Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share! An opportunity to bring along your project(s) to this virtual sewing day and share in some of the conversations and handy tips doing the rounds of the Worldwide Quilting Community. Do add your thoughts and links in the comments box at the end of this post. Thank you!
Needle and Thread Thursday
Midweek in my Sewing Room – Seagulls and Half Square Rectangles
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.
Read moreMidweek in my Sewing Room – Seagulls and Half Square Rectangles
Dashing Stars unpicked and re-organised!
Oh! Phew! Unpicking lots of seams takes lots of time 😉 In my previous blog post I shared my very silly decision not to label each of the 36 blocks before putting together my latest version of Dashing Stars. Having made one poor decision I followed it up with an even more misguided one: I choose to leave the blocks I’d misplaced in the first couple of rows and just rearranged others in lower rows thinking it would work out OK! Well! It didn’t! The inevitable marathon of unpicking followed (not so much a marathon as a endurance race with stages as it took several sessions over several days to undo all those pesky stitches!).
Anyway the blocks finally went back up on the design wall. I used my original photograph to guide me as I pinned a label to each and every block AND then, and only then, did I stitch them all together!
Quilting Feathers & Being Ambitious!
Ooo! I did so enjoy meeting Trudi Wood and taking part in her workshop last Sunday. Trudi quilts the most beautiful feather designs using a domestic machine as well as her long-arm. The workshop was very relaxed, Trudi gave us all confidence as she explained how to free-motion-quilt feather designs. We had plenty of time to practice – a bit of pencil to paper muscle memory work to begin with then our sewing machines began to whir!
It was amazing to come away with a credible free motion feather wreath – I had no thought of creating anything so ambitious by the end of the day.
As usual, I have more than one project on the go! Three have all reached the same stage at the same time: as a result I’ve spent quite a lot of time spreading out fabric and wadding on the sitting room floor trying to figure out how to piece backings and working out if my wadding pieces will be big enough. Here is the backing (including label!) for the ‘Chocolatier Variation‘ quilt.
Then, of course, comes the dreaded basting.
I finished basting the Beginners Course quilt (and attached a label!) – it’s up on my design wall to brighten the place up while there’s no piecing going on.
I also basted ‘Carrie Nation Variation’ – it is pretty large at 76″ square and weighs a tonne!
My ambition with this quilt is to enter it in The Festival of Quilts (an annual event held at the NEC, Birmingham). I’m hoping I’ll be able to stitch some half decent feather patterns across the quilt. This morning I’ve been stitching in the ditch around some of the patchwork, mainly to stabilise the layers but also, I have to admit, to put off switching to free motion mode!
It’s time to do a bit of housework but those feathers are calling 🙂
Linking with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday. Kelly is sharing memories and photos of her time at the recent Quilt Market.
Allison