plenty of sewing time

Just popping in with a short post …

Mum is doing well; she has improved physically in the week she has been here which is a good sign. She is no longer stooped and shuffling; being undernourished will do that to you! Instead, she is eating very well and has regained her usual stride. Yesterday she even worked out in the garden with WM for a couple of hours.

Her biggest interest is reading and she spends hours absorbed in books. This frees me up to be in the sewing room so I am getting quite a bit done.

A couple of weeks ago, my quilting teacher donated a partially completed quilt to Caring Hearts Community Quilters – all I had to do was finish the quilting, make binding, attach it and sew it down. I have done all but the last task, so no photos until I show you the finished project!

My Jacob’s Ladder Goes Barn Raising is quilted. Life is so much easier when I think about the quilting before I pin baste; then I can position the pins out of the way of stitching lines. The quilting was done in no time but it seemed to take almost as long to sew in all the ends! You can’t see it here (because the photo is pre-quilting); I sewed diagonal lines about 5” apart through the centres of the squares that make up the diagonals.


The binding is cut and waiting for the strips to be joined.


I have also been knitting! Shock of shocks!!

In the past three days, I have worked on Crinkles Hoodie by doing a three needle bind off on the shoulders and starting the first sleeve (the photo, which is of the back, is really not worth showing but I know you like pictures! LOL)


Last December, I started knitting Charley Bear for my great-niece who will be two next month; I began on the train on 16 December and haven’t touched it since. On Monday, I stuffed the body and head. I am so not enjoying this! There are so many fiddly little pieces to come, of the type: CO 4 stitches, K 2 rows, increase either end of next row, knit 1 row. Bind off! I have no desire to be a toy maker! The head is on the left; it seems proportionally too large for the body!


And I’ve finished a pair of small women’s socks which were started on 21 February. The second sock was cast on 6 March.


My current reading is varied, but includes 100 Days of Real Food by Lisa Leake. She started a blog a few years ago and it led to a book! Our copy only arrived yesterday so I’m not really in a position to write a review just yet. It certainly is an interesting read.

There are some advantages to having had to cut back on my away-from-home activities, at least for a few weeks! ;-)

Linking up with WiP Wednesday and Yarn Along when they go live.
         


PS Is anyone else having trouble with Firefox working very slowly or is just us?

slow stitching on the first finish of February

I’m linking this post with Slow Sunday Stitching over on Kathy’s Quilts blog when it goes live later today (it's 7pm Sunday here in Sydney, Australia).

This afternoon, I hand-stitched the two sides of the label that weren’t held down by the binding – a ten minute stitching project that saw my Green Scrappy Strippy quilt completed and become my first finish for February!

This project, started in July last year, was obviously inspired by the Jelly Roll Race quilts. However, this quilt is more thought out – all the fabrics used were graded from light to darkest and the lightest strip is one third from the top of the quilt.

Some of the fabrics, such as the ‘red’ strip at the bottom, don’t even read as green and yet, to my eye, they said ‘green’! Perhaps next time I’d better take a photograph of the fabrics to see what the camera sees!

There are thirty-two rows of 2” strips in this quilt – and I’ve barely made a dent in my green scraps! I wonder what month will be green over on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge which is hosted by Angela at SoScrappy blog.

I quilted this about every four and a half inches apart, with two horizontal rows of quilting, about half an inch apart. I say ‘about’ because, to me, quilting is an art as well as a science and imperfections show that it is made by hand not produced by machine! You can see the quilting better from the back, which also shows my quilting ‘signature’: a pieced panel to widen the fabric to the needed width; in this case the gingham fabric was only 36” so I added a 20” panel giving 56” before trimming. (Yes, those light strips truly are green!)

Although the three layers of the quilt sandwich are well-and-truly joined, I wonder whether I should have added vertical quilting to stop the batting from doing whatever wadding does when there isn’t enough quilting. Please feel free to offer a constructive opinion!

I made eight nearly-WOF lengths into binding and should have realised I had a problem when the base of my Teflon-plated iron gripped the fabric instead of sliding over it. But no – sometimes I miss the obvious! I tried to sew the binding onto the quilt – got about a quarter of the way around (about nineteen inches) when the whole quilt slipped and instead of stitching 1/4 - 3/8 inch from the edge, I was suddenly stitching at about 1/16” for about four inches (slow down driver!)! Of course, that meant some unpicking. In the end, I decided to remove the binding completely – I just didn’t feel right about it.

