Craftsy Pattern Store

Finally managed to set up my pattern store...very humble beginning with just 2 patterns, but I am super impressed with it as I have been talking about this for a long time.

Check out my new pattern

This is the first of a set of 4 placemats I am intending to complete.  I am thinking of having 3 placemats with a white sheep and then reverse the colours and have one with a black sheep...a bit of fun at the dinner table!

Here is the link to my pattern store:

Karin

A new WIP: Scrappy Country Quilt

As you may know I decided to make another scrappy Country quilt using the Disappearing Four Patch block

 Love the look of this block and think that it lends itself particularly well for a scrappy type of quilt.



Going through my stash the other day, I finally decided to use my 'special country fabric'.  This is fabric I won (21 Fat Quarters) in a competition run by the Australian Patchwork & Quilting Magazine in 2011 (Vol 20, No 7) to celebrate Leutenegger's 120th birthday. The fabric was an assortment of prints from Windham Fabrics, Andover Fabrics, Henry Glass, Robert Kaufman, Blue Hill Fabrics and SPX Fabrics....just beautiful. This is a start...not sure what else I will throw in.

My selection so far


Have not progressed that far, but made a start. The blocks come together easily and accurately and finish up at 8 1/2in square. Bit out of practice with piecing though...took me a while to figure out which way to press my seams. Got all confused.

My progress so far

This is exciting!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced with guest blogger Liz from Shush - I'm Quilting

Karin

FMQ Friday

Short Update...not much progress since last week.

However, the feather frame is finished ...yah! Each feather took me about 3/4 hrs and I only managed 1 - 2 per day.

Now I only have to work out what to fill the space in between with. Will have to take a bit of a break as I will have to get to the city to purchase a thread that blends in unless I decide to use white....still a bit undecided what exactly I want this to look like. I got so carried away with my feather design that I did not consider filler designs. I could of course stipple this down...bit bored with that though.

 

Started just doodling with the machine...have not done this for ages...





Wow, quite an assortment of weird and wonderful shapes...I liked the spikey design but for the life of me could not get away from quilting it all in a row. I had seen this somewhere on the internet and in the picture it was definitely a filler design filling up an entire area...definitely not quilted in rows.

 Quite like this filler. Seen it on some of Patsy Thompson's projects and quite like the look of it.

However, I tended to get lost in it...did not come that naturally to me...definitely one to practice as I think this is a very useful filler as it lends itself to fill out all sorts of spaces.

Might have to check out Leah Day's 365 + designs to see what else I can find.





Linking up to FMQ Friday over at the Freemotion Quilting Project with Leah Day.

Until next time

Karin

Are you a beginning quilter?

Had this post in my mind for a while ...for all those beginning quilters that look over the internet coming across all those wonderful quilts. I did not blog when I started quilting and I would imagine that looking around  the net could become quite intimidating and to some extent discouraging when you are a beginning quilter.

Therefore I thought I share my very first quilt with the world...warts and all. It a simple sampler quilt that I put together following instructions of a tutorial for beginners by Gloria Massard from Sew A Quilt on the internet. Now this is several years ago but the basic information is still there. This is how I learned quilting. The original tutorial had 6, 6in blocks...a Log cabin, Four patch, Flying Geese, Rail Fence, Diamond in a Square and Pinwheel block.

I got so enthused about it all that I just kept going and made it into a little quilt.

The end product looks alright from afar and I remember how proud I was (and still am) that I accomplished this. As you can see, already then I preferred the solid type of fabric.

Now let's take a closer look:

The Log Cabin block was somewhat hard and turned out seriously crooked...too many pieces involved

 I loved the simple Four Patch

 This was the first block I made and I was hooked

 The Pinwheel block had a big knob  in the middle where all the seams meet...in fact, there is a bit of a hole there.

 Flying Geese block

Diamond in the Square block...this was hard and from memory, I don't think it ended up 6"...but, hey, it looked great.

Actually, none of the blocks turned out at exactly 6 ".  I then put some sashing in between which did not really line up properly, but this probably helped to even it all out a bit as the whole quilt turned out reasonably straight.
 
Left the best for last...my stitching in-the-ditch was an adventure, to say the least. I used beige thread as this was what I had read in magazines about. Did not realise at that point that you could buy invisible thread and it also did not occur to me to use something maybe a bit less obvious. Still remember being quite perplexed about reading that  the quilting in-the-ditch would literally disappear in the ditch. Well, mine definitely did not, ha, ha...

So, hope you can see we don't all start with those amazing works of art, but from experience I can honestly say that each subsequent quilt obviously became more accurate and my workmanship  improved over time...it does not actually take very long at all to get the hang of it.

Happy quilting

Karin

Another Country Quilt

Feel in the mood for a country type quilt and have been playing around with my EQ7 program designing all sorts of things...

Settled on the Disappearing Four Patch...quick to construct and interesting to look at and lends itself well to a scrappy type quilt. Country fabric will not be an issue as I have tons of it (and more)...in addition, some time ago I won 20 fat quarters of country fabric in a block competition with one of the magazines over here (Inspiring Country Thread). The fabric is really beautiful but so far I have not used it for anything. Definitely time to cut into it...

The internet is a great resource...did not take me long to find a number of tutorials on how to quickly construct this block.

Here are just a few of the sites that I looked at:

Chock-A-Block Quilt Blocks (ending up with a 12 1/2"block)
SewWonderful (8 1/2"block) and
What comes next? (Disappearing Four Patch with a twist - very cool)




And here is my test block

Perfect...I used 5" squares as my starting point and arrived at a block size of exactly 8 1/2". Went  together pretty quickly...I reckon the best way to go about this is to sew up all of the Four Patch units first and then proceed to cut them to make the Disappearing Four Patch units one by one.

The quilt I am planning will look something like this:

42 blocks in total...with a border of 6" this would come to 61" x 69".  Have not quite decided on the border as yet as this will depend a bit of what I find when I go through my stash, but overall I like the look of this. Yep, can't get away from it...I love those simple, repetitive arrangements.

Linking up to Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop Week 8 and Link Up over at Plum and June and Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin

Quilter's Show and Tell



This is my entry to this week's Quilter's Show and Tell over at the Quilting Gallery. The theme for this week is Quilts for the Little Ones.

As you may know I finished this quilt earlier in the year. This is the second time that I have done this quilt. It is the perfect quilt to whip up in a hurry as it comes together very quickly.

 

What I like about this quilt design is that the design is particularly useful in showcasing the feature fabric, in this case,  zebras that are hopping all over the place. There are currently so many bright and colourful conversational type fabrics around and I often look at them and think that they are far too pretty to cut up into really small pieces.

 

 

The quilt measures 36.5 x 48.5 inches and is quilted with an overall loop design.

Watch this space as I am intending to put the pattern up on the blog in the near future (just have to figure out how to upload a PDF).

 

Anyway, voting for the quilts starts on Friday and goes through to Monday morning. There will also be a give-away open to everyone visiting the site during the weekend voting. So, head over to the Quilting Gallery to have a look at all those wonderful quilts (and hopefully give me one of your votes). 

 



Karin

Less May Be More

This is how far I got with my in-lining of the plume shapes

Initially I was going to also outline the plume shapes on the outside as I had done with the feather wreath. However, after I started it and looked at it, I just felt that this was too much...somehow it distracted rather than enhanced the look, so I did not continue with it.

Looking at it now, I think it definitely needs a filler, but given how slow the in-lining is progressing,  this is still a while off. I don't want to rush this along, but take my time and hopefully get it right and enjoy the process.

Linking up to FMQ Friday at the Freemotion Quilting Project.

Karin