Floor cushions

You know when someone finds out that you sew and gives you a whole load of non-quilty stuff and you're not sure what to do with it. Well, at our guild we turn them into cushions.

This is a floor cushion (about 90cm x 90cm) made from all donated stuff apart from a bit of velcro.

We were given bags of what looks like offcuts from making mattresses. We also had this horrible batting that I've been trying to use up.

I wanted to line the inner cushion with the batting so that it wasn't quite so lumpy. I cut a strip of fabric and sandwiched the batting between the strip and the cushion inner so that I could sew the batting and make a pocket to put the off-cuts into.

The cushion inner is now lined with batting and filled with lumpy bits.

I made the back of the cushion from large curtain samples using velcro as a closure.

The front was made from upholstery and curtain sample books.

These lovely terracotta/pink fabrics were offcuts from a professional seamstress (sewer/sewist, which one do you use?) I was going to make myself some cushions or a handbag but I've had them for over a year and it hasn't happened yet. Time to let someone else appreciate them. These cushions are going to a children's home.

This is my latest project. It is really exciting. Two of these sheds are mine and are destined to become backpacker cabins somewhere lovely.

A couple of summers ago I visited Suz (http://suz-allthegoodonesaretaken.blogspot.co.nz) and Monika (http://monika-quiltingjourney.blogspot.co.nz). They live a beautiful part of the country up north. I also met Miss Lottie (http://theslightlymadquiltlady.blogspot.co.nz) on that trip. Miss Lottie often posts about the joys of living in the country. I made a decision that holiday that this was the life I wanted and I've been working my way slowly towards it. I'm planning to run a small backpackers and campsite (well, one electric point for an RV) and also build a house, keep chickens, grow stuff and do a bit maths tutoring.
The cabins are being built by students at my school. It will take them all year as they learn the skill for each part of the job. So I've got until the end of the year to find a place to put them.

Clown mystery quilt finished

Isn't he marvelous!

I quilted the background and border on a friend's quilting frame (thanks Raewyn!) and quilted the clown on my domestic machine. Most of it was just outline quilting but I tried to do more interesting things where I could.
Like stamens on the flowers...

 Curls in his hair...

Spirals on his nose and shoes...

Ruff pattern on his braces...

And I used some of the red fabric in his trousers for inspiration and quilted my signature meandering hearts. I've used that quilting pattern in so many quilts!

I tried a new type of binding on this quilt. It is 100% machine sewn! I saw it on a blog but sorry, I can't remember which one and google didn't find it for me. There are plenty of tutorials out there though. Search for 'binding with false piping'. Here is the way I did it.

Cut the binding fabric 1 3/8" wide and a contrast fabric 1 5/8" wide. Sew them along the long side. Press the seam allowance to the binding fabric.

Fold the binding in half. Match raw edges and sew to the back of the quilt with a quarter inch seam allowance with the contrast fabric facing up.

Bring the binding to the front. Stitch-in-the-ditch between the binding fabric and the contrast, matching the top thread to the contrast fabric and the bobbin to the backing.

 Mitre the corners just as you would for a regular binding.

Click to enlarge

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

This is my entry for the Bloggers' Quilt Festival run by Amy of Amy's Creative Side. I'm entering this quilt into the wallhanging category. 

I'm in good company in the wallhanging category. Rhianon from Nifty Stitcher got in early. Rhianon does the most amazing work! It was less than 2 years ago she was complimenting me on my quilting and saying that she was starting free-motion quilting. Now it's me trying to emulate her quilting. I wanted the nice buttery quality that Rhianon manages to get in her feathers. Getting there.

I've also quilted a motto on this quilt. Maybe I should tell the story behind it.

Our local quilt guild put out a challenge to make a quilt representing your favourite charity. I didn't need to think twice. I am so impressed with the work that the hospice do. My Dad died of cancer almost 5 years ago. He never stayed at the hospice but the nurses came out to him. So I didn't actually see the inside of the hospice until after he died when we were invited to be part of a fund-raising project at Mercy Hospice in Auckland. Mum and I were given a tour. I always thought that hospices were places where people died. Their motto is 'Living every moment' and that's what we found out on our tour. It's all about living, even those last moments. We saw their very clever bath where patients can be helped into with the greatest of ease and then sat up with a beautiful view out the window to the gardens. At hospice, having a bath isn't about bathing but an opportunity to enjoy a moment of life. We were also told about the amazing work that volunteers do, coming in for beauty sessions etc.

The logo for the hospice group is the yellow kowhai flower, a native tree in New Zealand. I've made it by drawing up a large paper foundation pattern on freezer paper. The middle section is just over 18", the width of freezer paper, then I added the yellow and green borders. All the green fabrics are from a batik pack I bought at fabric-a-brac, a fundraising event run by the hospice every year. I'm going to give the quilt to the hospice. It's funny to think they're going to get their fabric back!

