Modern technology.......

is the reason I have not posted since my trip to Toowoomba.  A couple of months ago I bought a new Samsung note/tab.  I was very excited that I could  now take photos and edit them straight away, etc.....big deal, except I could not work out how to get them from the tab to my main computer where I sit and write this today!   I am sure there is any easy way that I have not discovered but I ended up "sharing" them through Google plus, and then saving the photos and uploading......yes I will work it out soon.

So, here are some of the photos

These were taken on the last day of my visit at the Japanese gardens.  This is a really beautiful rural city in Queensland.  You can see a little of the Autumn colours in the trees.  Really, it is still so warm, you would not believe that tomorrow is the official start of Winter.  That is me on the bridge.  We did a couple of "selfies" but they were really horrid......all old and wrinkly looking.  I prefer the long distance, smudged look.

 Some of the lovely ladies working on their applique.  The quilt we did you can see on the wall behind.  It is the Bling Bling Baltimore.

 There were lots of different colour and fabric choices used

These photos were taken at Precious Time shop in Toowoomba, owned by the lovely Lisa.  You can go to their blog by clicking HERE and there are more photos taken on the day, and Lisa's very kind wrap on the day.

And, this is the "hostess with the most-ess"! the beatuful Penny, who looked after me.....had a glass of wine ready at the end of the day, and cup of tea in morning, drove me around and sat and sewed with me in the evenings.

I have been invited to come back, so I had better come up with a new project that might fit the bill. 

Thanks to all the Toowoomba people for making my stay so enjoyable.!

Travelling and stitching

Am I the only one here who spends more time preparing to travel, fussing about what sewing I am taking rather than thinking about what shoes or jacket?  On Thursday I am off to Toowoomba in sunny Queensland to visit with Penny, and teach some classes. 

So far I have come up with two versions of the Broderie Perse for the Di Ford BOM from Quiltmania.  I am just going to put all the cut out flowers and leaves in a bag, and play with them when I get there.

I knew that I would have to take along my Little Sisters quilt, as the quilting is not yet finished and I have 6 weeks to get it done.  So, today I decided to put the binding on.  Bit risky sometimes when the quilting is not complete, but I think it will be ok.

Before I start the binding process, I run a long stitch quite close to the edge of the top, thought the 3 layers.  this will hold the stray bits together.  It also helps if you have a tiny bit of a flared edge happening - it settles it down a bit.

I cut my binding 2 1/2" wide, join all the lengths, and press in half.  I use a walking foot and a 1/4" seam.  Don't cut away the excess binding and batting just yet.

Once it is all sewn in place, I use my ruler to measure 1/2" from the sewing line into the batting.  This is where I cut it off. 

fuzzy photo, but you can see that the batting is now about 1/4" wider than the edge of the quilt.  When I turn it to the back, the binding will be filled with the batting.  No floppy bindings!

Turned to the back of the quilt, the pressed edge sits neatly onto the machine sewn line, and this is where I will slip stitch in place.

This is not meant to be a tutorial, just a few hints.  When I started quilt making the bindings were always a chore, and just threw them together, not thinking about the final result.

Until......entered in a quilt show and the judges comments were "watch your bindings"  .......ok......time to do a better job at it.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips - Part 7

Tiptoe Through the Tulips - Flower Tree - part 7

When I made this quilt I really wanted to take advantage of the stripes in the two fabrics I had chosen for the funny looking flower/trees.  I cut the whole shape out of one piece of fabric.  If you are not confident about applique-ing into those inner curves and corners, you could do the stems of the flowers as seperate pieces, put the flowers over top, then the large trunk of the tree over the inner edges of the stems.  It could still be done with striped fabrics, but you would just have to spend a little more time in fussy cutting the fabrics to get it right.

I used two fat quarters for my trees,cutting two from each fabric,  and put them in opposite corners.  You will have to put the borders onto the quilt centre, and then place the shapes over the seams so that they are exactly in the corners.

The patterns are now available on the Legend and Lace website as a digital download.  The price is $4.95.  As always, let me know if you have a problem, or need any help.  I will do what I can to sort it for you.  However, I can not do anything about your printer:-))

Now that I have only one more thing on my "to do" list before I got to Toowoomba next week, I will spend some time finding some blocks for us to do after the baskets are completed.  I did not mean "call it quits" for good - just for the basket blocks.  I am running out of ideas for them, but will keep looking.

