Fancy Fox Quilt: Half Way Through

Thankfully I am a bit busy lately, otherwise you would have had a blog post for every single new fox. I am so enjoying working with the Dryad fabric range from Shannon Brinkley. Absolutely love that fabric.

This is how far I have progressed over the last week...half way through!

I think I am hooked and will definitely be making another one of these. Took me a moment to get familiar with the pattern. The key seems to be in the organisation of your pieces. This is one of Elizabeth Hartman's easier patterns, however I found myself doing the first few one by one as I just could not get my head around all those different pieces, some of them very small. After that though it got easier and I started to work out an order for the construction and then was able to chain piece sections at a time. I am now half way through and have just cut out the remaining 9 foxes, all pieces neatly stacked in piles in the order that I am going to sew them, so it should go much faster now. Really enjoying this pattern and already have looked at some of her other ones, like 'Hazel Hedgehog'...bit of an obsession starting here, I think (I do also have her Bear pattern but that has lots more pieces and appears a bit intimidating). We'll see ...

Linking up to Midweek Makers over at Quilt Fabrication

Karin

Follow Up on Echo Feet

Just a quick note to follow up on my earlier post about the echo feet for the Handiquilter Sweet 16. Long story short and as explained in that post, I had a ‘dud’ echo feet set. I did get the whole lot exchanged and here you can see what a difference the new set makes:

My original 3/8in echo foot

New 1/2in echo foot

As you can see in the picture on the left, my original echo foot was in the way of the needle bar. Upon closer inspection with the woman at the local HQ group we discovered that the neck of the foot was uneven (see earlier post). Initially we only exchanged the 3/8in echo foot but when I got home and looked at my other echo feet they were all the same.
The other day then I got the whole lot exchanged...on the right you can see the difference in how the new echo feet are sitting (I took a picture of the red, 1/2in foot only, but the new ones are all the same). The needle is centred and they all have a little bit of space between the needle bar and the foot. Now that is what I call excellent customer service! Very happy that I followed this up. It was only when I needed it for an entire quilt where accuracy was an issue that I actually noticed this.

Karin

Fancy Fox Details

Seams pressed to the sides

Seams pressed open

I have been doing more testing of the fox 🦊 quilt block. I got somewhat confused with the pressing of the seams and the pattern only talks about pressing of the seams in the first segment. In the picture on the left I pressed the seams to the sides as I always do when constructing quilt blocks. That worked really well but made the middle part somewhat more bulky and protruding. I then started to read up on how others where doing the blocks and found that most people pressed the seams open. This is not something I ever do...

Anyway, knowing that I will do an allover quilting design over the quilt, I thought...why not, let’s give that a go. While I was at it I also changed the eye colour as I was not happy with the quality of the brown fabric. So, the new fox on the right has black eyes and all the seams are pressed open. It does make a difference in the block...you have a more tidy flat block, however it also added in width and length. My Pfaff machine does a very scant seam allowance and is usually spot on, but pressing the seams open, I was then out by several millimeters and the putting together of the segments became a bit of an issue. I then changed my thread from Aurifil 50/2 to Guterman 50/3 and that got me back on track. Also followed some advice on one of the blogs I read to measure each segment as I went along to keep the block straight and accurate.

The other thing I had paid no attention to was the direction of the fabric in the ears and also the snout (as you can see in the fox on the left). Given that some of my fabric is directional I paid some attention to it in the fox on the right. Looks heaps better, however requires some additional cutting, so one strip did not give me all of the fox. As I am planning to do another fox quilt, that does not matter so much, as I will be able to use the additional strip cut for the next quilt.

So now I am ready to get going on this...

Karin

Image Gallery

Finally found a blog that explained how to do a simple image gallery. For a long time I have been mucking around with trying to get images sitting next to each other with little success. I do find that a bit of a nuisance on blogger. Then I stumbled upon Liliflora Pretty who put up a post in 2016 on how to add a simple image gallery to blogger. When looking at this I thought that this almost looked too simple, but tried it anyway...

and tada, how easy was that...


Now this was particularly easy as I knew that I had reduced and cropped those images to the same size, so it looks pretty good. No hassle, just copying a few codes...very simple.

I then went ahead and set up my Quilt Gallery (see tab above). I previously kept all my finishes under the tab 'My Quilts' but was never happy with this as the quilts were all arranged underneath each other. I also had not kept this up-to-date, so over the last week I went through my whole blog looking at what quilts I had done, adding captions with the name of the quilt and the year of making. That was quite interesting actually as you could see how my taste has changed over the years.  Also it showed how I slowly but surely became hopelessly addicted to FMQ. The images are all different sizes and shapes which makes this gallery not quite as neat as above but it still looks ok, I think...anyway, better than it was. I am sure there is a way of making all your images the same size but I was not game enough to really start mucking around with that for fear of messing it all up again.

If you are in search for a simple image gallery or just want to be able to put images next to each other in your post have a look at the link provided above.

Karin

Fancy Fox Quilt: Test Block Done

I have got nothing to quilt 🙀 so I started on the Fancy Fox Quilt. It is on my list for the 2019 Finish A-Long, but in between I might have to construct something else so I can do some FMQ. Always have that tension between the actual piecing and the FMQ. Piecing takes me a while and takes away from the time that I can spent FMQ, but eventually I run out of quilts to actually quilt on. Might clean up my design for the next whole cloth, then maybe I can alternate between the two because I get a bit restless if I have nothing to FMQ.

I love Elizabeth Hartman's Fancy Fox pattern...in fact I love all her patterns. You can find them at Elizabeth Hartman Design. A friend of mine just did the Llamas and the Flamingos, but that looked a bit too involved for me. I finally got the Fancy Fox pattern with a gift voucher from the Fat Quarter Shop that I got for Xmas.

Yesterday I made a start. I am using my all time favourite fabric, the Dryad range by Shannon Brinkley for Paintbrush Studios.

It is absolutely gorgeous fabric and almost falls into the ...'too good to cut up' category, however I thought the other day ...'how ridiculous'!...what am I keeping it for?

So, I made a start...you need only one strip of a Fat Quarter for one fox, so my Fat Quarter bundle will last me a very long while. I am starting with a baby quilt size to see how it goes, but already am thinking that I may make another one straight after.

My first fox...so cute!

This was very easy to piece together once I got my head around cutting all those pieces out. For the background I am using a grey organic cotton, so I am closely following the colour arrangement of the pattern. Love the look of it! I will need 20 foxes for the baby quilt, so this should come together relatively quickly.

Onto the next fox...

Karin

2019 Challenge Quilt

Spent the afternoon completing block No7 of a challenge quilt I am involved in through our local Handiquilter group

Enjoyed this block enormously...even though my blocks are not entirely square. The grid design, while work intensive, produces a really nice texture. A bit work intensive but well worth the time and effort.

Only two more blocks to go...wonder whether we are also going to stitch down the surrounding zigzags.

Linking up to Quilt Fabrication’s Midweek Makers Linky Party.

Also linking up to Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing for Freemotion Mavericks Linky Party Karin

First Finish of the 2019 Finish Along Third Quarter

Have blogged about my Funky Bird Quilt extensively in previous posts, but here is the post on the actual finish for the 2019 Finish-A-Long.

You can find my goal list HERE

The finished Bird Quilt

The quilt measures 40in x 49.5in and is quilted with Aurifil 50/2 white thread using a variety of rulers  in the blocks and a swirly freemotionquilting filler in the bird blocks

Linking up to Meadow Mist Favourite Finish Monthly Linky Party

Linking up to Studio Sew of Course for the Q3 Finish-A-Long

Karin