This is called "cutting it fine"

I know I work well to deadlines, but this is a bit ridiculous. See the last box on this timetable? It says 'Drive to Wellington and deliver" and that is what we did today.
I didn't get my quilt photos onto a cd for the entry in time to post it yesterday. (I don't know what it is with computers and me. Apparently I was doing the right thing but my computer was not playing nicely at all. My son rescued me last night and did them on his computer. He says it has something to do with the fact that I had bought cheap and cr***y cds.) I was also up until 4 in the morning the previous night sewing on the binding and washing the quilt to get out all the quilt markins so I could photograph it. Remind me to start the next Symposium quilt at least 2 years before it is needed. What? The next Symposium is in 2 years already? That means I have to start now? Sheesh, I've only just finished this one!

So my good friend Jo (she of the time table design fame) drove me so I could hand in the envelope to the mail centre and ask them kindly if they could make sure it got into the box today, since today was the final day for entries. The very kind lady at the post shop attached to the mail centre said "anything for a fellow sewer". She deserves a medal for great customer service. It was just as well Jo was driving because on the way back home I had a bit of a zzzz in the car. That would have been a bit dangerous if I had been driving :-) I have great friends (and a great son) and I appreciate every one of them - thanks, all of you, for your support and encouragement.

One cannot go to Wellington without visiting a few quilt shops on the way and, once again, I am poorer than I was. The weather today was perfect. The sea at Pukerua Bay was like glass and there were no waves at all. Magic. there was also a fantastic Italian restaurant cum Italian grocery supply place next to the mail centre and we had a very yummy brunch and coffee to fortify ourselves for further quilt shopping :-) Did I mention the very melt-in-the mouth almond croissant I had for afternoon tea at a french cafe in Cuba St, in the next block down from Minerva (the NZ Quilter magazine's bookshop.) Who said the 'd' word?

Quilting with Juki

I want one of these:
This wonderful machine belongs to my very good quilting buddy, Janice. Usually it sits on a Swiftquilter frame in Janice's studio but she has very nobly allowed Juki to have a holiday at my olace - a working holiday of course! There is so much more room under the arm than my Elna. It is a great workhorse and having needle up/needle down makes it so much more useful than my old Singer which 'runs on' after taking your foot of the pedal. It is so much easier to control what I am stitching. Thank you Janice.

The basting method I used has proved to be very successful. I have NO puckers from the quilting. I have had some trouble with the basting thread catching in the needle threader as I move the quilt around, but that is probably due to a lack of willingness on my part to clip the basting threads in the area I am working on rather than a deficiency in the basting method itself :-) After I had quilted around each block centre I removed all the basting thread and that solved that problem.

I am so rusty with my quilting. I haven't done any for ages and I am not happy with some of the work I have done. I will be getting out the quick-un-pick to fix up some of the "oops" parts. I think the reason those commercial quilters are so good is that they are quilting regularly. The rest of us have to wait until we actually get a top finished before we can polish our quilting skills. That's maybe 3 or 4 times a year??

Basting with Sharon Schamber

Just because I have plenty of time to get my quilt finished before the deadline (Yeah, right!) I thought I would try Sharon Schamber's method of basting a quilt sandwich using boards and the table. Sharon has a free video on her website that explains the method much better than I can, so go here to see her excellent demonstration.

The advantages I see are that:

1. I don't need to get down on the floor - this is a biggie reason if you are me :-)

2. I can check for stray threads as I roll up the quilt top and backing.

3 It doesn't add weight to the quilt, unlike safety pins.

4. I can baste a quilt on my own, on my table, without needing a large surface (although because this quilt is 2.3 metres square I did put 2 tables end to end.)

The disadvantage is that it takes a lot longer than pin basting would, although I could easily have used pins with Sharon's roll method.



Really, I guess, it is a bit like having a machine quilting frame, without the frame, if you see what I mean.

I haven't started the quilting yet so I am not sure how the thread will go but Sharon says to clip the area you are working on. I will let you know how it goes.

The opposite of sewing is . . .