Thanks for your continued support.

Flower Basket

While I am incapacitated - can not walk well without a stick, and can not drive the car - I thought I had better sit down and work on my Baskets Galore BOM.  I made the Flower Basket a few months ago, but it just takes time to write the instructions, and upload it to a PDF etc.  My granddaughter came to stay the weekend, and I am not much fun right now - not playing hidings or chasings, phew!  She is sitting behind me now playing ipad games.  She is limited to 1 hour at a time, so I have to get this done in one hour as well.

I went looking for my collection of basket blocks yesterday, and could only find 11 of the 12.  I know the 12th one is there and I am in no state to climb about and look for it.  I know it will turn up.

Anyway, after the last months block, which was a bit tricky, this is a nice easy one for you.  Each of the half square triangles are a proper size, and finish as 2" rather than some strange fractional amount.  If you are rotary cutting, the instructions say to cut 2 7/8", then cut in half on the diagonal.  If I was doing this on the machine I would cut to 3", join them, then trim back to 2 1/2".  I find doing it slightly larger allows for us who are not so precise to get it right.

So, just 2 more to go, and I have been thinking about what to do after this.......just call it quits? or try something new?  I have been toying with two ideas.......one is more baskets, but ones with applique, or a little harder to do, and the other idea is similar to the Rose Garden, but just flowers - all sorts of flower motifs - tulips, daisies, roses etc. I don't want to make it too hard for you, as I like it to appeal to all skill levels.

If you are collecting the basket blocks, they are now on the Legend and Lace website, and can be downloaded free of charge. 

Next week I will be working on Tiptoe Through the Tulips and the Pom Pom Tree, as the week after that I will be off to Queensland to visit Penny, and teach at a few shops.

If you live in South East Queensland, and would like to attend one of my applique workshops, you can get in touch with Precious Time in Toowoomba, or Ffi's Fabricology on the Gold Coast. I believe there are still a few places.

Ok,  I think my hour is up!

on the subject of doll quilts......

Look what I got in the post yesterday, from Nancy near Philadelphia, in the USA

Doll quilt from Nancy

This is the lovely little lilac/purple doll quilt I received in the Doll Quilt swap that Lori organised. It is machine pieced, and has hand quilting.  Just lovely.  Thanks the quilt Nancy, and thanks to Lori for putting us all together.

Doll quilt I sent to Darlynn

This is the one I made and sent to Darlynn.  This quilt was made from some of the left over flying geese blocks I found.  I misunderstood the rules of the swap when I signed up, and thought it was just a quilt top.......no......it was a whole quilt, quilted and finished.  Panic set in, and this what I came up with, and I machine quilted it.  After I had made it, I liked it so much, I wanted to keep it:-(

I am writing this to you from my bed.  yesterday I had a HUGE fall at the gym, and fell onto the hip where I had replacement surgery 6 1/2 years ago.  It hurt real bad, and scared me even more.  I am seeing the doc this afternoon.  In the mean time, I am resting and have to use the walking stick to get around.

Nearly forgot!  Penny now has her website Pennylanepatchwork.com up and running.  It looks great.  Go and have a look.  Will be up there in 2 weeks time.....very exciting!

Four patch doll's quilt

I thought I would have another look at  my left over "orphan" blocks this week and see what I could make.  There was a heap of 4" four patch blocks, so I thought I could start with this.  After laying them down and playing about for a bit I came up with a suitable setting.

I did not try to match the blocks at all except to not put the same next to each other.  Just one failure on that point.  Never mind - Dolly won't notice.

 With this kind of onpoint setting you need to get the sides right.  If you cut them the wrong way you get a wobbly edge.  Not so bad in these little quilts, but horrible in the larger ones.

To get this measurement right you need to take the size of the finished block - 4" and multiply it by 1.414, then add 1.25: for seam allowance, and then round it up to the next 1/8th of an inch.  Sounds complicated?  here is the way to do it.   So this would be 4 x 1.414 = 5.656 + 1.25 = 6.906  ---  round that up to 7". 

So I cut 2 squares 7", then cut  on the diagonal twice to get 8 triangles,   and that gives me the long side of the triangle on the outer edge of the quilt.

Now, for the outer corners it is kind of reversed.......4" divided by 1.414 = 2.82 + .875 for the seam allowance = 3.7.  So round that up to 3 3/4".  Cut it in half once and you get the outer corners.

