Gift completed

So glad to have this one finished - Double X quilt - a gift for my niece's September wedding. 

We've had some lovely, much-needed rain so this is the best I could do for a garden photo - very careful to keep the quilt clean and dry!

1.33m square (53 inches square)

 I kept the quilting simple - hoping it would suit her taste. It was easy to manage by machine with the walking foot. The quilt is a rarity for me in that it is totally machine made - pieced and quilted (oh -  except for hand hemming of the binding). The piecing was done rather infrequently so it took quite a while to complete..little doses bit by bit! 

Something else that is slow going, but very enjoyable, is my hand applique (needleturn) of the Ann Randoll sawtooth edges - two edges on each border - fiddly but fun. As the borders get bigger on a medallion quilt - so does the workload! I am getting the sawtooth edges done first and then will fill in the middle of the border strips with hexagons and applique flowers.

Back to some more prep...

Relaxing with Auntie Green..

The applique has been a very relaxing process - just love it. Here we are so far:

There are a lot of circles of all sizes in this applique and I did make an effort to create quite a few by the gathering-and-ironing-over-templates method. It does produce such perfect circles but I have to admit I didn't stick at it very long.
I decided I really don't mind a little more organic circles, and the more relaxed I got the more I liked them lol! So ...most of the circles are back basting prepared and then needle turned. I found this little tool really handy to draw neater circles for back basting prep:

Fitting on that outer vine and flower border was tricky - needed to do a wee bit of pattern adaptation to fit. 

I did the floral applique first but left about 3 1/2 inches clear background to add the vine outside:

Organised chaos...or maybe just chaos?

Positioning the vine (long bias strips prepped as in last post) - bit of adjustment required:

Pinning ready to applique...and I might add a few more flowers/leaves later to fill gaps.

 

Meanwhile...here is Benjamin Biggs Block 7 -  such a delightful pattern. 

And here is one lap quilt that is nearly finished - my Double X gift quilt - pinned and now being quilted - all machine pieced.

I can only hope it might have improved my machine piecing skills (as I made this under expert teacher guidance in my quilt class) but I can't say I enjoyed it as much as hand work. If you want to know my thoughts exactly about hand applique - just look at Kyle's inspiring post - always a joy to read her posts at Timeless Reflections!

Taking stock

The trouble with doing too many lots of projects at once is the feeling of moving in slow motion - nothing seems to be progressing. I know I'm spending hours on it... but where exactly ...?

So I gathered the projects for a quick stocktake.

Here is my Stars meet Hexagons - not looking much different but it has got larger since last report, and there is a lot prepped ready to sew. I am aiming for lap quilt size and still love the fussy cutting.

Here is a quilt I started in my monthly quilt class and posted about here in December - a wedding gift for my niece ( I'm calling it my Double X or Lucy's quilt). It has been all machine pieced in class with one flying geese border ready to add. I've learnt a lot about machine piecing in the process but still don't enjoy it as much as hand work, so it largely only gets worked on in class.

I'm just about to start Block 5 on the Benjamin Biggs BOM - and here are the fabrics selected ready.

There has been progress on my Ann Randoll reproduction - but lately some of it backwards. I'm really enjoying the challenge of this quilt but might need a little extra hair colour added this month (to cover the extra white hairs that Ann has contributed!). Three minor hiccups ...

• Glue stains. After the pinwheel border comes an applique vine border with an large sawtooth edge. Here is the border attached with the sawtooth completed ready to add the bias and leaves of the vine.

The placement of the bias vine is fairly tricky - so it lines up with the corner feature and there must be enough room for leaves either side - see below.

Well - I decided on my first attempt to try glue (Roxanne bottled glue) to attach the bias strip to the border background ready to applique. But once it dried I found my placement was wrong so removed the bias - only to find some truly nasty glue stains were going to be visible. I washed/scrubbed/soaked it every way possible but they would not come out! So that border had to be scrapped and started again. And the lesson learnt ? extreme caution if anchoring applique with glue! I went back to pins...

Here is the stained reject:

• The hole - when I unpicked a seam to adjust it (another story). A patched repair.

A patch inserted

Not too noticeable in the scheme of things...

