Hearts for Christchurch - TV interview

Hearts for Christchurch:
Have a look at the link in Evie's blog. It's a news article from Canterbury TV about the display of the Hearts For Christchurch project.  The display is superb!

Hearts are ready for posting

A baker's dozen ready to be sent off to Evie.

Hearts for Christchurch

Edited to put my photo back in. Where are they going??

More hearts for Christchurch

As promised, some hearts made from the remaining wool.  Here are three of them all stuffed and finished.

This was a bit of an experiment.  I didn't have much dissolving stabiliser so I tried something else.

I started by ironing on some fusible web to the front of the fabric.





Teased out the wool roving to cover the fusible web.





Scattered my threads over the wool.





This is where things went a bit wrong. I thought a layer of bondable Angelina fibre on top would be a good idea. I only have white and thought it would blend into the wool. Wrong! I managed to peel the layer of Angelina and my fancy yarns off the wool and turn it over.




Then I used the backing paper from the fusible web. I put the paper on top of the wool and threads and sewed some lines to hold it all down. I tore the paper off and sewed some lines going across the previous lines.  That was a bit difficult.  The foot kept getting caught in the yarns.



And the finished fabric after washing in hot soapy water.


And this was my second attempt. I used the two small pieces of soluble stabiliser instead. I also put the Angelina fibres under the fancy yarns instead.


Here's a good tip I picked up from Abby Glassenberg. Instead of cutting the felt out with a seam allowance, use a freezer paper template, sew around the freezer paper and then trim back the seam allowance. Abby makes the most amazing soft sculptures. They aren't toys. They're works of art.
I have reused the same bit of freezer paper for six hearts here. I'm not going to turn these hearts out to I have sewn the felt on to the wrong side of the fabric. I cut a little triangle out so that I could place the ribbon for hanging the heart.


After cutting out the heart, I stuffed them...



... and then sewed the hole shut to complete the heart.





This is my second piece. The Angelina fibre didn't go like a white spiderweb this time. You can't really see it in this photo but it went iridescent instead of white. Not sure if that was because it was next to the wool roving this time and bonded with the wool or if I put hotter water on and it washed some of the dye ou of the wool. Anyway, it looks great and I can't wait to make up another set of hearts with pink felt. I've run out of ribbon so they will have to wait. :(

Hearts for Christchurch

I have started making hearts for the people of Christchurch after the earthquake there but I have to say, I can't believe the devastation in Japan! At the time I'm writing this, the nuclear power plant has exploded but they are still not sure what has happened there exactly. I guess we can feel a bit smug here in New Zealand, being nuclear free. Somehow, feeling smug doesn't feel good in this situation!

Just to lighten the mood slightly, here's a site showing how Christchurch residents are coping with the disruption to sewerage. There are some great inventive people there! Have a look at these long drops.

So, they really need something like a stuffed heart to decorate their dunnies, don't they. :) Seriously though, I think Hearts for Christchurch is a great project and a lovely way to show support.  I hope Evie, the organiser of the appeal, gets 400,000 hearts.

Here is my first heart in the making...

Asymmetric heart inside a symmetrical heart

I tried using the 'making great circles' method I've posted about before, just to see how far I could take the technique.  This method works for shapes other than circles as long as they are large enough and convex.  The left side of my heart is slightly concave and that presented a problem, as did the concave peak at the top. I ended up using hand applique for the peak.

Auditioning the fabric

I wanted to quilt my heart.  I cut out a heart shape in thin cotton batting and put it behind the appliqued heart with no backing fabric. After I quilted it, I put the backing fabric on right side together and stitched around the batting so that there was only fabric in the seam.  That kept the bulk from the seam and meant that I could turn it out.  I left a hole for stuffing and then hand stitched the hole. The ribbon was stitched into the seam when I added the back.

And here is my completed heart.  I have put a message on the back but that's for the recipient only!  If you would like to make a heart, click here.

Variation on hearts

I've been looking for an opportunity to try out this variation on my favourite quilting pattern, meandering hearts. I came up with this during one very boring exam supervision last year. Isn't it just so cute! I had to make up for the nasty centipedes with something cute.

This little bit took me about 30 minutes. If I don't get any faster at this, it's going to take 20 hours just to quilt the last border. I'd better get faster!

My ghost layer quilts

I was really excited about using Katie Pasquini Masopust's design technique after reading her book 'Ghost Layers and Colour Washes'. It's a three step process that is really simple to follow and is fun to play around with.

This was my first one, done in a hurry as I needed it quickly for an exhibition at school. I didn't put a lot of thought into it. In fact, I think I used the squiggle from the example in Katie's book. I loved the design technique but I struggled with the piecing method Katie described. As you can see, my straight lines ended up a bit curved as I tried to match seams together.


I came up with my own method for piecing, which I will explain in another post, and made this little sample to try it. It was going to be a throw away sample but you know what quilters are like, can't throw anything away. So I added some embroidery and borders and it became a small wallhanging.


This sample was made to test some of the kinks in my piecing method. I discovered that fine bobbinfill will show on the top when you use monofilament thread in the needle. It was a useful exercise.


This is my latest project. It has grown a bit since this photo and deserves a post all to itself. More later...

Community quilts

I belong to a quilters guild, a good thing to do if you want to be inspired by fellow quilters and also gives you opportunities to explore your craft in ways that you probably wouldn't take on your own.

Twice a year the guild donate quilts to charities, both child-centered, and I am just about to complete my first contribution. The green and floral heart blocks were done by various members of the guild.  We have a draw each month where people make up blocks to a pattern suggested the month before. Each block you make gives you a entry to the draw. I made five blocks out of 22 so I suppose it wasn't surprising when I won. That's a 22.7% chance, just in case you were interested. (Sorry, maths geek moment there!) They had two draws so I won 11 of them and made an extra one. So I put the blocks together with some red and brown log cabin strips and went off to my local quilting shop, Fabricland, to borrow their long-arm quilter. This was my first experience with a long-arm quilter.

Here is the beast.

I've quilted an all over design of a hearts linked together with a short meander stitch. I start my hearts at the top whereas most people seem to start theirs at the bottom point. I've tried the other way but it just doesn't feel right to me. I tried stitch-in-the-ditch around the floral hearts. 'Tried' being the word of the moment! It was pretty difficult but I was improving towards the end. These things get easier with practice, so I'm told.

Now it's time for the binding.

I want about 10mm to show on the front so I cut strips 70mm wide. That's six times the binding plus twice the thickness of the quilt.

Now you will notice that I measure things in metric and also in millimetres. Metric, because I'm trying to throw off the shackles of the British Empire, and millimetres because they just make sense for small measurements and they don't use cm in the building industry so why would I use them in my sewing. For those of you unfamiliar with the world of metric (am I conceited enough to believe that one day someone other than my two daughters may be reading this page?), for 70mm one says, 'seventy mil'. Now isn't that easier than saying two and three quarters inches - or is it two and three quarters of an inch. See, I don't even know how to speak imperial any more!

But back to my binding...  What I wanted to share was my method of attaching different size bindings. I don't have a quarter inch foot since I use a 5mm seam allowance. I use a masking tape guide instead. The beauty of this is that I can make my guide any size. I sew a seam on a bit of scrap fabric, then use my ruler to trim the seam allowance to size. Then I put the scrap back into the machine and put the needle down through the seam and position my masking tape on the bed of the machine at the edge of the fabric. Perfect guide to any size I want.

And here is my latest bit of masking tape. I will return when the binding is finished.