International Matters

I think this might be quite a long post so I shall cut right to the chase. Lots of quilty stuff in the last week.
First up, I had a parcel from Rhonda who hails from Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. Rhonda was the driving force behind the Finish A Long last year and has handed over the reins to Leanne for 2013. She did however, sponsor the first quarter of this year and my name got pulled out of the hat. And this is the pile of goodies that arrived - thanks again Rhonda for your generosity.

Talking of the FAL, my main project yet to be finished, is my Mod Pop quilt - since my regular classes have finished for summer, I seem to have got a bit of a wriggle on, and I have finished all the piecing. Now I am really at the coo's tail on this one as I think it was back in August or September that I joined in the sew a long on this one. I intended making a super king sized quilt but have limited it now to a queen which I think will still comfortably fit our bed. So I had one less strip of blocks to make but added in an extra row of patches on either side. I have photographed it on the bed but it is still in three sections as I plan to QAYG - I think I can achieve this without compromising the fabulous pattern.

I doubt I will finish before the quarter end as our holiday is looming but never say never.

As I was tidying up the leftovers I had a few pieced units, the curved ones, so played about for a wee while and have made this cushion front.

It still has that 60s feel for me and I am planning to quilt in a sort of squarish, roundish spiral. I have been reading a bit of The Quilting Edge and feeling inspired to try something a bit different for me.

I was tidying up after a recent EPP workshop and thought I might as well complete the two little rosettes I had used as samples. They were lying beside the pouch that I had made a while back and used to carry the hexies in. Small lightbulb moment and this is what happened.

Fast forwarding to last Thursday (sounds like time travel) and I had my Day Trip Round the Word workshop - been doing this one for a few years now but have been tickled by the interest in RTW blocks & quilts on blogland and am particularly keen to try a scrappy one someday. In the meantime, I contented myself by teaching the clever loopy technique and the ladies did me proud.

The big pic in the mosaic is the top made by Amanda, and featured Noteworthy by Sweetwater, another great fabric line. Have they ever produced a dud? I don't think so. 

Ever thrifty and resourceful - ha - I found some strips leftover from Mod Pop that I was able to use to demo the technique. I like to demo as well as show a finished article, think it helps.

So when I got home, I continued with my little piece and it became quilt number two for the Princess!

I tidied up my sewing room yesterday and found the makings of at least two more Princess quilts, think I might have slipped into a second childhood.

For those of you still with me on this world tour, I received a package this morning from Oregon, from AnnMarie, who blogs at Run and Sew Quilts.

I was lucky enough to win her giveaway last week in the mega SMS Giveaway Day. I won this charming little quilt, measures about 20" square and came ready to hang. The quilting on it is divine and it looks and feels like it has been washed and dried, all squishy, gorgeous. I think I have just the place to put it.

Thank you again, AnnMarie.

Now feeling a bit tired after all that travelling (or maybe it was just running about after a 1 yr old!) time for a restorative cuppa. I hope you are all having a good week.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival - Spring 2013, (take 2)

For my second entry into the Spring Festival I am entering my wee Dollies Quilt into the Doll / Mini category.

In August, I will be attending, and teaching at, the Stitch Gathering, in Edinburgh.

I think this will be the first retreat get together of its kind, in Scotland and I can't wait to meet up with blog friends that so far I know only in a virtual way. My little class is to be on Crazy Quilting, a very traditional technique but we will be giving it a modern twist. I had been looking for an excuse to buy one of the Ikea Dolls' beds and this was the perfect one. I put together a little quilt made up of 4" crazy blocks, each one sticking to a colour family, and each one stitched by hand.

The little quilt measures 18" x 13" and was hand quilted using embroidery floss, and then embellished with colourful buttons. The binding was done by machine, I have my limits.

Making this little quilt and buying the bed has launched me on a new journey.......to make a pile of little dolly quilts so that when my grand daughter is old enough to understand the Princess & the Pea, she will have her own real life scene from the fairy tale.

Linking this to the Festival. Thanks to Amy once again for organising such an event - I got a bit confused at voting time last time but think it may be a bit simpler this time around.