. . . rip it, rip it, rip it! I seem to have spent most of the day undoing sewing and re-sewing. I had the 4 corner blocks to make which, as you can see, are fairly simple. The first one behaved perfectly well and then the next three were very naughtly and didn't play together at all nicely. I had to unpick them, twice! I had also decided to change some of the fabric choices, not many - only about 4, so that some of the lighter star points were more defined. But it seemed to take me forever. All day, in fact.

The centre and border blocks are now all pieced, ready to join together:


I have to keep telling myself that when they are joined it will all look so much smaller. I'm planning on finishing the piecing tonight and it will be basting tomorrow and some quilting.

My very good friend Janice has agreed to loan me her Juki 98 which has more room under the arm. I am hoping that this will make the quilt easier to turn than it would be under the arm of my Elna. Really, why don't the manufacturers make all machines have a longer arm. Every body would be happy. Surely it can't be that expensive. I don't want a lot of embroidery stitches. I want a machine that sews basic stitches and has room under the arm to do sit-down table quilting. Not much to ask, it it?

I've done enough for a mallowpuff

It's one o'clock in the morning and, while I haven't got quite as far as I wanted today, I have done heaps and it is time to go to bed!

Here is how it is looking. Most of the border blocks are pieced. I need to finish the corners and sew everything together but it is quitting time for today.

There are a couple of fabric choices I am not happy with so I am going to sleep on it and see what it looks like in the day light.

PS. I'm being spammed (of the "cool blog, leave to me yur phone nmbr" type) so I have enabled comment moderation. Darn! It is such a pain but at least the word verifications are now easier to type, as in they are more like real words rather than a random jumble of letters.

The Plan Develops

It is now half past eleven in the morning and I have been up since 6. I've done 2 loads of washing, drunk two coffees and eaten 1 piece of Christmas cake. I've also done heaps of sewing. This is what the quilt is looking like now:
Yegads! It's a bit of a mess, is it not? Is it working as a design? I'm in the "what on earth do I think I am doing' stage. I'm telling myself it will look much better from 10 metres away. Maybe the borders will help pull it together.

I still have all the borders to piece - and all the quilting to do (and the basting, and the binding, forgot about those bits) Am I mad? Well, maybe the jury's still out on that one but the chances are I am. I have to be to put myself on such a tight deadline. But I'm not giving up now (and I treasure every moment of my long summer holidays, thank you for asking.)

Back to the machine for me.

Moving Right Along

I've had a really quiet, quilty New Year (Thank goodness there were no loud stereos in the street. The noisy neighbours across the road seem to have quietened right down.) I have made good progress on my quilt. I sewed all yesterday and most of today. I can tick off the right number of days on the timetable. Yipee! I'm up to date and on track. So far, so good - and I've even tidied my piles of fabric - haven't vacummed the floor though :-)

Here is the plan of what I am doing:
The blocks are all different fabrics and I'm working out how the secondary star pattern works. Some will be dark and some will be medium and some light. (Thanks to Janice for that suggestion. My original fabric choices for sashing were way too overpowering.) I'm actually further on than this. I'll post another picture again tomorrow. I just have 3 more sashing strips to make and then I can piece the sashings to the blocks. Then I need to work out a new border. I might actually get this done!

I Might Get There

It is just as well that I don't have anyone in the house at the moment. I have spent the last 2 days doing nothing but quilting! The house is a complete mess. I am making progress and have almost half the blocks completed.

The rest should/could/will get done today. I still have the borders of course. The design of these is proving somewhat troublesome since my original plan made the quilt way too big for entry into the competition. But, I have a another plan!!

Here is one of the completed blocks:

Why I was getting stuck.

One of the reasons that I had almost given up on getting my quilt finished is that it is a BIG quilt. I am making it, primarily, for my bed and I want it to be 2.4m by 2.4m. So the sheer size of the project become somewhat daunting. The other problem was that I don't (didn't) have a design wall big enough to work vertically. I actually don't have a wall big enough to put that size design wall onto. However, I have found a solution. It just took a while to get there.

