Weekly Themed Quilt Contest

 
I love virtual quilt shows...and this week I am able to participate, as the theme is Leaves, Trees and Flowers.

I put up my Autumn Leaves Quilt that I finished in 2011. I am pretty much a traditional quilter and love the Maple Leaf block. Constructing it out of Japanese fabric, I started experimenting with its orientation and this is the result.

I wanted the leaves to be just "thrown" across the quilt in an orderly way to evoke the sense of the leaves being scattered across the quilt top. Anyway, this is the version I finally settled on.
Hope you like it.

To have a look at all the quilts, head over to the Quilting Gallery for the Weekly Themed Contest. Voting starts today and finishes on Monday at 8am (EDT).

Until next time

Karin

UFO Sunday

Well, tada...here is my progress on the English Paper Piecing project. I know it does not look like much but let me tell you this is not for the faint-hearted.

Not sure what possessed me in starting this, but I am determined to finish this. I do like the fabric and must say a project like this is ideal while watching TV. It is quite relaxing but very, very slow. I had a packet of 50 hexagons which by now are almost used up. I thought I would like it a bit bigger and had a try on recreating that template in EQ7. Now, that did not work, so I painstakingly made my own template using a leftover hexagon as my guide. Ha, ha...that took ages but I managed to get an exact copy and am using leftover printing paper to cut out the shapes. Again, very time consuming and not something I would do for an entire project. However, as I got some fabric left over I thought that I would extend this by one or two rows...(remains to be seen whether my patience carries me this far).

My question in relation to this project is around the quilting...

- how do I best quilt this?  I do not want to hand quilt this as I am no good at it and actually do not enjoy it either. I know the Quilt Police will be gasping, however this is just for me and I think I can live with it being machine quilted. I was thinking maybe to just follow the seam lines in a curvy way on the inside, but not sure about this...wondering about whether that would be too much.
- also, this appears to be quite fragile in its construction and I am wondering whether I should be using an iron-on batting to secure the piece and then I could 'bag' this little quilt rather than attaching a binding. If I was to follow that idea, when do I quilt it - before I sew on the backing or do I 'bag' it first and then quilt over the finished product?
-on the other hand, maybe I should add a small border...

Any suggestions??

Karin

BlockBase

I ordered BlockBase about a week and a half ago and it arrived yesterday! Cannot believe how quick that was.

This is what Block Base is about: BlockBase has virtually every pieced block published from 1836-1970 – over 4300 patterns, ready to print as patterns. It is based on Barbara Brackman’s book 'Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns'. Have a look at Barbara Brackman's Material Culture blog  to see how she is using it.

Had a look this morning and wow, yes, I am in heaven...this certainly gets the creative juices flowing...had a look at Scrap Quilts this morning and have come up with a number of designs, however I am not going to rush things as I am working on my UFOs. Repeat, I am not going to start another project...

Determined to get that English Paper Piecing project finished. Will post my progress in the next few days linking up with Leah Day's suggestion of UFO Sunday as I do have a few questions about this project and chances are, somebody will have done this before. Then on to the table runner that has been sitting there for weeks now waiting to be quilted. Might do as Leah Day suggested in Quilt Along #28 - Auditioning Designs and try to draw out different designs for quilting it, maybe that will help me to decide.

Can't remember whether I put a picture up of this, but here it is, patiently waiting to be quilted

I am hesitating because I would like to do something different with it, except cannot figure out exactly what this 'something different' might be...it will come to me, I hope.

Anyway, until next time

Karin

English Paper Piecing Project

Well, this is how far I got so far...not a quick project but I am very pleased that I have made some progress after all. Love the fabric...very much my colours.

The elongated hexagons are 2" and the squares in between come to 1". They came in a packet of 50 paper shapes with an acrylic template to cut the fabric (from Patchwork with Busy Fingers, visit website Here ). The hexagons are not basted, but glued with a Fabric Glue pen to the template. Apparently this is water soluble and when it is finished you spray the whole thing lightly with water and the template can just be taken out. I hope that works alright and is not too fiddly.

Here is the back



So far, so good...I have got 50 hexagons, so will be able to make another 2 rows. Hmm...maybe I will extend this. I could just trace the hexagon on paper and make a few more. I will see how I feel about this when I get to the end.

