A Special Quilt!

One of goals this year is to only buy fabric for my classes and to make quilts from the fabric in my stash and scraps buckets.

One of my lovely friend's had a big birthday this year and I wanted to try the Marcelle Medallion quilt by Alexia Abegg's book Liberty Love. When I bought the book and then watched the QAL on Instagram I was hooked.

I decided that I wanted to make this quilt for my friend, so set about making the centre last summer. I will admit it was a frustrating process that was not fun. The Y seams and the small pieces not connecting properly left me really annoyed! Since then I have found this paper piecing tutorial for the block which would make the process much easier!

I put it aside for a few months whilst I started my City and Guilds, but dug it out 5/6 weeks ago and started working on it for the friends birthday.

Work in Progress, and Lego in as usual in the background.

Because my centre block was the wrong size I had to adapt the pattern in a few places, but overall it worked well!

Once the patchwork was finished I set to work machine quilting it, but loads of safety pins where involved first!

Lots for lovely safety pins!

I decided that I would quilt each border with a different pattern:

Lots of tiny pebbles, swirls and star bursts!

As the borders grew I increased the size of the pattern to include a tree bark pattern and the some love heart paisley in the final border, along with the family names of my friends family.

On the back I used fat quarters from my stash. The quilt patterns show up really well on the backing. It is lovely!

I found some fabulous little houses for the binding, which made me smile and fitted in perfectly with the colours in the quilt top.

The finished quilt is so totally gorgeous, and it did cross my mind to keep it for myself!

Luckily I didn't and it is now living in my friends house and very much loved!

Sewing Info:

Pieced and quilted with Aurifil 2024.

Pieced and quilted on a Janome CXL301.

Christmas Spinning Stars!

Earlier this year I responded to a request from the Fat Quarterly team for contributors to the magazine.... and my design was accepted!

I did a lot of dancing around the studio and then had a minor panic attack about how I was going to transfer the idea from my iPad to fabric....

Luckily my idea worked!

The lovely fabrics came from Makower and the Modern Christmas line by Henley Studio. I matched it with a white back ground so the stars would float and spin. It is backed with grey Klona.

The quilting is with Tula Pink variegated 50wt Aurifil thread in the spinning stars - I will post a close up of the quilting later in the week. I quilted stars and swirl with white Aurifil 50wt into the background.

My lovely friend Liz helped me sort out the photos and then posed for me!

I hope you like my first pattern for Fat Quarterly -go buy a copy, it is a fabulous e-zine!

Q3 Progress and 2 winners!

On my Q3 list a quilt for my dad that I started 7 ish years ago.

It has been sat bundled up in cupboards in 3 different houses waiting to be loved!

Finally it has been basted and made it to the sewing machine for some Free Motion Magic!

I love the pin wheels and decided to quilt swirls in the spaces around the stars, swirls remind me of wind blowing the pin wheels.

There are some spaces between the pin wheels that are trapped in so I have been putting parallel lines into the triangles. I am using variegated Aurifil thread number 3320. It is perfect for this quilt!

It is a massive under taking to get this quilt done, but I plan to finish it as soon as possible - I think my dad has waiting long enough!

Now to the winners!

Sorry has been a couple of days - time seems to slip past me in the summer holidays!

So the two winners are: Hannah and Helen Lay!

Congratulations!

Can you email me so I can send you a copy of the pattern each?

Off to Festival of Quilts on Thursday - I can't wait!!!!

Take a jelly roll....

My first finish of 2013 was actually started and finished in just over a day this week!

It is the first demonstration quilt for my class tomorrow - I am slowly getting the supplies organised and boxed up...

Anyway here is the finished front:

Yes, we still have snow!

It is simply made by piecing the jelly roll strips together in a haphazard way... I just plucked them out of the pile and sewed them, trying to to get the same colours next to each other!

I love this design, Mama Said Sew from Sweetwater... in fact I am kinda in love with all their designs! 

The backing is from my stash and is Hometown by Sweetwater (seeing a theme building here??), which I have held onto for ages, but I am so glad I did!

