WIP: A Field Guide

Back to this...

Decided to quilt a simple line design in the surrounding areas

Looks great, but wow...this is going to take me a long time. Running out of thread in a minute too, so will have to wait until the Quilt Show next week to stock up on that particular colour.

While doing this and getting very bored I thought about the next thing (of course)...

This design is from Cindy Needham's Craftsy class on 'Machine Quilting Wholecloth Quilts', the idea being that you take what you like from this and design your own center medallion. I have got it enlarged and ready to go...this could be good and certainly would stretch me out a bit...

But before this, I am going to make another bag...still not over that bag obsession...

Too much to do...need to get going on the myriad of projects hanging around.

Karin

October 2015 FMQ Challenge

Completed my pillow for the October 2015 FMQ Challenge over at Quiltshopgal.
Already talked a bit about the process in an earlier post HERE.

October 2015 FMQ Challenge

Different colour due to daylight, but same piece (still missing the cathedral window)

This months' expert is Lori Kennedy from The Inbox Jaunt and I followed Option #2 using Lori's 'Divide & Conquer' Craftsy class. As there were too many designs to choose from, I decided to do a sampler pillow of some of the designs. By now I have got quite a list of Craftsy classes and this was a good way to quickly remind me what's in the class. These are the designs I used from the class:

Paper Clip design: absolutely loved this; cute little design to frame something or put into a narrow inner border
Square Flower: this appealed to me as it could just be stitched out freehand and looked good no matter how wonky you stitched it;
Dots & Dashes: with just a few lines drawn, this is a nice modern fill
Flower Power: had trouble with this design when I last stitched it, and included it for more practice in this piece, filling out a 6" space
Hearts: formalised hearts in a row is something that I have avoided in the past as I am not that great at it; this time I marked half inches spaces in my section and that worked alright;
Ric rack: again marked some spaces but had some issues with this even though it only involved going up and down
Fabulous Flower: what a hoot...practised this on paper for a while and in the end I just stitched it out as I was not going to get any better at it; funny...the eye only sees what the eye wants to see. Initially I thought that my flowers looked sort of alright, but when I had flattened the area around it, I saw that all of the flowers except one, did not look like flowers at all. So, yep, suck at that design.
Lines: finished the bottom off with some lines
Gridwork: could not help myself and included my favourite grid, the cathedral window, in there

For the back of the pillow I choose to stitch an overall flower design to match the front; I did this fairly quickly and did not stress too much about consistency or scale or indeed anything...just wanted to get a feel for filling a larger space with that as this could make a nice larger scale, allover design. This worked reasonably well and was best stitched with the foot on the pedal. When I stitched slower, I tended to become smaller and smaller...

Really like the back of my pillow

As always, this was good fun!

Linking up to the October 2015 FMQ Challenge at Quiltshopgal.

Karin

Progress Report

Working away on my pillow for the October FMQ Challenge hosted by Quiltshopgal. This month expert is Lori Kennedy from The Inbox Jaunt.

I have her Craftsy class 'Divide and Conquer" and decided to follow this and make a sampler of the different designs. Almost finished the front

Done some gridwork (not completed yet), paper clip design (which I loved), a heart design, the square flower, some pearls, more flowers, loops, ric rac and today the fabulous flower design. Well, the fabulous flower design on the bottom did not work out that well. Trying to follow someone else' drawing is always hard and I did practice this one on paper for a while, but somehow I could not get the flower shape right. The design is stitched in several passes and apart from the last flower on the right my wonky shapes are oddly consistent (looks actually like a chuck's head), so it seems that I just do not get it somehow. In the end I had to microstipple the fullness out of  the surrounding area and you can see that it is trying to puff through in parts.

Never mind, this has been good fun...we can't be great at everything! Not sure yet what I am going to do on the back, maybe an overall flower design...we'll see.

Linking up to Let's Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts
 
Until next time

Karin

FMQ October

Now that it is October I am back to FMQ. Just blissful! I did notice with the last quilt however that I probably should be piecing a bit more regularly, as my accuracy was woeful.

