Racing track

I decided that I ought to get on with the commission for the small boy.  I had sketched the design in a notebook and thought I knew what I was doing.  So I set about making the blocks and laid them out

This did not look right at all so I went back to the sketch and realised that I had omitted a whole lot of blocks.

This looked more promising, so I filled in with some more plain blocks

That is more like it.  Now for a mock up of one of the corners. There will be a chicane in each corner.

Now I see it, I am not sure about the small blue piece sticking out into the yellow and wonder if I should keep the blue to the inside and the yellow to the outside. I could do a curved piece of the blue to continue the blue all the way round and a cresent shape of the background fabric.
Anyone else got any suggestions?

I will go and sew the three middle rows together and see what inspiration strikes.

Threads

I played hookey from work today and had a wonderful trip to The handweavers studio in north London.
The shop was fantastic.

Lots of beautiful threads in all sorts of materials - silk, cotton, rayon, wool and many more.

What a treasure trove and needless to say I succombed and bought some.

Some are silk and some cotton and they will all be marvellous for hand quilting.  Have I got a project to use them in at the moment - no of course not, but the good thing about threads is that they don't take up much room and I can always dream.

I also went totally overboard and bought some tussah silk tops in the most marvellous colours

These are silk fibres which can be used with an embellisher. They come from Australia at Treetops colour harmonies I hope you can see them clearly in the pictures. The names of the fibres are magical - from top left
birds of paradise, thunderstorm, seahell, lavender lace, tranquil, southern seas and, at the bottom, madras.
Now all I need is to borrow an embellishing machine from my friend Maggie and see what happens. Both the madras and seashell fibres may end up in my pink heart quilt, I think.  The others - who knows!

If anyone out there and reading this has used this fibres, I would love to know what you have done with them.

Off to do some stroking!!

Roseville Block 3

I am finally beginning to work out how to make these blocks. The stems come first - made bias binding, fusible webbing on the back and then sewn down.

Then your take the individual shapes and glue and sew them into individual flowers

here are the flowers. This is such a good way of doing it as when it comes to sewing down the flowers you have a relatively large piece to sew around. I tend to use a Bottomline thread in sage green in the bobbin and an invisible thread on the top. I really enjoy the machine applique method but am not adverse to hand appliqueing the odd piece as well. As long as I have glued under all the edges, I am quite happy.

Then you place the largest pieces on to give the block a frame

Once you have got the frame of the block sewn down, then all you have to do is fill in with the flowers and leaves you have created earlier.

I am off to a small quilting group today to show them what I have been doing but I doubt I will get any time to sew - we seem to chat too much!! But hopefully I will be able to show you the finished block in a day or two.

demonstrating

When my quilt group came over on Friday, I decided to demonstrate the Sue Pelland rulers.  Well I should have known better. How is it that when you are excited about something and want to share it, everything goes wrong.  Well naturally it did - I was not concentrating and suddenly had cut out a leaf shape that was totally different from all the others. I have no idea how it happened but you could see the enthusiasm of all the others gathered round waning visibly.
But once they had left I continued to cut and came up with the following design

Some of the points do not meet exactly so I am thinking of using small circles of fabric to cover the points. I have also cut out several different sizes of leaves in the same fabric and am thinking of just doing an applique quilt with the various sizes of flowers.

Also managed to get the pink blocks done for the Beth Ferrier quilt over the weekend.

Off to do some work on the third Roseville block.

Student's work

I was teaching on Thursday evening and one of my students has finished this quilt.

She pieced the whole thing by hand and then had it machine quilted on a longarm machine. People always seem to think that hand piecing is so slow but if the only time you have to sew is in your lunch hour or do not have the space for a machine at home, then had piecing can really be done quite quickly.
The quilting is lovely, in a varigated blue, white and red thread with stars on it.

I love the way she has included an apple fabric in the top as he son (for whom this is intended) loves apples.
Congratulations Jane - brilliant work.

Roseville Block 2

I have finally managed to finish the second block of the Roseville quilt.

It has ended up not quite as flat as I would have liked but I think I have decided that I will have to hand quilt this quilt anyway so I will just have to do more quilting to flatten the whole thing out.  At the moment I can't still get a handle on the final colour scheme - am just trying to include the same sort of fabric in each block and hope it will all come together - if it is a disaster, I will just end up with a lot of cushions to sell!.

 But the technique is becoming clearer with each block. The fusible on the back of the bias binding has helped a lot and with the next block I am going to use the turquoise washable marker pen to draw in the stem lines and I am going to sew them all down first. Can't imagine why it has taken me this long to work out this system but hopefully it is going to be quicker.

The best news is that my local group here in London has decided to postpone their next show until spring 1213 which should give me plenty of time to finish this quilt and the Beth Ferrier as well.  It sounds an age away but I was beginning to panic when the first suggested date was autumn 1212.

Have just cut out the shapes for Block 3 and will post them as soon as they are all glued and ready for sewing.

state of stash - February

Oh dear - I really should be slapping my wrist. I have started a database for the amount of fabric I buy and use each month and today it makes horrific reading.  I have bought a total of 27.5 metres last month - OK in justification 19.5 metres were for the background for the two large applique quilts, so at least that is already in use. There was a further 8 metres for a commission quilt (why did I think that it was going to take that much fabric!).  But on the good side I have used 7.1 metres - most of it on quilt backings and borders for my students, but at least it has now gone.  And then there was the small cot quilt that I made.

So not a brilliant result but I will try and do better in March - at least I should not HAVE to buy anything, although I will be going to the Quilters Guild Regional Day on 19th March and they always have good traders. Perhaps I should just leave my credit card at home that day.

Off to clean the house before the book group arrive this evening.  We have just read Wuthering Heights and The Snowman by Jo Nesbo. I had not heard of Nesbo before but now his name seems to be all over the placewith new books coming out all the time. He seems to be Norway's answer to Steig Larsson. A totally gripping tale that I really enjoyed.