Avoidance Behaviour

I really should be writing my reports which are due in on Thursday, but somehow I couldn't resist joining my strip sets together. The result was too short for a bed quilt so I made two more sets, one for the top and one for the bottom. You can only see the top half of the top. It is about 2 metres long and only about 1.2m wide, so I am going to add really wide strips to the sides to make it wide enough for a single bed.* The sashing strips are a Christmas fabric I had 3 metres of (What was I thinking? Oh, that's right, long strips use up a heap of fabric, just as well I had 3 metres, eh?) Actually it is a nicer shade of green that in the photo.

*Confession time, I did have strips on the side the same width as the sashings but because it still wasn't wide enough I ripped them off last night while Frances and I watched a couple of episodes of Antiques Roadshow. I'll use them for the binding.

Oh, well, back to the reports . . .

And then I got carried away . . .

. . . making more strip sets. These ones are from pieces I got in some grab bags from Grandmother's Garden a few years ago. They are the selvage off cuts from 5" strips of fabric which they use to make 5" square fabric packs, so the length of each one was 5" (more or less, interestingly some weren't exactly 5") The widths of the strips varied depending on the width of the original fabric. I still find it amazing that quilt fabric is not a standard width and can vary by as much as 2"-3".
Mmmm.... there is enough here for a 'Chinese Coins' strip quilt, and it hasn't made one smidgeon of difference to the size of my scrap pile!

Stress-free Stitching

I have a lot of things I could be sewing but at the moment I'm trying to bring some order to my rather large collection of scraps which are dotted all over the place. So it has been tidying rather than creating, but the problem is when I pull out a container to sort through I find something that says "It just needs this and then it can be used for" to me. Shortish lengths of about 1 1/2" wide fabric scraps just needed to be made into this border (untrimmed as yet!) for a scrap quilt.

It is very relaxing not worrying about what goes with what, very stress-free stitching. I'll add it to my orphan block collection and someday it will find its way into a community quilt.

In New Zealand We Call It Tinny. . .

. . . when things are lucky or work out just right, and so it was for the latest rookie quilt I have made for my beginner lessons. I had just a tad over the right amount of binding to overlap to do the diagonal join. The border fabric is quilte busy so I decided to join all the off cuts to use for the binding. I did a rough measure and this is how much overlap I had. Just right for trimming to the 2 1/2 inches overlap required for 2 1/2 inch double-fold binding.

This is the finished piece. I've called it 'A Touch of France' because of the colours used. It measures about 74 cm by 80 cm.

My old coffee table . . .

. . . is now my new ironing board! Last year I went on a quilt retreat to Karen Bird's at Kimbolton and was very impressed by her very large chest freezer being put to good use as a large ironing surface. Way better than my normal ironing board, an old Suzy brand which is great for clothes but fabric has a tendency to slide off the pointy end. I hardly ever iron clothes. I subscribe to the 'if it needs ironing don't buy it' philosophy of clothing purchases. I'd rather be quilting!

I thought you might like to see how I made my new 'ironing centre". First I pinched a chest of drawers from my spare room. I had these drawers for my clothes when I was a kid, so that makes them 'almost antique'. Funny how they look quite modern even though they are over 40 years old.

The drawers have proved to be a very useful storage space for reels of thread and rolls of fusible webbing, baking paper, lunch paper for tracing, Glad Press 'n' Seal which is now available in New Zealand supermarkets. (when is the freezer paper arriving?)

The old coffee table minus its legs, which were broken from teenage boys standing on the table(!!), sits on the top. I haven't fixed it in place yet so leaning heavily on one end will result in a bit of a surprise.
I covered it first with a layer of thermaldrape lining
Then 2 layers of wool flannel. This is the type that used to be used for babies overnaps. I bought some when 'he of honey bunch fame' was little and never got around to making them. I did use cloth nappies with cloth liners though and I had a few pairs of hand knitted 'bunnies", as the overnaps were called, given to me which I used. So it didn't really matter that I never got around to sewing overnaps using the wool flannel. Much better to use it for padding on the ironing surface :-)
Then a cover of cotton decorator fabric. This is an old Laura Ashley fabric.
The iron cord sits nicely into a holder that came with a second hand ironing board I bought a few years ago so I would have a second iron and board. It holds the cord out of the way and when I unplus I don't have to drop any cords on the fl00r. Saves all that 'using your back like a crane' bending down when plugging and unplugging
Not quite as large as the 'big boards' from USA, but pretty useful all the same.

