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.

:)