Red and Green blocks - number 12

I have just completed the LAST of the Red and Green Blocks.  That is 12 of them that you can download by clicking on the image to the right of this page.  They are free for at least one month, and sometimes 2 months- depending on how busy I have been.  After that time, you will be taken to my website, where they are $2.50 each.  That is Aussie $'s, so if you live in another country, it might cost you a lot less.

As yet, I have not decided if I will continue with a new free block programme for next year.  So far, nothing has really taken my interest, but I will keep thinking on it.  I have been trying (as always!) to get a few things finished, but keep getting side tracked by thing that inspire me.

You know the Civil War Brides quilt?  I saw a photo of some blocks made with a dark background, and using Kaffe Fasset type prints.  The blocks were made by Patty Harrants

I have tried to contact Patty to let her know that I have been overwhelmed with how beautiful her blocks are, and that I intend to make similar ones.  So far, I have not heard back, but I will show you photos of mine so far.  I have done mine with hand needle-turn applique, and Patty made hers with machine applique.  I am totally sucked in with these blocks now.  I am using the book "A Bountiful
Life"by Karen Mowrey.   I have had the book for ages, but never intended to make the quilt....until now!

Anyway, these are a couple of my blocks.  So far I have made 2, and part finished another one, and have one drawn up to go next.

I had a very small stash of Kaffe type fabrics, and have been asking my friends for donations, and going to the quilt shops (of course) and buying 25cm strips to add to the stash.  In time I hope to have enough to make all the blocks I need.

You probably know that I use Back Basting for my applique, and people ask me how I cope with a dark background like this one.  I say "use a light box" as you will be surprised at what you can see through it.  I am also using a white gel pen to draw the design on the fabrics.  It stays there, does not rub out, and does not damage your fabrics.  Not the "iron out"kind as I want it to stay for the duration.  I use the type you buy at the stationary shops.  They are only a couple of $'s.

I hope some of you might join me in this new project.

Long time - No see!

Did you look at the date of the last post? 1st August!  I can not believe that I have been absent for 2 months.  Mind you, it has been a hectic 2 months in one way or another.  There is a lot of catch up to do

In July, my friend Penny, opened her new shop at Victor Harbor, PennyLane Patchwork.  The opening was on the windiest coldest day this winter.  We all snuggled inside, and greeted the customers.  The photo above is the new Block of the Month I have started to make for the shop.  It is in Jen Kingwell "Lollies"fabric, and will be ready next year.  All the blocks are circles of one kind or another.  Some simple, some more complicated.

 Then in August, I went across to Melbourne, and stayed with my friend Janet O, and was the guest speaker at the Victorian Quilters Annual General meeting.  That was a bit of a treat for me, and I hope they enjoyed the quilt show and tell I had for them.  While in Melbourne, I visited the National Gallery of Victoria, to see the Making the Australian Quilt Exhibition.  A few of the quilts are shown above, but I think there are restrictions on showing them, so I had better be good :-) You can read about it on the link.  It is a must see exhibition if you are in Melbourne until 6th November.

 So, we get to September, and we have SPRING!!  Yay!!  we had the wettest spring on record, with gale force winds, and floods across the state.  It is still raining now, but we have been promised sunshine by the end of the week.

In preparation for Spring, I started to make these sunshiny blocks.  They are made from a Layer Cake, but I added a few other fabrics that I had picked up along the way.  The blocks are "Dresden Squared".  I am making about 20 of these, or more, as I think they would make a great workshop idea.  Simple cutting and sewing.  The trickiest part is appliqueing the centre circles.  This I am doing on the machine as well.

I got the Noughts and Crosses quilt finished.  I posted about the start of it back here .  It is all done, and hanging on the clothes line (along with the washing!) so I can take a photo.  I had it machine quilted with an all over Clamshell design, by Helen Campbell at the Quilting Room.

Also, forgot to mention, that during all this time, I had taken on a part time job!  It is finished now.....what was I thinking of???

Another one on the clothes line.  This one is our Spring into Summer workshop for 11th November.  It is a Jelly Roll quilt, or in my case, 2 1/2"strips from my stash.  I used only brown and brown prints, plus the solid blue, and I just love it!  It makes the brown look like gold.  It has gone off to be quilted as well.  There are spaces on the workshop if you are interested.  Email me for details.

 Last weekend we had the South Australian Quilters annual Festival of Quilts. I had a shop stand there, and can you believe, I did not take one single quilt photo!!  I was far too busy serving customers.  thanks to everyone who called by to buy some of my goodies, or just have a chat.  We will be back next year.