The text in the Sweetwater is always so lovely, so many things catch you eye each time you look at it!

I have never used patterned fabric for a backing and I love the way it compliments the front. I quilted it using a walking foot and some Aurifil red thread, just simply lines that follow the seams of the jelly roll!

Another first is using the jelly roll as binding so the binding changes as it works it's way around the quilt!

The whole process has confirmed that I love text! Can't wait for my swap FQ from the text swap I blogged about!

Best get on with planning and packing up!

To Auriful or to not Aurifil...

2012 was a year of quilting discoveries.... one of them was of the importance of thread.

I will admit I have been a long time quilter, but never given thread a second thought - I thought they were all the same.... I know!

Then I started Katy's Hexy MF quilt along in the summer and she listed Aurifil as her thread of choice.

Katy, if you don't know her, is an amazing quilter and oracle of information about quilting, so if she says this thread rocks then you HAVE to go and check it out!

At first the price knocked me out... I thought, really? That is crazy!

But I invested in some aluminium as she suggested and started hand piecing my hexagons....

I discovered the thread is incredibly flexible and the 1300m goes a very long way... I mean a very long way!

You can hand piece, machine quilt and machine stitch - all with one thread!

I now have a small collection of threads, that I am adding to slowly as I need and I don't even look at my box of polyester threads... which brings me to the dilemna I now face..

Do I use Aurifil in my classes?

Up until now I have kept my supply for my use and private students, but I feel like I am holding out on my other learners...

Should I introduce them to the joys of using Aurifil?

I guess the middle road is to use Aurifil and my polyester threads until they are all gone....

Experimenting with hexagons!

I have been steadily working on my HexyMF - work commitments and children who insist on scaring their mother with trips to the A & E have made my progress slow down..

But I did have a birthday present to make for one of my closest friends. Liz is a an amazing friend. She has been there to listen and gives out most amazing hugs... at a moments notice she has taken the boys if there has been an emergency. Without her and another couple of people we would have been in the muck more than once!

So what to make her....

Her living room has lilac and green curtains... I had an idea late one evening of using the lilac colourway of Katherine's Wheel by Nel Whatmore that I had bought last month to make her a cushion cover...

A few weeks ago I bought the wonderful book Hexa-Go-Go by Tacha Bruecher. As an EPP novice I wanted to explore the idea of hexagons more and Tacha's book is perfect. It is chockablock full of designs and ideas that use hexagons and EPP to the max - I really recommend it!

So I cut out the hexagons and put together a  design:

 

 

I backed the hexagons with cream and set about free motion quilting the negative space:

 

 

 

 

I didn't have any cream Aurifil so I used aluminium instead that give the quilting a silver appearance which worked really well!

 

 





I love the finished cushion, and luckily so did Liz!

PS Sorry about the bad photography - late nights sewing and forgetting my digital camera batteries!

Seeing Pebbles!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Craftsy and the courses that they offer. I bought the Negative Spaces course by Angela Walters.

When I wrote the post I had managed to watch the videos, but not mactually managed to try out her techniques. At first I had worried about using the techniques on a home machine - Angela uses a free motion quilt machine - but her tips for transferring the skills to home machines were spot on!

The course focuses initially on planning. You need to practice with a pen the designs you want to put into the negative spaces on the quilt:

I opted to try out the pebbles on my the elephant quilt I am making. I purposely included lots of negative space to quilt. Angela is very reassuring about using free motion techniques on the negative spaces. Matching the thread to the quilt top means you can focus on adding texture to the quilt, without having to worry about perfection!

My thread is very similar to the top, but darker than the backing fabric so you can see the progress I have made on the quilt:

Using my lovely quilting gloves and Aurifil thread the quilt is coming together brilliantly!

I also had a go at swirls for a mat for my sewing machine:

I still have a couple more classes to take - each one is between 15 and 25 minutes long so there is plenty of into and ideas to digest!

Do as I say, not as I do!

On Tuesday during my class in Gloucester one of the learners bought along a length of stretch, leopard print material. She had been asked to make a skirt with it.....

