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...

Clamshell capers

Since I discovered clamshell patchwork last year I have been rather obsessed with them ...and seem to have stitched them at every chance!

This was a first-attempt project last year - appliqued using Sue Daley's paper piecing method - with much reference to the Youtube video in the link.  Starting with this:

Clamshells stitched together

It became this,  using Sue's pattern: 

Since then I have made a clamshell gift pouch for my sister in March, adapting a great tutorial on Janet's blog "Quiltsallott" (thanks Janet!) Starting with a panel of appliqued clamshells, quilted and cut into this shape:

And added binding and zipper to become this:

Still found myself channeling clamshells last month - and made the same pouch for a friend's April birthday. I decided to use some squares of French souleiado that I thought might be her colours. 

Clamshells over papers

Applique row by row

Meanwhile ...I don't know if you remember all the clamshells I made at the end of last year  - to add to the design of my medallion quilt. Here are some pics from previous posts:

Top finished in January

Well, I have got this sandwiched and pinned on the floor ...

...and am quilting it - machine quilting on my domestic machine. I would dearly love to have it hand quilted but my arthritis does not allow this. I want to achieve as close as possible to a hand quilted vintage look so we'll see how it goes.

Quilting in the ditch around all the hand applique:

And now ...I am quilting around the clamshells:

I wonder if I might soon be "over clamshells". Hope not too soon because there is still a rather large border of clamshells to be added to my Ann Randoll quilt in the nearish future - hah! 

About time for a post

Hope you have all had yourselves a very merry little Christmas and are now recovering  relaxing? I've had a bit of a posting break due to much 'busyness'. You all know the usual craziness of Xmas preparations and of course the Xmas gatherings - loved it all!  There has also been the excitement of a daughter's Uni graduation and a son moving out of college into his first share house.

And what about quilting??
I never did get those foundation-pieced Xmas cards done (mentioned last post) -  maybe next year...

But I did finish a gift project - a table runner (of my design):

The fabrics are a mixture of shot cottons, linen, plains and homespun. I cut them into squares and made half-square triangles by this method (great tutorial) and then chain pieced them together - very simple construction.

Strings of chain piecing!

Auditioning blocks ready to sew together in rows

I sandwiched the top to a homespun backing with thin pellon for wadding - aiming for it to sit very flat as it is a table topper, but still have the addition of some machine quilting.

Straight line machine quilting with the walking foot

Some more progress on my Dutch quilt 'Simon' - adding corner blocks.

Needleturn applique corner shapes

Here is the top so far: 

And now am working on a surrounding border. I made a lot of paper templates for the diamond and triangle shapes and am constructing it by the EPP method. 

Nothing new to show on my Chintz Medallion at the moment. 

But I have joined a monthly local quilt class - very excited to discover this class being held in a wool shop in town. It's a very open class - work on what you want - so I decided to focus on a machine-pieced project in the class - a wedding gift for a niece's September 2014 wedding. My machine piecing skills need fine tuning (to put it kindly) so this will be good work on under the expert supervision of teacher Ruth van Haeff ! Here are some blocks made so far: 

The pattern I am using is called ' Double X' and it is in Two-color quilts by Nancy J Martin. 

More news - A big thanks to Meredithe from Pomegranate and Chintz for a lovely giveaway win. Very generous of you Meredithe - I love it!

Sweetly wrapped

Inside was this lovely acrylic template set - to make a 13" block

I can see lots of potential uses for this set . The block looks wonderful in the repro fabrics photographed on the pack. But I think it would make a great two-colour quilt too....

To finish a long post - here's me and my daughter at her graduation. First Class Honours in Law - am so proud of her.

Happy New Year!

Carolina Lily completed

On a queen sized bed

Now just to show you what I did in the final stages (probably are lots of better ways to do this mind you!)...

Here it is with the quilting just finished, ready to trim, bind and wash:

I can tell you I felt a little bit worried as I shoved it in my front loading washing machine with a dose of wool wash and turned on the full wash cycle. I wanted to be sure to remove all that pen and I wanted high spin so it would not be too wet afterwards. I added several white colour catchers and here they are afterwards - must have picked up all the orange pen colour!

After the wash it was good incredibly fantastic to see that all the pen marks had disappeared. 

I wanted to square the quilt up before letting it dry on the timber floor for a couple of days. I always hope this will avoid any distortion that could happen if I just hang a new quilt on the line to dry. The squaring just involved pulling the corners and sides a little - so the diagonal corner and parallel side measurements were much the same.  Here it is drying:

Once it was dry I went over it checking for any loosened applique and threads to trim. I found four small lifts in the border vine where the applique thread (a fine silk thread) had come loose. Easily fixed and not bad at all considering the quilt is all hand applique and the poor thing has been dragged this way and that under the sewing machine and then given a few hefty spins in the washing machine. It is a fairly fragile thread - might have been better with something stronger. See the loose applique below?

Checking the back of the quilt here: 

Hanging it on the wall for some photos:

Well that was quite a task for me to quilt on my domestic machine. But I am really happy ( and so relieved) it has turned out with the look and feel I wanted - as close as I could  manage to the traditional hand-quilted look I love. Time for a little happy dance? Thanks for all your encouragement along the way. 

I am wondering if I am game enough now to tackle quilting my Burnt quilt - the finished top has been sitting waiting for quite a while... It is a big quilt (bigger than the Carolina Lily) but, without all that applique, may be easier to quilt. Perhaps a break from quilting first though!

 Remember this?

Something lovely is happening in the garden - signs of Spring! Do you recall that in June I planted a "tulip lasagne" in a pot? It thinks Spring is coming too.

Quilting and more quilting...

That's what I have been doing - hours and hours of it!
So far it is going pretty well thanks to a couple of fold-out tables added around the sewing machine -creating a nice big area to spread and manoeuvre the quilt.

This is how it started - sandwiched with wadding and backing taped to the floor. You can see  all the marking lines and trapunto wadding stitched in the wreaths.

Then pinned together and wadding trimmed back a bit to be manageable. 

The first bit of machine quilting ( and I find it so important to do this bit) is the stitching in the ditch between each block to stabilise the whole quilt. 

Then I free motion quilted an outline close around all the applique - that was really enjoyable as it became three dimensional. 

Yep - notice a mistake in the background grid marking - uneven spacing  - to be corrected

I also quilted the wreaths:

You can see the dissolving thread anchoring the trapunto wadding on the wreath - inside marked line 

Lots of dimension appearing here!

Might regret that plain green backing - shows every stitch!

And now I'm working on the outer border -  half inch parallel lines. This is rather tedious and time- consuming sewing, but not difficult. I am sewing this (with the walking foot) as background quilting "behind" the vine applique (not over the top). This means a lot of drag and sew, which means a lot of threads to be trimmed off front and back - very therapeutic (up to a point ...sigh)

Lots of threads to trim

Looking neater with the threads trimmed:

I will be happy if  when all the pen marking is washed off - I'd like those lines to look a little more subtle!

Once the border lines are done then I'll quilt the 1 inch grid over the rest. It will again be "behind"  the lilies so more threads to trim. 

It is also an angled grid so the quilt will have to be passed on point through the sewing machine. That could be interesting - not done that before! I might not be surfacing for quite a while....