The following day, not being able to find enough of another fabric to make binding, I decided to go with it. My iron stuck to it again and it smelt awful. Obviously it was a polyester blend and something that felt like plastic doesn’t belong on the bound edge of a lovely soft cotton quilt! In the end, I used three different, similarly-coloured, green fabrics that read as the same tone – look closely, you may be able to see them! (probably not!! LOL)

Here’s a close up of one of the fabrics, I’m getting better with my mitred corners! It’s actually much darker than this photo shows – I like dark bindings – but the mitre wouldn’t show when I darkened the photo!

So that’s it! My first finish for February and my second personal finish for 2015 (sixth if you count the four projects I completed in January that were other people’s starts!)

I'm also linking this post with Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday (I'm a little late) which is being co-hosted at Quokka Quilts and A Quarter Inch from the Edge (I've linked at the latter).

So, what do you think? Should I go back and add some vertical quilting? (I’m not taking the binding off!)
What would you do?

fourth fifth finish in ‘fifteen

I admit that none of these projects began with me. However, I did finish them.

Firstly there were two quilts for which I had to make binding, attach and hand stitch. For our quilting group, they were big quilts; both of them were 280” around.

Then there was the quilt donated by my quilting teacher. When donated, it was at the basted stage so the quilting and binding are my work ( although K. made the binding which was a time saver).

 

A couple of years ago, someone donated a pile of 9.5” QAYG string blocks. I made a quilt from some of them that was shown at the Airing of the Quilts in 2014. 

While sorting through UFOs at the beginning of January, I found another 28 blocks. That wasn’t enough for another quilt so I made another 14 blocks – and in the process discovered that I don’t really like making QAYG string blocks!

Nevertheless all fourteen were made and the quilt was put together. I thought the blocks looked dull and decided I would probably not make another of these quilts in the future.

I chose a royal blue printed fabric for the sashing. It did a great job of making every individual block like a little window or piece of art in its own right and made the quilt look more cohesive. Better still, the quilt went from being dull and lifeless to being quite a ‘happy’ quilt.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough of the blue fabric (which was left over backing fabric from the quilt in the first photograph above) to make the binding. WM laughed when I told him yesterday that I had to audition fabrics for the binding. I wanted a darker blue but didn’t have enough of any blue fabric that worked so I changed to red. I found a reddish-brown that had tiny blue dots on it that I thought worked. Of course, the dots are so small that the fabric reads as solid maroon from even a short distance. This is a very inaccurate photo of the colour which is much darker in reality but at least the photo shows the blue dots!

I finished hand-sewing the binding at 12:30 this morning – I didn’t intend to stay up to finish it but you know how it is – once I was approaching that fourth corner I couldn’t put it down. I like the way the blocks seem to fold in and out!

Speaking of corners – this is the first time in nearly five years of quilting that I have four perfectly mitred corners on the back and front of a quilt! Woo-hoo!

 

That’s my fourth finish for this month – I’m so pleased. Maybe I have time to get my Bargello table runner quilted and bound before the end of the month? I have to make a back and quilt it before I can bind it!

ETA: I did get my fifth project finished before the end of the month! You can see it in this post.

How is your January progressing?

I’ll be linking this post with WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, Binding Blitz at juliekquilts and Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday as they go live this week.

slow stitching on a wet Sunday afternoon

WM is not well so what could be a better way of spending a wet Sunday afternoon than curled up in front of the television watching the final two-part episode of “A Touch of Frost” (a British detective series) while sewing down the binding on a quilt?

The quilt was donated to our quilting group by my quilting teacher in 2013 in response to the terrible bush-fires that occurred in September of that year in which 200 homes were lost and a further 200 were damaged. This donated quilt was only at the basting stage and no amount of effort by me at the time it was given would have gotten it done in time. I asked my teacher if she’d like it back but she said that once given, it was given (or something to that effect).

In my last post, I explained that my week had been spent working on other people’s projects.  Quilting this fairly small quilt (48” x 62”) took me three days – I haven’t quilted anything for more than a year and I found my muscles tensed up a lot; each quilting session was shorter than the previous one! Anyway, I finished the quilting late on Saturday night; thank goodness for excellent lighting in the sewing room. I was so exhilarated by finishing that I even attached the binding which went on extremely easily and quickly compared to the previous two quilts! I found a video on YouTube which instructs the quilter to stop a quarter of an inch from the corner, which I have always known, then turn the quilt clockwise 90 degrees and sew off the edge of the quilt. Those extra three stitches have made turning corners so much easier than my previous method, which was to backstitch when I got the quarter of an inch mark!

