Finished my Little Woodland Quilt

New listing in my Etsy shop...finally finished this little quilt. The pattern has been hanging around for years and I even saved the woodland print for several years for just this quilt. It is a very traditional design with its two common blocks, however it does come out really nicely once you quilt a bit of a design in the alternate block.

The quilt measures 36-1/4in x 36-1/4in and is an ideal play mat for a baby or toddler.

Here is my photo on the bench

A bit dark, but I had to hurry today with my photography as it is a pretty grey and rainy day. There was only that little bit of bright light right in morning between 10 and 11 o'clock, so I was racing against the time to get all my Etsy shots done.

The motif really makes this little quilt

Used Amanda Murphy's Heart template (3-1/2in) for the motif. Easy as and the hearts came out lovely. Really like the effect of this.

This little quilt went straight into the Etsy shop before I changed my mind. Just have to write up the pattern now which should not take too long. I think I am going to incorporate several sizes in this pattern as this would also make a great lap quilt.

Karin

It had to Happen!

Well, finally Covid has caught up with us...after 2 years, we finally managed to catch it. What a bugger. We were not blessed with a mild sniffle, in fact I was out of action for the whole of last week eventually accepting that I could only sit on the sofa and not move much at all. Find that incredibly difficult at the best of times, but being literally confined to do nothing was really quite torturous.

Well, used my time to look into the Procreate program on the Ipad as I had seen that Bethanne Nemesh had offered a Procreate for Quilters mini course. Initially went with the general videos that Procreate offers for free and must say, was totally bamboozled with the possibilities. Had no idea how powerful that program was. So far I had only used it for doodling the odd design and to make a little booklet for my Freemotionquilting class. 

Did some amazing learning through sitting there for hours on end and managed some spectacular drawings but lacked some insight into the use of layers and moving things around in a less haphazard manner.

Love this little sketch. Traced the original design off a drawing and then multiplied it somehow. Reminded me of a Christmas bauble. Might look good on a Xmas table runner stitched out in gold.

I did end up taking Bethanne's online class as I was interested in the possibilities for quilting and designing. Went through most of it today (2hrs) and must say it is very good. Everything you need to know as a beginner from gestures to brushes, colour fills, selection tools and more... and it did answer some of my questions about the use of layers in a drawing program. So this is what I drew today following along Bethanne's example. Basically created a piece of fabric with that single heart design.

Obviously I am not going to make my own fabric but this was good learning in terms of repeating your design in order to get multiples of the same thing. Very handy for wholecloth work in terms of laying down your ideas and playing around with orientation and settings. The class did clarify a few points where I was utterly confused with all the different gestures and possibilities. Bethanne does have the knack to stay focussed on the essentials which is where I am sometimes lacking. Not gone through the whole class but I am a bit excited about the possibilities.

If you have an Ipad and want to learn how to utilize this more effectively for your quilts, I can highly recommend Bethanne's Procreate for Quilters class.

Karin

Clamshell Quilting

Have been clamshell quilting again. After having finished my big background filler project I made a start on the charity quilts that I picked up about a month ago. To my delight they are little baby quilts in really nice bright colours. Love those!

Me in action

The finished product

I am playing a bit with Idea Pins on Pinterest at the moment. If you want to see the process head over to my Pinterest account and watch my Idea Pin on clamshell quilting (under the Ruler Work board). Would be great if I could display this here but I am not sure there is a way to do that.

Karin

Another Quilted Nursery Panel

Love doing those...

Cute and quick to do. I quilted it with an overall clamshell design which is easy and relaxing to do with the Handiquilter Clamshell ruler. A little bit of care has to be taken to keep it straight but if you go slow and take your time with the alignment it always works out.

This little quilt measures 33.5in x 39.5in, a good size for a 'drag along' quilt or as a floortime play mat. I used a 100% wool batting which gives this a nice plush and soft appearance.

For more detail, head over to my Etsy shop

Karin

Background Filler Project

I m back onto my background filler project after a few weeks of a bit of a break. Felt somewhat overwhelmed with the enormity of the project and lost some steam to keep going. So I did a few other projects to take my mind off mainly working on some listings for my Etsy shop but also 'playing' around on EQ8 with some new patterns (fantastic program...was able to manipulate a pre-existing layout into the custom size that I wanted, changed it a bit and ended up with at least 5 different versions of possible quilts - there is another blog post waiting to happen). Will finally include an applique design that my daughter drew when she was really young. 

