Vol 2 - Project 10 - Carrie's Confetti

Another long time between posts - but despite distractions of Christmas and a bit of travel, I did manage another finish.  This one is for my next door neighbour Pauline, who chose the initial fabrics ages ago.  The project in the book is quite small so I've doubled the size, and Pauline has a quilt large enough to wrap herself up in.

Carrie's version

Project 10 is a strippy quilt with a tiny 'windowpane' strip running down the triangles.  Those strips are the biggest challenge for me in this project.

These are not the fabrics we used - changes were made!

Because I changed the size of the quilt I had to change fabrics.  The mauve became dark blue, the black became bright pink and some other fabrics were added to make the extra blocks. All the fabrics were based around the butterfly print.

After making the blocks, sorting out the size of the triangles is the first challenge - not an easy one for the mathematically disinclined.  Taking advise from the book, I used graph paper to sort out the measurements and where to place the small strip.

With the strip sewn in, cutting is really wasteful as you can't turn your triangle around and cut from top.  Carrie has a solution in the book for making a strip on both sides, which works brilliantly and saves heaps of fabric - but it's complicated to do the math.

Much more economical to do it this way and save on fabric

When I make side setting triangles, I like to make them a little large, then trim them back....

For this project, that doesn't work!  The triangles must be cut to fit exactly or those little strips will end up in the wrong place.  Using the Creative Grids side setting triangle ruler, I was able to cut the triangles down to the right size.  

I also had to unpick some of the practice triangles as I ran short of the blue fabric....sadly, some of these had badly stretched and had wonky stripes, but I had no other choice other than to use them. They are quite noticeable - sorry Pauline!

QUILTING

I've used a wool batting in this quilt which wants to shift around despite heaps of pins. Ditch stitching helped a bit.

You may have guessed, Pauline is a butterfly fan - she has butterflies all over her house - so the obvious quilting pattern to choose, is butterflies! 

I had a butterfly border stencil - perfect for a strippy quilt - I used it on the butterfly fabric with invisible nylon and of course it's invisible. 

For the blocks I decided on a simple cobweb design.

The side triangles also got the butterfly treatment - this time I used pink rayon thread.

Halfway quilted!

PAULINE'S QUILT

She likes it!

CHERIE'S QUILT

Over Christmas I was lucky enough to have family come to stay.  My daughter--in-law Cherie, wanted to make a quilt so I let her loose in my fabric stash.  They were only here for 2 weeks and had lots of things to do, so we only got the top finished...............

Good job Cherie - now aren't you glad I made you unpick those badly cut ones?

Small progression and some NHP's

Hello!  I know it's been a while and I apologise for that.  A great holiday in Western Australia, followed by a bit of a medical issue - nothing drastic but unable to sew.  After that my computer decided to kill the hard drive which caused quite a kerfuffle.  But all those are excuses, the real reason for my not blogging is that I've been working on some Non Harriet Projects which now aren't secret anymore.

PROJECT 8 - FIVE PATCH CHAIN
This one is almost finished, with just some quilting to go.  It's been ditch-stitched and I want to do some stencil work in the blocks.  Hopefully, I'll get to that soon.

NHP 1 - HARVEY'S QUILT - PLANET SPOTTYDOT

I put up some pics a while back (May actually) of the quilt I was making for grandson Harvey's birthday in September.  It was put on the back burner while I made the rush quilt for my brother, then the holiday rahda rahda rahda.......  Poor Harvey has been very patient but he finally received his birthday quilt this week.

 Can you believe I forgot to take a photo of the finished quilt before I posted it?!!  This is the quilt before I washed it - it still has chalk markings and the aliens don't have any eyes. 

Harvey with his quilt

NHP 2 - NEW YORK ART DECO II

Earlier this year my sister Kaye visited New York City and brought me back some fabulous fabric featuring New York art deco buildings.  I made myself a queen size quilt - using the deco fabric as the feature surrounded by complimentary fabrics sewn into nine patches.  I had some of the deco fabric left over and made this up into a smaller lap quilt for my sister.  I had to use different complementary fabrics, as I had no leftovers from the first one.