I bought 2 pieces of soft board.* They measure 1.2m by 2.7 m. I had to cut them down a bit. Most modern houses have a 2.4m stud. My house in from 1937 and has a 2.7m stud. So 2.7 m long soft board would have been a bit of a squeeze. I cut them down to 2.5m. I thought I would lean the 2 sheets vertically against the cupboard opening where I store my fabric. The problem was that the stuff bends very easily and one sheet was bending more than the other. After a few days of struggling to work on it I finally went to Mitre 10 yesterday and bought 6 pieces of aluminium edging which just slides onto the edges. One goes on each long side of the 2 boards and takes care of the curvature problem (I wish my curvature problem was so easy to fix!) The other 2 go on the short sides at the top and bottom and temporarily join the 2 boards together. Wahoo, a flat surface I can work with.

Of course I can't easily get into my fabric cupboard while it is up, but it is possible to slide the whole thing far enough out of the way to get to that elusive piece of fabric I absolutely must have for the quilt I'm working on :-) I now have a wall that measures 2.4m wide by 2.5m high. I can take it down and store it when I am not working on a large quilt. Now I can give you an idea of the scale I am working on:
Lots to do, huh? I'm not going to make the sashing pieces all the same colour, it would overwhelm the blocks. Another reason for needing a big design wall. It is much easier to choose colour and value when I am looking at it in a vertical plane. Back to the sewing . . .


* This is a whole 'nother story! We used to be able to get a product called flameguard - which we used to call pinex many years ago. At the beginning of this year it was priced at about $25 per sheet of 1.2m by 2.4m, a very reasonable cost. I encouraged my quilting friends to buy some, which they did. When I decided to get some more guess what? They don't make it any more, grrr..., and the replacement softboard is over $55 per sheet, grrr..., grrr... ! I wasn't going to pay that much when I needed 2 of them. so I went to Bunnings. They had some older softboard that was painted black on one side. It was $26 per sheet. But since they were wanting to get rid of it they gave me 2 sheets for $30. Must have been my lucky day. Just as well, really. It cost me $42 for flannel to cover the boards (no fluffy sheets in the shops in summer, ask me how I know!) and the aluminium edging was $15 per two metre length, and I got 6 of them. Sheesh!

I'll Get By With A Little Help . . .

. . . from my friends. When I told them I had given up on getting my quilt finished before the deadline my good friend Jo protested and suggested I needed a timetable. So she typed one up on the computer for me (the picture should be click-able):
So far, I have managed to tick off the first day! Yippee, all the hand applique is done. But I have done some work towards getting the sashings done. I'm just not sure I have done enough to cross off the second day :-)

Now I look closely at the time table, Jo has put Saturday at the start of the week and it is now Sunday, so I am already 2 days behind. Yikes!

Thanks to those who have left encouraging comments. I try to reply to all comments by email but Nola and Karen have their settings as 'non-reply'. But thanks any way for taking the time to leave a comment.

Stuck

Well, this is where I got stuck with my quilt. The sashings are pieced and I am not happy with the light/medium/dark values. I don't know which way to go. The first or the second? Or some other combination?


Or maybe this way out combination?
(Just kidding)

Slow Progress

This is one of the applique blocks that I have been working on over the last few months. The challenge for me was to design something original and I was hoping to have this quilt finished in time to enter for Symposium but this is not going to happen! Entries are due in by 14 January and my quilt top is still in pieces, some of which haven't even been pieced yet, let alone getting it basted and quilted in the next 3 weeks! (drat - I won't be winning Best of Show for a while, will I?) There are 25 of these, all in different fabric, and I still have 5 to finish off. Then they are surrounded by a pieced sashing which I am having difficulty getting the colour values right for and I have done only about 10% of what I need to have done. Oh, well there is always next time.

Requiem for a Singer

My trusty old 1963 khaki Singer blew a 'foo foo valve' the other night - literally. I was merrily quilting along on a hearts of hope quilt, which a group of ladies has put together for one of their very dear friends and I offered to quilt for them, when my machine blew up. I knew the old rubber coated wiring was in dodgy condition, I just didn't realise that the condition was perilous. When the cord connecting the light to the electric motor blew it set the quilt on fire. 'H*** sh**' was the expletive deleted as I jumped and then saw flames! Frantic patting of the area with my quilting gloves!
Fortunately it was the very edge of the quilt, the batting was 100% cotton and therefore didn't melt, and the worst affected part will be cut off when the binding is attached.
But a tiny part of the scorch mark on the back of the quilt will not be covered by the binding.

