A New Project and Some Pics to Share

I am currently working on a new project using the Little Pierrot designs from the Quiltery. The project is quilt as you go and I am using some quilting designs that you will be able to purchase at a great price from Anita at Chrystal Embroidery. The background quilting design (behind the embroideries) will be available in a few sizes to suit your embroidery machine and the Pierrots will also fit in the 5x7 quilting design she will have available. I have then just quilted some rows of straight stitching with my normal sewing machine.

Here is a sneak peek.

Pierrot Quilt in Progress

 

The plan is that all you need to quilt this are the quilted embroidery designs to put behind the embroideries and then just use your normal or walking foot to finish with straight lines of stitching around each design and then complete the the quilt as you go. There is no hand stitching on this quilt apart from the binding and you can do that completely by machine if you wish.I will be writing up the instructions for the quilt and will be sending them out to those who receive the instructions for my projects using the Quiltery Embroidery Club designs.

 

I have shared pics with you before that my friend Carolyn from Inverary Ontario in Canada has sent me before. She has a new grand son who was born the same day as Prince George and these are some pics she has taken. I can see a new career in the offing.

Hints and Tips 15: Did you know there is a right and wrong side of quilt batting?

Most of the time I just get my batting out of the packet and sandwich my quilt together. I know that on a couple of occasion if I have used a black backing on my quilt that some whispy bits of  batting have sometimes poked through to the backing when quilted.

Next time you use have a look at it. Most of the time one side has a rough ,speckled appearance side (sometimes with leaf remnants etc. if it is a cotton batting) and the other side is smoother in comparison.

If your batting does have a smoother side and a rough side the rough side should go to the wrong side of the quilt top with the smooth side against the wrong side of the backing. If you are not sure, one method to find the difference is to poke a pin into the batting several times. Whichever side the pin pokes through the easiest is the wrong side and consequently that is the side that goes under the wrong side of the quilt top.

 

Betty has sent me in a pic of her Aristocat quilt top. I just love seeing all the different colours that people choose. It gives us all a bit more inspiration and that is why I love having them sent in to be published here.

Betty's Aristocat Quilt

 

 

 

Quilt Top Finished-Now to Quilt

Yesterday I did a day of relief teaching as they were very short of relief teachers at my former school. When I retired I  told them that I would be available go in if they had a shortage of relief teachers. It was a very pleasant day and it was good to get back to dealing with students in the classroom and do a bit of teaching. I did plan on finishing my quilt top but that had to wait until today and took a bit longer than expected with that pieced border. In fact there are around 2100 pieces in this quilt. Now I have to sandwich it together and work out how to quilt it,perhaps just a meander all over.

Lazy Sunday Mystery Quilt Top Finished

 

Mystery Quilt Top Nearly Finished

I have spent the day working on putting together my Bonnie Hunter Lazy Sunday Mystery quilt that has been featured in Quiltmaker since the beginning of the year. The last part (Part 4) has just been released with their latest issue and I have finished making up the main section of the quilt top today. The borders are still to go and as you can see they are pieced as well so a bit more work ahead of me. The inner border is supposed to be in pieced orange tones but I am going to use a purple/mauve continuous section

Lazy Sunday Mystery Quilt

 

 

Lazy Sunday Outer Border

More Crazy Quilt blocks

Two more block instructions have been sent out to those participating in the Kenny Kreations Crazy Quilt BOM. Block 27 and Block 28 are both blue blocks.

Block 27

 

Block 27 Close Up 1

Block 27 Close Up 2

Block 27 Close Up 3

Block 27 Close Up 4

Block 28

Block 28 Close Up 1

Block 28 Close Up 2

Block 28 Close Up 3

Block 28 Close Up 4

Block 28 Close Up 5

 

Floral sketches Update

I have just taken a pic of the  Hatched in Africa Floral Sketches 2 BOM I am doing. We are almost at the halfway point with blocks going out but I have not sent out the large block in the pics below.

The quilt that I am making with the 5x7 designs is in the top of the pic and the 6x10 designs are in the quilt section in the lower part of the pic. The fabric is Cuzco by Kate Spain.
If you still wish to join this free BOM you can email me.

Floral Sketches BOM half

I have also taken some pics of the lovely little white eyes that were having a bath in my garden statue outside my kitchen window.

White eyes having a lovely time in the bath

 

Our garden is just starting to burst into spring bloom all be it a little early.

Rhododendron

We have had this rhododendron form when we were first married ad brought it with us from our first house.

Have a play with this program

I am not into digitizing, yet but people often ask me to put a logo on their clothing etc and I have to say that I can't because I do not digitize. I stumbled across this video on You Tube yesterday about a program called SewArt from Sand Computing. Thought it was worth a play with.

 

 

It is a free demo for 30 days ($75 to buy at the end of that) but have a play. I made the stitch file for this old school logo of mine. This was my very first attempt without any tweaking and I made a few errors. It can be improved but not bad for a one of thing. Just a reminder that you should not be using copyright material to digitize that you do not own. Remember that this is a very basic auto digitizing program and you will not get the results as you would from a more fully featured manual digitizing program.

 

Hints and Tips 14- Pressing Your Embroidery

We all know about not pressing our machine embroidery stitching on the front  but to place our project face down on a towel or similar and press from the back.

