WIP Wednesday

Have been busy...

WIP #3: Baby Quilt top finished and basted read to be quilted. Thinking of a loopy kind of FMQ design

WIP Table runner

 

Finished the stitching-in-the ditch. Forgot how tricky this can be. I am using white thread rather than Monofilament, so I need to be a bit more exact. While necessary at times, I actually do not like Monofilament thread that much and try to avoid it wherever I can

The blocks are beautiful (looks rather wrinkled here because it was folded up) and this should turn out nice. Still planning on a feather border and found a nice motif to put in the sashing. Looking forward to this.

This white top on the cream batting is a bugger to photograph...looks much better in real life

 

 

Apart from this I still have to baste (and continue on) my Colour Adventure quilt and continue on my FMQ piece....I cannot believe how many projects I started this year! 

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Karin

WIP #3: Baby Quilt top finished

 

Hard to believe, but I finished the baby quilt top...yes, I made it again!








If you followed my earlier posts about this quilt, I realised that the direction of the fabric did indeed matter in the construction of the quilt. Unfortunately I only realised this after I had the quilt top just about finished. As I am planning to put this pattern on Craftsy or something similar, I did not want to lead people down the garden path as the mistake was in the construction of the blocks...hence my pattern needed to be altered (although with my fabric you would hardly notice the difference as the zebras are facing up and down, as do the clouds - however if you had fabric where direction mattered you would need to pay attention to this).

Had to have a bit of a break at that point, but re-wrote my instructions properly the other day and made the whole thing again, checking my instructions as I went along. Worked great ...was very happy with my write up and glad to be coming to an end. I did end up making the quilt a bit bigger and managed to get more of the zebra fabric which I will now use as the backing. Figure this, the same fabric still available after more than half a year! All that is left to do is to finish off the quilt, do some grammatical changes and formatting and I am ready to go. This is actually a nice little quilt to make and one that you could finish off in a weekend.

It will be interesting to see whether this will generate any interest but given that I have been talking and thinking about this for a good year by now, I just need to make it happen. No time for doubts. This will take some pressure of and I can then think about where I would like this idea to go.

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch and Let's Get Acquainted LinkUp at Plum and June this Monday hosted by Janice at Better Off Thread

Karin

Quilters' Show & Tell

Here is my contribution for this week's Quilters' Show & Tell held over at the Quilting Gallery. The theme for this week is Scrappy Triangles.

An 'Oldie but a Goodie', this quilt was one of the first bigger quilts that I made. It is used daily, has been through the washing machine several times and still looks great.

Broken Dishes quilt (2008)

and a close-up

So simple, yet so effective...

The blocks measure 8in and the overall size of the quilt is 75 1/2 x 51 1/2in. It is entirely made out of scraps (at that stage I was collecting offcuts at the local fabric shop).

The designer of this quilt is Jane Morgan and the original quilt is called 'Anything Goes...Scrap Quilt'  and was featured in Stunning Patchwork No 1, 2007.

Karin

Blockbase Sew Along #9

A very rushed #9 block for the Blockbase Sew Along run over at the EQ blog 'Behind the Mouse'.
The block is called   Broken Star and is #2901.5  of Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

This was a fun block top make and came together easier than expected. Not sure about my colour combination, I think I would have preferred something darker surrounding the middle square.

Linking up to the Blockbase Sew Along to check out all the other blocks.

Karin

FMQ Friday

More FMQ fun...

After a month of piecing I really felt the need to do some FMQ, so I decided to repeat the little exercise that Patsy Thompson had set in SewCalGal Freemotion Quilting Challenge in December 2012. This time I chose black fabric...(see my previous version HERE)

Also tried Don Lin's method of marking the fabric with black tulle which was demonstrated on SewCalGal Freemotion Quilting Challenge during April 2012...yes, that worked absolutely fine. I used a white marker to trace the design on the black tulle, heat set it and transferred it to the fabric with a silver pencil. To spice things up a bit I decided to do some trapunto...now that was interesting. Probably should have done a bit more reading around that. I only used one additional layer of cotton batting and secured the design with water soluble thread. I cut away the batting with my little embroidery scissors and was quite amazed that I did not cut into the fabric...after layering and basting the piece I then chose a light orange thread to stitch out the design, trying to stitch next to the white water soluble thread...this was really hard to do and I must say the white thread was very distracting. Once finished, I sprayed the design with water and the thread dissolved, however....yes, there is always a however, the thread might not have been the best quality and while it dissolved, it left some sort of sticky residue in some places and I also noticed that in some places it had pulled up the bobbin thread slightly, so I had these tiny white dots everywhere. Also, in retrospect, I should have put two pieces of batting behind the design as it hardly showed at all...

Not to worry, I then stitched over my design in white thread and again in the light orange thread just for good measure (as you can see I had quite a bit of fun with it) to have a look what this would look like and to cover up some of those more suspect areas. To my amazement it turned out quite nice...if you like your design to show up like a chalk drawing (ha, ha...). And then I played...this was so relaxing...did some microstippling and started filling the piece with various borders. My stitching is a bit 'wonky' in parts, not having FMQ for a while, but I soon got back into the rhythm of it.