I've very pleased with this quilt. I love the batiks. I couldn't find a variety of yellow batiks but the prints and yellow solid go well with the batiks. The paper foundation method is easy and very versatile. This is definitely a technique I will use again. And finally I like the way the feathers all fit into each other. I've made this so it can be used as a lap quilt so I haven't done any dense quilting with stippling between the feathers so they had to cover the entire quilt. That turned out to be easier than I expected. I'm not sure what the hospice will do with the quilt, sell it, use it or display it. I don't mind. I made it for them as a thank you for the care they showed to my Dad.

Charity Challenge quilt

I said I wasn't going to start any new projects but I've done it again - deadlines dictated that a new project had to be done!

The Counties Manukau guild show is on in a couple of weeks and our challenge was to do a quilt representing a charity. The quilts are then going to be given to the respective charities. I chose to do one for the hospice but didn't even start by hand-in day. Unfortunately there weren't many challenge quilts so I decided to do my idea anyway. I reasoned to myself that it wouldn't take long. Ever the optimist!

Here's where I've got to so far. It's the stylised kowhai flowers from the hospice logo. I only have one more row of green/blue strips to sew on and then quilting and binding. To keep it simple, I'm going to quilt feathers all over it rather than do separate things on the flowers, sashing, borders and background. I don't think that will detract from the design. What do you think?

I've also made a small confetti quilt but I think it needs more.

That tree in the centre is too chunky so I need to cover it up. I like the canopy of leaves but the undergrowth hasn't really worked. I tried to get a feeling of depth by putting lighter fabrics at the top and paler tree trunks for trees that are further away. I don't think that worked. I'm going to add more foreground and possibly put a deer over the fat tree.

Are you a Google Reader user? If so, have you decided what to use when it goes? One blogger I follow recommended bloglovin but I've been subjected to porn in my feed twice now so I wouldn't recommend that!  The first time I told them about it. The second time was time to get rid of it!  I tried Feedly but the app for iPad has a few bugs. Any other recommendations?

Mystery quilt revealed

I've really wanted to post this but I had to wait until our first guild meeting so that the ladies who made it could see it first (apart from a select few who saw it in person :D).

Clown - border still to be added, 36" by 48" so far

As promised, I will share how we did this. 

Firstly, I found an image on www.canstockphoto.com that I thought was simple enough and that filled a rectangle nicely. It cost me about $2.50 and I don't begrudge paying such a small amount. We should be supporting artists - one day it may be my daughter that you are paying! 

Print out on A4 size paper and draw a grid on the image of 4cm squares. That's it on the right of the photo below.

That gives you 6 squares across and 8 squares down. A4 is slightly smaller than that so the outside squares will have more background than shows on your A4 print. Try to position the grid so that the lines cut through the drawing at convenient places. I'll show what I mean in the next diagram.

Freezer paper is 18" wide so you can get three 6" squares across the paper. Tape two sheets together and draw a 6" grid on the freezer paper, 6 squares by 8 squares.

Do we all remember making enlargements in Art at school? Look at the intersections of the drawing with the grid on the A4 print and transfer those marks to the freezer paper grid. Connect the dots - with flair and panache! (see below for hints on flair and whatever!!)


Number the squares on the A4 print and freezer paper pattern.

Cut up both A4 and freezer paper into the squares and attach the 4cm colour square to the 6" pattern square with a paper clip, ready for the needleturn applique.

I made a video for the needleturn applique but it never uploaded to YouTube and I forgot that when I handed in my iPad to school for wiping! I will try to remake it and cover that in another post. In the meantime, I will try to explain how I drew this.

Draw in pencil to start with. Although you are going to try to enlarge the drawing to look like the original, this is an opportunity to change it a bit so that it is easy to put back together again. You may have to adjust the position of the 4cm grid on the A4 sheet depending on how it falls. I found that if I started with a line touching the bottom of the mouth, the nose was divided into reasonable sized sections. If you find that a lot of slivers of colour end up just going over a line, can you shift the grid to get more of a shape falling in a square? You're not going to manage to get it fitting 100%. This is where the flair comes in.

 

Looking at the pattern of the hat on the left, you can see that I made the hatband follow the line of a square on the left side. I really didn't want to have to sew a tiny blue bit and it looks fine as it is. I've also made some of the curls of the hair go into a line as well. I must have drawn the flower about 10 times and I still wasn't happy with it but it ended up looking ok. You can see my many pencil lines!

After adjusting lines, I stuck the pattern on the wall with masking tape and stood back to see if any of the adjustments looked a bit too kooky. More rubbing out and more pencil lines!

Once I was happy with it, I went over the lines with a permanent pen with a 0.25mm nib and then rubbed out all the pencil lines.

This has been a really fun project and I'm very pleased with the results, as were the women that worked on it at guild. Some didn't even realise that this was the project they had worked on! I really fooled them - in a good way. I hope you consider doing this with your group. Send me photos if you do!

This quilt will be displayed at our guild exhibition in May and we will be making a matching quilt at the show. If you are in the Papatoetoe area in Auckland on the 11th and 12th of May, call in and make a square. The quilts will go to children in care. Two lucky siblings should get these ones.

Mystery quilt blocks finished

There were only five more blocks to make so Mum and I finished them off. Here they are after I chain-pieced the rows together.