The Show is Over

Yes, our biennial exhibition has come and gone. It has taken me a week and a half to catch up on my sleep. We had a great time capped off with a dinner to celebrate our 20th birthday. Guest Speaker Barbara Bilyard kept us very well entertained during the evening. We were thrilled that 3 of our 4 founding members, Cathy Owen, Thelma Dawes and Trish Souness were able to attend. Our fourth, Pat Britten, has not been enjoying good health and was unable to make the journey south.

Highlight of the weekend for me was selling two of my quilts. The first piece is a top I purchased a few years ago from Grandmother's Garden. Some of you will recognise the pattern. I finally got around to basting and quilting it and, finally(!), binding it. Someone really liked it.

The second quilt I sold is one I designed for our club's mystery half nighter. Well, the background was the mystery half nighter design. After I had done this version I decided it was a bit ho hum and needed more so I appliqued the flowers and leaves. Then I mucked up the quilting and had to unpick it after I got about three quarters of it quilted and start again. Needless to say I didn't finish it in time for the class, but I did finish another version in different colours without the applique. This is not such a great photo of the quilt that sold but you get the picture?

I also won a Judge's Merit for Steamy Summer Sunrise (which I see by my photo title I originally named Steaming Summer.) Oh how I do forget things.

This piece sat around for ages needing a hanging sleeve and label. I needed a way to make sure the top bits didn't flop over. I ended up hand sewing sewing some really stiff vilene which had been fused onto a piece of the backing fabric, cut to shape, onto the back of the quilt then I added the hanging sleeve.

Pat myself on the back

Since I started teaching beginner classes last year at a local fabric shop I have been busy thinking up quilts to make as class samples and writing the patterns for them. This has challenged me to make more use of my computer, including EQ6 (in which I still don't know how to draw a 6o degree triangle!) Tonight I finally learned (now don't laugh) how to scan a picture into a file and then insert the picture into my pattern document (okay, you can stop laughing now!)

I thought I would draw my own pictures of how to do double fold binding. These are just the illustrations.





Okay, I have to work on not getting the edge of the paper showing, but not bad for my first attempt.

It takes a long time . .

. . . to sew a 3 metre seam! Especially compared to piecing 4 inch blocks. I have been making bags to put the poles for our quilt stands in. The poles are 3 metres long so the bags had to be even longer than that, and I sewed french seams for extra strength, so that is twice times 3 metres for each one. I would get to the halfway point where the handle is and think "I'm only half way!".The bags are are not elegant, being made out of left over curtain fabric and curtain samples, but they will do the job. Here they are lined up at Frances' house, 20 poles in each bag.
And these are some of our new quilt stands that Murray, the husband of one of our members, has made for us. They have a slotted piece to go on the foot of each one so they are easy to pick up and put down. Murray also made us 8 "thingies" to lift the poles in position (anyone got a good name for these?) Frances and I had a trial "hanging" this afternoon. They work great. Thanks Murray!

Colour Challenge

Janice has just reminded me that she hasn't seen my entry for the colour challenge in our upcoming exhibition, so here it is:
We had to use analogous colours on the colour wheel. It is the size of an A3 piece of paper. This is a miniature of a bed sized quilt from (I think) Quiltmaker magazine. Does a challenge have to be totally original? The challenge for me was in having the analogous fabrics to be able to do it. Does that count? I was going to make the plum colours weave under the purple ones, to add my own variation to it, and had made extra blocks to do that, but when I put it together I forgot I had them and now it is too late. Never mind.

