Citrus Quilt

I'm so pleased to finally have a full photo of this quilt.

The design came from a jigsaw. I love jigsaws and tessellations fascinate me so when I found a jigsaw where all the pieces were the same shape, I had to buy it. I've changed the multi-faceted jigsaw pieces into a smooth crescent shape. This means that I had to overlap the shapes so my quilt isn't strictly a tessellation. I like that too. The layout is still the same as the jigsaw. I think there are other layouts that would work too and one day I'm going to do some experimenting with that.

This quilt started life as a single bed quilt for my daughter, Melanie. I think that was about 2000/2001. It was originally going to be just the crescent shapes in the middle. It's hand-pieced, which obviously took quite a while.  In that time she got engaged (now married) so I added the blue border to make it a double/queen bed size. That was a bit tricky. I made the border as accurately and carefully as I could but as you can imagine, I had a big floppy rectangular doughnut. Then the middle piece had all these floppy edges with it not being square either! I had to put one on top of the other and try to end up with a flat quilt. I pinned all around the edge of crescents and hand-appliqued them to the blue border.  That took me three months.

Finished at last - or was I?  I looked at this quilt for ages, put it away, took it back out - several times.  I knew that it needed more. An operation on my foot and six weeks in plaster gave me the opportunity to applique the extra crescents on the blue border.  I thought about making the extra ones gradually smaller but opted for the idea that the crescents are falling off.

So in 2009 I had finally finished the piecing. I could have waited another nine to ten years to quilt it - or go with the easy option and have it quilted.  I went for the easier option and asked Jo Hollings to quilt it for me. We chose an overall design with nice curving shapes, based on a kowhaiwhai design.  I can't remember what it's called.  Another reason why I want to keep this blog.

And that is the story of my Citrus Quilt, named obviously for all the citrus colours.  Look out for more of this design.  I'll try to figure out a quicker way to do it.

Teal Dragonfly

Yes, I know, the dragonfly is cream/beige/brown but I've been calling this the teal dragonfly all the way through making it so the name has stuck. I love this quilt and I'm keeping it!!

I've used three different techniques for the curves seams. The middle part is my baste and topstitch method. The circle blocks on the outer border were done using the method I described in this post, making great circles. Then the circle blocks were cut with a gentle curve by stacking one strip of blocks on top of another and just going for it with the rotary cutter.  As long as the curve is not too curvy, the two bits will go back together with a 3-5mm seam.

Metallic thread was couched on to the body.  The thread has slubs (lumpy bits) so it wouldn't go through a needle.

I've done quite a few dragonfly wings now so it's getting easier to do. If you look at real dragonfly wings, you'll see that the small veins between the main veins are more like pentagons than squares.  They are quite easy to quilt too.  Also, dragonflies have a solid bit on the front tip of the wing.  Adding that little bit of satin stitch makes all the difference.

I bought the binding fabric for another project but discovered it was perfect for this quilt! I think my brain is just fixated on this beautiful dark teal colour.

Here are all the posts about this quilt:

Grid quilting

Pebbles and swirls quilting

Centipedes in my sashing

Variation on hearts quilting design

Koru Gecko

Finished and handed in at eight o'clock this evening - only four hours late! And I still have to sew the binding on the other dragonfly.

We tucked the gecko under a bundle of quilts for the show, hoping that it makes up for the fact that I didn't block this quilt. That outer border is very wavy.

This was how I quilted that last border. Leah Day calls this Water Plants,


Here are the previous posts on this quilt:
Start of the gecko design
My baste and topstitch method
More tips on baste and topstitch
Gecko scales - quilting pattern
Sneak peek at gecko quilting

All You Need is Love

I made this quilt last year for my nephew. He likes the Beatles. Actually I think he likes Drum Hero and happens to play The Beatles on it but he did like this quilt.

When I saw the fabric with 'All You Need is Love' in rainbow fabrics, I couldn't resist. I used it to make three dimensional bow-ties, teamed with coordinating fabric.

I quilted Beatles song titles in the red border - and discovered that my lousy handwriting is just as bad when I quilt! Still, it is was a fun thing to do.

Even the binding has little pictures of the Fab Four.

I've started a new project. I'm going to try to document all the quilting designs I use in my quilts. So I have started a new page and I'll link each design back to the post where it was used. Hopefully I won't go around in circles!

My first sample is the quilting design I used in the background of the bow-ties on this quilt.  It was inspired by the grey design in the background of one of the fabrics.  It's like a monochromatic psychedelic design, which sounds like an oxymoron but have a look at the design around Paul in the photo above.  How else would you describe it?

Here is my design.  I'm calling it 'Psychedelic'. It's made up of loops that turn into flower petals, groovy wavy lines and the occasional rainbow to fill in some spots.

I've also made a sample of the design I used in the grassy background of my Japanese Lady. I did a little experiment here and added some grass seed heads to a couple of rows of grass tufts.