Thank you for visiting.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival - Spring 2013

Hard to believe it's Festival time again, hard to believe it's Spring - we have the lights on here, it's just after midday and we have torrential rain - just as well I quilt!!
We are allowed to enter two categories this time, so for my first I am entering my Strippy quilt into the Bed Quilt category.
For those of you visiting for the first time, I should just mention that I teach P & Q here in my little corner of Scotland. Last year I ran a mini course in making a Strippy Quilt and how to put it together using Quilt As You Go techniques. I am a great believer in QAYG, saves all that heaving about of large, heavy quilts and cuts down on the swearing too.
Early on in the year I came across Velocity, a fabric line by Brit Jessica Hogarth, and I just knew I wanted to use it, and I knew it would make a great "manly" quilt for my son.
Strippies are brilliant for those fabrics that you really want to showcase and can't bear cutting into. My Strippy is totally reversible and was constructed in three sections, each of two fabrics. I used four different fabrics from Velocity and each one made an appearance in 3 strips.
Each section was heavily quilted with lots of unmarked vertical and horizontal lines, using Aurifil 50wt cotton, almost a whole 1300m spool!!

The front

The back

and some close ups

I loved making this quilt, and was so pleased with the finish - it measures approx 80" square, fits a UK double bed (US full??) and I used Hobbs 80/20 batting, my favourite.

I am linking to the Festival and would encourage you all to go and visit regularly to see all the quilts, it is so inspiring. Thanks for dropping by. (I am off to put the heating on!)

SMS Giveaway Winner!

Thanks to everybody who took the trouble to leave a comment in my wee SMS giveaway - I enjoyed reading every single comment about your gardening aspirations!
So let's cut to the chase - I had quite a few no reply blogger comments and I had a couple of duplicates that I deleted. That left 104 to pick a winner from and the winner is -

(I am useless at getting the Random box to appear here - you just have to trust me!!)


True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:5

cheeky monkey 5said...

This looks gorgeous! I need some sun here :)

If I could I would grow cocktail tomatoes, berries and I would love to have a little apple tree.

6 May 2013 20:02

Anneliese aka cheekymonkey! I have flickrmailed you Anneliese, will get the mini off to you as soon as I get your address. Well done!!

Workshopping

If you are looking for my Sew Mama Sew Giveaway please go here.

It's been quite a creative week here, and not all of it sewing related. Last Saturday, friend Janet & I had a great day workshop learning about stained glass. We took the class with Leona Stewart here in Ayr. Her work is super and we had great tuition in her workshop , just the two of us, such a great opportunity. Leona had asked us in advance if we had any idea what we would like to make.
Janet wanted to make a panel that reflected the textile piece she had made in class last year.
Here is her wallhanging -

And here is her glass version, isn't it brilliant!

I originally thought I might try a patchwork block in glass and then changed my mind and opted to try a lighthouse as a gift for the OH who has a thing for lighthouses. It turned out not too badly, almost circular but I have to admit I was chuffed to bits with it. Neither of us had tried this before and we were thrilled to complete our projects in the day. My day was a birthday gift (yes - another one) and it was just perfect.

Today I had one of my "summer workshops", I use the term "summer" very loosely. Basically, I am just running a workshop each week for 6 weeks following the end of last session. Today's workshop was foundation piecing - most ladies who attend my classes have tackled FP before. Some have a love hate relationship with the technique and nearly everyone hesitates as they start a new FP project. Today's workshop was small, just 6 students and the emphasis was on challenge. I encouraged the ladies to choose or have me source, a reasonably challenging block that would leave them feeling much more confident about foundation piecing.

Avril already had a pattern she wanted to try and today she pieced onto paper for the first time rather than use the lightweight Vilene that I usually start folks off with. Paper is of course much quicker and more verstile as you are able to print straight from the internet etc. So this is her block, pieced in four sections. She is going to make three more.

Norma wanted to do a block with a cat in it and I sourced her block here. Probably the trickiest of today's patterns, Norma made great progress with her sleeping cat and should complete it at home in next to no time!

Elizabeth came to the workshop today after a few years away from class - she wanted to do a Pineapple block so I printed one off for her from EQ7. She soon got back into the swing of things. Her block is destined to be a cushion.

Christina had found her project in a book of animal FP projects, A Quilter's Ark, by Margaret Rolfe. 

And here is her owl! He measured about 3" x 2"!!

My final two ladies followed patterns from the same source - I sort of fell upon it and want to share with you as it's brilliant if you are looking for a meaty FP project - they do several Block of the Month programmes, some charged and some free.