In addition and to stall further I looked at social media, specifically Pinterest and started to clean up my account a bit, organized my boards and in general had a bit of a look what had accumulated over the last 10 years. Well, stumbled across their Idea Pins and got inspired to give that a try...so did some videos (which I generally find really hard), read about Idea pins and watched a few YouTube videos and finally managed to put some reasonable videos together to try that out. Did that on my phone which worked really well. The topic was not super exciting -  'Basting a Quilt on a Sitdown Longarm' but that was what I was doing at that moment. Must say, that came out really nice and worked a treat for me. Might do that again as I like it better than Instagram Stories or reels.

Finally though I re-looked at my background filler 'monster'. We had a bit of sunshine yesterday so I took some photos.

 Close up of the fern area that I really like

Those darker areas gave me a lot of trouble with the Invisafil thread. Being that fine at 100wt I had real trouble seeing where I was going. If you look at the darker area I had to do the pebbled area first leaving a channel to then fill in the rainbows. That was incredibly challenging on the old eyes.

...and then I finally continued and finished off that side...not too bad...

Almost there...continued a bit further on the right but will take that out today as I am not happy with it. The key on this thing seems to be pre-planning. If I am unsure what design to use, it is best to stop and think that through carefully rather than charging ahead.

So, hopefully I will make it to the end of this over the coming week!

Karin

Christmas Table Runner Finished!

It's June and I have finished my christmas table runner! This is the last of four that I did out of one panel purchased last year. The panel was 'Snow Place Like Home' by Sharla Fults for Studio E Fabrics. Bit chuffed with my efforts as this could have easily ended up in the UFO pile...was just lying around from last year and I had of course moved on to other things. 

Did not take me a long time to put together and like with the others that I did I kept the quilting to a minimum for a clean modern look. Just outlined the snowmen, blocks and sashings and put some channels in the sashings and border.

It measures 18-3/4in x 41in and I actually quite like it as a wall hanging. Really cheerful.

It's up and running in my Etsy shop if you are interested. 

 

Karin

How To Square Up a Quilt Panel

Finally did some research around how to properly square up a panel. While it is relatively straightforward  for panels with wide open spaces around the edges it becomes a bit more of a hassle when you have distinct borders around your panel, like in the one I am tackling at the moment. 

I did cut the selvage edges off on top and bottom first and took that as my true straight line. I then straightened the longer sides a bit and of course, it was not straight. The problem with that is that I cannot just straighten it out as the images on the panel are surrounded by a border which would look skewed if I just straightened that.

Consulted the internet and came across a fabulous video 'Squaring up Hoffman Fabric Panels' . Of all those little videos I watched this appealed to me the most as it involved a no fuss easy way to straighten out your panel by just folding it and re-folding it and ironing it into position. The first thing the lady said was not to cut off your selvage edges...argh...had already done this! Put some pins in place to hold those straight edges together and folded my fabric in half, re-aligning things, folding it again into quarters, and got it pretty much straight. Ironed it and the iron blasted a stream of brownish gunk onto my quilt (iron obviously needs a good clean out)!

Had to wash my panel again (whoever buys this little quilt will have a very clean quilt as I do pre-wash all my fabric before using it, so this was the second wash for this panel). Next problem...it is pretty rainy and grey over here at the moment. If it was summer, I could have dried this nicely on the veranda and blocked it into shape but with the bad weather had no choice but to hang it on the washing line.

Hung it in a way that hopefully would not distort the panel too much more.

Got it inside later in the day to have a look at the distortion...not too bad actually, just bowed out a bit to the right which was the case before I washed it again.

The piece was still just that little bit moist, so I started the folding process of halving it, then quartering it and ironing it dry at the same time. I did tug a few times very gently on the diagonal in the hope of getting rid of the bowing as well. Repeated that process over and over again

After folding it again and again into quarters and ironing it, had a pretty good result. I did end up trimming all the edges of my panel by a tiny bit at the top and bottom and about a quarter of an inch on each side. The design on the side of the panel (the rectangles with the monkeys) were not exactly aligned with the designs on top (and had a fair amount of give), so the final cuts on the sides produced a tiny bit of variation in the border size. As the variance was quite small I decided that this was good enough, unless of course somebody goes to it with a ruler.

Happy with the end result

My top is straight and when I put the quilt sandwich together I will pay attention to the straightness of the boxed designs and then the quilting (most likely a quick clamshell design) will take care of the rest I should think.

I have another panel to do after this one and will try this method of straightening again (minus the cut off selvage edges and the mishap with the iron) as this seems to be working very well.

Karin