Hand in date for the quilt show

Yesterday was the hand in date for the Counties Manukau Quilters Guild show and I didn't have either of my wallhangings finished. Fortunately we are meeting on the 30th and the show is on the 14th and 15th May so I have a little bit more time.

I was up to 3am putting the border on the gecko quilt and putting a hanging sleeve on the quilt I made for Melanie. This is the quilt I've used in the background of my blog and I still don't have a proper photo of it. Hopefully I'll get a good one when it's hanging up at the show. It's so difficult to take a good photo of bed quilts unless they are hanging up.

Here is Melanie with her quilt.

 

I machine sew all my quilts but this one is hand sewn. It took about 9 years to complete - not 9 years of solid work but picking up and putting down for long spells. I love it. The best compliment I had for this quilt was, 'I don't like bright quilts but I love this one!"
This was from a friend who does the most beautiful traditional quilts in muted tones, stunning workmanship and lovely colour combinations. High praise indeed!

My Stress Relief Quilt

Last year was a bit stressful for me. A quilting friend suggested that one way of dealing with the stress was to get on the sewing machine whenever I got home. Everyone was getting sick of my I've-had-a-shit-day stories. She said that I should work on some simple blocks to unwind - not something difficult or precious! It was a great suggestion and really helped.

I had been saving scraps from projects for years. Anything that was cut into a nice strip, square or triangle plus some pieced bits have gone into my hoarding bag. The middle part of the block is made just picking up pieces and sewing them together.  No measuring or rotary cutting involved until the piece of fabric is made big enough (150mm by 240mm in this case). For some reason, it's easier to make rectangles rather than squares using this process. Then I heavily starch the block and press well to get it to lie flat. Once it lies flat it can be trimmed back to size.



I added the green frames after I had destressed!  That was not simple.  It didn't help that I cut the light green strips at 70mm wide and then realised that I only had enough dark green fabric to cut 50mm strips. That made the mitred corners very awkward but it looks good and was worth the fiddling to get it right.

This is going to be another community quilt.  We always need good 'boy quilts'.  It's easy to make pretty girly quilts but some of the recipients of our quilts are teenage boys. I think this would be nice for a young boy (maybe not a teenager when you see some of the fabrics) and I have this striped fabric that I would love to use as a border.  The only think is that it's floral.  The first border is a dark brown and I think that one is ok. So is the green border and it doesn't even look like flowers.  It's the third border I'm not sure about.  I love it and I also love the red bit - but would it look right on this quilt? Opinions please!

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...

Highland Dancing Fairy

This was really easy to draw. I found a photo on the internet of a real girl doing highland dancing and traced the outline. Then I gave her a cartoon face and skinny legs and arms. Becky said it looked an illustration in a Roald Dahl book (illustrations were by Quentin Blake should that ever come up in a pub quiz). Sure enough, she looks like Matilda.

I scanned my sketch and then enlarged it on the computer and printed it out - on several sheets of A4!  It ended up a bit bigger than I had intended but maybe just as well.  I could never have done some of the detail work if it had been smaller.  The butterflies and flowers were added after I had scanned the sketch.



Here are some of the fun things I did with this quilt.

• Fairy wings made from embroidered net.

• A real pom pom on her Tam 'o Shanter.
• The hair was made using a fabric pen and just embroidering a few black lines.  That was an idea that I came up with after looking at Quentin Blake's illustrations.  Very quick and easy.
• Free motion embroidery butterfly with bead eyes.  This was copied off clip art I found on the internet but I skewed it to make him look like he is flying towards her.  The original was too upright.

• Shoes and vest laced up with cotton embroidery floss.
• Free motion embroidery flowers and more beads.  The big white and blue flowers were embroidered on stabiliser (as was the butterfly) and then appliqued on with invisible thread.  The bluebells were embroidered directly on to the quilt.

• And the most fun bit... a tutu that sticks out!!  That really was fun to do.

And you may also notice - NO tartan!  The binding was the closest I came to putting tartan in it. I have nothing against tartan but I didn't think it was right on this whimsical quilt.

And here is my niece showing off her moves and her quilt.

Becky's Dragonfly

Becky picked out some blue fabrics from my stash and asked me to make her a blue dragonfly. I had just made the Highland Dancing Fairy with see-through wings so I wanted to use the same technique for the dragonfly wings.

The first step was to draw some dragonflies or parts of dragonflies. I think one of these is actually a grasshopper!

The bit of green fabric was a trial of a foil.  More on that later.