• Running out of fabric. I realised part way through appliqueing the vine leaves that I had very little of this fabric left and it was not a good feeling as I know it is long out of print. Not easy to work out how much was needed for the rest so I just plodded on regardless. With the help of my lightpad and the back basting prep technique for applique I managed to to wedge the leaves into every skerrick of the remaining fabric, leaving the tiniest seam allowance for needleturn - and just made it - phew!

Pinning for back basting prep on the leaves

some leaves ready for back basting stitching 

nearly finished the vine leaves

Now measures 55 inches square

Plenty more borders to come - just in case anyone thought it might be finished! No rest for the wicked? Next is a wide border of clamshells.

There has been some secret knitting: 

There's been a teeny bit more machine quilting of my Medallion quilt ....

So that's the stock take done - no finishes but lots of "nibbles" of this and that. 

 Autumn has been especially colourful in the Southern Highlands this year. Here is part of my garden.  Yes - am loving the colour of the maples, grapevine and golden ash, but am not loving the colour of the lawn! Actually it is very green under that bird netting :)

The reason for the netting is a desperate woman's defense against a flock of crows who have adopted our hill as their territory. They are usually quite harmless but at the moment have been ripping this lawn to shreds in search of beetles. It seems there's been an infestation of lawn beetles/grubs. I have spread powder to kill the beetles but the crows are not convinced and keep ripping the grass up to check! So the netting is there for a little while... hopefully not long, hehe.

"simple" Simon border and a new project

After not posting for many weeks this is my second post in one week.
Well it's that time of year - no work, Christmas rush is over and a few days to relax and catch up on quilting... The house that was cleared of quilting clutter to make room for entertaining is now littered with piles of auditioning fabric.

My Simon quilt top is almost finished. I just have to decide on the fabric to use for the outer first and third borders -"should be simple" she thought?
Here is 'Simon' in the Dutch book - the antique original and the authors' reproduction - showing these borders:

The antique quilt in "Promenade in a Dutch Garden"

Outer three borders on the original antique quilt - a lovely diamond print. Photo from the book.

Outer borders on Petra and An's reproduction - a beautifully coordinated stripe. Photo from the book.

Here is a collage of some fabrics I trialed with my quilt top and strips of pieced border - just auditioning, not stitched yet. I think I would like to keep the colours close to those in the original quilt - cooler/lighter colours - so these are rejects for this project.

The bottom right is my favourite of this lot but still not right...

Then I tried a Dutch chintz floral and a paisley print - I love them both and can't decide. I'm edging towards the paisley print because I love it's simplicity.  But it seems to make sense to use the Dutch chintz on a Dutch chintz repro quilt! Ho hum... not such a simple Simon border after all.

Dutch chintz print

Paisley print

Meanwhile - new project...

In a couple of weeks I am going to Summer School in the NSW Blue Mountains with Rhonda Pearce to make her version of the Ann Randoll quilt/coverlet - so terribly exciting as it is just my cup of tea. What's not to love in an antique British quilt with applique, clamshells and loads of fabric choices! And I have had such fun learning to make clamshells in my Chintz medallion quilt (still in progress). 

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the original quilt when it was on show at the Queensland Art Gallery but at least I have the wonderful book/catalogue they produced ("Quilts 1700-1945").  There are also great pictures in this book below:

Photo from book above

Centre of the quilt - photo from book

Photo from book - wonderful fabrics!

Some possible fabric selections I've made for the centre using the requirements list:

  Lots Some more set aside for scrappy piecing and clamshells - loads of small prints needed.

I've not seen anything but a small colour photo of Rhonda's work on this so am keeping my options open a little regarding fabrics and colours. You can read that to mean I'll be taking half my stash along to class! 

Thought I might review my quilting year - 2013.

A collage of projects that were started and finished this year:

All started and completed in 2013

Then there are the projects part-done this year: 

Baltimore - blocks 14 to 23 made this year, the rest were previous years

Burnt quilt - top finished 2013, still needs to be quilted - some time!

Lucy Boston - Started 2012, finished 2013

Medallion quilt - started 2013, working on it now

Simon - started 2013, working on it now

Double X - just started

Pretty happy with that lot.

But I'm a bit shocked to find there are 5 quilts still in progress ...and I am starting a new one! Such is the quilting life. All the best to you all for much inspiration and fun quilting in 2014!