You know what happens at a quilt show, you get inspired to do new things.  Like I have not got enough UFO's to keep me busy for a while.......but I have had an Arabic Lattice quilt idea in my brain for a while.  This is a simple and tricky block, and it has danced with me for about 15 years.  Now it is about to get done.  I drew it up on EQ and this is the result.

 It starts with a 4 patch centre, and then you wrap triangles around that.  You can only partially sew the first triangle in place as show about.

 Then you can add the second triangle

 add the third triangle

 you are left with the first triangle, still flapping about

and finally you can sew that in place.  

I have made 3 of these this morning, and cut out a further 3.  The placement of the colours, will give you a number of different designs.  Wait a while and I will show you what they all look like sewn together.  I have made them 9" so I am thinking 20 blocks, plus a border, will give me a good size quilt.

Thanks for taking the time to read all my catch up news.  Sorry to have neglected all this time.

It has been a while

Did you miss me??  I have been to China

This has been the holiday of a lifetime!  It was a wonderful experience, but I will be very happy to stay home on Australia for at least a year.

 We have come home exhausted, and with a cold that is not shifting very fast at all.  This afternoon I head down to Victor Harbor for a quilter's retreat.  I expect that lots of good South Australian red wine, and the company of like minded women will help a lot!

Before I left on 9th May, I was able to get the next block ready for you from the Red and Green Again Block of the Month.  If you have not found it yet, the free pattern is available by clicking on the photo at the RHS of this page at the top.  The pattern is different to those already shown.  It had never been my strategy to make these patterns in a similar cross-over style, it just happened that way, and now I have been able to find a few that are a little different for you.

Start with the circular background, add the leaves, then the layers of the flowers.

As part of our tour of China, we took a cruise on the Yangtze river, and visited the 3 Gorges Dam project.  They have built a series of escalators so that you can actually go to the top of the mountain, without having to climb!  on the way up I found these hollyhocks growing.  I grow them in my own garden, so could not resist taking this photo.

There were beautiful gardens everywhere we visited.  Here are a few for you to enjoy.  I don't know what I expected to see, but not this.  Everything was clean and shiny. 

Lily block

Did you notice that I am a little early this month?  I am trying to get ahead.  Next month I am going to be away for a great chunk of it,  and I have not yet worked out how to do these block posts on the Samsung Tablet!  So, May's block may be as early as the 5th or 6th.

I was a bit worried with the Red and Green blocks, that they were starting to have another "theme"and that was the "crossing" kind of style.  That was not intention, it is just that I like them.  So, I thought I had better change it a bit in case you got bored. The LILY is a little more complex with overlapping petals and very fine stems.

To do this block well, start with the yellow petals, just appliqueing the outer parts in place, then overlapping with the red petals.  That will make the flowers nice and flat.  Then do the leaves, the stems, and finally the base of the flowers.

Hope you like the block.  You can print it off free of charge by clicking on the image at the top tight hand side of this page.

The block should print off at 8".  If you want it smaller or larger, then perhaps you can adjust your printer.  For the 8" size do no adjusting, just print of  100%.  My intentions with these is to have them print on one page of paper.  Hopefully I have got it right.

Happy stitching!

Tulip Cross Block

Thanks for being so patient.  The Red and Green block is on the right hand side of the page, ready to be downloaded (if you have not already found it!)..

I had it all ready, but had forgot to put it up, until a very kind person asked me about it, and that is when I realised that we were way past the 20th!  Lets hope that it all runs smoothly now.

The month of March was quite hectic towards the end.  Some of you may know that I am the Australian distributor for Karen Kay Buckley products.  I sent a newsletter out to our wholesale customers asking that they might get orders in early if planning to take their shops to the Australasian Quilt Convention held in Melbourne, 14th April.  Dutifully they did so, and I then had to get Karen to send all the goodies to me, so that I had them mid March to fill orders.

This is just part of the 8 boxes that arrived.  I had to take over the spare bedroom, as my workroom was already crowded.  So, over Easter I packed, and organised freight and generally had stuff all over the house in one area or another.  That is my main excuse for being late with the block, I was so otherwise occupied.

Should you be going to the Convention please call into see Punch with Judy, and Sewn and Quilted who are both now stocking Karen's latest Perfect Adjustable Rulers

They come in 6"wide and 3"wide, and can be made up to 24"in length.  Perfect for travelling to retreats and conventions.

On the sewing side.....what am I doing?  Still working on the hand quilting of the Birdie quilt.

