Trudi Wood – NEW EVERY MORNING

Saturday Quilting Bring & Share (34)

October 12, 2018 by Allison Reid

Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. I wonder which projects you will be bringing along to this virtual sewing day and which quilty conversations have got you buzzing this week? If you’d like to share a link to your latest project or add to the conversations in this post please do use the comments box at the bottom of the page. Thank you!

Behind the Palm House, Kew by Allison Reid — Behind the Palm House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

I’m making slow progress with my projects at the moment, partly because I’ve had some lovely days out (see my photos of Kew Gardens drenched in warm October sunshine here) and partly because I’ve been working on a long-term goal. This big goal of mine is to translate my patchwork designs into patterns . It’s taken me a lot of time and effort to get over my tech-phobia but I have now established a rather laborious, but not ineffective, way of using EQ7 and Microsoft Word to produce patterns. Writing patterns takes time, and that time has taken me away from my sewing machine…

So it is with some pride and much relief that I share with you my latest pattern, published under my label, ‘Sunrise Patchwork Patterns’. The Patchwork Star table runner requires just five fat quarters to complete the top plus additional fabrics for the backing, wadding and optional binding. The instructions include three ways to make the Half Square Triangles used in the pattern plus two methods to complete the runner – one with binding the other without binding.

The pattern is available in two PDF download versions from my Etsy Shop, AllisonsPatchworks. One download has been configured to print on A4 paper, the other on US Letter paper.

Quilting Feathers & Being Ambitious!

July 25, 2018May 24, 2018 by admin

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!

First feathers by New Every Morning Patchwork & Quilting — First feathers

Feather meander by New Every Morning Patchwork & Quilting — All-over feather design

Feather wreath by New Every Morning Patchwork & Quilting — Feather wreath – second attempt

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.

Pieced backing by New Every Morning Patchwork & Quilting

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.

Beginners Quilt No5 by New Every Morning Patchwork & Quilting

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

Saturday Quilting Bring & Share (17)

July 25, 2018May 19, 2018 by admin

Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring and Share 🙂 You might like to join in this virtual sewing day by linking a post or you may be content to dip in to see the projects others bring along and ‘listen in’ to the quilty conversations being shared. Either way it’s lovely to have you along.
Quilty Saturday is dawning in pretty shades of pink (I’m glancing out the window at the sunrise as I write). It’s going to be another beautiful day here in the South of England – a perfect day for a wedding wouldn’t you say? 😉 Or maybe a football match? 😀

This weekend the projects I’m bringing to the virtual sewing day revolve around quilting rather than piecing. I’ve made a start on pin basting my 5th version of the beginners quilt.

I’m also going to put together 3 or 4 practice quilt sandwiches. Partly because it’s always good to have a practice sandwich on hand – to test tension and get free motion quilting juices flowing before jumping onto an actual quilt – but mainly because I’m going to a free motion quilting workshop on Sunday 🙂 Trudi Wood (check out her beautiful quilting on instagram) will be teaching us how to stitch feather designs. I’m so excited about this workshop. Maybe after the workshop I’ll have the no-how and confidence to tackle a few more of the quilt tops waiting in my UFO queue? *Happy Dance*
Just a few conversation starters this week:
A quick quilt for a fund raiser. Melva nearly gave up on her Thomas the Tank Engine quilt but then plain borders came to the rescue. And she found the perfect location for the quilt photo shoot!
Further to my blog post about adding black and white to rainbow coloured quilts I read this post by Diane Knott which includes a photo of a colourful house quilt that has black & white sashing, and a link to a quilter called Freddy Moran ‘who uses black and white to control her wild colours’. I must go investigate… Ooo! Freddy Moran’s website is full of colour and black and white and a lot of useful information 🙂
Sticking with my rainbow with black & white quilt top: This week I added to my patchwork and quilting experience by creating a patchwork layout with blocks on point with sashing between. The first time I’ve stitched such a layout. I was glad to find a very helpful tutorial describing the order in which to put together such a layout. I was even more glad to find the tutorial had a link to a table giving the cutting instructions for setting triangles and corner triangles of all sizes 🙂 I made one mistake through not reading the measuring instructions correctly but it was easily put right. I learned a lot without going into deep anxieties over those complicated formulas needed to calculate the size of setting triangles 🙂 (My word of the year LEARN has had another workout!).
Doh! That glitch in my WordPress admin re-emerged this week. For some reason in ‘notifications’ the box indicating that I don’t wish to receive e-mails letting me know when blogs I follow have new posts was ticked AGAIN. It’s been a busy week and I’m afraid it took me a few days to realise that I was receiving fewer emails than usual. Yesterday I sat down at my laptop and figured out what had happened 🙁 This is all by way of an apology for me not having many links to share today. I will enjoy sitting down and catching up on the posts I’ve missed – it will take several l-o-n-g coffee breaks to work through my now overflowing in-box – and hope to have a bumper post of conversational links to share next Saturday 🙂
Have a great weekend. Happy Stitching.
Allison

Oh! Couldn’t miss out on sharing a pic of the first peony bloom of the year 🙂 Summer is nearly here!