Oscar the elephant

I was very excited to receive my copy of Abby Glassenberg's book 'Stuffed Animals'. Even though I'm on a tight deadline to get things finished for the show, I couldn't resist making an elephant. Meet Oscar.

He's made out of brown polar fleece with batik ears.

I love Abby's designs. He stands up very nicely due to clever design. And can you see his mouth? It's details like this that make all the difference.

His toenails and tail are grey felt, just because that was what I had and I was impatient to start. I had to go shopping (imagine that!) for his eyes so I tried out some different colours. Firstly, I tried the same colours as in the book, grey eyelid and orange/brown iris. Not right! So I tried the dark brown iris. Better. I also bought some green to match his ears but that didn't look right either. Then I tried a dark brown eyelid. Bingo!

This is a lovely book. So many photographs! You can almost follow the instructions by just looking at the photos. Almost, but not quite. I'm not good at slowing down and reading instructions but I was a bit confused about what to do with the mouth. I had to resort to reading and I have to say, the instructions were very clear. I should have read the instructions for inserting the ears too. I cut the slit too big. My mistake!

I love all the notes on pattern design and ideas for making the softie your own. There is so much information in the lessons and extra notes on adapting the patterns. I've got some great ideas for my next elephant.

My challenge quilt is almost done. It washed and blocked and beautifully flat - difficult considering all the bias edges when you paper foundation piece. I just have to add the binding. Also the clown is just about finished. It's been a productive school holidays. All good things come to an end though and it's back to school tomorrow.

Inspiration Station

Mel and Louise (my daughter and her friend) are starting a craft school in Doha, Qatar. Don't you just wish you were there! It sounds great.

Check out the Inspiration Station

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?

Modern Cot Quilt - finished

I've managed one finish, the cot quilt we started with Robyn in our Modern Quilting class several months ago. Why has it taken me so long? Well, I still don't have any grandchildren!! So there you go girls, the first one to produce a grandchild gets this quilt. Granny Pat (aka my Mum) says that the nursery has to be decorated to match!

I used the left-over fabric on the back as well as two blocks that didn't make it into the front. Quilt making should be about being thrifty! Talking about thrifty, I bought the patterned fabric last year for $5 at Fabric-a-brac, a fund-raising event run by the Mercy Hospice. If you ever need to destash, get a stall at this event. On the other hand, if you want some real bargains you'll have to wait until next year.

 The machine quilting on this quilt was very simple and very quick, just diagonal lines through the patterned blocks. Then cross blocks are hand-quilted with 2 strands of embroidery floss matching the colour of the cross and done using nice big stitches. I really like the look.

Craftsy class, Lola Jenkins' Thread Art

I've actually finished a quilt! Ok, it's only small and no piecing but it's finished.

I bought a couple of Craftsy classes just before Christmas and I've been looking forward to doing Lola's project. Then I had a need to make a "Don't touch the quilts" small quilt for our show next month. Putting the two together made sense.

Here's my quilt, about A4 size.


I was originally thinking of using the first photo below of my daughter for this technique but I was going to remove the Christmas hat. Then she sent me the second photo and the idea for an "eyes only" quilt was born.


I cropped the photo and printed it black and white. Then I went over the main lines of contrast with a Sharpie.

I transferred the lines on to fabric with the same Sharpie but used a fine pen for the eyes.

All the hatching is done with black thread. I also quilted Bec's hair with a variegated thread and tight spirals.

I think I used five colours on the iris of the eye! Most of that is coloured pencils but I used Derwent Inktense for the shading on the face. As you can see I follow the less-is-more school when it comes to painting. The rose print on the fabric was already doing a lot for me but I found that by adding just a hint of brown to suggest the eye socket (following on from the eyebrow) was enough to stop it looking flat.

I finished off with a satin stitch edge, using the same colours that I quilted the hair with - not because I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered getting a different thread - well, mostly because I'm lazy but I liked it anyway! So there!

Usually I would do the satin stitch edge with a stabiliser on the back but even with tear-away and a close stitch, you sometimes get little bits of paper poking out. I decided to do an experiment. Sharon Schamber stabilises the edge of her quilts with glue and then glues on the binding. I thought that was a great idea so I glued all the edge with 'No more pins' and got all the pokey threads stuck down. I'm pleased with the satin stitch and there are no pokeys!

All in all, a fun project and one I will try again. More finishes to do for the show before I can start anything new though. Hopefully I'll be posting again soon with my next finish!

Bits and bobs

Work has been getting in the way of my creativity. However, some of my work has been creative so that's not so bad. I've been a bit busy with my ESOL ladies.

We made pincushions with button bases and elastic to either go on our fingers or wrists.

Then we made needlecases. I made mine using inklingo. It's a pdf file with the pattern pieces that you print on to the back of the fabric. My printer is a pain in the proverbial so I didn't print them for my 16 ladies. That would have been a mission. It was a good exercise in accurate cutting and making sure that you used a quarter inch seam allowance. Out next project is the Winding Ways pattern.

I used a piece of discharge dyed black fabric on the inside. I think I should have washed the fabric first. It didn't discharge very much.

Last weekend I made a scarf with Cindy. She was complaining that I hadn't updated my blog in a while so here you go Cindy but nothing new for you I'm afraid!

I love it! It's alpaca wool on top of fine black silk chiffon. The purple blobs are merino and the coloured bits are silk roving. Then I also meandered a fancy yarn through the whole thing but since it was synthetic, it hasn't felted in very well. I'm going to sew it down with a fine silk thread in grey. I hoping the stitches won't show.

As you can see in this photo, it's very fine. I'm going to have to buy some purple clothes to go with it!

I've also quilted the background of the clown quilt but I'll put a photo of that up with I've done it all. Now I need to concentrate on finishing some things for our show. Hand in day is next month.

If you are in Auckland, come along to the show, 11th and 12th May at the Papatoetoe town hall.

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.