As for the Singer? It is off to my very friendly sewing machine mechanic to be fixed. I love quilting with this machine. There is so much more room under the arm of the machine than my Elna. Why do they make modern machines with such a small harp? Why can't they make a basic low to mid price range machine that has more room?? I know there is a brand new Bernina with 12" harp coming out here in NZ next year. But I am positive it will be way out of my budget. I don't want all the fancy embroidery stitches. Just the basic features we have come to know and love like needle up/needle down, thread cutter, and the walking foot, free motion foot and 1/4" foot included as standard, not optional extras!

Oh, that's right, the Juki 98!

Here in New Zealand we can get this supplied with a very easy to use frame as well. My friend Janice has one. I want one! I just need to save some money. That is going to be a bit harder to do for a while. He, of Honey Bunch fame, is off to University next year. We do not qualify for any student allowances and the amount he can borrow on the student loan is not enough to cover the cost of his halls accommodation. He does have a holiday job but it will not be enough to totally cover the extra so it is mum to the rescue (but only while he continues to pass his courses!!).

Oh well, one day Roger Rabbit, one day!

What I did this weekend ...

... was to travel on an 800km round road trip to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. I'm rather tired but also wired. Which is why I am on the 'puter when I should be in zzzzzz land. I gave my mother a quilt which I called "Where on earth is Bettina Monica Nesta?" Those are mum's names and she hates very one of them. She is called Betty which is usually a diminuituve of Elizabeth. But I think she was called Betty even before she was born. I remember as a child her telling me that her older sisters thought her mum had a baby doll just for them! It is a scrap quilt (and I don't think I have a picture of it) I made a couple of years ago. I named if after Mum because it had a tiny piece of fabric with an old lady motif on it.

This is mum and my stepfather Bert. I am thankful that they are well (relatively speaking for their age) and their minds are fully functioning.

My parents split up when I was 18 and Mum has been married to Bert for almost as long as she was married to my Dad. Amazing huh?

Getting organised

One of my quilting students is starting a new quilt using a lot of fabrics of the same colour family. When I asked her how she was going to remember which fabric is which she showed me these plastic zip bags with a pocket on the front. She has printed out all the colours and numbered them and has cut each one out and put in the pocket window. When she cuts each piece of fabric she is going to put it back in the correct bag.


I thought it was a brilliant way of keeping things organised. I suggested she stick a piece of masking tape to the end of each piece of fabric and number it as well, so that if things get mixed up she has the actual fabric labelled as well as the pocket. Of course she will have to be careful to cut the fabric from the other end to the label :-)

A bit of applique

It has been very slow going and I am still not even halfway through the hand applique blocks that I am doing for the quilt which I hope to finish in time to enter Symposium. Every week I promise myself I will do some every day. Mmmm.... Oh well, the school holidays are coming up in a few weeks and I'll get it done then. But that's what I said to myself before the last lot. Who am I kidding??

Here is a little bit of a preview:

Another Invasion!!!

This time of an extremely welcome sort - visiting quilters from England! I got a phone call last Friday from a lady called Pat who is visiting Wanganui with the Friendship Force group. She had visited the local patchwork shop and asked if there is a quilting group in Wanganui. The shop gave her my number and she called to ask if she and some of the quilting ladies from the tour group could come and visit after dinner on Sunday evening to talk patchwork and quilting. Of course, I said yes.We have just finished a delightful hour and a half getting to know each other and I now have new friends from the other side of the world and an invitation to visit the Isle of Wight - as long as I plan my visit around the second Thursday of the month which is when their guild meeting is held :-)

All I have to do now is win Lotto!
Along with Pat came her sister Sue and friend Nava all from the Isle of Wight, and Joy from Southampton. I have to confess I didn't get the fourth lady's name so I am expecting (hoping!) Pat to read this blog post at some time when she gets back home and let me know.