I just love FMQ...the effects you can achieve with thread are just amazing.

Linking up to Leah Day's Freemotion Quilting Friday to have a bit of a look what others have been up to.

Karin

FMQ fun

After a month of pure piecing I finally made some time to FMQ. I think I am almost enjoying the FMQ more than the actual piecing...

So, the projects on the floor got left behind ...were in use anyway as you can see

and I set out to play...

Gone a bit overboard with it...went around several times with different thread (white and light orange Aurifil 50/2 thread) to hide some imperfections (will post about the actual intent behind this later) and to also have a bit of a look at what this would look like. Looks actually a bit like a chalk drawing...amazing what you can do with thread...

This was most enjoyable...yep, obviously started another project.

Linking up to Anything Goes Quilt & Sew over at Marelize's blog Stitch by Stitch

Karin

Basting Day

I have got 3 projects to baste. I have been piecing since the beginning of the year and am in avoidance mode, I think. This is not one of my favourite jobs...I am used to crawling around on the floor for this, however that takes me a long time as I have to build in regular breaks,  otherwise I do my back in.

On her blog Stitch by Stitch, Marelize recently suggested hand basting your quilt. She shared two little videos from Sharon Schamber on her post on how to do this.  Find the link HERE. Now that was interesting to watch and almost seems too good to be true...

Ah, habit is a funny thing...I started with the small projects today and will go from there. As you can see, I am using pins...not really my favourite, particularly on white fabric. Also discovered that some of my pins are getting rusty, so did a bit of a clean out while I went along.

I wonder whether I should try those Pinmoors















One down, two more to go...

Linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced

Karin

BIG Mistake

WIP #3: Baby Quilt on hold
Last week and over the weekend I worked away on my baby quilt. Chain pieced all the blocks and managed to sew together all the rows. I was very impressed with my productivity and thought that this was super easy, fast to make. And it is....

I am sure you can relate to this...working away, thinking you are really getting things done, standing back looking at your work, still all good, in fact, looking really great, and then suddenly....you discover the mistake. Initially it is a fleeting thought and then you really stand back and take note! No escaping it...BIG mistake.

I could not believe it! In my haste, I did not pay sufficient attention to the direction of my fabric.

I focussed on the zebras for some reason...looking at this the week before, I thought (and wrote) that this would be great as the zebras would be hopping all over the place. Yes, they do, however I failed to pay any attention to the clouds. No idea how this happened, but I now have a quilt where all the clouds point in the vertical direction...

I know how this happened...it is due to my method of construction and requires a different approach. As this is a pattern I ultimately want to share over the net, I will have to fix this. Maybe this was due to my low grade migraine that troubled me for most of last week, but I am still in a state of disbelief.

Options.. (1) I could fix the current blocks, or (2) do it again...

Looked at the fabric this morning...yep, as I always buy way too much fabric, I have enough to do it again (may need to purchase some white, but that is ok, as I only bought this recently). Phew...the other fabric was bought some time during last year, so little chance I'll get that again.

Can't believe it...well, one good thing, this pattern will have been well and truly tested and there would not be anything else that could go wrong. ( I have done this quilt before on a smaller scale with fabric that was non-directional, so this will be the third time I am making it)

Thought I share this and am linking up to Connie at Freemotion by the River.

Karin

WIP #3: Baby Quilt

Working away on my baby quilt 

This is very cute. Currently considering whether I should make it larger...my original idea was 6 x7 blocks which would make it 36.5"x 42.5". Looking at the width, I think it could be a bit larger.

This is super fast to make...I chain pieced most of the blocks in one evening and if there was no shopping, cleaning etc. I think this could be pieced together in a weekend which makes this a super fast project to make.

Once this is done I have 3 projects that need basting...yes, I know, what is the hold up...had a bit of a low grade migraine the last few days and just could not face doing anything too taxing. Just needed to be still. After this though, I will need to tackle the job as I want to get back to FMQ. It's been far too long.

Linking up to Anything Goes Quilt & Sew Linky Party over at Marelize from Stitch by Stitch

Until next time

Karin

 

Blockbase Sew Along #8

This is Block #8 in the Blockbase Sew Along that is hosted by the EQ blog 'Behind the Mouse. The block is #1407a in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns  and is simply called Spool.

I chose the block with the inset seams as I have some leftover fabric in the range I am using (Moda Jelly Roll '30s Playtime') that just fitted those rotary cutting instructions for my 8" block.

Complete flop on the first trial, obviously a bit harder than I thought

My block did not turn out that great but I did not have time this week to repeat it. It took all four of those spools to get the hang of this, hence it did not fit together properly at all. I must admit, I am totally out of practice with inset seams ...never mind, all good practice but this one definitely has to be done again.

Until next time

Karin