Have a great day

Karin

Quilt along #26

Hi all...I am feeling very unproductive compared to some other quilters in blogland. Mind you, I did have one of my migraine episodes over the weekend (why do they always cover the weekend?), so I was not able to do anything. After that we had a school meeting night, then a conference, work etc and that did not leave any time to do anything much.

However I did try the design that Wendy Sheppard demonstrated on SewCalGal's Freemotion Quilting Challenge for the month of August.

This was a fun design to try and definitely something I will use again.

Apart from this I am still going through my phase of confused indecision and lack of inspiration...not sure whether other people experience this when in between projects...nothing really grabs me and I struggle to continue where I left off with other projects. This then in itself becomes a bit of a stressor. Funny enough, this then often becomes the time when I yet again start another project! Figure that one out.

So, I decided to stop stressing, not start something new and do some planning on what to tackle next. As I don't like to sit idle I pulled out my paper piecing project from last year and do some hand sewing. This was sooooo therapeutic...just sitting there with this incredibly fiddly piece of elongated hexagons. I must say I do admire quilters who stitch by hand. When I bought the template for this at one of the shows, the woman had an entire bed quilt made out of these tiny hexagons. No, while I will finish this in the next few weeks, I don't think that I would have that amount of patience. This is incredibly work intensive.

This is what I am talking about

Paper Piecing Project in 2011

I will post some photos of how far I got along in the next few days.

Until then

Karin

Wasting time

Can't get into anything at the moment...still need to bind my table runner and also need to continue with my 'Arrangement of Small Pieces' project. Somehow this project has lost much of its initial excitement and is in danger of becoming another UFO.  Just can't find any inspiration at the moment...

Instead I participated in the Pets on Quilts Show over at Lily Pad Quilting. Hop over to have a look...some of the photos are just hilarious. This was a lot of fun and really made my week.

Apart from that I re-designed my blog (as you probably noticed)...this took ages to do (with the blog background changing every couple of hours) but I quite like how it turned out. Put some more quilt pictures up, experimented with all sorts of colour combinations, layouts and just about every other feature that I could find. Again, not sure why I spend that much time on it as I had firmly promised myself to work on my other quilting tasks today.

Maybe tomorrow...this is really stupid, I have quite a number of blocks pre-cut and just need to sew them together. My only excuse is that I have a bit of a headache and probably should go to bed.

Until next time

Karin

Quilt Along #25 - Cucumber Vine

Another great design from Leah Day's Quilt Along Wednesdays called Cucumber Vine.

Now I could pretend that I have not seen this design before, however this is the one design that I had picked out late last year to practice. I kept my practice piece of that design because I was obviously very impressed with that.

Here is what it looked like last year

Now, it will be interesting to compare how I am stitching this design this year, so I had a go on my practice quilt:

Bit hard to see

Back

Not much different...it seems last year I did the whole design a bit more dense and you can see some hesitation here and there. I think now the design looks a bit more well rounded.

Last year I also played a bit with making this design fit into an inner border or sashing of 2 or 2 1/2 inches and this is what I came up with (I actually saw something similar on some pre-printed shopping list where an overall design like this was as a watermark in the background):

I actually had forgotten that I had this in my little notebook:

Playing with the idea

I substituted my usual pattern of leaves and hooks with the swirls...pretty sure this is not a new design and that somebody somewhere will have thought of this before.

Anyway, hope you like it...I think it makes a nice small border or sashing design and sews very easily due to its repetition.

Looking at this I had to laugh...how consistent are those two lines in terms of spacing and shapes...no, I did not measure this out or plan it this way.  Actually did not see this on my little practice piece until I put up the photo just now. This is actually a good example of how some designs become like riding a bike, totally internalised. I do a lot of the leafy type designs and have done several smaller borders with similar designs. While I am a perfectionist by nature this is almost a bit freaky - the same slant of the curves, the same shape in the leaves. I assure you I am quite normal otherwise (lol).

My 'practice ' quilt is coming along!

Until next time

Karin

Pets on Quilts Show 2012

Here is my entry to the Pet On Quilts Show 2012 over at  Lily Pad Quilting .

This photo of our cat, Abby, was taken shortly after our move to our new house in February of this year. She suffered through the move being fairly disoriented for a while but then found the familiar quilt on the bed. This is her sleeping soundly not just stretching. As you can see she is a bit of a contortionist. Total relaxation.

Head over to Lily Pad Quilting and have a look at all the entries and place a vote for your favourite. This is going to be hard, they are all very cute.

Until next time

Karin