**Update**

The missing name is Sue L. She is new to quilting and doesn't belong to any group. I hope she was inspired by what she saw at my place.


I am hoping to meet Nava again next weekend. I am going to Calico Christmas, the Auckland Patchwork and Quilters' annual show, and Nava is expecting to be there too. We have made a loose arrangement to meet for lunch. I am so looking forward to this!

And, yes, I know it is almost 2 months since I have posted. Life has been in the fast lane lately. I have hardly got near the computer andI have 2798 blog posts to read - ahem!

My new best friends . .

. . . are this dinky pair of curved embroidery scissors, a can of spray starch and some bee-ooo-ti-ful YLI #100 silk thread:
Yes, I've started some hand applique. I'm onto a new project which I aim to get finished before 14th January, 2009, in time for the entry deadline of our next National Symposium. I was halfway on the way to sewing a pattern I bought a year ago which I thought I might enter. It was for a lovely wall hanging and I had decided to enlarge it to queen bed size and make a new quilt to use on my bed. Then I read the entry rules which state entries have to be original designs. Jam on the brakes and come to a screaming halt! It took me a some time to get over the 'oh darn, I'm not going to have enough time to make this plus another quilt' feeling and come around to the idea of putting aside the first quilt and make up my own design. Which I have and it has some applique. Normally I would fuse this, but I don't like raw edge on my bed quilts (O, la di dah, doesn't that sound snobby? Like I've got a huge stash of bed quilts to ring the changes with - not!)

The scissors I picked up on a sales table earlier this year, thinking 'I've always wanted a pair of these curved scissors'. I was delighted to find that the price was further reduced when I went to pay for them. The spray starch is for ironing the edge over the freezer paper. It smells like home baked biscuits around here at the moment, I'm using so much of it. I'm not normally known for my hand stitching skills. In fact I was told very clearly (grin) the stitches on my test piece were way too big, hence the silk thread. Which is wonderful to stitch with. The thread just disappears and I can get really, really tiny stitches. Of course I know really, really tiny stitches are the aim here, but how come no one ever tells you in the quilting books and magazines that the tinier the stitches, the more of them there has to be?? And the more of them there has to be, the longer it takes to stitch something down?? Huh! What was that deadline?

Unwelcome Visitors

WARNING: This post has no pictorial content.

I live in a 70 year old house and old houses, being as they are, are prone to invasions of certain kinds of pests. In the last week I have trapped and disposed of the remains of eight (yes, 8!) furry little rodents that decided to make their home underneath my kitchen sink. There is a wonderful mouse trap available called the 'Better Mouse Trap'. It is a gray plastic trap that works a bit like a spring loaded bulldog clip. The great thing about it is that when the mouse is trapped the head can't be seen - wonderful for the slightly squeamish like me. Don't, however, make the mistake I did. After hearing the trap spring I suggest you wait a decent interval before opening the cupboard door before disposing of the contents of the trap. You want to give enough time for the poor thing to be properly dead and not wriggling its little legs!

PS: This post had no quilting content either :-)

A Wee Bag

For those of you who know me, you will understand that I don't 'do' bags. I don't mind making the odd one to put a quilt in for an exhibition, but as far as handbags go I buy a black one, put everything in it, and I use it until it wears out. Then I replace it with a new one. I don't change my bag to go with my outfit (I don't 'do' outfits either, but that is another story - vbg). So it was with some surprise that I found myself making a bag the other night. The teacher of Japanese from my school wanted to make a bag like one she had seen in a magazine but there was no pattern. Yours truly volunteered to draw up a pattern to make something similar. After a test run using left over scrap homespun this is the result:

It is not exactly like the original. The bottom is curved instead of having what looks like a gusset insert in the bottom and the handles are wider and not as long, but I'm pretty happy with the result. I love the fabric I used; chocolate, pink and lime green - what a funky combination! In fact it would look really good in a quilt, wouldn't it? Of course it will have to be a much smaller quilt now, since I now have less of the fabric than I started with. But hey, it's not like I don't have plenty of other fabric to quilt with!