Festival purchases, Piccadilly to the Nines and another GG block

Yesterday I went to the Creative Festival with some friends. We each came away with some lovely purchases. Some bought backings for quilts and other just bought bits and pieces of fabric. I bought a few fat quarters from one vendor.....at $2 each who could resist? Certainly not me. Before you ask what will I make with them, the answer is I don't know, I just thought they were nice! I expect I might do some fussy cutting with them!

I bought the four fabrics in the next picture for the same reason.....I just liked them. The fabric on top was $4/yard so I finished the bolt. It will be perfect for a backing! I like the striped fabric with the little waves - directional prints are so versatile and they add visual interest. I was looking for some larger wavy Smithsonian/Civil War type prints but had no success. Still I am happy with what I found! The bottom two fabrics will be great for delicate little fussy cut hexagons!

And I thought these two were pretty so I picked them up as well!

I did some more quilting on my Piccadilly to the Nines. One side is now quilted with feathers and I am on to the second. I hope to get the other three done this weekend so I can move on to the hourglass border. Here you can see two of the arrangements quilted; there are four in total on each side.

In the picture below you can see the four sets of feathers quilted in the border. It has some issues and it isn't perfect but I'm not bothered. I like how it looks, warts and all! There are a few little empty spots that may get filled in with stippling. For those who are interested I work on my domestic sewing machine.....it can be done!

One of my readers said she liked seeing the fabric I used for my Godstone Grannies (GG) hexagon diamond blocks because she has a hard time picturing what kind of print my hexies originated from and what to look for when she shops for fabric for hexagons. One of the things I do if I am going through my stash or shopping for fabric for hexagons is to make a little window template that I keep in my wallet. I can pull it out and slide it around on fabric to see what the print would look like as a hexagon. I took one with me to the Festival today! Anyway, here are four fabrics that I pulled to make the latest GG block. The print on the upper left has all sorts of interesting bits that can be cut out. Same with the fabric on the upper right.

And here is the block that I made. It is one of the filler bits that go on the top and bottom of the quilt. It still has the basting threads and papers and I'll leave them in until I've got all of my blocks ready to be sewn together.

Well I think that's it for today. Tomorrow I'll be working on the second block for the Value Proposition QAL but I'll be back on Monday. I hope you enjoy your weekend and happy sewing!
Karen H

Try it, you'll like it and Love Entwined

Did your mother encourage you to try new foods with the promise "you'll like it"? Mine did and she was often right although neither my brother nor I ever took to her grated carrots in mashed potatoes! Yesterday I took an Open Thread Bar workshop with Anita Zobens of Cotton Mills Thread Works.  Anita is an educator with Superior Threads.

We were to bring quilt sandwiches that measured 8 1/2" x 11" so that they are the size of standard paper. The top half was to be a light colour and the bottom dark. We used the embroidery stitches on our machines and experimented with all sorts of different threads.

This would give us the opportunity to see the effect of different threads on different colours. This in and of itself was a great lesson because different threads look very different depending on the fabric colour. This lovely variegated thread has a very different look on the two fabrics.

I experimented with some of the embroider stitches on my machine but decided I was more interested in experimenting with the threads and free motion quilting. I changed the foot to a darning foot and dropped the feed dogs. I wanted to quilt a little feather with a purple thread but I simply couldn't control the stitches and the needle was moving all over the place. What the heck? Oops, I still had the machine set for an embroidery stitch! Once I reset the mode it was fine!

I love the look and feel of silk thread. Very rich and it has a lovely sheen.

But no matter what I did I couldn't eliminate the whiskers on the back. I had a super fine poly thread (The Bottom Line) in the bobbin. I adjusted the tension from 1 to 9 and there was minimal improvement.

I eventually moved up to a heavier bobbin thread (So Fine 50 wt) and the whiskers on the back lessened but it still wasn't perfect. I have two Janome machines and had the same problem with both. The blue bobbin case doesn't help. I also tried a 70 and 90 needle with minimal change. If anyone has any suggestions I am open to them!

So what did I try that I thought I wouldn't like? Polyester threads such as Magnifico, Fantastico and Twist. They have a gorgeous sheen and my machine seemed to L-O-V-E them! And as it turned out I love them too! They have a rich sheen, are soft, hold their colour in hot and cold washing, don't shrink, do not produce lint and they are very affordable. I wasn't alone. Many of my classmates felt the same way!

I bought a cone of a green turquoise variegated thread that I think I'll use on Piccadilly to the Nines. You can see it in the bottom centre and the upper right in the picture above.

It will look great in the hourglass border.

My machine also really loved the So Fine 50 wt. It is another polyester thread and I'll use it to quilt the light background in the border and in the centre.

So Fine 50 wt.

So it was a good day and a wonderful workshop. Anita is a great speaker and extremely helpful and attentive.