During the first lesson a fortnight earlier she had been introduced to an electric machine for the first time, previously she had sewn using a hand crank. At home she had taken her new electric machine out of it's box and made her son some cushions for his flat. This had prompted her friend to ask for a skirt.

So we sat discussing the design, how to cut the fabric and how she wanted to construct the skirt. She planned everything on paper, including drawings of the finished skirt.  I had taken along this fabulous book:

It has everything a new sewer and experienced sewer needs to know about using a sewing machine!

She sat for 20 minutes reading the book, making notes and before I approached again to talk about getting started. I showed the page that explains needles and how you need different needles for different jobs - we are going to need stretch needles for this skirt. the next question was, what happens if you use the wrong needle?

I explained that the machine skips stitches, puckers and generally gets upset. I talked about leather needles, using size 90 for sewing PUL...

Then it dawned on me - I hadn't been using my own advice. When I had attempted machine applique, free motion quilting and machine embroidery I had always left the same old needle in. Just any old needle... but my tension never seems right, the machine missed stitches...

When I was researching Aurifil threads, it said that 50/2 needed a Top Stitch Needle for quilting. I bought some and they have solved all of my problems when doing any kind of quilting or applique!

If I had used my own advice I could have saved myself a whole lot of frustration and started machine quilting a very long time ago!

New Toys...

When I started my Hexy MF quilt along, Katy from Fat Quarterly suggested all sorts of new sewing toys!

I bought most of them as I had not used them before and I thought it would be a worthwhile investment. Some of the them have been a success... others I am not sure I will use again....

Everyone is different so I thought I would share my thoughts on the things I have tried out:

Sewline Glue Pen

I love this glue pen. It is easy to use and really does work. The down side is that you have to use a lot making so many hexagons, which means they run out very quickly... I have found that I need a buy refills too quickly, so whilst I love the glue I have returned to the traditional method of attaching the paper - needle and thread!

If you want to try it out Pollyanna Patchwork has them and they are super fast with delivery!

Wonder Clips

I got these at the Festival of Quilts a couple of weeks ago. Katy recommended using them to help when attaching the fabric and paper hexagons. I tried this, but found the clips heavy and bulky whilst I was sewing... But I have been using them for the next step of building the flowers:

They work really well to keep everything in place. I also used them to help when I was binding my new quilt:

I got mine from Creative Grids at the Festival, but they have them online too.

Thread

I was also introduced to Aurifil 50/2 thread, which has changed the way I work completely! I have bought this thread in a number of shades and it is now the only thread on my sewing machine!

It is amazingly versatile - it pieces, appliques, hand pieces and quilts.... perfect!

The best range is at Quilt Direct, who are fantastic at getting them out fast!

I hope I have given you some inspiration... what new toys have you tried that worked well?

New sewing finds....

I am always looking for new supplies and ideas for my quilting/sewing.

As you know I started my first quilt along with Fat Quarterly blog, which has been fabulous. Not only have I learnt a new sewing technique of English Paper Piecing, I have also tried out loads of fantastic new products.

Katy from I'm A Ginger Monkey and co-founder of Fat Quarterly, made some suggestions for supplies that I hadn't encountered before - some of them I will be using from now on!

Aurifil 50/2 thread was suggested as great thread for the hand stitching. It was a thread I hadn't heard of. I bought a neutral colour for my Hexy MF quilts. It has been a joy to sew with!  Since then I have ordered 6 different colours for my studio - they piece, quilt and hand stitch! They are sublime!



I ordered mine from Quilt Direct, who were super fast in getting the threads out and they have a superb range of threads to choose from!

Another tip I picked up was using bees wax to coat the thread when I am hand sewing so that is less likely to knot. I got mine from the Eclectic Maker, which is also a new website to me!

It has meant that my thread no longer breaks and there are far fewer knots than before. I really recommend it if you are hand sewing. I have even used it when basting a couple of quilts - I am old school and hand bast my quilts...

I hope you find my discoveries helpful!