Local Quilt Exhibition

Went to a local quilt exhibition weekend before last. The group held their 12th Anniversary and celebrated in good style by putting on a small exhibition.

Very enjoyable as always to look at beautiful quilts and talk to like-minded people. Many quilters in this group are into hand stitching and I must say I did see some awesome quilts made entirely by hand. They even had an Australian Wagga quilt on display.

Also found some nice FMQ

This must have been done by a longarm quilter...it looked very nice and I inspected it for a while.

Came across many more interesting quilts but I did not meet the people who made them and hence could not ask whether I could put them on the blog.




I did however meet Cheryl (remember Cheryl's quilt?...still have not finished it) who had one of her quilts on show. I thought I share this with you as I had not seen this before.

Cheryl's Chicken Scratch quilt

This is called Chicken Scratch embroidery. It is a lace like embroidery that is worked on gingham and seems to involve some basic embroidery stitches. I believe it is also called Depression lace or Amish embroidery amongst some other names. How effective is this ? Cheryl's quilt is entirely hand stitched and quilted. Must say I cannot imagine stitching an entire quilt by hand...just incredible.

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin

Sneak Preview of the Windmill quilt

Before you consider a project that requires a lot, and I mean a lot of HST, consider the cutting time! I have been cutting for most of the last 2 weeks and really started to drag my feet with this...also made one of those stupid cutting mistakes, wasted some fabric and half way through changed my mind on the background fabric...

But finally, the beginnings of a beautiful little quilt

Very simple, but I do like the simple quilt layouts where the fabric and colour does most of the talking. I won the border fabric (Remix by Ann Kelle for Robert Kaufman) in one of those Magazine competitions and have long been wondering how to use it...this just fits perfectly. The blocks come together quickly if you are organized and chain piece your way through it...the only fiddly bit is the join of the eight seams in the middle as this can become a bit bulky, particularly if your points are a bit out. Hence, the accurate cutting of the triangles is very important as I found out yesterday evening with having to redo and fix about 10 of those blocks...lesson learnt! 

Well, on with the show...more cutting coming up for me.

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin

EPP Linky Party

Well, not much happening Down Under. Did not continue on my TV project other than looking at it...

However, I did come across some more fabric on my regular exploration of the offers at the fabric shop. Have a look what I found in one of the sales bins.

Yep, another stack of Fat Quarters that matches the Fat Quarters that I already had. I paid $1 for this...can you believe it?

While that fabric has a more modern design to it, I think I can use some of those pieces to extend my hexagon project. You never know, I might want to make it bigger!

Am really busy at the moment with a host of other things, amongst them I also started a Dresden Plate project that turned out a bit more work intensive than I thought as I am stitching the Dresden Plate on by hand.

Also got side tracked with looking into the Accu quilt system...will attend a demonstration around this at the local sewing shop in April. So I am spending a lot of time researching this on the computer at the moment. As luck has it a friend lend me her Accu quilt Go Baby cutter (thanks Mhairi!) over the weekend to give it a try.
She has the hexagon die cutter. Comes in 3 different sizes and so I tried the smallest hexagons on some leftover strips of a jelly roll.

Look at these

I cut a stack of them in about 5 minutes. They will come out as 1"hexagons...this is very easy indeed and very accurate. I am quite impressed. However the whole affair is quite expensive if you want to acquire a collection of dies and I do think that for this to be useful you will need quite a collection. I am a bit undecided at the moment and will ponder re this little machine  a while longer.

Anyway, I am linking up to the EPP Linky Party at Splish Splash Stash. Hopefully I have got a bit more to share next time.

Karin

Quick Update On Dresden Plate

Slow progress with my Dresden Plate, but what a beauty. For readers who missed the previous post about this Dresden Plate, I am using up some leftovers from a Moda Jelly Roll (French General).

Have the other two plates finished as well, but have not got around to sew them into place or do the center. This is a bit finicky so I don't want to rush the process. So much for my idea of a 'quick fix' project!

Not sure yet how I am going to quilt it...this looks quite busy. Probably will just emphasize the circles and go around the spokes with 1/4in outline.

