5 more quilts taken to Cancer Support Services 10/4/2014

Catching up still

 

Kaffe and Friends Stars

Reverse

Oh dear! Just when I think I have Blogger mastered it goes and changes!

This is a quilt I made just after we got home from visiting Granchildren in Palo Alto in April.
I always experience a huge let down when I arrive home, this one took me 2 months to get over. It was a combination of saying goodbye, jetlag, a favourite cousin with terminal cancer, a dear friend in UK for 4 months and final realisation that I didn't have The Quilt Patch as a daily place to visit after nearly 26 years. And it was winter!

I was down to go to Poatina for the Tasmanian Quilting Guild's annual retreat, so this quilt was an ideal "vegemite" quilt to make, something easy that could be done while talking for 3 days.
Certainly fitted the bill I can tell you, bright colours in lovely Kaffe and friends fabrics, friends and sewing soon helped me clambour out of the doldrums I found myself in.

I'm not sure where this quilt will end up, maybe opn a bed at the house at Bridport, with 6 bedrooms, I have rooms to fill! Mind you, I am working on SCQuilter Sig. Square quilts for some of the rooms. Friends covering friends, lovely!

My blues have passed, bookings have been made for a December visit to USA to check on the grandchildren and their parents, lots of quilts have been finished and new ones started (I certainly have plenty of fabric to keep me going forever!) and I am doing as much as I can for my cousin which makes me feel a lot better.

NB This quilt was given to Heather Woods in early March 2013

I'm back, until I forget again!

It's been so long and if I don't do something soon I may as well close the blog, except I like going back to see what I've been up to.
I have a few quilts that are leaving/left the house so I thought I'd record them for posterity.

This one was a raffle quilt for Launceston Patchworkers and Quilters "Girls Night In".
Members embroidered the panels, I made stars etc and assembled the quilt and Jane at Purrfectly Quilted quilted it for us.
Erica Davis was the delighted winner and we raised nearly $1500 on the night for Cancer Research.

The next one is a top I made many years ago when the first strip pieced designs came out using 60 degree rulers. It has to be about 18 years ago or earlier!
It languished in the UFO cupboard and finally completed. It will be given to my friend Lindy Lockhart who works at the LGH in Recovery. She wants a new thermometer and it costs about $500. I hope she raises enough money to buy it.

The next one I called "Blooms In The Valley" and donated to "Life Education Tasmania" to be auctioned at a Garden Party at Lalla this Saturday, 29 October 2012.
Graeme is on the board and it's a very good cause.
" Life Education is the largest non-government provider of health education to children and young people, Australia wide. Our Mission is to empower children and young people to make informed choices for a safe and healthy life. We work with and through schools."

That's enough for today. There is one more quilt to be given on Sunday to a nephew for his 18th birthday.

"Fresh Air" to a new home.

I gave "Fresh Air" to Catriona. She's Rob's girlfriend, a lovely girl and I hope she cherishes the quilt.

I also gave an "ABC I Spy" quilt to friends for their newly adopted granddaughter from China. It was fun working out fabrics that were gong to be relevant to her.

P for Panda, T for Tasmanian Devil, N for Nurse, C for Crayfish and Q for Quilter.

Launceston Patchworkers & Quilters Exhibition September 2009

http://www.flickr.com/photos/68269939@N00/collections/72157622215953891/

They're here - all 257 of them.

Make yourself a cuppa or glass-of something and sit for a while.

Click on the above, then there are 3 sets "inside" this Collection. Click on each one.

There's one for Set-up day, one for the whole exhibition plus extras, and then there's a set for last day.

Here is another one of my quilts.

Trail of the Tin Dragon

Launceston Patchworker & Quilters Exhibition is this weekend!

It's a lot of hard work setting up an exhibition which then ends all too quickly.

LPQ's (Launceston Patchworkers & Quilters) are having their first one for 5 years.

Over 160 quilts will be hung - somewhere!

It will be a wonderful exhibition, we will all have a great time and then in 4 days time it will all be over.

I can't show quilts yet - mainly because they are all bagged up on the lounge room floor ready to be popped into the car, but I can show 2 tops made for The Quilt Patch as samples.

C U in Bali is my "C-Section" design made up in batiks. This was the design we made 18 quilts for the Victorian Fire Relief. I didn't have one for myself, nor a commercial pattern. Now I do!

One Bali Pops roll plus 16 more strips. (Kits available for $80 - pattern included)

I have also just made a top from a "Layer Cake" - I lay awake all night wondering how to set 40 blocks - 5 wide by 8 long is such an awkward shape - too rectangular! By about 3PM I'd decided to make it 6x6 and use the 4 left over as a side for a bag etc etc!!!!