Never mind. Did some practice for the upcoming October 2015 FMQ Challenge over at Quiltshopgal. This month expert is Lori Kennedy from the Inbox Jaunt. Got her Craftsy class and started some practising the other night

Not sure what I am going to produce yet, but rather like that square flower and probably will design something around this. Maybe a sampler pillow of the different designs...Lori had some very nice border designs in her class, one of them being the paperclip design (see on top of first photo)...very neat.

Apart from that I have been spending much time on Instagram. You can find me @the quiltyarn...my kids got me into this and I must say that I am rather enjoying this, particularly over the last two weeks as I have been super busy at work and also at home. With Instagram I was able to just quickly put up a photo and move on. While scrolling around I came across Hexies for Healing about Carrie of @gotchacoveredquilting who was asking for some hexies so she could pass the time following some major surgery. The cause is close to my heart and so I spent Friday night making this little number

Just need to send it of...

While doing this hexagon I also stumbled across the Hexie Down Under #2 swap run by Bendigo Lioness. I was so tempted and nearly signed up...40 hexies until the 31/12/15! After much thought though, I resisted...calculating this through this would have meant about 3 hexies per week which does not sound that much, but with work, FMQ and life in general that had the potential to become stressful. They are running another hexie swap from January to March which I decided was much more feasible for me. Sounds like great fun.
However, having stitched that hexagon the other day  I again felt that this was so therapeutic, sitting there, hand stitching. So I went to work and cut out lots of hexagon shapes in all sorts of blue and white to stitch together at my own leisure.

But for the time being, back to FMQ...

Karin

WIP continued

Not much to report other than that I am working on my WIP. Quilt top is finished and I now only have the borders to do. Actually came out so much better than I thought. Always am surprised when the quilt looks just like on EQ7 which I use to design the quilts.

Bit of a close up...

I was rushing to get the quilt done by the beginning of October to set my machine back to FMQ. Have several things to FMQ....another pillow, my WIP: A Field Guide quilt and now this one...looking forward to this

Linking up to a new Linky Party by Zenia of A Quilted Passion

Karin

WIP

Had an incredible 2 weeks...very busy at work and even busier at home. On top of that one of our cats needed surgery and needed more looking after than usual.

Finally I got back to some sewing...inspected the blocks I had done and  was not impressed. Accuracy was sadly missing. Started to doubt my piecing skills somewhat because no matter what I did they just did not end up the square measurement that they should have been. After much deliberation, I finally worked out how to press the seams for the flattest look and also re-cut my dark strips. This time I re-cut the strips on the lengthwise grain....that did the trick. This way they did not distort that much and I was able to get the blocks nice and square. Part of the problem also was that I did cut all the beige squares with the Accuquilt GO Cutter which gave me very accurate squares. However, I also must have placed a batch of the squares the wrong way around on the cutter which gave me a good 1/16 to 1/8" less on one side.

Anyway, spent some time today undoing some of the blocks I had done and putting it all back together. I am now back on track with half the blocks finished. This will be a small quilt...lap size, I reckon.

Linking up to Let's Bee Social over at Lorna's blog Sew Fresh Quilts

Karin

Another Finished Bag

And here it is...the second bag from the Victoria Tote Bag pattern by RebeccaMaedesigns found on Craftsy.

Love this fabric for a bag

Made it a bit bigger and stabilised the bottom a bit more as this is for my daughter who was in urgent need of a carry-all bag for uni. I made this super strong, reinforcing the handles, stabilising the bottom and double stitching some the seams. This baby should hold.

Not finished with my temporary bag obsession...will make another one. Learned a lot with this one as well, i.e. by accident I used Extra Loft Fusible Fleece which I did not actually realise until it was finished, all the while wondering why this appeared somewhat more bulky to sew together...while still ok it did make it a touch more lofty obviously.

I did a lot of researching on Interfacings while making these bags. found several very good posts at YouSewGirl!
Combining Interfacings for bag-making 
Comparing Vilene and Pellon Interfacings/Interlinings

and at Sew Sweetness: All About Bag Interfacing 

Karin