What was even more exciting for me was that the corners mitred on the back so easily! I am absolutely stoked with the results I got this time. The only thing I don’t like is that the binding is not as “padded” as I prefer because I trimmed the backing and batting to the same size as the top (as instructed on this video) – my previous teacher had me trim a quarter of an inch out from the quilt top which gave that little bit of extra padding to the bound edge.

For my next binding, I will try this new method of doing the corners (which logically shouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference!) with the extra quarter of an inch batting under the binding! I might find I need to cut my binding at 2.75”, or even 3”, to compensate for that extra padding but I won’t know until I try.

Did I mention that I’m just so happy that the binding looks almost as good on the back as it does on the front? ;-)

How do you do your bindings?
By hand or by machine?
With a 2.5” binding strip?
What about the corners?

 

I’m linking this post with Slow Sunday Stitching over at Kathy’s quilts.

works in progress

Everything I have been working on this week is not originally my project. However, they all need to be completed for the Airing in April so I had to get them done, sooner rather than later. Most of my own projects are at the basting stage and I need to make a trip to my LQS to use the big table there for that process so now was as good a time as any to work on other people’s projects!

Here’s what I've been working on (or plan to work on) this week:

1. four patch quilt – to be bound and labelled
2. triangle brights and flowers – to be bound and labelled
3. pink brights and gingham – backing required
4. K’s project – quilt, bind and label (binding supplied)
5. QAYG string blocks – 14 more blocks needed

At our community quilting group, when projects go to the long-arm quilter, there must be a top and a backing. When projects come back from the quilters (who volunteer their time to help us), the project is usually given back to the original maker to bind. Sometimes the original creator is not there – either they are a member who is absent that day or the quilt top was donated.

Projects #1 and #2 came back from the quilter but the original makers were not there so I ended up with the quilts to bind and label.

For some reason, the member who donated project #3 did not provide a backing so I was asked to make one.

Project #4 was donated to our group by my quilting teacher – the quilt sandwich is made so the trickiest part is done for me!

I have already made a quilt from the donated QAYG string blocks (project #5) but I still have 28 x 9” blocks left. That’s not enough to make a quilt in the size required in our group so I will have to make some more blocks which shouldn't be too much of a hardship given the number of scraps around here!

So, how has my week gone so far?

MONDAY

I didn't do any cutting or sewing: the heat/humidity has stopped me sleeping well and I was too tired to use my rotary cutter and sewing machine safely! Instead, I auditioned fabrics for bindings for projects #1 and #2, both 280” around.

 

Then I read a novel in a day! It was The Dancing Master by Julie Klassen – historical, romantic (Christian) fiction. Ms Klassen has been described as a ‘modern day Jane Austen’ – I’m not so sure but it was a light, enjoyable read.

TUESDAY

I auditioned fabric for the backing of project #3 then put the fabric in the washing machine (on the  ‘easy iron’ setting) because it was stiff and very creased. It’s the same pink fabric in the photo above.

I cut the binding strips, joined them and made binding for both quilts. I then made labels for both quilts from leftover triangle scraps (note to self: write the label after attaching it to the quilt – or write smaller!).

I had to watch a video on binding, because I haven’t bound a quilt for over a year and couldn't remember how to start! Thank goodness for YouTube and all the generous video makers! Eventually, I attached the binding and label to project #1 and began the task of hand-stitching the binding down – I got a little more than halfway (the quilt is 280” around) before it was time for bed!

What looks like a brown and white check is actually tiny white stars on a brown background; which I didn’t notice until I’d already cut the binding strips. It doesn't look like a good choice with that blue backing; but the quilt was mostly browns – here’s a hint (see the checked fabric in the block?:

WEDNESDAY

I started writing this post before I got on with attaching the binding and label to project #2, then I watched another video on mitred corners because mine just weren’t working! They are fine on the front but the back is terrible! I attached the label to the quilt then started sewing on the binding. I got to the second corner and realised there was a hole in the fabric, eight on the fold line of the binding. I had to undo twenty inches so I could remove the hole – it was close to a join in the binding strip – and rejoin the strip. I was about to start sewing again when I realised I was attaching the binding to the back of the quilt! *sigh* 

If it were my quilt, I might have been tempted to keep going but it isn’t and I couldn’t take the risk of bad corners on the front of someone else’s quilt so I spent more than thirty minutes un-sewing the rest of the binding! :-(

Things improved somewhat; I got the binding on eventually. It’s not perfect but it really is the lest I can do. After pressing the binding (I can’t remember ever doing that before but I think I must have – my teacher is very big on pressing) I moved onto project #3.