Undid the Layer Cake and what do I read??? 42 squares - 2 bonus ones, which makes for a better sized quilt of 6 blocks wide by 7 long! When did they start adding the 2 "bonus" squares?? Never mind, the quilt quickly got made (top only) and I'm please with it.

I used a stack and shuffle method, 6 fabrics at a time, paying attention to values between the fabrics, cut it up as one square and moved the top central piece onto the bottom - understand?

Great!!!!

I called it "Happy Cakes" Happy because I worked it out and Cakes in honour of the bundle! Weird? yup!!!!

IMG_4469

IMG_4469, originally uploaded by FranW.

More of my quilts

The Chook quilt is called "Fowl Play" and was made a few (well quite a few) years ago. I'd started making the chooks and sunflowers using enlaraged Chook Shed and Meme patterns in the yummy black, white, gold and reds. Then I went to Perth, WA for a SCQuilter's retreat and did a class with Jan Mullen, so I used the same fabrics. Pure laziness on my part as they were at the top of the heap and easy to grab.

This is a pizza, another challenge entry from a few years ago. I think the topic was "food". This is called "Super-supreme and Sundae" as the top is meant to be a pizza and the backing fabric has icecream sundaes on it.
I played with a Kaliedoscope ruler as I wanted it to have a "round feel" about it. Lots of tomato, onion, capsicum, mushroom, olive and pizza fabrics were used and then some precious chunky buttons from the button box.

Further to yesterday's post with the bright batiks - I have completed 30 more, now have 60. I either don't use 1 (7x7), make 4 more (8x8) or 40 more (10x10) - big decision! I think I have enough fabric to make 30 more, so maybe it will be 81 blocks (9x9).

PPS - I've just found I have 30 more squares cut - it's meant to be at least 90!

I really did want to get onto the Tasmanian Devil quilt, sigh!!!

Because I was a quilter once.....

before I became a gardener, I thought I'd better post a few pics of what I am doing.

Last year sometime new Tonga Batik fabrics arrived and I "needed to use it" so I made a small sample.

The book "Stack a New Deck" by Karla Alexander (That Patchwork Place) had recently arrived and "Cottage Quarters" appealed. I'm not using the sashing.

The sample languished on display at the shop until I needed a project for retreat a few months ago. More blocks were cut out then and nothing sewn until today. I'm not sure how big it will end up, but I don't "do" small quilts now unless they're for a child, so I will plod on until the fabric runs out or it gets to a size I like.

The quilt top on the bed is another almost finshed one. Many of the blocks came from a 9 Patch swap on SCQuilters, my Internet group.

Set with plain pansy fabric blocks it has ended up quite large - 2.1m square, backing done and waiting for quilting.

This one is an "Ami & Michelle" Oz-Dye Arts pattern from years and years ago. I hung it above the spare bed where Nic and Nancy sleep so Miss Maggie and Banjo can enjoy it while they visit in 2 weeks!
The crooked certificate is one Nic won in grade 6 for Mathematics. He took the PhD certificate to his home, wonder why he didn't take this to hang up?

Jelly Roll Quilt

There are 40 strips in a Jelly Roll ,from each 2½” strip cut 2– 4½” pieces and 2-8½” pieces

You will have about a 16” strip left.
Pair this up with another one of contrasting colour and sew together, then cut this into 4 - 2½” pieces. Sew 2 together, turning one up the other way to make 2 Four patches

You will make 40 of these ( 1 for each strip in Jelly roll)
Select another fabric (colour) from the 2– 4½” pieces and 2-8½” pieces and sew the 2– 4½” pieces to each side,
Press then sew the 2-8½” pieces to the top and bottom - press.
This should measure 8½” square.

The amount of plain 8½” squares added to the quilt is dependant on how big you want to make the quilt.

Mine is 8x8 = 64 squares (quilt is about 80” square)
40 made from the pieced Jelly Roll and 24 un-pieced squares.
You’ll need an extra 6 strips of 25cm in "blousy" florals,

cut into 8½” strips then re-cut into 25 - 8½” squares

Borders are
#1 - 2½” - buy 60 cm.
#2 - 6½” -buy 2.10 metres which will do for borders and binding. The borders are cut down the length of the fabric.
Binding is 2¾”

This is all you need!

Now I know why I love giving quilts to my loved ones!

