Stitched lino prints - Birds

I always like to have some hand sewing to do in the evenings - it stops me falling asleep in front of the TV! When I was lino printing these birds on cards for Christmas, I also did some on fabric for stitching at a later date. They are so relaxing and stress-free to do and yet never boring.

This small hanging is just 6 ½" x 13".

I sewed one of the lino prints to the back of the quilt.

After sewing on the binding I remembered a tip about sewing triangles into the corners for a hanging rod. Of course these should have been sewn in with the binding and hopefully I'll get it right next time. Nevertheless I went ahead and sewed them on anyway.

I cut two 2" squares and folded them into triangles. I would have cut larger squares for a larger quilt.

I placed them in the top corners, tacked them down and sewed the binding over the raw edges making sure that the stitches went through the triangles and  caught the backing. 

I'm chuffed with that - it makes a really neat finish. I would have used the same fabric as my backing, but I wanted you to be able to see my triangles. Triangles can also be sewn into the bottom corners for another rod to keep the bottom of a wall quilt nice and straight.

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday

Happy Stitching
Anita x

Curves and Circles

Sometimes when you're thinking about your next quilt project you have two new design possibilities and it seems a good idea to combine them in the one quilt. That's the way it's been with my Curvy Circles Quilt. (18" x 23")

The two thoughts were:

1. Wouldn't it look good if I did a strippy quilt of circles and floating rectangles where the circles were placed randomly along the strips
2. Instead of straight strips I could make them curvy.

That's when things started to get a little complicated as the circles couldn't be placed on the narrowest part of the curvy strips as they would be too small ........ there goes my very random idea!

So, as in life, my quilt is a compromise, which to my eyes doesn't quite work. Nevertheless I do like the curves and I do like the colours. The colours make me think that perhaps it's leaving certain ones out that makes for a better combination, rather than what we put in. I was going to say that I've left out two colours which are next to each other on the colour wheel - red and orange, but actually they are both there in very tiny amounts. Before I start a new scrappy quilt I hunt around in my small scraps, which are in a wicker waste paper bin .... and yes that does get a bit confusing at times :), and I lay them all out to see which to reject. Taking a photo sometimes helps.

This post explains how I do the circles and the floating rectangles - 6 minute circles - design 1, but this time I did the 6 minute circles by sewing with invisible thread and zigzag stitch and I used Steam-a-Seam-2 to attach raw edged small circles inside the larger ones, sewing them on with the same zigzag stitch.

I machine quilted around all the shapes and hand quilted with horizontal lines around the circles.

I've not sewn curves much except as in drunkard's path, so didn't anticipate the problems that I had with these serpentine curves - all the time thinking that there must be a better/easier way. In the end I unpicked my wobbly sewn seams and settled on the method below. This is an example using just two fabrics.

I drew my curves on cardboard using three evenly spaced straight lines to guide me. I drew some positioning marks across the curve. I cut carefully along the line as I wanted to use both halves of the cardboard as templates.

I put one of my pieces of fabric (pink) on some fine sandpaper to stop it moving about, and marked the curve. I used a Frixion pen and I copied each of the positioning marks onto the fabric.

I marked the other fabric (cream) using the other template.

I cut the curve of the pink fabric adding a seam allowance and I snipped into the seam allowance along the inside curve.I left the other fabric uncut.

Then I folded the seam allowance under being sure to have the pen mark along the folded edge and I tacked it down.

Finally I pinned the pink curve on top of the cream matching up the positioning marks.

The curve can be sewn by hand or by machine and the cream fabric in the seam trimmed once the seam is sewn.

Some of the seams that I sewed over were quite bulky and I remembered reading in Di Wells' blog about using a "Hump Jumper". It's so annoying when your sewing comes to a halt, the stitches mess up and you have to keep lifting the foot and adjusting the fabric. I made myself a hump jumper out of cardboard and it actually works!

Many thanks to Di for that tip!

To satisfy myself that both my ideas are good ones I'm now going to have to make two more small quilts:

1. A random strippy quilt - no curves
2. A precisely pieced circles and floating rectangles quilt where all the circles are evenly spaced and are placed at the widest part of my curves

This photo edited pic shows how a random strippy might look.

Mmmmmm - less circles methinks.

Well - back to the sewing machine then ............ goody - Anita x 

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday

Jo Colwill at Flowerpatch

It was wonderful to have Jo Colwill of Cowslip Workshops come to Flowerpatch Quilters' March meeting. Jo is a member of Flowerpatch - a founder member no less, and regrets that she is so busy with her Cowslip Workshops teaching that she rarely makes it to our meetings. She came along this time especially to talk about applique which is by far her favourite patchwork sewing technique and at which she excels - I'm sure she will say that it's all down to practise.

We were each given a kit to make a daisy pin cushion similar to these below.

But first Jo talked us through some of the applique quilts and cushions that she has made.
Her most used and favourite way to do applique is needle-turned where you draw the design on the back of the foundation fabric.
This is a detail from her quilt 'Dancing with Daisies'

and here is the beautiful centre of another quilt - with a detail, which has really tiny applique pieces.

In contrast this is Jo's colourful quilt of large daisy flowers - I love the daisy quilting between the flowers.

Her fun cushion 'Run Rabbit Run' uses raw edge applique.

These flowers, which are on two other cushions, are also raw edge applied.

Finally Jo showed us a large quilt in very different colours and this is one of the blocks of freezer paper appliqued tulips. I love their vibrancy.

It was lovely to see such diversity and Jo was so helpful to all of us as we endeavoured to sew tiny stems and neatly turned leaves and petals for our pin cushions. I, for one, find this very difficult, but not so all of us as this is the pin cushion that Iris L. has since finished and she enjoyed the applique sewing so much that she put a daisy on each side!

Thank you Jo for a super evening.
Please do visit Jo's Cowslip Workshops website - it is a delightful venue.

Update a couple of week's later - I persevered and did finish my pin cushion - I love it!

More excitement on the evening was to see our "Over the Rainbow" charity quilt finished. 

This has been quilted by Sandy Chandler on her Gammill Longarm Quilter so even the back looks absolutely stunning. 

I was lucky to be able to visit Sandy at work so here you can see our quilt on the machine and work in progress. Sandy did a hand-guided design of daisies.

You can read a bit more about "Over the Rainbow" in a previous blog post.
The quilt is being raffled in aid of Guide Dogs for the Blind - a most worthwhile cause.

Flowerpatch's next meeting is on 12th April when Lesley Coles will show us how to design patchwork blocks. Please bring along a pencil, ruler and coloured pencils. Lesley calls the evening " Making the most of your Scraps and Stash" - sounds like great fun.

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday

Happy Stitching - Anita x