 The triangles are all attached and you can start joining the rows.  When making a large quilt you might want to check the directions of the pressed seams so that they butt in and sit flat.  I did not bother for this little one.  I did press all the seams where the triangles joined, in the direction of the triangle.

All done in about an hour.  I decided to not do a border as the setting triangles kind of make the border.

Binding and quilting completed.  At first I machine quilting in the ditch between the blocks, and then did the binding, which I cut a little narrower to reflect the size of the doll quilt.  After that I did a little hand quilting with Valdani perle cotton in variegated pink.  You can see a little of the wobbly lines in the top photo.

And, I did start the Di Ford Mystery quilt from Quiltmania.  I prefer the reds and greens I have chosen from my own fabric stash.  The Broderie Perse fabric is still undecided, so I am working around the that.  I joined the 2 Facebook pages for this quilt, and the ones done from fabric packs look great, but the photos look all just the same - each quilt is identical.  My vase looks a little wobbly in the photo.  It might just need a press.

Do I want to take this one on?

Last week I went to my applique group and 4 of the dozen or so people sitting around the table are doing Di Ford's Mystery quilt from Quiltmania.

Initially I was interested, when I heard a few people talking about it, and it was a BOM where they send fabric parcels to you.  The BOM with fabrics, are really the most successful, as we tend to feel that the fabric is here, there is no excuse, just get on with it.  AND, you have paid the money that is always an incentive.  The BOM which are pattern only tend to peter out after a while.

I have noticed this myself with the BOM's as digital patterns on my website.  The first couple of months are busy, then after that it really slows down.  People are less enthused, and get lost in other things to do.  That does not bother me as I know that the serious stitching people will get back to them, and they are still on the website for as long as needed.

So, having said that, I was a little disappointed to learn that the shop in Aus who were doing the fabric packs, had totally sold out.....well that kind of makes the decision for me, dosn't it?    Well, apparently it does not, because I can just use my own fabrics - ta dah! 

The thought of all these quilts exactly the same bothered me a bit.  How many? you might ask.  Well, there are a couple of facebook pages for this BOM and each of them has over 300 members, plus all the people who do not do facebook, or blog, or whatever.  I joined one of the groups and saw lots of photos of people using their own fabrics.  This one of Dorothy's is really different, so I went in search of fabrics in my stash.

 I have a box of fabrics entirely marked for "Broderie Perse".  These are a couple I found.

The one above on the right is my current favourite.  It is an old Smithsonian print, and needs a home.

 And then, I found this panel I bought a few years ago.  It has all the floral motifs of the one used in Di's mystery, but not enough to make it work.  There is also a lot of blue, and I have more greens and reds that I would prefer.

So here I go on the journey.  Lots of the girls have started on part 2 and I have seen some photos of the next part on the FB pages.  I get my magazines at the newsagent, so I am about a months or so late.  Many others subscribe.

At least I know my quilt will not be just like all the others.  Must not forget also that I need to have the Little Sisters quilt finished in 2 months...........not a lot of spare time, but my hands are sore and I need a rest from quilting.

Last but not least

I am now all up to date with my blocks for April.  This last one is block 6 of the Pom Pom tree.  This is a funny little block, and I think of it as "the one with the hat"!  It is a bit wonky, and that is how the original quilt was - not quite perfect or  symmetrical.  This appeals to me, but if you are the type of person who likes to see it all perfectly matched, then you will probably want to redraw some parts of the block.

The block is now ready for you to download from the Legend and Lace website.  The cost of $4.95 if you live in Australia, and $4.50 if you live in any other country.  If you pay by Pay Pal you might get a strange message telling you that it has failed.  Something is going wrong with PayPal and it is sending this message.  Before you do it all over again, check your emails to see if you get a confirmation email first.  Usually it is ok, and I am sorry about this.  It is some little quirk that I have tried to fix but does not want to talk with me.

Be patient and I might get it fixed.  The link should come to you in an email, and you have 3 days to download.  Good luck!

Don't forget the photos :-)

Tiptoe through the Tulips - part 6

The next part of the Tiptoe Through the Tulips quilt is now ready.  There are 8 of these little "tulip trees" on the border of the quilt - 2 on each side, either side of the centre baskets

When you start to add these pieces of the quilt, you need to measure between the point of the largest green leaf straight, across to the sloping edge of the basket about 2 1/2".  That is where you start the placement.  If you prefer, you can wait until the next part is ready, then just place the tulips half way between these tulips and the corner pieces.  Remember, it is a Folk Art quilt, and is not meant to be perfect!

