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!