Midweek Makers – NEW EVERY MORNING

Patchwork: Beginners Rotary Cutting Set

November 13, 2019 by Allison Reid

The Beginners Classes I’m teaching this term are nearly through. During the penultimate session last Saturday students tried out walking foot quilting techniques and learnt how to pin baste their quilt sandwich. I’m looking forward to seeing all the near complete quilts on Saturday 23rd when I’ll be teaching the making of straight grain binding and demonstrating how to attach binding to a quilt. I have my homework cut out as I’ve yet to sandwich and quilt my own version of the Dashing Stars quilt! 😀

But, rewinding to Session One of the Beginners Course, I’ve been giving some thought to what should be included in a Rotary Cutting Starter Kit. Ours is not a cheap hobby but having the right tools makes a

Working on two patchwork projects- piecing, backing and binding

October 30, 2019 by Allison Reid

Ooo! I’m sorry I missed the deadline for last weekend’s edition of Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. It’s been a busy old time here and my laptop has been in a repair shop for over a week (battery issues) so everything has slipped. Anyho! You’ll find some links into the Worldwide Quilting Community at the end of this midweek post and I’m hopeful my laptop will be returned today. I sure will have a lot of blog reading to catch up on…

I have been busy patchwork quilting. Saturday I ran two Beginners classes at Purple Stitches. Week two of the course and the aims were to learn how to make two at a time Half Square Triangles and four at a time Flying Geese. I felt very mean giving a whole chunk of homework to the class members who had concentrated so hard to make their Churn Dash and Sawtooth Star blocks – all the blocks need to be made and the top pieced before the next class! In two weeks time I’ll be teaching the art of making a quilt sandwich and sharing quilting tips and techniques. I have to keep a step ahead of the class so I had my homework cut out too! After quite a bit of dithering and rearranging blocks I settled on a layout and stitched the quilt top together. This morning I pieced the backing and cut out a piece of Quilters Dream Green batting ready to make the quilt sandwich.

My third version of the Dashing Stars pattern – this time it’s a bit of a rainbow 🙂

A pieced backing with a blank rectangle ready to use as the label.

Keeping myself on my toes, I’ve been switching between the Beginners class quilt and my second version of the Square-in-a-Square quilt.

Thankfully I found my free motion quilting mojo and managed to stitch the feather swirls into the twenty block centres. I’ve also machine stitched the binding to the front of the quilt. Now I need to hand stitch the binding to the back of the quilt. My essentials for this job (apart from a sharp needle and good quality thread) are binding clips and Thread Heaven (a substitute for beeswax). I find the clips are so much more user friendly than pins and the thread conditioner certainly cuts down on the number of knots and thread twists that occur as I’m stitching. Do you have any favourite tools or techniques to use when you are hand stitching binding?

Here are the links I’d gathered for the Saturday Quilting Bring & Share post before my laptop had to go to to be repaired:

Yvonne and her husband have arrived home after five months on the road. Among all the settling-back jobs Yvonne has found time to decorate and re-organise her sewing space (‘space’ is the operative word!).

As part of her Autumn Jubilee Carole has published a great tutorial on her blog page showing us how to make table mats that fit the Season perfectly.

Rebecca has taken on the challenge of completing half-finished, hand pieced Double Wedding Ring blocks for a client. She explains clearly how she is constructing two bed runners rather than one large quilt from the blocks that are all ‘slightly unique’! Hum! It looks like quite a puzzle… I am in awe of Rebecca’s ability to figure out what needs to be done to create a precious heirloom out of a collection of partially finished blocks.

Carole Lyles Shaw creates amazing modern quilts. In this post she lists her favourite quilting tools along with some handy tips on how to make the best use of them.

Linking with Susan for Midweek Makers and Jennifer for Wednesday Wait Loss. Both blog link ups feature inspiring project ideas and are great examples of the friendliness to be found in the Worldwide Quilting community 🙂

Allison

Strip piecing and keeping up with the Jelly Roll Waves QAL

July 31, 2019 by Allison Reid

I am glad I chose to make Myra’s Jelly Roll Waves quilt using the instructions for strip piecing fabrics from Fat Quarters rather than the 2½” strip version. I would definitely have fallen behind if I’d been cutting and piecing all

Midweek in my Sewing Room – Seagulls and Half Square Rectangles

July 11, 2019 by Allison Reid

Whew! It’s Thursday morning and I’m struggling to get going today. I slept well until the local mob of Gulls decided to kick up a bit of ruckus well before 6am. These pesky birds have set up residence here, some 50 miles from the coast, making up for being low in numbers with their high volume calling. They are constantly patrolling the skies, chasing off Red Kites and Buzzards and skirmishing with the local crows.

My main goal this week has been preparation for the Patchwork Workshop tomorrow. On Tuesday I made the final adjustments to the pattern for the ‘Into the Woods’ table runner. Yesterday I printed out the foundation paper piecing patterns and made some part-finished examples for the demonstrations I’ll give in class.