I also purchased some spools of silk thread for the applique work on Love Entwined. I've almost completed Part 3. The red and pink hearts are pinned and ready for stitching down. In the next couple of days they will be stitched and then I can move on to the first vase and bouquet of flowers in the corner.

Finally don't forget to visit Quilting Gallery's Show and Tell. This week's theme is Stars. I'm showing A Pound of Stars but for all you hexie lovers be sure to check out Sheila's Stars Over Adelaide. It is gorgeous! You can vote for your favourites here.

That's it for today. Until I post again, happy experimenting with different threads!

A lovely prize I won and Picadilly to the Nines

Earlier this summer Lia hosted a Secret Tote Bag Swap and I decided to join in the fun. And fun it was! I made a lovely tote bag for my partner and I received a lovely tote bag from another quilter. In addition there were a bunch of prizes to be won and lucky me won one of them! My prize was a custom made tote bag made especially for me by Lia! The colours are just gorgeous and the bag has outer pockets, a zip closure and a lovely lining.

She did a fantastic job of this bag and I am thrilled with it! Inside the bag were a couple of little treats....a Toblerone Bar (delicious) and a Bunny Hill pincushion pattern). 

Lia is organizing another Secret Tote Bag Swap and the sign up will be in a few days. If you've never participated in a swap this is a fun one!

Basting and stitching the diamonds for the border of my quilt "81" is an evening job so while that is going on I can go back to working on a quilt top, Picadilly to the Nines! This is a quilt that is made of mostly nine patch blocks and variations thereof. I make 3" finished nine patches with scraps and I use them as leaders and enders when I'm sewing. This means I've always got a good pile of nine patches available.

Picadilly to the Nines was inspired by some nine patch variation blocks in my stash. One of the fabrics in those blocks is Picadilly by Free Spirit. I love it and use it sparingly. It is a lovely lime-olive ground with bits of yellow, black, soft turquoise and pale blue.

The other fabric in the blocks is a stripe fabric from Northcott. It is a brighter green with bits of olive and gold. I love working with stripes and directional prints because they can be used to great advantage in blocks.

These two fabrics aren't a perfect match but the originals were made with scraps and when I'm working with scraps I play around and these two fabrics worked together. One of the reasons I think that this is so is because the colours do not bleed into on another. They do have some commonalities and so they do work well together. And I'm only using small bits because the finished block is 3".

And here are three of the 3" blocks from my stash that were the beginning of the quilt top!

I had limited stash of the inspiration blocks but I liked them so much that I decided to make more with the two fabrics. Notice that the Northcott striped fabric is used in the same position in each block. Since the first blocks were made with scraps there are two different backgrounds in each. That was because I was just using the scraps I had on hand. If I had the enough of the right size scraps for the background it would be the same but if I didn't then there would be two different backgrounds and I quite like the effect of different fabrics!

Tomorrow I'll show you how I made these little blocks. They are fun and fast so if you want to give it a go, look for a piece of striped fabric in your stash and we'll have some nine patch fun!

Until I post again, happy sewing!

My one hundredth post!

Close-up of Loopers in the Sky with Diamonds, 2005

Welcome to my 100th post. I hope you've been enjoying my blog, quilts, how-tos, tutorials, patterns, dolls and the odd curio! I've really enjoyed sharing what I've learned and what I do. And I really like hearing from you whether by email or comments posted. It tells me that there is an appetite for what I am doing. If you have questions about how I did something I hope you'll ask me - I am more than happy to explain! If there's something you want to see more of, just ask!

So to celebrate this milestone I decided to share another one of my quilts. This is an original design and I made this quilt in 2005 for my daughter whose nickname is Loopers. She was at university studying astrophysics and I wanted to make a quilt with an astronomy theme. I call the quilt Loopers in the Sky with Diamonds!

What is it about cats and quilt? Cats are drawn to them like catnip!

The quilt was made using my foundation pieced English paper piecing technique that I've written about in the past. It is a fun way to create interesting blocks and designs. Over the next little while I'll show you close-ups of several of the blocks!

Over the next 100 posts I have lots more in store. First off is finishing Cherry Blossom quilt today or tomorrow. And then there will be more nine patch quilts and free nine patch patterns coming! And maybe the odd story to go with the quilt!

 

Close-up of Piccadilly to the Nines

Close-up of Marazion

There will be more of Anne H (Mom's) African themed quilts; this one is in progress. It needs another border, quilting and Anne's beautiful embroidery and beading!

Anne H's Masai quilt in progress

There will be lots of hexagon quilts too!

 

I hope you'll stay tuned and that you'll enjoy what I bring to you in the next one hundred posts!

Before I sign off how about a few garden pictures?

Blackberries ripening

Bottle brush

Elderberry

Day lily

Young robin (I surprised him while he was having a splasharoo in the pond!

Until I post again, thanks for your interest and happy sewing!