Piecing a backing involves a bit of maths and, for me at least, the rough drawing of diagrams. Eventually I had it sorted and went to find some strips to join my pieces together – I can’t help myself; it has become my signature to have a panel or some sashing on the back of my quilts. This isn’t mine but I did it anyway. I cut the pieces for the sashing and for the backing. There was some more reverse sewing after I sewed the right side of one piece to the wrong side of another piece but, all in all, with the help of lots of pins, I got the backing finished.

What looks like an off-what fabric is actually a very pale pink. It has some lovely details on the fabric which, of course, can only be viewed close up.

Because I have so many other projects to quilt in the near future, and because I think J. would like this quilt in this year’s Airing, I am not going to attempt to quilt it myself. I will pass the backing and the flimsy on to our coordinator, who will in turn, pass it on to one of the long-arm quilters. If I feel so inclined, I may even make the binding to go with the quilt. I’m thinking I’ll make it out of the same fabric as the back – I have some binding left from project #2 and lots of that fabric left. I’ll think on it – it may be too much having the same binding as backing fabric.

THE REST OF THE WEEK

So, here it is, Wednesday evening, which still leaves me two full days to work on the other two projects and to get the binding done on projects #1 and #2. I’m linking this post with WiP Wednesday over at Lee’s blog, Freshly Pieced.

What about you? Are you crafting this week or is something else occupying your time?

happy finish dance

I’m about two weeks late in posting about my first finish due to my computer being in the shop for eight days!
My Scrappy Log Cabin quilt is completely finished (except for the label). I basted it before class (with the help of my teacher, the shop owner and one of my class mates) on Monday 2 September as planned. My teacher came up with the quilting design and it’s the feature that many people have commented on when looking at the quilt in “real life”.
  
A finish to start the month is a great feeling!

It’s amazing how much was done over four days; especially considering this quilt had languished as a UFO for over twelve months! The quilting was finished on Monday 2 September and the binding was attached and sewn down on Tuesday 3 September. Choosing the fabric for binding this quilt was easy – I just repeated the solid brown I used for the inner border. The quilt was washed to remove all traces of marking for the quilting on Thursday 4 September and photographed on the line while still drying.

And this is the back (before quilting) if you haven’t seen it before.

I need to buy a proper waterproof pen to make my labels – the pen I have been using smudges.

I have a very full schedule from now until the middle of October. Early next month, DD and SIL are going on a trip on “The Ghan” (a train) which goes from Adelaide on Australia’s southern coastline to Darwin on Australia’s northern coastline (and vice-versa of course), a distance of 2971 kilometres (1851 miles). This trip takes three days and is to celebrate SIL’s father’s 60th birthday. Two very active, energetic boys under four would not enjoy the trip so they are coming to stay with us for a week. I will probably need another week to recuperate! ;-)

This weekend, I am tutoring two sessions (Double Knitting and Intarsia & Picture Knitting) at the biennial camp of the Knitters’ Guild of NSW – one on Saturday morning, one on Sunday morning. Next week, we have three billeted guests arriving on Thursday for our church conference (Thursday night to Monday lunchtime). Because I’ll basically be out of the house or hosting all that time, my crafting time will be very limited for the rest of the month so I decided yesterday I was going to get another finish “under my belt” in order to continue with my theme of 2013 being a year for finishing projects!

So here is my second finish.

These blocks were not made by me. they are leftovers from someone’s sampler quilt (the same one I’m making which I talked about in this post). I merely joined the four blocks together (in March!). The project stalled while I searched for suitable backing fabric. Working from donated fabric is often a challenge or a compromise. The fabric that I used for the backing is not ideal but it works!
The red in the flowers picks up the colour of the binding which I had already chosen.

