Sewing along(s) —

As a new weekend approaches, I am still trying to find the time to write about last weekend's sewing! I've had a week of meetings, appointments, a work day and heavy rain (flooding) so it's sped by with little sewing and blogging time.  I started last weekend with a new blade and a new needle - armed with those I felt ready to take on the world!! I spent most of Saturday thinking, planning and cutting ... I seemed to be partway through several projects, all of which had stalled because I was ready for the next step.

I had got Irene (see Terry's Treasures to learn about this sewalong) to this stage and was ready to do the outer border...calculations done.... enough fabric left to do it Terry's way —

— until I did a miscut (probably was day dreaming about the next project I want to start) - oh no, would I have to rethink the outer border, or maybe do some piecing and hope the joins were not noticeable?  I managed to hold my breathe until I got to work on Wednesday... I had taken the last of the fabric on the bolt, but was hoping there would be some precuts still left in the shop and ...lucky me... there were two bullets in the bullet jar!

And the two bullets were just what I needed!

~~<<>>~~

I made a few decisions and did a little cutting on the project I haven't officially started yet - if it's not on my blog, it's not started, right? I am loving this project but needed time/space to decide on my next fabrics. I feel confident with where I am going with this one now.

Hmmm, maybe it is officially on my blog now and maybe I'll have to 'fess up to
another started project pretty soon?

~~<<>>~~

With Irene off the design wall, I pulled out Hop To It....actually it was already out but Mum is coming next week so I needed to take it off the bed in the spare room. More decisions needed with this one, I hadn't been able to decide on the cornerstone fabric, but think that using the background fabric will be fine... my sashings are quite dark so I think it needs the calmness of the creams. Deciding on an outer border will be another path I need to go down!

(Hop To It is an Edyta Sitar quilt, some bloggy friends and I used it as a sewalong 'in the past' (I am scared to think how many years ago - two maybe?!))

~~<<>>~~

I've been wondering who else is doing Pam Buda's Market Day sewalong? I love Pam's mysteries so of course couldn't help myself :-) I also caught up on my cutting for this. (By the way, I met Pam at Pittsburg and she really is a sweetie). This is really intriguing me ... we are making a few small, simple blocks each week so is a good one to cut out and use as a leader/ender. I wonder what will happen?!

Pam is giving instructions for two sizes - I couldn't resist trying them both.
3 1/2" and 2" unfinished sized blocks.

I've started playing with possible layouts but the 'odd' number of some of the blocks are throwing me. Guess I'll have to be patient!

 (Seems the colour went a bit off in this last photo, it's the same carpet as the previous one!).

 I have a few little secret projects I need to complete this weekend, hopefully I can squeeze in a little time cutting and sewing :-)

Happy creating, and thanks for reading to the end :-)

Mainly applique

Many of you will know that I love all aspects of quilting and my sewing lately has seen me thinking about appliqué. Last year my on-line quilting group worked on Hop To It from the book of the same name by Edyta Sitar. I loved making this quilt...and doing all of the appliqué by hand. I used my favourite method of needleturn appliqué; the back basting method, as outlined beautifully here in Sentimental Stitches, and I have waxed lyrical about it in the past.
Here is what my Hop To It quilt looks like at the moment.

It's laid out on the spare bed waiting for decisions about corner stones and sashings.

This year my on-line group is working on 'Pieces of Time' by Lori Smith. We are making one pieced and one appliqué block each month. I thought long and hard about what method of appliqué to do this time around... I love the look of hand appliqué but it does take me an age to complete each block. So I have decided to do this project by the invisible machine applique method.
While I've dabbled in this method in the past, I've been a bit scared of using it, worried that I couldn't achieve a truly invisible look.
Well I've bit the bullet!!!
I am doing the method using freezer paper - Joanne (Threadhead) gives a tutorial on her blog, and Kim Diehl does an excellent chapter on it in her pattern books.
I've decided to do a quick run through of it here to inspire others to give it a try as well.

Trace and cut out template shapes from freezer paper.
Use a little glue to stick the matt side to the wrong side of your fabric.
Clip inner curves and carefully press raw edges over edge of template.
This takes a little while but it is worth being patient to get the shapes nice and even.
The fabric will adhere to the shiny side of the freezer paper.

Prepared pieces.
Layer these on your fabric background, as you would normally do for other appliqué methods.

Set the machine to a very narrow, small zig-zag.
'1' and '1' settings are recommended elsewhere but the settings on my machine were '0.3' and '0.4'.
(EDIT - The next time I did this I used 0.6 and 0.7, which was easier/quicker to sew and
because my thread matched so well was just as invisible).
I used smoke coloured Aurifil monofilament in the top and fine Mettler Seraline in the bobbin.