All the echo quilting in the centre is complete now, and I am working on the final border.  My goal is to have it completed by the end of April, and I feel like that is now in sight.

Other big news, next April - that is 2017  -  I will be teaching on a craft cruise!  It is run by Needlework Tours and Cruises.  You can get the link HERE.   If you click on "Brows and Book Projects" you will find me listed way down the bottom....it is alphabetical.  The cruise goes from Sydney, around the south Island of New Zealand for 10 days.  There are 5 days of classes and 5 days of leisure activities.


Very exciting for me, and I hope my classes get booked out fast.  More on that one as the time gets closer.

I forgot to add the photos!!

New Block

This is the next block in the Red and Green block of the month.  It is called Lollypop......for obvious reasons I think.

It is not the first time I have used this block.  Quite a few years ago I used it in a 4 block quilt called Fruit Tingle.  The blocks in this quilt were 16".

Fruit Tingle

I used this quilt as a teaching project for a few years.  It was a good one to teach needle-turn applique.  The blocks, and therefore the shapes, are quite large, so new people can tackle the larger pieces, and get the general idea, before moving onto the more tricky shapes.

This Lollypop block is 8"finished, but you can increase the size when you print it, or photocopy it by increasing the ratio.  It is available now, and will be free of charge for one month.  If you look on the RHS of this page, you will see the photo and link.  Just click on the photo, and you *should* be able to print out the drawing.  If you have a problem, just email me.

I have had a really busy month with visits from my sister who lives in Newcastle, in NSW, plus my daughter is moving house next week.  The lead into the move has been really all consuming.  However, we did get a lunch day out when my sister was here.

Maz, Wendy, Di

We went to a fabulous place called the Bombay Bicycle Club.  this is an old pub, which has been converted into an Indian/English Raj themed venue.  If you click onto the link, you can see all the great images of the interior.  It is quite breathtaking.  They have palm trees growing in the dining room.

Natalie, Skylar, and Di at Glenelg

 Glenelg is one of our beach side suburbs, and we had a day out in the sun

Wendy and Di - Very bad selfie at Brighton

 
Edit.......
 I was asked about fabrics needed for the Red and Green quilt.     There are 12 blocks each needs to be cut 9"square....so you can cut 4 across the width of fabric, 1 metre/yard would be enough for the background. The rest is scrappy.....just use what you have. 

Peonies applique block

This is your new block for this month.  It is called Peonies.  I quite like these cross over kind of blocks with a bit of red and green.  If you go to the RHS of this page, and click on the photo it should take you straight to the spot where you can print out the drawing.  Set your printer so that it does not scale and just prints to actual size.  It is an 8"block, but you can increase the size if you want.  I made it 8"then I know it prints on one page only.

It is still terribly hot here, and I have not had much inclination to do any more of my cleaning out and decluttering.  I did get a few cool-ish days and evening, and was able to start on the hand applique of the Birdy quilt. 

 As usual, I had no clue as to how I was going to quilt this quilt.  My usual approach is to quilt around all the shapes, and in the ditch, if there is any pieced parts (like borders) and while I am doing that, I start to get a feel for what might suit.

I settled on doing echo stitch in all the background of the centre part of the quilt.  It takes a while to get into the swing of it.  Best part is that you do not have to mark the lines!  saves heaps of time.

 I did start on one of the borders as well, which I did have to mark.  My favourite marking pen for this kind of fabric is the wash out blue pen.   There are lots of brands on the market, and they have never let me down.  They have never "not come out" or never "reappeared" or never left any marks, so I keep using them.  The ceramic pencils are very popular now, but I find with hand quilting, and handling the fabric all the time, they tend to rub out.  Also, the new iron out pens - Frixxon - are a bit scary in my opnion.  Anyway, I don't want to iron my quilt once it is quilted.

The design is pretty simple, and I can use my long ruler for this.  It is just 3 parallel diagonal lines 1/2"apart then a gap of 1"before I start the next set.  I started in one corner with the marking,  and worked down one side and back the other.  They all seemed to meet ok.  I read that this design was quite traditional for the time in which the original quilt was made.

With the echo quilting, you just go around everything until you come to a spot where you are kind of boxed in, and then fill in that part with the same stitches, at your chosen width apart. 

I guess mine are somewhere less than 1/2" wide and greater than 1/4".  I just "eye-ball" the width and it seems to work out.

I got a fair bit of my de-cluttering scrappy quilt put together last week.  So far I have made 9 20"blocks, and I want to make 4 more.......and I have enough left overs!  it is on the list for a cooler day this week.