The blue reflects the blue flowers in all of the blocks although it is a lot more intense in the backing fabric. I had to piece this fabric, even though I only needed to make a 27” square – it had been stored for so long that it was filthy along the fold lines. Washing removed some of the dirt but the fabric was also badly faded so I cut the folds of the fabric away and pieced my backing. If you look carefully at the photo below, you’ll see where I pieced it – between the quilting line in the centre and the quilted square on the left. This colour is also more accurate than the one above.

This 24” square quilt is another going to Yasminah’s Gift of Hope after our group’s Airing of the Quilts in April next year. The quilts are given to parents of babies “born asleep” or who die soon after birth. Sometimes the quilt is buried with the baby, sometimes the parents keep the quilt as a keepsake – it is totally up to the recipients. 

But wait … there’s more!

Last night I finished the first of the Purple Cocoon Socks. Today I will cast on the second sock and I will take them to Camp with me as my knitting project. I have taken a photo of the pattern with my iPad so I will not need to carry the book with me – I was going to have my iPad there in any case!
It’s hard to take a good photo of oneself wearing the sock but here it is:

And you know what, the fit in the foot is not too bad after all!

Linking up with Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday over at Missy Mac Creations (edited to say I'm back from Camp, happy but exhausted -- and that the link is now direct to the TGIFF host page)

works in progress

It’s nearly the middle of the month and I’m way behind with some of my projects but right on target with others.

No progress has been made in turning a flimsy into a finished quilt for Gift of Hope quilt #2 or in completing the flimsy of my Scrappy Log Cabin quilt.

There has also been no further progress on my Earth and Sky quilt – I plan to rectify that today! As my friend Debbie at Stitchin’ Therapy said in a recent post: “boredom leads to UFOs” and I am so over this project! (Some self discipline is what is needed here! )

I had some time over the weekend for some knitting and some further time yesterday afternoon so Emily’s Blanket is moving along – slower than I had hoped but still progressing. The colours in the photo below are not accurate but they’re the best I could do – the yellow is much more lemon and doesn’t look so obvious!

Until Emily’s Blanket is finished, I can’t work on the sleeves for my Westall cardigan so it may be a travelling project (ten more sleeps until ).

My hexagon project bag is coming along well and, I hope, right on target. I finished the hand-piecing in class on Monday. I would have finished it over the weekend but I didn’t take the pattern away with me and I had six hexagons I didn’t know what to do with. Turns out they were surplus to need! Ah well, there’s always another project, right?

Anyway, here is the project as it was when I finished class on Monday after the piecing was completed and some of the papers removed. The other photo shows the fabric I have chosen for the lining; the lining has been cut and the two pieces (not shown here) are ready to be gathered and joined. The base of the bag has lots of green in it so the lining makes more sense if you could see it!

I hope to get it completed in class next week. I’d like it done before we go away on 24th May!

I do have plans for another hand-piecing project but that will be the subject of another post.

The biggest project of all, the renovation of DD’s former home, is almost complete. The painter is there but there are still a few odd jobs (mostly that WM had to attend to) to be completed before we call it done – such as ordering a skip (and filling it of course), painting the garage (I’d forgotten about that and have lost enthusiasm now – we decided not to pay the painter to do this “simple” task), washing of floors and hanging of curtains.

Here are some photos of some of the work that has been done:

1. A new stove top and oven were professionally installed. WM replaced the doors and handles on either side of the oven. I scrubbed the tiles at the back and cleaned the glass of the range hood. MIL washed the filters before I re-installed them.
2. WM installed a new vent where there hade been a hole covered by a sheet of MDF held up with duct tape.
3. When DD and SIL moved in, the laundry tub was covered in paint. It had always been their intention to buy a new tub but they never got around to it. MIL turned up one day and decided it could be cleaned – between her efforts and those of WM the tub looks pretty good!
4. Some of the vinyl tiles on the laundry floor were damaged – WM lifted them and replaced them (hurrah for being able to match the tiles; thanks Bunnings! – a large hardware chain in Australia)
5. There once were shelves and unused brackets on the laundry wall. All the shelves have been removed (for painting) and the holes filled and sanded. Not too much can be done here, the walls are made of a fibro that contains asbestos and would need professional removal.
6. 79yo MIL washed all the windows and venetian blinds in the family room. This photo shows slightly more than half of them! WM has installed a new light fitting on that bare wire!

There will be more before and after photos in a later post!

Right now, I’m off to have lunch then trim my quilt sandwich, press fabric, cut and join binding strips, attach binding and stitch it down – it doesn't sound like much if I type really fast!