As you complete each layer snip through the fabric at the back and remove the freezer paper.
You must remove the paper from one layer before you sew the next piece on top!

Back of completed block - cool huh?

Front of completed block.

Here are my first two pieced blocks.
Monkey Wench (left)
Northumberland Star (right).

Now I cant rest on my laurels for too long as I still have the February appliqué block to do. It's a nasty one, but apparently not impossible as two of the others in the group have already done it! (Joan and Joanne).
I'm going to rest before giving it a try!!

Now I have a faux pas to correct from my last post. Gulp.
I thanked the very kind Cat for the lovely doily she made me...silly me... it was a wash cloth. Now in reality it is too pretty to use as a wash cloth but once Albert (the bear) has finished with it, I will try it out in the bathroom. I'm actually quite excited about this as I haven't had a handmade wash cloth before. Thank you again, Cat.




Thank you for visiting, I hope you all have a happy, stitching week

The last one bites the dust!

I'm celebrating!!

I have finished my last appliqué block for my Hop To It quilt!!!

I seem to have been working on these forever but the home straight is in sight!

Block 1 - Rose Hip Heart

The light blue on the left is a new fabric - why I wanted to introduce a new fabric
 on the last block I don't know, but the colour worked so well!

My 12 blocks of Edyta Sitar's Hop To It quilt - a quick layout to see how they look.
You can see a bit of the sashing on the bottom right hand block.

Now it's just the layout to sort, piles of sashing strips to assemble, border fabric to arrange and the quilting to do---whew, nearly finished!
Have a happy week everyone!

Friday Night Sew In and a Surprise Quilt

Again this month I took advantage of the excuse to sew in the evening and joined in with  Heidi and Bobbi for the Friday Night Sew In... I do sew most evenings but it is usually some hand stitching in front of the telly, interrupted by milo making, pets and dishes. Last night I decided to have a lock down in my cave and have a good session of machine sewing. I told my family I was sewing from 8-10 pm; as I also said it was a bloggy thing, they left me well alone (well nearly!).
I was keen to make some progress on my Hop To It quilt. I still have one more appliqué (by hand)  block to do but there's also a lot of machine sewing to do with the sashings, borders, etc.

8 pm. An appliqué block and a pile of cut quarter square triangles waiting for action.

9pm. Progress being made.

Just after 10pm-calling it a night- lots of sewing, pressing and trimming done.
I joined one length of sashing to a block to give me an idea of
how they will look.

 It has taken me a while to decide which fabrics to use  for these sashings. The pattern suggested rusts, oranges, reds and purple but I wasn't happy with how the ones I had collected looked.I then decided to make it really scrappy with all the leftovers from the appliqués. That didn't work for me either; so I took out all the light fabrics and used just the brown shades, green and reds and I'm pleased with their look. Now that I've made a decent start on it I'm hoping it wont take me long to get them all together.

A group of friends had a fun start to the day this morning with a surprise morning tea for a friend of ours who has a special '0' birthday this coming week.
We each made her a block which we put together in a quilt for her. Many, but not all, of the blocks came out  of the Some Kind Of Wonderful book by Anni Downs.

Happy Birthday Aurely!!

Don't you just love the setting the girls came up with? We used the Putting on the Ritz range by Bunny Hill and the addition of the green really makes it sing.

Leeanne (Quiltmekiwi) did the fabulous quilting. My block is
 the Angel on the moon -top left.

 It was a fun surprise and she loved it!  For lots more photos visit Leeanne's blog.

And another nice surprise - for me this time - I came home to see that my YD had assembled my new bookcase for me - the next stage of my cave makeover! It's actually has deeper shelves than a normal bookcase so it is perfect for my magazines. 25 years of magazines got to go somewhere!!

The bookcase fits in the wardrobe in my cave so I can close
 the doors and not be embarrassed by all the mags I have!!

As you can see, my weekend has got off to a great start!! I am hoping for more creativity this weekend so watch this space!!
Hope you all have a happy weekend too, thank you for stopping by,

And so she sewed....

It was the weekend; my sewing room was nearly back to normal and calving was settled down into a routine. (The mad rush is over, we're into a time-consuming routine now) so what was happening at Raewyn's house...?

.....The washing machine was whirring away.....

And Raewyn completed the next two Temecula Quilt Co blocks.

.....The dishwasher was humming away.....

And Raewyn made good progress on her Mini Friendship Sampler run
by Joanne (Threadhead)  in May. I hadn't done the applique which is
done by Invisible Machine Applique. I started the quilting too but
need more quilting threads.