Getting Ready

Phew, a second post this month. Things must be improving!! Just so you know I have been a busy beaver, this is a pile of quilts which are going into our club exhibition next month:
Sadly, they are not mine, I just helped get them ready (but it looks impressive doesn't it?) Our exhibition is only 5 weeks away, yikes! You can check out our guest speaker Barbara Bilyard . I am looking forward to seeing some of her quilts close up. She has a reputation of being a "hard case" so it should be an entertaining evening. I get the honour of opening the formal part of the evening, so if anyone has a good speech they want to exchange for fabric you know what to do :-)

What happened to February?

It even had an extra day in it and I still didn't get any posts done! This is really bad. It's not like I don't have anything to blog about. I have plenty. I just seem to run out of day too soon. Soon, no one will visit me 'cos I've got nothing to say!!!

This is what I have been working on and got the letters fused last night.

This is the background:

These are the words:
And this is the fused top:
It is our Club's 20th Birthday this year and the committee thought we could do with an up date of the old banner. We are having our biennial exhibition next month and a celebratory dinner on the Saturday night. Barbara Bilyard from Auckland is our guest speaker. It is going to be a good night.

I must confess that this is not my design, my good quilt buddy Janice did that. She enlarged the letters to the right size for me to trace. We started some of the blocks at a club meeting and I finished it at home. It has been fun to work on it. Janice has very kindly agreed to quilt it, thanks, Janice!

This one is for Janice!

Here is the new shed, in all its glory :-)
The washing line to the left and back of the shed is now gone and a new one has been put up to the left and front of the shed. an unexpected bonus in getting a new clothesline was that it has 6 rounds of lines instead of the 4 my old one had. Yipee! More washing! Ha!

Never mind the quilt, where's the shed?

Janice wants to see a picture of the shed. Well the problem with that is that it is not finished yet. We had a problem with the skylight panel. It was damaged and we got a replacement. All good and fine, but the replacement is too long. One could be excused for thinking that a kit set shed means just that! Open the box and put everything together, no cutting to size involved. Well, apparently not. The shed person I spoke to on the phone was surprised to find that our kit set shed came with a skylight panel cut to the correct length. We are supposed to cut it ourselves! That's what saws are for right? Yes, true, except we don't have a suitable fine tooth saw and we don't want to crack the panel when cutting it to the correct length. Hey, it costs $75 for a replacement panel! Then the house guest went up-river for 3 days of R&R, so no progress has been made for the last few days. I do have a shed, it just doesn't have a whole roof yet.

And on the subject of my house guest, some of you want a clone of him sent to you. Just as soon as I figure out how to do that I will be selling to the highest bidder :-)

On the quilting side this is what happens when I don't watch where my hands are. Just as well I only caught the edge:

Something Finished - finally!

Oh no, another whole month goes by and I have been a bad blog writer! Only excuse is I have been really, really busy (yeah, right!)

I got sidetracked by my new home stay offering to build a garden shed for me. He is a young new teacher from England who will be teaching in the same department as me at school. He was looking for somewhere to stay until he gets himself sorted with more permanent accommodation. The first day he offered to paint my house. The second day he offered to do any handy-man jobs I needed doing. Then he asked if there was anywhere to store a push bike. I don't have a garden shed and my garage is tiny. So we agreed in return for some free rent I would purchase a kit set shed and he would put it up. He built a proper floor for it and put in a step (It is on sloping ground - no where else for it to go). The washing line needed moving so the shed can fit, so he is putting up a new rotary clothes line for me. He clears the table after dinner and unpacks the dishwasher without asking and has one quarter of the washing a 15 year old Japanese boy produces. Okay, it is costing me money rather than contributing to my cash flow but HE CAN STAY HERE! (Do you think he can hear me shouting?)

We also had a stall at the Bushy Park Festival last Sunday and I was madly getting things ready for that. We had fantastic weather:

Here is the Bright Irish Chain finished. Not a great photo but I am pleased with the quilt:

Now, no prizes for guessing how long it will be before I next make a post. (but I will send a fabric postcard to some lucky commentor on this post)

How Not To Join Binding!

I've had a break today from piecing the blocks on the new club banner and I decided to finish quilting the bright Irish Chain I started earlier in the year. A great day sewing, made heaps of progress and only fell at the last hurdle when joining the beginning and the end of the binding together:

Oops, time for a break, time for a Kit-Kat!