Lesley chose to do their Compass of Many Colours and learned how to "chain piece" her segments. This is going to be a stunner.

Wendy is already planning Christmas projects for family gifts and when I spotted another pattern on the same site I thought she might fancy giving it a go - here is her block so far - look at those wee Santas!!

So which site am I talking about?? It's Quilting on the Square

Now they have just launched a new BOM and I couldn't believe my luck, May's block is a combo of foundation piecing and EPP.......heaven. I have made three blocks so far - once the FP hexies are made I will EPP them together, genius idea.

Lastly, I also got going on this Viewmaster block, courtesy of Kim's blog. I have plans for a quilt based on this block but will share more of that later. In the meantime I am off to Sewing Bee, I have trousers to let down!!

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day

Welcome to anyone who has dropped by from Sew Mama Sew for Giveaway Day. 

I am offering this Sunshine & Showers mini quilt that I made in last year's Zakka Sew A Long. I hope it will bring a little sunshine wherever it may hang.

I am happy to post internationally - as I sit here typing I am looking out at the early evening sunshine and I can see my rhubarb which is doing extremely well this year - yum. To enter my giveaway just leave me a comment telling me which fruit or veg you grow or would grow if you could.

In the event that I get a deluge of entries, I will not reply individually if that's ok. If you think you are a no-reply blogger then please include your email address in the body of your comment. I will choose the winner as soon as practical given time differences etc, (late Friday 10th May or early Sat 11th) and if I am unable to contact you then I will re-draw until I find a winner that I can contact.

Now leave a comment and then pop over to Sew Mama Sew to see all the other goodies that you can try for.

Good luck!

The One Where...........

Sheila gets an upgrade!

About 4 or 5 years ago I "inherited" my son's cast-off laptop. A Toshiba, with what he described as the red line of death running vertically down the screen (permanently), and a dodgy "M" key, I was chuffed. I had only been used to a desktop, and it transformed my computer life. Despite its foibles, it was a fast machine and never really let me down.
However, all things must pass, and for my birthday, (did I mention I had a birthday recently???) my lovely OH & kids gave me a new Toshiba with Windows 8 (it'll take a little getting used to). New Toshiba is very slick and shiny and how wonderful to have a slot for my SD card instead of intermediary wee contraptions!
The only downside so far is the incompatibility of my printer with Windows 7 - grrrr, our house is beginning to look like a printer graveyard, current tally - 3.
Having come up thro the ranks of EQ5 and EQ6, it was necessary to upgrade with my new laptop, to EQ7 and this was also gifted to me, by Big Sis. I used EQ6 an awful lot, mainly for my classes, and plan to see how much more I can get out of 7.
Some other family upgrading went on last week which resulted in me being able to acquire OH's Kindle Fire replacing my bog standard Kindle,so now I have a tablet too - go me!
In sewing news, I have made some Bee Blocks today - in Bee a Brit Stingy, Catherine asked for these Pineapple Blossom blocks and gave us the link to a tute on Quiltville.
What a great block, it would be brilliant for using up leftover jelly strips, and you get bonus patches too!

And I made these two blocks for Judith's Bee Blessed

Fiona posted a really good tutorial for this block, they make up so fast.

Now in case you think I veered off the theme of today's post, you are wrong my friends. For quite some time now I have been planning to upgrade my sewing machine. The time was right as this, with the help of others, was to be a present to myself, my gold watch if you will.

 I have had a Husquvarna Lily for 11years, she has served me so well. I also have a little Janome Jem Gold that I take to class, also a great little stalwart.

I have agonised, researched and discussed with some blog pals over which model/brand I should opt for.

After much deliberation I opted for a machine that I am familiar with from my days of working with Janomes. I thought it might be headed for extinction  with so many recent models arriving on the scene but it is a well respected and fabulous machine, is still very much a current model,  and I took delivery of mine on Wednesday. (Just after having a haircut - another upgrade!!)

So here she is - the 6600P, or as I intend to call her, Big Bertha. And I made these blocks on her today.

All we need now is an upgrade in the weather (I know that was a bit of a stretch) - we have had torrential rain here today, even some hailstones, just the job for a Bank Holiday weekend. However, I have my Saturday sorted and it doesn't need good weather. My friend and I are off to a Day Workshop in stained glass - it was another birthday gift (how lucky have I been!!) and I am really looking forward to trying something new.

I hope you all have a good weekend,wherever you are.x

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