Quilts in the Barn

On Saturday I visited Quilts in the Barn at Wonga Park in Victoria - a long trip for me but worth every bit of it! It is nearly 8 hours drive away interstate but what a good excuse for a road trip - two nights each way and lovely countryside to view en route.

A wonderful entrance view

There are a few different bloggers' posts on this wonderful event - so you may have seen a lot of these pictures already (apologies). Of course, if you are anything like me, can't get enough of a good thing....

First some of the Dutch reproduction quilts ( I think they are ones made by Petra and An) - a lot of the patterns are in their book Promenade dans un jardin Hollandais:

"Sisters" on the left

Below is the "Simon" quilt - very exciting to see Petra and An's version (all the way from the Netherlands) now that I am making one too!

"Simon"

Love how the blue sings in this one - "The Elephant"- also from Petra and An's book

"When Stars meet Hexagons" - 7/8" hexagons, stars and triangles

Lots of other quilts with a chintz theme - and I think they are the work of the Sisters:

What a beautiful red to frame the chintz.

Below is a lovely medallion by Dorothy Ramage - and I had the pleasure to meet her at the ticket desk:

Gorgeous fabric and quilting on this one

By Karen Styles - lovely block looks wonderful framed

Look at that broderie perse - sigh.

Stunning border and background fabrics - super blocks.

Hexagons made from antique fabric scraps - such little gems.

Love the fabrics and the fussy cutting - oh, and the perfect points.

It was a thrill to finally see Di Ford's 'Morrell' quilt in real life - and here are two of the most stunning (and difficult!) blocks:

Inspired fabric choices here - gorgeous.

It was wonderful to meet up with Carole and her sister at the Barn. We have both made a version of this quilt using Di's pattern so had to pose in front. Check out Carole's lovely blog for all her photos of her Barn visits too (she went twice!).

Me on the left, and Carole from Wheels on the Warrandyte bus

 Well ...I am running out of superlatives for all there was to see ...but there is more...

The antique quilts and fabrics brought here by Mary Koval - for viewing and purchase. Here is just a small sample that we could photograph. Some was not to be photographed (by request of the owner) - they were fragile but beautiful.

Purchases were made: When I went to pick up a copy of Chintz quilts from the Poos collection it was lovely to see the friendly face of  Meredith and so appropriate that her blog is called "Pomegranate and chintz"! I have broken into my sealed copy of the book now and it is wonderful stuff.  There are lots of pictures from the book now on different blogs.  

 I also bought a piece of lovely new chintz to be treasured - one I have not seen before - doesn't have a sheen to it and is normal patchwork weight and feel. Am assuming it is from the Netherlands as it says "by Prins and Kooiman" on the selvedge. 

I was so impressed by QITB - lovely venue, great refreshments, beautiful displays, many friendly faces and so well organised - thanks so much and please do it again!

To finish off a  lovely day Carole was kind enough to show me her local quilt shop - "Needles and Pins" in Warrandyte. She is a lucky lady. Warrandyte, on the Yarra River, is  a beautiful place to live and this is a very nice little quilt shop ...with my sort of fabric. 

It was also just wonderful to find that Di Ford was busy helping out that morning - so nice to meet her and have a little chat too!

Here are my purchases from the shop (including super bargain finds):

Just in case you haven't seen enough quilts.. on the way home I spent some time exploring Beechworth  ( historic country town in Victoria). With quilting and chintz very much still in the mind I spotted these: 

• In the local museum, along with a great display of gold mining and Ned Kelly memorabilia, was a  sweet child's "wagga" in a cot, and it looked to be made of chintz. 

• In an antique shop - several "much-loved", vintage quilts for sale:

Beautiful hand quilting designs on these

Back to sewing with renewed energy - hope you find all these quilts inspiring too!

Four different projects

Simon quilt: 

I've made many paper pieced hourglass blocks and here is my Simon quilt so far:

Chintz Medallion quilt:
Last post I showed this messy ten-month collection of bits and pieces. All to make a medallion around a lovely chintz panel. You can hardly see the chintz panel under the load !

That really was enough procrastination  research. If I used all the ideas I had "collected" the quilt would be he large enough to cover the house ...so time to commit to one or two borders. 