I tried to trim the blocks as carefully as possible but I haven't fussed too much about matching seams on the applique. A lot of them are amazingly accurate but where it is a little out of alignment, like in the shorts leg above, I've just left it. I think it will add to the charm of this quilt. 

Want to see the whole thing? Not long now... :)

More community projects

Yet another project finished! Last weekend we had the woman from Dingwall Trust (care homes for children) come along to pick up some quilts. I really wanted to get this one finished and off my UFO list and I'm really happy to have one of my quilts go to Dingwall. The kids love them. It does your heart good to hear how our silly hobby of cutting up fabric and sewing it back together can comfort a child.

I arrived at the guild meeting 20 minutes before she came to pick up the quilts and I still had to stitch the binding down and sew a label on it! Two wonderful ladies helped me and we got it done just in time! Then Liz took this photo for me as I didn't have a photo of the quilting. As we were waiting for Liz to get her camera, I was chatting with the woman from Dingwall and I told her that I called this my stress relief quilt. I made this when I was a bit stressed at work and just needed to unwind by doing something that didn't require any thought. I wrote about how I made it here. http://layer-upon-layer.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/my-stress-relief-quilt.html

She asked me who I thought it should go to. I said that I intended that it should be a quilt for a boy so maybe a little boy who is angry with the world. She said that they have just taken in a seven year-old who lost his mum and she thought that maybe it would suit him. Then I pointed out the quilting pattern that looks like lollipops is actually inspired by the movie Tron, where the characters go into the computer. 'Ah yes,' she says,'this will be perfect for him!' As I said, it does your heart good!

Here's a photo of the top before quilting. By the way, that quilting pattern is called Cyber Echo.

Well, first day of the school holidays and I've got lots of sewing to do - and lots of prep work for next year! I'm teaching a class next year using iPads. This will be a class of about 16 students that are very weak in maths, perhaps with learning difficulties, behavioural issues etc. They have been having a lot of success with these students in the intermediate school so we want to carry that on at secondary school. I'm looking forward to it but it's a lot of planning.

Then yesterday I found out that I'm going to be an ESOL teacher for one period of the week. Have I ever done that before? No, but I'm game for anything! The way our timetable works, if you teach two junior and three senior classes, you are one period under allocation so you have to pick up a lesson somewhere else. I've taken a reading class before (go to the library and read quietly - I can do that) and remedial maths tuition. The ESOL department want me to teach quilting instead. How exciting is that!! Imagine, the Ministry of Education are going to pay me to quilt! Well I hope they are going to pay me. I've gone from a fixed term contract to permanent staff so I had to fill in a new form for Novopay. My readers from New Zealand will have heard how the new payroll company has stuffed up pay for teachers. I haven't been affected - yet!

And I leave you with a photo of my daughter's name badge that she made for the guild she joined in Doha, Qatar. She seems to have abandoned her blog - after persuading me to write a blog! It's based on the traditional knife-through-the-heart tattoo. I can't say I've ever understood that image (maybe Melanie can explain) but I think her take on it is very amusing and I love it. That's my girl!!

Caring for the Community

Every year, towards the end of the school year, my school takes two days out to do things for the community. It's a chance to show the kids that community counts and that it is easy and very rewarding to do something for someone else. Projects range from teaching some elderly people to text, weeding (in school and our neighbours), cleaning up the beach, making jam for rest home residents, fundraising for the SPCA... and so on...

I offered to run a project making lap quilts for a local rest home. They specialise in dementia care and recently cared for one of the teacher's mother. They seemed like a fitting recipient of some quilts.

I was very fortunate to get a class of all adult students! I had a class of 15 ladies and two teacher helpers, some had some sewing experience but none of whom had ever used a rotary cutter. We had fun!

This is what we produced, one finished quilt, two that only need the binding on them, one to be quilted and bound and the fifth one I may save for next year. They are all based on the 3D bow-tie block. I've used this in a couple of quilts now and is one of my favourite hand-sewing projects.

Some happy workers!

Cutting and ironing station

The lady on the right (looking like a model!) was one of my main translators.

This may turn into a cot quilt for Middlemore Hospital or be saved for next year

I took this one home and had fun quilting it. Still to finish and bind.

Detail shot of the quilting

Our first finished quilt

I quilted a simple leaf design on this one.

They tried a different layout for the bowties and made an interesting secondary pattern.

We made a pieced back for this one and a student quilted it.

Straight line quilting done by one of the students.

All in all, I think it was a very successful project. I'm not sure how it would go with 14 to16 year-olds but I'm willing to try it again next year!

Mystery quilt

I have designed a mystery applique quilt for our quilt guild. It's always difficult to come up with education ideas but I struck on the idea of having members teach each other to do needleturn applique. I took a simple drawing and enlarged it on to freezer paper, then cut it into six inch blocks. The mystery is that you don't know what you are making in your block but hopefully when it all comes back together, it will make a great quilt!

One finished block

Denise marking her block. My instructions in the foreground were way too wordy!

Hmmm, what could it be??

We have used fabrics from the community quilts stash so it will a real patchwork picture.

If you are interested in doing a project like this with your guild, I will post instructions and photos of the process when we have finished. Alternatively, you can add a comment here (enable email replies) and I'll email you.