I couldn't use all the lovely blue fabrics that Becky had chosen as a background. A blue dragonfly on a blue background wouldn't have worked. So I decided to use them in the border. The dragonfly image that I liked the best was actually not a real one but a painting by Katsushika Hokusai, a Japanese painter from the Edo period. I love the look of this period, which is probably why I love my vases. One of things that characterised the art of the Edo period is that objects were not necessarily grounded in the background. Things are not realistic but the beauty of each object was shown at its best. I decided to use this idea in my design. I had bought a lovely pink floral fabric in three designs, each one in the same colourways but different sizes of flowers. I wanted to use the three sizes as foreground, background and distance but this is not a realistic landscape quilt so more flowers and less leaves!

This is my sketch.

To get the proportions right, I scanned in the flowers and my sketch and messed about in Paint to put the two together. I can't wait to get a proper programme but Paint works for what I do. Then I projected that image using a data projector at school and blew it up until the image of the flowers was the size of the actual flowers on the fabric. Then I traced the dragonfly and the position of the flowers and border on to stabiliser and used that for the positioning and dimensions.

I made the wings using two layers of a fine net, one layer of soluble stabiliser and a tear-away stabiliser.  The tear-away was removed from the middle after stitching the outside of the shape.  I also added a little Angelina fibre to the wing tip and more where the wing joins the body.  The bottom wing has been washed to remove the stabiliser.



At this stage I had put all the blue border together by randomly cutting strips and sewing them together. Then I cut some blocks at an angle and fitted them together to make strips.  I left the outside edge all random lengths and cut the inside edge straight and added to the green background.  I had also added the foil at this stage.  The idea is that this is a shady pond with oily slicks or ripples.  Here I have pinned all the elements I have so far to the design board to see if I need more foil.  My big patch didn't come off the acetate as well as the other two patches but I figure I can cover most of the blotches.

I made up a mitred border and then used spray adhesive to temporarily attach the middle plus blue border to the orange border. The blue border was then satin stitched to the orange border.  I liked the way that the orange border looked like a wood frame.

I added more flowers using raw edge applique and invisible thread and I used a fabric pen on the distance bush (top left corner) just to give it a bit more definition.

The branch in the foreground was applied using a whole cloth applique method.  I'm moving away fusing applique.  I don't like the way it makes the fabric hard.  Whole cloth applique is just that, the whole piece of fabric applied to the front of the work.  Then I work from the back using the stabiliser on to which I traced the design.  After sewing around the leaves and stem, I removed the stabiliser and trimmed the fabric back to my sewing line.  Then I used free-motion embroidery on the stem and satin stitch around the leaves.  I added another leaf to the design since Becky wanted the dragonfly sitting on a leaf - and what the client wants, the client gets!  By using fabric pen and a different colour of thread for the stain stitch on the curled part of the leaf, I managed to give the impression of the underside of the leaf without looking for another fabric and fiddling with small pieces.

This was a sample for the dragonfly body. I like to do that not only to try out a technique or, in this case, the holographic thread, but also so that I have something to put in my scrapbook.

And the finished quilt.

Cockatoo wallhanging

I love this glass mosaic featured in Kafe Fassett's book 'Glorious Inspiration'. I decided to use it for my first adventure in thread painting after reading Ellen Anne Eddy's 'Thread Magic'. The gold leadlighting would be really easy to reproduce in gold metallic thread. I also liked that each feather could be coloured in separately, breaking down the task of blending colours for the bird into small steps. Each feather had at most about four colours of thread so it didn't seem like a huge task.


I scanned in the image and then just used Paint to manipulate it to something that was simplified but still a pleasing composition. I was going to make up the background with a light diamond behind the cockatoo and darker triangles in the corners. The black lines were to help me see how that was going to look. But in the end I liked the background fabric too much to cut off the corners!



The finished piece. The image is reversed because I traced the image and then worked from the back. I didn't mind which way round the final piece was facing so I didn't bother reversing the image before I traced it.

Japanese Lady wallhanging - design process

This was the first wallhanging I made after taking a class with Pam Holland in 2005.  It was one of those projects that started with a bang and then went on the shelf for a long time.  I finally finished it in 2008.


These vases were given to me by my Granny and I love them.  As you can see, I've taken the middle figure and simplified the design.  I couldn't figure out what she was sitting on so I changed it to a rock.  Kinda wish I had thought about that a bit more but there you go!



The wisteria was done using Pam's drapplique method, fine Pigma pen for the outline and then coloured in using fabric pens.

I quilted grass on the grassy bit as the fabric was a bit flat in colour.  Also, once I had finished, I decided that her kimono needed a bit of decoration. I thought about it for weeks.  I wanted to do something more Art Nouveau than Japanese.  I could have researched it but this came out of my head instead.  Quilted in gold metallic thread from the back so the thread was in the bobbin.

I can't remember what this says.  This is one where I did do the research so it does say something. This is why I want to start documenting my quilts!




Some more bobbin work in the border.  I like the idea of adding a bit of texture, even if you can hardly see it. I'm talking about the red wool in the red and black border, just in case you missed it.


Don't you just love the back of quilts!  Or is that just me!!


And the finished quilt again.

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.