Linking up to Lorna's Let's Bee Social Linky Party and WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Karin

Testing Blog Button

What do you think of my blog button? Still in its development stages ...somehow I think I am doing something wrong with the picture. I don't think it is clear enough and at the moment it seems to have a purple line around it...not sure about this either. I created the button in a drawing program, exported it as a JPEG (a bit over the recommended 125 x125pixels) and it came looking out like this.  But even more exacerbating was trying to get it on the blog with that little grab box.

You have no idea how I have struggled with this...for many, many sessions. Actually got very frustrated with this...just could not find something that came out working...

Finally found a web site that worked at Code It Pretty. So, gave that a go and it worked...

I am going to test this a bit to see whether it actually works...

Holding my breath now

<div class="The-Quilt-Yarn-button" style="width: 130px; margin: 0 auto;"> <a href="http://thequiltyarn.blogspot.com.au/" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoG1A6TgKgnyoJubLz7NVFiASCqwE9pySXea4bFG1xfl7El_SuZ_Hpj_Kf0t4n8N0k5uulDWkSIcpE4Bau8yBiwnLKaqg7bM6RsbmZC2yrNqg5U3hcNY5S2yNhzugqzUuB5mnOsAfBlLs/w130-h130-p/Simple+blog+button.jpg" alt="The Quilt Yarn" width="130" height="130" /> </a> </div>

PS.  Wow, seems to work, but also just saw that it has a white surround and the purple line has disappeared...hmm, I think this is due to the JPEG export.
also, the horizontal scroll does not work when posted but is working when composing the post. No idea why that is so. And obviously this button needs a bit of work. I like the design but would prefer it to be much crisper...back to the drawing board. This is actually holding me up in my quilting, can you believe it?

PSS Even managed a second one on the side bar with a different code

Karin

Piecing

In production-style piecing at the moment. While also working on my Dresden Plate, I finally managed to cut out all my squares for the baby quilt that I am intending to do.

I prefer to cut out all my pieces in one hit which is quite tedious,  however seems to work better for me than doing it block by block. This way, I have to calculate and think through the quilt in some detail before I even touch the fabric. This avoids mistakes in cutting and works better for me. Once done, I can usually sit down and strip piece elements of a block all in one go, speeding the whole process up a bit. When that is done, I then piece maybe two or three blocks in one go until all done.

My block consists mainly of HST and I finished sewing 80 of those together just the other evening...I cut my squares slightly bigger and trim them to size after I cut them apart. This is a bit work intensive however I am used to doing it this way and found that it provides better accuracy overall.

Here is my first block

This is all I produced in one evening :)...Downton Abbey has started again! Yes, spend most of the time watching TV.

Was not that happy with the centre of the block...too many seams meeting and as you can see the centre is bulging out a bit. Although I pressed it correctly I am wondering whether I should iron  the seams open in the middle.

Any suggestions ?

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin

Progress on Dresden Plates

Steadily working away on piecing these small wedges together started this last week... see also my previous post 'Going off on a tangent...again'!

 

Then of course realised I needed some background fabric...and something for the border. Wanted some dark fabric for the background but could not find anything suitable, so went for a tone-on-tone beige background. Then found the red fabric that sort of goes with the red in the wedges...

That is as close as I could come to matching the red. This Jelly Roll - French General from Moda is very tricky to match, I must say.

Did I say Quick Fix project before? Well, I then went ahead and centred the plate on my background fabric, basting the plate in the middle to the background fabric and securing the spokes with a bit of fabric glue. Initially I tried to sew it on with an invisible thread using a very small zig-zag stitch. Did not like it at all ...maybe I did something wrong but it looked very obvious and so I proceeded to stitch the plate on by hand.

This is how far I got ...2 more to go and then I need to figure out how to get the centre exactly where I want it to be...this should be interesting. Intending to also sew the centre on by hand...just looks neater, I think.

Wow, a bit very colourful...maybe a bit too much going on here. But I am happy to report I used up lots of remaining Jelly Roll strips, but still got enough variety for another small project, I think.

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin