Techno-Klutz

I know I am not an unintelligent woman, so why is it when I decide to do a class involving a computer everything goes wrong? (or at least it feels that way).

I have a desktop computer and the requirements for this Print Magic class by Anna Williams included a laptop. My excellent friend Janice agreed that I could borrow hers. The laptop duly arrives at my house and, being the 'Brownies Be Prepared" person I am, I decided to check out how to turn it on. Simple? Not when I am around. It crashed and suffered symptoms that He of Honey Bunch Fame called "blue screen death". Pace around the room. Worry. Gulp - Gasp - Panic! What am I going to say to Janice? Frantic text messages, emails and phone call result in the response, "Don't worry, you haven't killed it, it has got a fault." Phew! However I won't be able to use it this weekend. Okay, stop the panic.

Next day ring The Cloth Shop. They are busy and the phone goes to voice mail. Leave a message. Ring the tutor to say I won't have a laptop as promised. It's alright, I can use her husband's. Calm prevails.

First day of the class today and I insert the CD of photo images I have taken of the Wintergardens (there being not even a pale imitation of any kind of flowers at my house - I gave up even pretending to garden years ago.) The said CD was 'burned' under the careful tutorage of He of (you know the rest). NOTHING THERE! That will teach me to check the CD after burning, won't it. The very well organised tutor has images she has taken on CD if we want to use hers. Thank you Anna, these little things are why you are a great tutor.

I'm chugging along nicely with the borrowed image and I decide to take some photos of the class in progress (so I have something to blog about.) I take 3 photos and the batteries run out. Guess where the spares are? So no photo of what I have done so far. Maybe tomorrow?

Here are some of the ladies in the class. On the right Katherine, owner of The Cloth Shop, and one of the students are peering intently at the printer to make sure it doesn't throw a hissy fit:

The yummy lunch made up for all the frustrations:

I wish I could say this is my work, but I can't. These are the work of our fabulously patient tutor, Anna.

All my Christmases at once?

I have been suffering a severe drought of quilt magazines lately. I get most of them through my local magazine shop and the distributor can be pretty erratic with deliveries. I think they store them up in the warehouse for weeks before releasing them to the bookshops. I knew it was going to be an expensive day when I walked into Magzone and Pip asked if I had brought the bank with me! Six quilting magazines - plus the Xbox mag for He of Honey Bunch fame - ouch!

I am going to a 2 day course at the Cloth Shop in the weekend so I will have to read them all tonight. The worst thing is that I know it will be ages before anymore arrive (sob, sob.)

This looks better

I found some spotty blue fabric (in my stash!) to use as the border. Thanks for the suggestions folks. This looks much better:
Now I just need to sew another narrow red border and a wider yellow border and it will be ready to baste. So why aren't I doing this now instead of blogging??

I had a big quilty day today. I think I told you my friend Janice has bought a quilting frame ( A NZ produced one called a Swiftquilter) and a Juki machine to go with it. The frame arrived yesterday but the machine went by a different route and is not due until tomorrow. Today we went to visit Jill, a Kiwiquilter in Waikanae (about 2 hours drive from here), who has one of these frames and she very generously gave us a thorough demonstration of how it works and what to do. Boy is there a lot to learn!

I'm an easily distracted girl

Earlier this week instead of finishing my string blocks I decided to sew this:
It started out life as a demonstration to a non quilter of how to strip-piece, sew a quarter inch seam and what a 9 patch is and it was this size:
18" by 30", not much use for anything. I needed something simple to take to sew at the Kiwiquilters get together last Saturday so I made some more blocks there. It now measures 44" by 68" with the red first border. You can see I am contemplating the other borders. Maybe I shouldn't use the blue background as a border. Kind of washes it out. What do you think?? It needs the wider border to make it big enough to go on a single bed (that's a twin for anyone from America.) I can't say I love it but I don't hate it either and I will use it to practice my machine quilting. That's if I can get it finished. Nothing done today - I've been feeling like I'm incubating the 'flu and I spent the day reading and falling to sleep, several times. Just as well it's the - soon to come to a screeching halt - holidays.

Actually, I did do 2 loads of washing (laundry) washed and folded, went to the supermarket, picked up He of Honeybunch Fame from his holiday job, cooked a yummy dinner of chicken casserole, potatoes, corn, silverbeet and cabbage and rice pudding. (I can hear some of you going Yuck!) My Japanese student said it was very yummy but when offered some more asked if he could have icecream 'cos he likes that more! So in between the reading and sleeping I did some normal life stuff, I'm going to stop calling it 'doing nothing'.

Kiwiquilters Get Together

I had a great day today getting to know some lovely ladies from my yahoo group Kiwiquilters. We were a small, but select, group and we met in Palmerston North for the day. Here we are (minus me who is behind the camera) during Show & Tell. Going left around the circle (starting at the gap): Jill, Marion, Marina, Karen, Liz, Betty, Elizabeth (who is standing). Now that was pretty good remembering, wasn't it?

This is Marina showing her lovely queen size top. The pattern comes from an earlier issue of Australian Patchwork and Quilting. She has made a fantastic job of this quilt. I loved it and I am not an autumn person:
Betty is showing her lovely lilac and lemon quilt. I didn't get a close-up of the blocks but it has great stitcheries sprinkled throughout. Betty had another quilt to show which featured as a pattern in issue 58 of New Zealand Quilter, I didn't get a picture of this one but it is also a very pretty quilt:
And a close-up of the quilting. This was done by (I think) Colleen Burr of Stratford. Fantastic design on the border:
I had a good talk with Jill about the Swiftquilter frame which is available in New Zealand. Jill has one and my friend Janice has decided to purchase one, along with a Juki machine. Boy, am I GREEN!

All Strung Out

The first week of the holidays has whizzed by and for once I can claim I have achieved something. I have made more string blocks ready to trim so I will have 80 done. Without borders the quilt top will measure 60" by 75". There are 36 trimmed blocks on the left and 44 waiting to be trimmed on the right. Okay, so the top is not finished. But, hey, I did 44 blocks in 3 days.
On Wednesday I took a reconnaissance shopping trip. I am organising a mystery bus tour for the quilt club and, of course, I had to check out where we are going and how long it will take and all that stuff. My friend Janice drove us in her fab Citroen car and I navigated. We had a ball! I am a bit poorer ( make that quite a bit poorer) but happy that the basic planning is done - not that I need an excuse to go fabric shopping :-)

Good Friday Food. . .

. . . a little late, I know but I did make these Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday, I was just too tired on Friday night to do the post. I like to make my own and I avoid the buns available in the shops and supermarkets like the plague. Sometimes they are for sale in January!! Perhaps not eating them until Good Friday can be considered a Lenten sacrifice???

Shaped, ready to rise:
After rising:
Crosses on (pretty sloppy, I know):
Ready to eat, yumm:
Making them on good Friday brings back pleasant childhood memories of Hot Cross Buns only on good Friday and chocolate Easter Eggs on Easter Sunday. The only time we got chocolate was at Christmas, Easter and the occasional birthday. We truly live in a time of excess (you only need to look at my fabric stash to know I am one of the guilty ones).

Happy Easter!

Steamy Summer Sunrise done in a week!

I am mighty pleased with myself. I finished my art piece today and have called it 'Steamy Summer Sunrise'. It measures approx 30" by 38". I did the edging using varigated rayon thread and a 3-step zig-zag stitch with the stitch length at 0.2 and the stitch width at 7 (Elna 6005) and then I trimmed close to the stitching with scissors. It is not hanging totally straight so I am going so wet it and block it in the hope that it will behave a bit better. The photo shows it smoothed against my design wall where it behaves nicely, but hanging in free air it is not so good. I need to make a label and hanging sleeve but it is as good as done!

I showed it at quilt club today and several people were very interested in how I had done the edge. One thought I had gone around 3 times and another thought I had used a triple needle!
Close-up of the quilting:

Left edge:

Bottom edge:

Right edge

Quick Progress!

I have been having real fun quilting this piece I started last Saturday at Janice's house. I have done a different free-motion motif in each of the colour bands using some lovely metallic threads I bought last year. You can't see the quilting in this picture - I did take some closeups but they came out blurred 'cos I am too tired to hold the camera still. O for a tripod! I will try again tomorrow.
I have decided to leave the edges in the jagged shape they. I am tossing up between satin stitching the edges or couching some king of yarn. This quilt has gone together really fast and is the first truly artistic piece I have attempted. I am pretty pleased with myself!!

The creative (coffee) juices are flowing again!

Yesterday I picked up my new replacement coffee machine, so I am all coffee-ed up at home now.
I love the name of this machine. I am nowhere near being chic in any way, shape or form. I might have been in my younger days - who knows - but those 'salad days' are long gone!! Now I quilt. Can quilting be described as chic?

A Hard Day At The (Quilting) Coalface

Today is one of those days where I know life is good. I went out to my friend Janice's place ( a leisurely 15 minute drive into the country on a perfect late summer/early autumn day) and spent the day sewing. At 9 am this morning I still hadn't decided what I was going to do. It was a choice between sewing more blocks for a Single Irish Chain quilt or piecing a background for the Jacqui Karl class I am doing in May. So I loaded up the two fabrics and the already made blocks for the Irish Chain and a pile of fabric for the background. When I arrived at Janice's we started straight into the coffee (which was great since Janice has an espresso machine and mine died and has gone back to the shop. I am waiting for a replacement so I have been without decent coffee for over a week!)

After being coffee-ed up I decided I would work on the background. The idea was to make a piece to put a dragonfly onto. It needs to be already quilted before the class starts. My idea was to cut straight strips of uneven sizes from across the width of the fabric, sew them together and cut vertically, then sew them back together in a jagged fashion. Janice suggested I cut the strips in a free-form curved fashion and this is the result (none too flat I might add!)

Then I cut strips vertically and sewed them back together. I had to keep trimming bits off so the thing would lie flat. Not quite finished yet but I like what I have done. Guess what? It is not going to be a background for the dragonfly. I have decided it will be a quilt in it's own right.

Janice made a delicious lunch of chicken breast chunks and chickpea salad. Sitting on the table were a couple of mini bottles of wine and a bottle of non-alcoholic Bundeberg. I was allowed to choose so I had a lovely glass-sized bottle of Jacob's Creek Chardonnay. Janice had the other wine and the Bundeburg was left behind. She said (tongue in cheek) that she noticed I had NOT chosen the non-alcohol one. "No contest" says me. I don't often get offered wine at lunch. I know when I'm onto a good thing. Janice's excuse was that she was trying out the theory that free-motion quilting goes better after a glass of wine!

Here is the progress so far:

To round off the day nicely my friend Frances came to dinner (as she usually does on a Saturday night) and I sewed the rest of the binding of the second community quilt while she pieced together the log cabin blocks of her community quilt. So now both of mine are now done, already for club next week-wahoo!! Picture of the second community quilt tomorrow - I need to go to bed now after a hard day at the quilting coal-face :-)

I forgot . . .

. . . that I found the pins. In the mess!

One is done!

I thought I would have both of my community quilts done by last Saturday but life (and work) got in the way. One is now done. This top was pieced by another member of Cotton On Quilters for her son, but she never finished it, decided she didn't want to finish it and donated it for a community quilt. I added the blue border, basted it and quilted it. I had hand stitched down all but about a metre of the binding and there it sat! For over 2 weeks! Kirsty over on two time leaves made a post this week titled "Drowning In Failure". That title pretty much summed it up for me, nothing done for ages!! (the story of my life?)

I had my Friday night group last night and I decided that this was the time to get it finished.

I also got the binding on one side of the second one done. I wonder how long it will sit? Better get it done by club next weekend. Which is Easter. Which is the start of the holidays. Yeah! Which is just as well because I have just realised I have booked myself up for just about every Saturday for the next couple of month! All for something quilty of course. The house work will just have to sit and sit and wait.

Today: Off to a sewing day with my friend Janice. She makes wonderful, innovative quilts, has won awards for them, and she now has her own blog, Quilts, Grandkids and Delphiniums. I invite you to go visit.

Next Saturday is Club day. We are having the Head of Art from the school I teach at to come and give us a basic colour theory lesson.

Saturday after that is a get together for members of my online yahoo group Kiwiquilters.

Saturday after that is a class with well known and international award-winning NZ quilter Anna Williams at the Cloth Shop printing photographic images of flowers onto fabric to make a wall hanging. This will be completely new to me!

Then I have one Saturday off.

First Saturday in May I am going to a big regional show and tell day organised by Rose City Quilters called "Tote & Gloat".

The Saturday after that our club is running a workshop by another well known NZ tutor Jacqui Karl (no link for Jacqui. I don't think she has an internet site).

So I am going to be a very busy bee and more stuff will sit unfinished! Oh well, never mind.

I have lost my........

pins. I know I had them at the community quilts sewing day. Now I can't find them. They must be buried under the mess in my sewing area. Either that or they have left home and run away!

Standing Up For Sewing

I was checking all my blog reads last night and was admiring the new sewing cabinet that Helen has shown on her blog Patchwork of Mini Grey . She was talking about now being able to sew sitting down. My goodness she sewed standing up! I asked her "Don't you know that the only reason all of us (un)famous quilters didn't get to feature on Simply Quilts is because we can't sew standing up!? Can any of you other lovely quilting bloggers out there sew standing up? Perhaps in the days of deep vein thrombosis we should all do it that way.

Bobbin Failure

I tried to make this post last night but my computer lost its internet link, so I decided to go to bed instead since the resident computer expert had retired for the night. Some people (who shall remain nameless) think I may have writer's block since I haven't posted since 10th March. I assure you, the words are still as plentiful, just not making it to the computer. ( TOO MUCH MARKING LAST WEEK!)

Look what happened to me in the weekend:

I was winding thread and didn't think about what I was doing when it was finished. I pulled the bobbin up, instead of left then up, and the end came off! I guess they don't make parts like they used to. Just as well I have a case full of bobbins, so I could keep on sewing. I have been quilting the two community quilts that I started a couple of Saturday's ago. I now have to do the bindings and I should have had them finished by now, but work keeps getting in the way of the weekends - oh and a fabric buying trip last Saturday also meant not much sewing got done.

I know I am not supposed to be buying fabric this year (or any year for about the next thousand) but there was a new Quilts Japan magazine waiting for me at The Cloth Shop over in Palmerston North, so I decided I would have a nice day out on my own. I came back with 6 metres of fabric for the background and borders of our next raffle quilt at the very reasonable price of $10 per metre. I was very happy to get that. I won't bore you with the details of the other fabrics that just had to walk out the shop with me, but the good ladies of Arthur Toye's had just unloaded a new shipment and temptation grabbed hold of my wallet and flung it at their cash register! Well, okay, here is a photo of a lovely graduated fabric I picked up:

The President Won!

It was our Community Quilts sewing day today and to add a bit of interest to the day I decided to donate a quick raffle prize with the proceeds to the Cancer Society. Guess who won her own prize!! How come I when I win it isn't Lotto? (First division of course - not much to ask for is it? You know I could just quilt all day instead of having to go to the work house - Yeah Right!)

Here are some of the ladies busy stitching:
And here is Georgia Rose enjoying some of the finished quilts:

Fabric Amnesia

Lynne from kleinmeisjequilts made a post about a great fabric for the border of her quilt which has been on her shelves so long she has no memory of buying it. I commented to her that I have lots of fabric on my shelves that I have no memory of buying. Is it Fabric Amnesia? I know I've got them but I don't know where they came from and I don't know where they're going either. At the moment they are just happy living at my house.

My string blocks have come to a rather sudden halt. I have made 5 more blocks since my last post but marking and prep has had to be a priority this week. Mereth of Pages from me asked: "Do you think you'll use up all your cut pieces? No matter how much I piece I never seem to empty a drawer completely." To my surprise I have nearly come to the end of the 1 1/2" strips that I had in my icecream container. I thought I had heaps, but obviously not! That's not to say that I don't have heaps of scraps, just not already cut and organised ones. Now I am cutting up my 3" strips in half to use. And I'm feeling really good about it. It's great to get rid of some of those scraps that have been hanging around for years and outstaying their welcome.

To finish a photo. Not a quilty, but quilty related. Last Sunday I went up to the Wintergardens here in Wanganui to take some photos of the huge begonias that are flowering in the glass house at the moment. I need some images of flowers to do a workshop with Anna Williams next month. The outside garden at the Wintergardens is currently designed to look like a typical Kiwi back yard complete with shed. Of course my back yard looks just like this - NOT!

Here is one of the begonias:


PS: The shed is not real!!

Thirtyfive percent done.

Thanks everyone for your comments on my recent posts. Don't we all love feedback!

I have done a few more string blocks this weekend and I am over one third done! Our local quilt club is having a community quilts sewing day next Saturday and I am hoping to get 64 of these critters done by then! But, I have heaps of marking and prep to do for school this week, so I'm not sure if I will reach my goal. ( A little calculation tells me I will need to make 8 a day - not going to happen. I wonder if I can get 48 done instead?) Anyway, this is the progress so far:

My friend Joy, who tells me she is really enjoying my blog, (Hi Joy, here is a challenge: leave me a message!) wanted to know if I was foundation piecing these. No! I dislike foundation piecing with a passion because I don't like to take the time to rip out heaps of paper and have a big mess to clean up (well bigger than what I had before - it probably wouldn't get cleaned up since the mess I already have isn't going anywhere anytime soon!).

What I have been doing is grabbing any old strip of fabric and sewing them either side of a black homespun strip until I have enough 'fabric' to cut out a square using my 8" square ruler. A little "photo tutorial" follows! The colours are not great, all 'blued out' (and I haven't got the inclination to fix it up with photoshop - I need to go and have my Sunday afternoon zzzzz...)

The strips sewn together:
See that pink strip on the bottom? That is from a kit for a grandmother's fan cushion that I purchased at least 25 years ago!

What it looks like on the wrong side:
With the squsre ruler placed ready for trimming:
Edges trimmed off:
I'm so a*** that I am saving the wider trimmings:
To make these (who knows what they will turn into!!):

I have done a little sewing!

I have finally got a little sewing done. I am such an organised person (sometimes - see previous post on the state of my sewing area!) that I have all my scraps pre-cut into different widths from 1" up. These have been annoying me lately as I now want to organise my scraps by colour instead of size. I've been inspired by the heart string blocks everyone is making over on the Quilt Mavericks blog, so I have decided to make up the 3 narrowest widths (1", 1 1/4" and 1 1/2") into string blocks using a 1" finished strip of black across the centre:

I'm quite pleased with how they look considering a lot of these scraps are from when I first started quilting (way, way back) and a lot of them are dullish country type colours. I used to buy scrap bags before I got sensible and bought lengths (yardage to you USA quilters) and some of these scraps date back over 25 years!.

These blocks are just stuck on my design wall at the moment, not yet sewn together. I am cutting them 8 inches 'cos that is the size of my square rule, so they will end up as 7 1/2 " finished. An odd size but I guess it doesn't matter with this type of block. (why the square ruler is not 8 1/2" I will never know!). I have made 12 and I guess I will need about 64 to make a decent sized quilt, so I am 20% there.