Kaye's Quilt - New York Art Deco II

Hmmm - Kaye's quilt turned out nicer than mine.  So now I'm in the process of unpicking the queen sized New York Art Deco so I can re-do it using nicer fabrics and a better layout.  *sigh*.  I'll work at it on and off but don't expect to see the finished quilt on the blog for a while yet.

Quilting this top became a bit of a headache.  I decided to make a semi circle on the lower right of the quilt, and fill this with a Baptist Fan design.  Radiating out from the circle I wanted straight lines.  A bit like a sunrise and very suitable for an Art Deco quilt.  Quilting the rays were no problem, but I had lots of issues with the scallops in the Baptist Fans.

I used a stencil and chalk marked inside the circle, taking out all the pins first.  Mistake!  The batting is a wool/poly and likes to shift around inside the quilt, it's not clingy like cotton batting is.  Anyway I ended up with large puckers inside the circle and had to unpick the quilting.

For the second attempt it made sense to quilt this top from the back as I found the design was really hard to follow over the busy print.  After stencilling I pinned the life out of it!

My next mistake was the thread.  I chose a beautiful variegated black/grey King Tut cotton. The fabric was printed in black/white/grey so it seemed a good choice. 

The design quilted in this thread looks quite odd, because the stitches suddenly disappear when sewn over a matching colour in the print, making the design look disjointed.  Because I was quilting from the back I didn't discover this effect right away and had no desire to unpick the work a second time.  So Kaye is stuck with quirky quilting - maybe she won't notice!  I forgot to take a pic, but it's something to think about next time I consider quilting with variegated thread. 

Finally, I really need to work on my starts/stops as they remain messy.  Usually the messiness is confined to the back, but this time, the little lumps and jumps landed on the front - yay for a busy print!  I have a quilting workshop coming up next year, so hopefully will get some expert help on this issue.

PROJECT 10 - CARRIE'S CONFETTI

I've made a start on this one and am hoping to have it assembled by the weekend (today is Wednesday).  It's gone through a few fabric changes in the process and I'll blog about that another time.

Fabric selection attempt 2

DID YOU KNOW.................?

Where did mother-of-pearl buttons come from?  I found out when I visited a pearl museum in Broome, Western Australia.

:)

Vol 2 - Project 8 - Five Patch Chain - Quilting

A BIG THANK YOU
Hi everyone.  First I'd like to say thank you to those who continue to support me.  After my brother's death I lost my sewing mojo and struggled a bit to get back into the swing of things.  The support and comments of the readers and followers of my blog have made a huge difference and now I am back with as much enthusiasm as ever.  Hugs to all of you!!

QUILTING - FREE FORM (EEK)!
The Five Patch Chain - or the Red & White Birds quilt as I refer to it is now finished.  This is the one I had all the problems with by accidentally using polyester instead of cotton for the white fabric.  By quilting it rather heavily, I've managed to 'quilt out' a lot of the stretchy seams which plagued this top.

Keeping a promise to myself to get out of the quilting box and do some free-form practice on this quilt - I was surprised at how easy it actually was to do.  Keeping another promise to myself, I also tried silk thread - love, love, love it!  What a shame it's so expensive as it's such a delight to quilt with.  It makes a nice alternative to the invisible nylon I usually use.  I've used a wool batting and free motioned around all the applique first, so the birds puff up nicely

Some piccys of the silk, free form quilted blocks...... I played with simple designs - loops and swirls combined with my usual stipple and echo.

Loops

Swirls

Echo

Stipple

Echo, Swirl, Loop combo

For the side setting triangles, I went back to my comfort zone and used a stencil.

  and swirled the corner triangles..... (oops, missed a bit)!

