Permission to play -1

I don’t quilt as much as the quilters in our area may believe and only have a small window of opportunity late afternoon and not necessarily every afternoon.  My other chance is over weekends if granddaughter doesn’t stay over but I have learnt to make the most of my quilting time. When I am done for the day I make very sure that my sewing room is neat and whatever would be next on my agenda would be prepared in order for me to just get going.

With this limited time however I would always be feverishly working on one of my next quilts.  I do work on more than one project as I tend to get bored with one technique, colour scheme or pattern rather fast.  So in trying to make yet another bed quilt and get it done, I hardly ever allow myself time to simply play with my hobby.

When I taught quilting classes, I did this (playing) much more as I had to experiment, test and make smaller projects to be able to accomplish this during a class.  For the last couple of years however I only make bed quilts.

I saw a post on a Facebook page (Sit down free motion quilters) by Sandra Pearson on how she coloured a quilted piece with Inktense pencils and although I have done this before, I couldn’t resist doing another.  So off to the copier I went, tracing the image onto fabric, and then started quilting on the lines. I used neutral thread on the background and can truly say I dislike this.  Even though with the free-motion foot, it felt like stitching heaps of straight line stitches.  Next time I’d rather go back to my old way of stitching quilt motifs with coloured thread and just enhance these with Inktense pencils.

It felt like it took forever and a day to get all the lines stitched but I did it.

Then I sprayed the piece with water to get rid of the blue lines.

I got the rest of my toys ready.

And it turned out to be nothing more than “colouring for adults” this time simply on fabric.  I am quite convinced I won’t do this again but I am this far, so I might just finish it up.

Eye of the Storm – 1

I bought myself a PDF Bargello pattern called Eye of the Storm (and for October 2017 most patterns on THIS SITE are less 50%) and once I decided on my colour and found all the fabric needed, I could start cutting 2½” strips from all 6 colours. The quilt on the pattern was in purple but being from central South Africa, with very little rain, our storms are usually just masses of dust, so I chose browns.

The next step was to lay out my strips according to colour and sew these together, praying the whole time that one of the cats wouldn’t jump on my strips and distort the order.

I tried glue basting and it worked fantastic.  Once I’ve laid out a series of strips, I glue basted and heat set these and could go to the machine in one session and simply string piece the seams.  I am not too sure I would use it for ordinary blocks but for Bargello’s it is a definite must! Glue basting also helped when I woke up at 4 am and without waking up granddaughter, whose room is opposite of my sewing room, with the noise of the machine I could start getting strip sets ready.

Only on page 3 of the instructions and this is already the amount that I’ve sewn.  These are not necessarily all single strip sets, some are sets of 5 (all pinned together).

Magnolia Mystery – 2

I am not getting much done on the quilting front…. Reached a slump I guess but I am still sorting out my new storage space and have opened up and got rid of temporary plastic storage drawers.  I’ve tried a technique when I overheard 2 embroiderers discussing their way of doing free motion quilting (actually they embroider motifs on a quilt) but it failed miserably when trying this on a domestic sewing machine.  So 4 solid days of unpicking was part cause of my quilt time wasted.

Let me move on to better news.  The second sewing clue for this mystery quilt arrived on time, in fact, earlier than I expected.  Being South African my clues seem to arrive long after the rest of the world receives theirs.

So this was what my sewing table looked like one Friday afternoon after work.

And once sewn together I had only these two stacks.  Now I have to wait yet another month for the next clue.

Birthday fabric One Block Wonder – 5 -Final

Started off very enthusiastically trying to quilt with metallic thread but after 6 thread breakages in the span of 14 inches I gave up.  Some wars are simply best left alone, so I did what I said I’ll do in the previous post and opted for a bright yellow.

I tried to use my “non-hopping” ruler foot for all-over quilting and this worked like a breeze and in future I might only use this instead of switching feet when not doing ruler work (not as if I have used rulers before).

So with the last sentence in mind I tried my hand a ruler work and I guess for a first try I should have gone with a thread colour less contrasting to the fabric as this combination showed up every little flaw.

Fortunately unpicking the contrasting thread was not that hard and after all the trials and errors I opted to make it easier on myself and chose a large scale all-over meandering covering the 3 borders.

Another one bites the dust!

Packing Space

On one of hubby’s frequent business trips, going through a quaint little town, known for selling antiques, he noticed something on the pavement in front of a pawn shop.  Aware of my quilt addiction and my need for plenty of storage space but not necessarily deep drawers, rather flatter but MORE space in one cupboard/storage area he stopped and made a purchase.

Previously this little green plastic rack used to be my paper sorter/container…. Fugly to say the least and now I could replace it with this wooden one. I turned the wooden one to face my computer, so people entering the room would not be able to see the mess inside but just see a wooden frame.  So much neater!

The second purchase was this divine little cupboard with flatter but more (30 in total) storage spaces.  It was just what I needed for all my accessories and tools.  I have heaps of these scattered in several drawers or spaces inside cupboards and always wished for one central area to store all of these. Hubby just added the little doors for me.  Neat or what?  I can hardly wait to start packing and sorting.