Here is the Divine Miss M. closely checking out the quilting on "The Corn Is As High As An Elephant's Eye". This one is for when she gets into a cot! (3 months old)




Banjo is getting to the age when he is recognising "identities" like Bob the Builder who is on a small patch in his quilt. Gathering up lots and lots of I Spy fabrics for this quilt is all worthwhile!
Here he is ready for his night time story with Nana's radio, a wonderful toy, especially at 6.30 in the morning. (2 years old)

Olympic Challenge ...continued

A lovely sunny day here in the Great Southlands and perfect for taking snaps of quilts.

Here are the rest of the 5 quilts I have finished during the Olympics. The pink thing is a sample from a few years back, the Magic 9 Patch is because I had to make one as well as everyone else and the "house" quilt has been in my glory box waiting for a little girl to come along. Well finally she did so is will be delivered to Miss Maggie in a few days time for when she gets into her cot.

I have called it "The Corn is as High as an Elephant's Eye" because the vines that I quilted ended up looking like corn stalks instead of ivy, so I also quilted corn cobs into it!

I'm quite proud of the quilting on this- I don't do a lot of machine (or hand) quilting myself as my hands are succumbing to over 25 years of handwork - sigghhhh!!!!!

This is the size of a cot quilt, easily fitted under the machine so I decided to have a go myself.

Olympic Marathon

I've been sewing up my own Olympic Marathon while watching the real ones.

Five quilts bound and as you can see from the two shown, they aren't small!

This is my own design, one using fabrics from Moda's Fresh Air range and the other using a small part of my black and white stash, with a few small pieces of lovely brights.

Quilts

One finished quilt and 3 tops. It's like one step forward and 3 back isn't it?

The black and white one I have shown before, I still need to write the pattern for it for a few people. I'm not good at naming quilts, this is the second one in this design so it's currently called Fresh Air in Black and Whites (at least I know which one is which)

The Geishas were a sample for our (Launceston Patchworkers & Quilters) LPQ's retreat held a few weekends ago.

The Lanterns were also an optional retreat project - nothing is ever compulsory, but many members try them :-)

The pastel one is one I began working on and finished this week at home - one Jelly Roll and 2 more strips. Certainly not my choice of colours but sometimes one needs to make samples!

I have also had another 3 quilts returned to me from the machine quilter, so I will be right for hand sewing during some of the Olympics viewing. The binding is done on one already and I'm hand sewing it down, I have cut the binding for the next and I need to find binding for the last.

I have a plastic container that I try to put aside fabrics for bindings, in theory it should work but many a time I have not done it. Sadly it's full and that means there are still lots of quilts lurking around in a "summer quilt" state.

No Black Amish

The Tasmanian Quilting Guild's exhibition was held this weekend in conjunction with the craft and Quilt Fair. I entered 3 Amish cot quilts. The tops were made many, many years ago and languished in the cupboard. I realised that I didn't have an entry for our show and if not, it would be the first time that I hadn't entered since we started over 20 years ago!

They were machine quilted by Jane Monk of Purrfectly Quilted and she did a wonderful job of customising them with traditional Amish designs.

Fran W 2, originally uploaded by FranW.

Amish Baskets

Fran W, originally uploaded by FranW.

Amish 9 Patch

Fran W 3, originally uploaded by FranW.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

New fabric arrived recently, isn't it gorgeous?
I know I could have made a smaller quilt with just the panel - leaf, caterpillar and butterfly, but the rest of the range was beckoning! :-)
The darker white triangles are really the same as the rest of the white, but they were done in the "flip'n fold" method, so there are 3 layers which makes it darker. Will be OK once the quilt is backed and quilted.
The top will be hung in the shop for a while before this gets done.

Here's a free pattern for this quilt. I made mine smaller using 6" cuts.

Fresh Air in black and white

IMG_2383, originally uploaded by FranW.

I get nervous when I get to the finishing stage, is it a siege mentality or the concentration span of a gnat? Anyhow, I need to have several quilts on the go at one time and as you might have noticed they're all quite simple. It means I can use fabric faster! This one is starting, the one below is off to the quilter on Monday and I have two more sides to finish the handsewing on the binding of "Butterflies for Billie"

Vego quilt

Vego quilt, originally uploaded by FranW.

This quilt is for my son's ex-partner. Having Chani around was a joy and I was very sad when it was all over. She is the one responsible for the huge change in him, from a meat eating, all Australian bloke to a S.N.A.G with no animal products! He asked me to make her a quilt so he could keep "Peas Will Kill You". This is not what he had in mind I know as he wanted a Mandala - I DO NOT DO CURVES anymore! I know she will love this anyhow.