Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the mums out there. I had breakfast in bed, crepes with chicken and mushroom and then one with lemon curd and chocolate. So I'm all set for the day!

It was lovely to relax and read my book. I'm reading Pam Holland's 'The 1776 Quilt'. Very appropriate for Mother's Day as Pam is the mother of 11 children and numerous foster children. Pam is an amazing person and I had the privilege of taking her class at the Auckland Symposium in 2005. Her 1776 quilt was exhibited at this event and it is just stunning. This is the quilt I made in that class.

My colours were very different to everyone else's in the class. They had all bought nice muted folk colours, cream backgrounds, very pretty. Mine was made with what I had to hand! I had just finished a year at university training for teaching and I was skint! I brought my whole stash in a small suitcase. Pam must have thought that she had a right nut case when I showed up!

Then since I'm an over-achiever, I was on to the satin stitch stage before everyone else. Pam's technique is to satin stitch around the raw edge applique after the quilt sandwich is made so it becomes part of the quilting too. I figured I already knew how to satin stitch so I just went for it. I was always taught (from books) that you stop with the needle in the outside of a curve at you turn through the curve. I've blown up this picture so you can see what a lousy job I made of that.

Pam says that on these tight curves with a small satin stitch that the build up of threads makes it ugly (I agree) and that stopping on inside makes a neater job. Ignore my quilting! I wasn't very good at it then. Also ignore the little bump on the top side of the branch. The point is that the end is much neater.

I liked her technique with the fabric pens too. You can add a lot of detail with a pigma micron pen and some fabric pens. This little house is two pieces of fabric, pigma pen and blue, gray and beige pen for the shading and windows.

I've used the techniques I learnt in this class is various quilts. This wallhanging was the next one I made after this class.