 

I do press my embroidery on the front if I need to but I use some silicone baking paper (called Glad Bake here in Australia) over the top of the embroidery. That way the embroidery is still pressed with the heat but it does not go shiny and threads do not melt under the heat from the iron.

Crazy Quilt block 26

Crazy Quilt block 26 has just been sent out to those who are participating in this free BOM.

Crazy Quilt Block 26

 

 

It is cold, wet and windy here today, a great day for sewing. I am working on some of my Hoopsisters Feathered star blocks. I am up to Row 5. I am doing this quilt in just thread and not putting the applique fabric behind the sections of the star blocks. I am also not putting a border on this quilt as the blocks are done in my 9 inch hoop and it is already large enough for my bed. I plan on doing a few more of these quilts including one using the applique fabrics.  The fabric I am using is Michael Miller Fairy Frost in Snow. This fabric really showcases the beautiful quilting which is the hero feature of this quilt.

Hoopsisters Feathered Star quilt in progress

 

I am also not doing this quilt double sided but rather will put a separate back on it and complete it by stitching in the ditch between the seams.

 

As this quilt was not designed to be stitched without applique fabric you will have to edit the 4 block star designs to line up the outlines of the star points if you decide to do it this way as well.

 

 

 

A Relaxed Week

This week I have taken a few days off from blogging while I have watched a bit of TV, played with my new Thermomix (had lovely minestrone for lunch today) and had the girls here yesterday for sewing. It is good to clear your head of all projects for a while.

 

I have just sent out Blok 7 of floral Sketches to those who have signed up for this quilt. It is becoming more like a Block of the Month or perhaps should be Block of the Fortnight. Just a reminder that I am actually stitching out two quilts here, one for each sized design.

Floral Sketches 5x7 design block

Floral Sketches 6x10 design block

Reminder on Some Fantastic Free Resources

We are very fortunate to have access to a number of free online resources to help us with our craft Some of those are some great free courses offered by Craftsy .

Some of their fantastic free classes on offer are:

(Click on each one to go to their page)

 

Pictures to Pixel Quilts

 

2013 Craftsy Block of the Month with Laura Nownes

 

2012 Craftsy Block of the Month

 

Creative Quilt Backs with Elizabeth Hartman

 

Mastering Zipper Techniques

 

Bag-Making Basics: Drawstring Bag & Bucket Bag

 

Bag-Making Basics: Reversible Tote & Zipper Pouch

 

Sewing Machine Feet From A to Z

 

Check out their iPhone apps etc. and how to access the classes on your portable devices.

 

Another great new free resource is from Quiltmaker magazine and is called Quiltmaker's Block Network. (QBN)

 

They are doing free videos with techniques and giving free block patterns and instructions. New videos are posted each Monday. The first video is called Easy Triangle Squares: Mark, Cut and Sew. There are some great block setting out ideas at the end of the video. 

Episode 2 coming up this Monday US time is called Stitch-and-Flip the Simple Way.

 

Project Round Up

This morning I am showing some pics of projects sent in by people who have made or have in progress projects that I have designed.

First up is Jade and Roy with Jade's Zig Zag table runner. Jade is one of the ladies who is coming with two of her friends to learn how to sew, do patchwork etc. These girls are doing a fantastic job.

Jade's Zig Zag Table Runner

Pat has also made the Zig Zag table runner

Pat's Zig Zag Table Runner

Elaine has made her version of the 10 minute table runner with the 10 minute blocks. she put a normal border around it rather than doing the 10 minute runner version as she was short of fabric.

Sheryl has also made a 10 minute runner with the 10 minute blocks.

Lorraine has been working on the Floral sketches BOM. My project for today is to get the next block out in that BOM.

Lorraine's Floral Sketches BOM



Janette has made a small quilt and wall hanging using blocks from the Aristocat BOM.

Janette's Aristocat  Wall Quilt

Janette's Aristocat Quilt

New busy work project

Many of you know that I love the projects that Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville has. She has just started a Leader/Ender challenge for 2013 and this is just perfect timing for me as I have been cleaning out my stash and found lots of bits that I will never use in a quilt or project. This challenge is using split nine patches which you treat as large half square triangles.

 Bonnie uses 2/12 inch squares but I am using 2 1/4 as I found a heap of fabric squares that could be cut to that size. A leader and an ender are small piece fabric that you put at the beginning and end of chain piecing your main project. You just pick up scraps after you have cut them out and before you know it you have enough half square triangles etc to put into blocks. It is not intended that you sit down and make up block after block but I have made up two just to check out size etc.

 I have also included a small scrap from Tenai's owl table runner she is making. The girls have gone off to finish off hand sewing the binding on their zig zag table runners before they come back next Wednesday.

 

A topsy turvey week

Block 24 has been sent out in the Crazy Quilt BOM using the Crazy quilt set from Kenny Kreations. I really like this block.

Kenny Kreations Crazy Quilt Block 25

 

 

There has no been much sewing done this week. Yesterday Mum and I went to my aunt's funeral and on the way home we stopped for a late lunch. We had some chicken and corn soup that was very very creamy. Not long after being home I started feeling pretty yucky. My Mum then rang to say she was feeling very ill was dizzy and had passed out on the floor for a few seconds. She had ben vomiting and continued to do so when I went up to her and so I stayed the night to keep an eye on her. We are both pretty seedy today but much better. Consequently no sewing has been done for a few days.

 

The girls are coming tomorrow for another sewing session