 .....The MOML was vacumming (grin)....

And Raewyn completed her next Hop To It block (an Edyta Sitar pattern).

I am doing these by hand needleturn applique so they are taking me a while!

 ....The crockpot bubbled away....

And Raewyn completed month 5 of the SewCalGal fmq challenge.
The tutorial by Leah Day was for Douple Stipling - this is the version
using straight lines called Railway Tracks.

.....And Raewyn was as happy as a pig in mud - a very satisfying weekend :-).

Hope you all had as fruitful a weekend,

Quilt Show, blocks and rain

I wonder how many other people took advantage of the free 'Quilt Show' episodes this weekend?  I used up our month's internet allocation but had a lovely weekend pottering in my cave; headphones on, iron going, machine going, listening to and watching wise and entertaining quilters share their quilts and techniques.  Pure Indulgence! (Lucky for me a new month's internet bytes starts on the 20th so I won't have to go without at all).

I have managed to get this round of my Stay At Home Round-Robin quilt done. (This is being hosted by the lovely Sunny over at Quilting Dreams). This round was to be pinwheels or hour glass blocks. I decided the movement of the pinwheels would suit the butterflies. Next round is to be applique which will be a calm round after the previous busyness.

This is the first time I have done this little bit of seam unpicking to make the centre of the pinwheels sit nice and flat. I was a bit unsure about doing it as it seems strange to unpick part of that quarter-inch seam. (And as you can see, I was a bit afraid to go ALL the way).

ONE of the quilt shows I watched in the weekend talked about clipping the seams so that the part that needs to lay one way can do that, and the other the opposite, but it still is cutting into that seam.... the jury is out - any hints or thoughts??

I've also completed my 6th Hop To It block (from the book by Edyta Sitar). Yaay - half way there!!

And now that I have 6 completed I can lay them out for a photo shoot, like Joanne and Wendy have done recently.

I'm loving them!!!

I've also been having a bit of a play with invisible machine sewn needleturn. I do love my hand needleturn but I am always wanting to try new ideas and have an excuse to start more projects!

I found it time consuming to prepare the templates using freezer paper (particularly as my hand applique is done the back basting method which involves no templates) but then found it VERY quick to sew!!

I used a Superior Threads monofilament on top, Bobbinfil on the bottom, a fine needle and a narrow zigzag. Seems to work (the polyester coped with ironing which was another query I had) so think I'll be having a bit more of a play with this.

One reason I was able to hibernate was the rain bucketing down outside... we've just had 2 months' worth of rain in a day. Once we'd made sure the animals were all on high ground, fed and warm, there wasn't much to do but stay inside.

This was the farm yesterday -

-here is it this morning -

 We are lucky that we drain fairly quickly but it will still be a few days before we will be able to get over the bridge to the rest of the farm. As you can tell, our house and main buildings are all up at a higher level than the flood plain. 

Other parts of Northland faired a lot worse than us, and I understand the rough weather is now moving down the country. I'm hoping that anyone else suffering from weather adversaties gets through it safely and drama-free.

On another note, Anne from Rotorua, who emailed me recently about the Hop To It blocks, please can you email me again. My main computer has crashed and I have lost your email so cannot reply to you.

Thank goodness I had done a recent back-up but I do know there are things that I will never see again!

Have a good week everyone,

Thanks for visiting,

  

Rabbit Report

I finally have some more Hop To It blocks to share. I'm in a Stitchalong where we do one block a month.... Wendy and I are handsewing ours (for hours on end) so aren't quite keeping up with Joan and Joanne who are doing theirs by machine applique.
Here are my most recent ones -

Block Two - Fleur Delight



Block Four - Spring Reel



Didn't like doing the sharp corners on this block and wasn't so happy with
the  tone-on-tone blue I used.

These blues worked so much better.

Keeping with the blue theme, and the Rabbit theme, here are the first two blocks from The Adventures of Harrington and Hannah. This is a free BOM being offered by Michelle over at Raspberry Rabbits. I decided to do it as I really wanted an excuse to play with some felt, and it seemed fairly straight forward with not too much time-consuming piecing. Consequently I'm hoping I can keep up with this one!

Block One

A good excuse to use this yummy Blueberry Crumb fabric too!

Block Two

The felt pieces are fused on with Fusible Web, then running stitched on - interesting.  I couldn't always get the pieces to stay stuck on - it takes prolonged heat to get through the wool to the glue on the web.

I'm enjoying both these projects...roll on the next blocks :-)

Happy stitching every-one, hope you have a great week!