Monday, July 26, 2010

A Memory of NZ

During the holidays one of my home stay boys returned home to Germany. He had been with me for six months and had been a real joy to have. Very outgoing and good company. He wanted something quilted to take home so, while he was on a 3 day holiday in Auckland before he left NZ, I made him this:


Needless to say he was visiting the sky tower on the day I made the quilt. It is from Gail Lawther's book "Glimpses of New Zealand". I bought this book when it first came out but this is the first time I have made anything from it. I started at 4 am (sleepless night in the middle of the holidays!!) drawing the pattern to full size. Then I went back to bed for a bit more shut-eye. I got up at about 8.30am, selected fabrics and started sewing it. It was finished and the binding was on, ready for hand stitching down, by 10pm that night! That is a pretty quick quilt - but I admit I had 3 days to myself so there was boiled eggs and toast soldiers for dinner that night.Altogether a perfect quilting day.

I highly recommend Gail's book. Apart from the subject matter, of which I am undoubtedly biased, the book is a sampler of many different quilting techniques in a manageable format. It would make a great series of tutorials for a group of newish quilters looking to learn non traditional techniques.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Press and Seal

Hi
Long time, no blog, no real excuse except life has been really busy.

I had a lovely 'day in the country' sewing day with Janice yesterday. I took along "Tabasco Sauce", the top I made oh, was it a couple of years ago?, from the left-over blocks I made for the Cotton On Quilters Banner Janice and I made for our Club. I finally got around to basting it up and was trying to decide how to quilt it. Janice recommended using Press and Seal to cover the quilt. I could then draw all over the Press and Seal to get an idea of how I want to section the quilting:




This is a way cool idea to audition quilting designs. Janice says NOT to sew through the Press and Seal. She says to just cut it apart to reveal the section to be worked on. Here are some close-ups:

 
Janice also gave me a quick lesson on zentangle quilting and here is her quick plan for quilting "Tabasco Sauce":