The rest was simply gridded............ here's half the back.

Overall I'm very pleased with the result of what started out to be a disastrous project.

FIRST WASH - THE SCARY PART

If free form quilting was scary for me, that's nothing compared to putting a red and white quilt in the washing machine.  I have a front loader, so once it's in there's no going back.  I threw in two Colour Catchers and crossed fingers.  The result was interesting.  The Colour Catchers did their job brilliantly, but for one single fabric.  Check this out..........

Before and after washing - one single fabric has run, but confined the pink to itself.  Disappointing, but I can live with it.  I should point out that the misbehaving fabric was a very cheap one - finding red spots on white proved difficult, so I had to go with what was available.  Lesson learned.

You may notice from the full quilt picture at the top, the blackbird has been quilted with red thread instead of white.  I echo quilted it, which looked awful then tried to improve the look with stippling.  That only made it worse.  I hate it but am too lazy to pull it out.

THE NEXT PROJECT

I finished the blocks for the next project, then decided to make it longer so I have another 6 chain blocks to do......... but it's coming along nicely.

I also made this dragon block.  It's designed by Australian quilter Eileen Campbell from her book Medieval Designs for Applique.  It was going to be the centre of a medallion quilt as part of a Round Robin project, where participants add borders to the central design.  Sadly I'll no longer be taking part in this fun project so am not sure what to do with this 20" block.

A BIT OF A BREAK

Ironic that now I have my sewing mojo back, I won't be able to sew for a while.  I'm off travelling, so the current projects will have to wait till I get back.  Meanwhile, I have taught myself to blanket stitch by hand and will take along something to work on while sitting in cars and trains.  Wonder how long that will last, as I'm not really patient enough for hand sewing!

Vol 2 - Project 9 - Four Patch Chain On Point

This is the next project - a pretty top but no new techniques to learn with this one. This can be made scrappy, as in the picture, or using a single fabric for the blocks and a contrast for the chain.  I've gone for the scrappy option.   The difference with this top compared to previous Irish chain quilts I've made, is this one is set on point so will require side setting triangles

As usual, we start with the smallest unit and build from there.  The technique for making the chain can be a little tedious -well for me anyway, but then I prefer to quilt rather than piece :). 

Step 1 - sew a dozen of these..........

Step 2 - cross-cut them into 336 of these..........

..........then press & measure each one - trim if required

Step 3 - top 'n tail and sew them together to make 168 of these.........

Step 4 - Press, starch and fan the seams...........

Step 5 - measure each one individually and trim to exactly 2.5" square..........

no matter how careful I am with cutting, sewing and pressing - I always need to trim every single one :(

168 four patches - sewn, pressed & trimmed

Step 6 - cut 3 strips of cream fabric and sew the half the four patches to them..........

Step 7 - cut, press, measure & trim to size..........

Step 8 - sew the other half of the four patches to the other side..........

Step 9 - press, measure and trim again - now we have 84 of these..........

Those are the 1 inch 'chains' done.  I've opted to make the linking chain in a slightly darker blue.

Step 10 - Make strips for the linking chain (press, measure & trim) then cross-cut into 42 segments..........

almost there..........

Step 11 - sew two of the sections together - press, measure & trim

Step 12 - Now sew the other half on, a final starch &  press, then measure & trim as required..........

 Yay - the Irish Chain is done!

For the scrappy blocks, I selected brown.  Yup, brown.  

Scraps, skinny 8th's and fat quarters will all contribute to this quilt.  There will be thirty different fabrics and shades of brown.  Most of the browns are reproduction fabrics, so together with the classic cream and blue irish chain, I should end up with a very nice quilt!  

I chose brown because my favourite quilt is this one which I made from QA Vol 1..............

Asian Nights

I use this one all the time -  it has a wool batting and is lovely to snuggle into.  The current project also in brown/cream/blue will be a nice companion for it and hopefully share around the wear & tear.