It looks to be a visual treat, with many of the sets reconstructed and a separate exhibition of the exquisitely made costumes. I had to confess in my comment on Carole’s blog that I live just 20 miles from Highclere Castle (the stately home used as Downton Abbey) and have never visited! Funny how that happens isn’t it?

I am enjoying watching Sharon’s Plad-ish quilt coming together. It is so effective – another quilt design I’d like to make :-O Sharon shared the link to the free pattern by Erica at Kitchen Table Quilting.

Leanne has released her first quilt pattern of 2020, ‘Hollow Jewels’. In this post she explains how she executed the dense straight line quilting. The quilting compliments the patchwork very well but it’s the photo of the quilting pattern on the back of the quilt that really caught my attention.

Christ Watson is running a QAL on her blog. Even if you are not taking part you might like to take a look at this post as Christa has provided a very clear foundation paper piecing tutorial – definitely filing this on my Foundation Piecing Pinterest board 🙂

It feels like I’ve only just packed the Christmas decorations away but Allison over at Cluck Cluck Sew has reminded us that it’s only a few weeks ’til Valentines Day! She has lots of patterns featuring hearts and a link to a heart block tutorial too 🙂

Should you need a little encouragement to move out of your comfort zone and try a new technique or two then I recommend you follow Nancy as she works through the blocks of a ‘Cheddarback’ quilt. This month she has tackled blocks requiring foundation piecing and y-seams. Her blocks look great, each requiring a willingness to try something new or work with a technique she’s not entirely comfortable using. The Cheddarback QAL, based on an antique sampler quilt, is organised by Gay Bomer of Sentimental Stitches.

Alyce Blythe has updated her very popular ‘HST Tutorial and Maths Formula’ blog post. As well as lots of useful tips and explanations there are three charts to download – very handy!

Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts designs and makes very clever character quilts. She shares her latest version of ‘Life in the Pond’ featuring Koi Carp and swimming frogs. The blocks can be rearranged in any number of ways to create your very own pond.

Happy Stitching!

Allison

Preparing for Patchwork Workshops and Falling Down Rabbit Holes!

January 9, 2020January 8, 2020 by Allison Reid

Snip of Log Cabin class notes — One of my ‘graphics’

On Monday I started revising the pattern and class notes for a workshop called ‘Two Ways to Build a Log Cabin’. The class is booked for 6th March. Before Christmas I made a flimsy to test out my idea and to check the accuracy of the fabric quantities I’d calculated. I began writing the pattern as one to sell but over time came to the conclusion that there are more than enough Log Cabin patterns and tutorials available in books and for free on-line so I’ve been revising my pattern into a class handout. I’ve also been twiddling around with the block design on EQ7. This all takes time – quite a lot of time actually! Especially as I haven’t been able to master graphics software so I do all the pattern illustrations using Microsoft Word. And I probably use that in an inefficient way… but repetition is a good teacher and I’m learning!

All the above is by way of an explanation as to how it is I’ve done quite a lot of thinking and computer work around sewing but so far this week haven’t actually got to switch on my sewing machine! That is about to change though 🙂 I’ve finally broken into a roll of strips, dividing them into two sets to make the normal and curved Log Cabin blocks for a second test quilt. (There are quite a few strips left over from the roll – these have led me down a rabbit hole*). The background fabric is a low volume text print that has been hanging around in my stash for too long. I’m hoping these fabrics will give the quilt a modern look in contrast to the much more traditional looking quilt flimsy I made before Christmas.

In my Saturday Quilting Bring & Share post I shared that I’ve decided to hop on the 2020 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. The colour for January is green. I sorted through my box of green scraps and came up with two colour groupings. I cut my scraps into 2½” squares and strips ready to stitch together as my leaders and enders.

I’ll need to be a bit careful doing this as the Scrap Challenge leaders and enders fabrics are quite similar to the fabrics I’m using for the Log Cabin blocks!

Scrappy Trip Along finished front (2) by Allison Reid — My 2019 Trip Around the World quilt

*Oh! But Dear Reader! I have now been drawn into another sew along! Scrolling through Instagram I discovered that Allison Jensen @woodberry_way is hosting a Scrappy Trip Quilt Along. I know I shouldn’t (this is definitely a squirrel tumbling down a rabbit hole!) but I did so enjoy the 2019 Trip Along organised by Gnome Angel ... And now I’ve got a growing collection of 2½” strips….(see above*) And Allison’s how-to videos on Instagram and in her blog posts are so interesting and so appealing…. 😀

Well! Last week I shared my word of the year – GROW. It certainly seems the number of projects I have on the go is GROWing 😀 But hey! One week into 2020 and I’ve signed up for a needle turned applique class – definitely got the GROWing skills buzz going! Have you chosen a word for 2020? Has it been inspiring your thoughts or actions?

Lastly, it’s a new term so there must be a Beginners Class starting at Purple Stitches! In fact Viv has filled two classes, one running Saturday mornings, the other in the afternoons. I’m looking forward to meeting the class members and seeing the fabrics they’ve chosen for their first patchwork quilts. Before Saturday I had better print class notes and prepare my demonstration materials…

Linking with Susan at Quilt Fabrication for Midweek Makers.

Hope you are finding joy in creativity.

Allison

A bit of paper craft with some links to patchwork and quilting news and tutorials

December 21, 2019 by Allison Reid

I have tucked away my sewing machine and cleared my sewing room ready to receive our guests over the Christmas and New Year holidays. I often feel a bit lost when the sewing equipment is packed away. I think the ‘lost/detached’ feeling I get when the sewing room is converted to a guest room is more about letting go of the possibility of sewing rather than any real loss of sewing time. After all there’s more than enough to do what with extra meetings with friends and family (not to mention more shopping trips into town in one fortnight than for the whole of the rest of the year!) so the chances of disappearing into my sewing room for any length of time are pretty limited.

But taking a break from sewing opens other opportunities to be creative and crafty. At the craft group I help run we were shown how to make a star shaped table centre/wall hanging. This was fun and do-able in