Little things

I've decided I may never make a full-sized quilt. It's not that I've decided consciously to not attempt it, but I just find I love doing small projects far more.

First, as an update from my last post, I've abandoned the quilt-along group. They are doing absolutely beautiful work but I fell flat on my face with the first block. First attempt was a disaster.

First attempt at "Addie" block

You can see from the lower panel that already it's out of sync....the triangles don't match the same way. Believe me it got much worse than this..... so I started over. This time I made certain that all my pieces were accurately and uniformly cut, then I laid them out before sewing just to orient myself as to what goes where.

Second attempt at "Addie" with different fabrics.

So far, so good. But when I actually sewed it, it was as much a disaster as the first one! I love the book, The Farmer's Wife 1930 Quilt Sampler and the writing, but IF I ever try one again, then next time I'll pick an easier block! 

My mug rugs, however (see previous blog entry) turned out very well. No pattern-- I just winged it.

Four mug rugs finished with burgundy backs

They were fun to make and not at all fussy or difficult. It probably was too easy and I chose the lazy option, but at least they're done now. First I used some heat bondable material to bond the cat silhouette to the front piece. Then I sewed a blanket stitch around the silhouette with my machine. 

The blanket stitch on my machine

Once that was done, I assembled the sandwich, using a fairly lightweight batting. After I turned the back lining inside out, I ran some quilt lines from top to bottom. If I made more mug rugs I think I would also have run horizontal lines and perhaps a contrasting binding, but for these I decided this was enough.

One more little thing is the new magazine, Simply Moderne. I just happened across it at WH Smith's and fell in love with some of the quilts, described as "modern" quilts, and other projects. No blocks or at least not many, lots of applique and just very different. This is the first ever issue so I'm looking forward to the second one. It's published by the same publisher as the magazine Quiltmania. This issue had articles about USA quilters and shops, but I suspect that this will change as it is geared toward UK readers. If you go to their website, you can browse some of the pages electronically. The magazine is a bit pricey at £11.99 but it's 128 pages where other quilt magazines are only 98 pages.

And the last little thing is that I went to a local quilt show here in Whitstable and met the nicest women, I believe most were from Abbey Patchers and Thanet Quilters. There were some lovely quilts on display, at least three different trader tables (I think I bought something from each of them!) and a tombola. I won the tombola (TWO prizes!) for the first time in my life -- two beautiful patchwork cushions.

My tombola prizes

Here are a few quilts that caught my eye, though they were all beautiful:

There is another quilt show in Deal, Kent this weekend. I hope to go to that one, too.

Pitter Patcher

A little of this, a little of that, a lot of nothing, really! My head is absolutely FULL of ideas these days, but as usual there's little action. I managed to cut out some mug rugs. No pattern for these, just playing with them, so far.

 

For the cat silhouette, I cut out triangles, then drew (free-hand) and cut the heads and tails. The plan is to use fusible webbing to attach them to the mug rug, then  quilt (the wadding is cut to the size of the mug rug), then bind with the red fabric at the top of the photo. 

Two more projects already in the pile are a sewing machine cover and a bread basket. Oh, and my In-R-Form Plus arrived from the U.S. so I'll also be making the tote bag shown here with my jelly roll. See what I mean about no lack of projects?!

On top of that, I just joined a quilt group online. It's at The Quilting Board in the "Blocks of the Month" sub-forum. We're using a book titled The Farmer's Wife 1930s Quilt Sampler, which just arrived this morning from Amazon. It has instructions and a CD for making 99 blocks for a quilt.

I've wanted to tackle a full-size quilt for some time, but all the ones I see are just plain intimidating. Beautiful, but involves lots of coordinated fabrics and skills that are probably a bit beyond me.  These blocks are only 6" square and seem do-able. The finished quilt will look similar to the one on the front of the book and are obviously just made from scraps, not necessarily coordinated fabrics. The project begins 4 August, so I'm away and running.

I really wanted to go to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August, but after our holiday in Wales last week, I've decided it's too far and I'm frankly too much of a newbie to get enough out of it. Maybe next year... and I hope that by then my knees and ankles will be better. Our Wales holiday has just about put me out of commission and into a wheelchair. Our cottage was unbelievably uncomfortable and full of steep stairs, suitable for a mountain goat.

So watch this space for some updates on my projects.

A Bit of a Panel

As the reorg of my craft cabin continues, I've still managed to do a bit of sewing. In January at the Make-It Show in Farnborough, I bought a panel for my sewing area.

I wasn't sure if I would cut it up and make cushions or use the cut pieces as appliques for tote bags, etc. but in the end I decided to leave it whole and quilt it. Well, quilting is probably a rather loose term here, but that's what *I* would call it.

This is just propped against the bookcase but it will be hung on the wall. Here's how I did it:

First, I tacked on some wadding (UK)/batting (USA), then I machine stitched around each panel. So far, so good. Then I attached a solid colour piece as the back, but realized it would look much better if I stitched around some of the elements within the panels. Doh! Unless I took the back off, there was no way to do that. Instead I hand-stitched some of the bigger bits without catching the back. That was a little tricky and  I soon decided I'd had enough of that, so not all of the panels have hand-stitching.

I'm lazy, I suppose, but it was my first attempt and now I know what to do for the next panel project. I have a Christmas panel I bought a couple of years ago that I'm going to do this year. But here's what I've learned:

1) To make the sandwich first: panel, wadding, and a plain muslin or cotton backing.

2) Once the panel sandwich is done, THEN start stitching. Machine stitch as much as possible, then hand stitch.

3) Once ALL the stitching is done, then attach the back fabric.

That way, the inside cotton/muslin holds it together better. It doesn't matter that stitching shows on this back as it will all be covered by the back fabric.

So, I've managed to get rid of a lot of magazines but still have a few boxes of scrapbooking and card making stash to go, including lots of stamps. The problem is that my local craft friends have also gone away from scrapbooking and cardmaking to sewing, so no takers there! I need to have a garage sale, I think. I'm sure that as soon as do, however, I'll decide to scrapbook again.

Meanwhile, I think I'd like to find a local quilting, applique, or patchwork class. I'm looking at the residence-type courses at Denman College (the Women's Institute college), but they're expensive. None of the local fabric shops (there are only a couple of them anyway) offer courses and I don't have the time to do the 10-week courses offered by the Kent County Council. Ah well....!