The pattern is on the Legend and Lace website now.  The cost is $4.95

On Friday we went to the Meadows Easter Fair, and I bought a whole box of strawberries for jam.

 I got about 4 kilos of usable fruit from the box.  Lot os bits had to be cut off.  The birds got those

 Seems a real waste but they were bruised or discoloured.

One kilo of fruit plus one kilo of sugar, and some lime juice.  Let them sit over night and the sugar melts. Seeing all that sugar is a worry!  Anyway, last night I finished it all off and got 10 jars of jam. 

I got a little more quilting done on the Little Sister's quilt as well.  I really like this free-hand kind of design.  I am marking with a wash-out blue pen, and if you don't like where the line goes, you just do another one.  Once it is quilted, I then spray with water, and the lines disappear.  You still need to wash the quilt. 

One thing I read on the box the pen came in (yes you should read it) it says you should remove with water before washing it, as some chemicals in washing detergent reacts with the pen, and the lines go a yellow-ish colour.  Did not know that, but I always removed them before washing anyway.

The Little Sister quilt

My friends have been asking me about the progress of this quilt.  It has been in production for the last 5 or 6 years, and to get things moving, I entered into a show.  The due date is early in July, and I allowed myself 4 months to get the hand quilting completed.

It is hard to tell from this photo, but all these corner motifs have been quilted.  I plan to put a little more into the background.

Apart from outlining all the shapes, I had no idea how I was going to handle the background quilting.  Until......recently I purchased a Samsung Note (a tablet) and one night I was looking at the photo of the original quilt humming and hahh-ing about it, when I realised that I could actually expand the photos, with amzaing clarity.  It actually showed up all the quilting stitches!

The original quilt was outlined (as I have done) then it was will filled in with heaps of (what looks like) free-hand floral quilting shapes.  That is pretty much the way I have decided to do it as well.

It takes the pressure off about laying it down flat some place, and marking background lines.  I can just fill in the spaces as I come to it........so, I now think I am more than halfway done, and I have more than 2 months to go.  Each night I thread up 10 needles before bed, and the next night, between dinner and bed time I quilt those 10 needles.  Sometimes I get less done, and sometimes I have a little extra time, so I think I will get it done.

Still on the subject of getting things done, these are the next two parts of the Tiptoe Through the Tulips quilt.  The next part is late already, and I am having trouble deciding what to do.

The tulip goes between the previous months basket block, and this funny tree shaped that goes into the corner.  I feel like we should do the corner next, and then you can see how the tulip fits into the space between.  Guess it will sort itself out soon.

Mini Log Cabin

We have a saying in Australia "no flies on me!"  It means that I move quickly and the flies do not have time to settle.  We have lots of strange sayings like that.

I finished that little log cabin quilt last night, and took the easy way out.  After arranging the blocks, and finding suitable border fabrics, I layered and quilted it with big stitches and Perle cotton.

 This part of the little quilt finished at 12"

I chose the first border fabric which is quite similar to the centre of the blocks.  It needed something to lift it.  The second border is cut from a stripe fabric.

I did not want to waste the fabric, so cut two different strips out of the same print.  I would have had t make a hole in it if I used the same print.

 I save my off-cuts of batting, and join them using a "serpentine" stitch on the machine, or batting seam tape

I decided to use the "envelope" or "pillowcase" method of finishing off.  You layer the quilt with the batting down first, the backing on that with the right side up, and the quilt with the back up.  Sew along the edges 1/4" inside the edge of the quilt.  Leave a gap in the seam to help turn it out the right side. 

 Trim the seam through all 3 layers

With this little quilt I left a gap about 3", but with larger quilts you need to leave several inches for turning.  Once you have turned it out the right way, you can slip stitch this closed.

The quilt is turned right side out, and you just have to tidy up the edges and points a bit.  Rolling the seams in your fingers, and tacking or pinning helps.

I put a quilting stitch just inside the edge of the quilt to keep that edge flat, and did some cross hatching over the rest of the quilt.  I might do a little more.

This is fun......I think I will start on another one pretty soon.