I have never made paper pieced clamshells but love the look of them ...so that would be a start. I researched several ways to do them on the net and found Sue Daley's tutorial looked the most fool proof for me. Here are some pictures of my process: 

Appliqueing the clamshells into rows

I am using fabrics with a blended/ ombre stripe because I love the soft colour flow in these fabrics :

That chintz panel will be on point so the clamshells will need to form four corner triangles:

Checking it is staying close to 90 degrees: 

The clamshells corner isn't attached yet - it might look best (and fit best) with a narrow fabric dividing border along the panel edge - will see. Now to make three more clamshell corners. 

Star Bouquet quilt :

Remember this one - my reproduction of a quilt made by Mary Leggett ?

The top is now finished. I won't/can't make it any larger because I have come to the end of the chocolate brown hexagon fabric. It measures about 1.7 m by 1.6 m so is a large lap quilt size (67 inches by 63 inches). 

This will just be trimmed and bound. I auditioned a couple of borders on it but prefer the look of it just as it is. My sewing machine is back from service so this one is heading to the top of the queue for quilting. 

Angela's Log Cabin:

My friend Angela is coming along very well with her log cabin - she is a star pupil. She's made two lovely log cabin blocks - despite my supervision! The unpicker had a bit of a work out last session and I felt very sheepish because I wasn't checking her progress thoroughly enough (too much chat) and a couple of errors happened - oops. All fixed up now though: 

Each block is 18 1/2 inches

Some cheery flowers to finish - all picked from the garden.

Starting Simon

This lovely book has been bedside reading for a while - Promenade in a Dutch Garden.  I just love the antique Dutch quilts and the lovely reproductions made by Petra Prins and An Moonen . 

"Simon" is my new quilt project from the book . It looks like the name was chosen because the original antique quilt (below) is in the collection of a man called Simon van Gijn. A good quilt name - Simon - short and sweet.

According to the book this is a very early patchwork coverlet from the Netherlands and is made from Indian chintz and printed European cottons - wonderful fabrics and wonderful colours! Hard to believe it was made in 1775-1800 as the colours don't look faded at all.

After a lot of close squinting at the fabrics on the book  photo I decided the quilt was exactly suited to make use of some treasures from The Stash - some India chintz, a few Smithsonians, some Dutch chintz remnants (from making my Burnt quilt), and a few other oldies: 

The other thing I love about this quilt is that I can make it with English Paper Piecing and applique - my two favourite techniques. Of course it could be hand or machine pieced other ways too - does not look like it is a difficult pattern (famous last words??).

Starting with the centre star I prepared the pattern with some copying and cut and paste. I also made foundation papers just for the centre rosette as it looks like a tricky centre point to piece. 

Not a good photo below but that is my lovely new Light Pad in action - ready to copy the pattern onto the back of the chintz background fabric: 

Below is the star getting needle turn appliqued (using back-basting prep):

11 inch square centre block

Here are some pictures showing the foundation piecing for the centre rosette. All done by hand as my machine is off on much-deserved holiday (service time). Once the two halves were stitched together I removed the backing paper and then appliqued it down onto the block.

I cut out a lot of triangles in thin card to use as 'papers' for the EPP Hourglass blocks. It was great fun cutting fabrics and covering papers and there will be a lot more of that to come. 

I have just won a lovely giveaway from Kyle at Timeless Reflections blog. One of the fabric fat quarters is in this picture -  perfect to use for this project - thanks so much Kyle!

So here is progress so far - the centre star and a row of Hourglass blocks. 

I do have another quilt that is ever so slowly progressing in the planning stages - no pattern for this one hence the slowness! You can't rush the research eh?

I am sure you won't recall the end of this post back in November 2012 .... when I showed a photo of starting planning a "future project" - a medallion quilt around a chintz panel. This was it in November: 

Bits and pieces of fabric, books, photocopies etc have been added as I got some inspiration. So now the design collection looks like this:

Things could be lost for ever and ever in that pile so I really must get a start on this one! 

And now for some cushions. What do you think of this for a starting intro-to-quilting-and-sewing project? I am teaching my good friend Angela how to do patchwork - big responsibility as I don't want to frighten her off. We started on these cushions. She's never done rotary cutting, measuring or piecing so it is right back to basics. We're both thrilled how well they turned out.  Next is a log cabin quilt...very large strips in  simple 18inch log cabin blocks. Wish me luck!