I have two baskets of small fabric scraps in my sewing room. One contains all the blues, purples, pinks and reds; while the other holds everything else. I decided to pull out some of the fabrics from the "everything else" basket many of which were old favourites that I couldn't bear to part with despite their diminutive size. My challenge was to make something from just these fabrics with no additions allowed. What joy that in the basket I found a strip of green fabric printed with little houses.
This is the result:
I had been reading a quilt book by Colleen Wise called "Casting Shadows" and tried to create the effect, but with limited success because of my "no additions" rule. You may be able to see what I mean in the following pics.
This is after piecing - can you see the dark line is supposed to be the shadow of the green square?
I think it shows a bit better now that I've quilted around the green square, both inside and outside, and around the little house square, which also has a shadow.
And in this pic I've stipple quilted all over the background including the shadows.
Colleen chooses her shadow fabric very carefully to be a darker shade of the background fabric - mine's a bit of a hotch potch!!
I definitely needed the practise with free motion machine stippling, and just occasionally I felt relaxed enough to enjoy the process.
This is a link to the method that I used to make up the cushion ........ Making a Basic Cushion
The back of the cushion is a piece of curtaining that I had left over. I sewed a strip of the lovely little house fabric along an edge of one half of the backing.
One final look as it didn't turn out too badly ....
Happy Sewing
Anita x
As anticipated the February meeting of Flowerpatch Quilters was a delightful trip around the south west coast of England in the company of Brenda Thomas and her wonderful wall quilts.
I had seen Brenda's quilts at many of the major exhibitions, often sporting a rosette or complimentary judge's comment, and it was so lovely to see them all and hear from her own lips the inspiration behind them and techniques that she uses in their making.
This is "Layers of Polperro" which is the first quilt that Brenda entered into an exhibition.
Brenda said that she started creating her very first quilt using free fabric (mostly furnishing) in case it all went wrong! She needn't have worried as it was lovely! Nevertheless she has continued to use all manner of different fabrics in her hangings and not just the more usual cottons. She tried out many methods to sew around and on her applique pieces, including using stitches on her sewing machine that we all think we'll never have a need for.
Brenda started by sewing a binding to her pictures to finish the edges, but now simply "bags" them (right sides together and sew all the way around, then turn the right way through a slit cut in the backing which is hidden by the sleeve), or she adds a facing. I really like the way that the houses, etc extend right to the edge.
This is a link to Victoria's tutorial on facing a quilt.
This mini below is only A4 size but all the detail is super - it's looking out of a window towards the harbour.
Brenda is renowned for her coastal scenes as above, but she also does other more abstract work and I love this sunset over the sea.
Brenda is doing a two day workshop at Cowslip on 28th and 29th March 2019 and there may be places available should you be interested.
Thank you Brenda for sharing all your work. We had a great evening and I'm sure there's many a scene being designed by Flowerpatch members even as I write - so very inspiring.
You can see more of Brenda's quilts in my previous posts:
Spring Quilt Festival
West Country Quilt Show
and Quilt Festival in Exeter
Our next meeting is on 14th March 2019 when we will be joined by Susan Denton.
Happy Stitching - Anita x
The start of a new year sees Flowerpatch Quilters beavering away at their sewing to get the blocks of the next charity quilt finished and ready to sew together. Our quilt this year will be raising money for the Cornwall Air Ambulance - so vital in this rural area.
This year's double quilt is called Colour Treat as many of the designs used in the blocks come from the book "Dutch Treat" by Judy Garden. Her applique squares are inspired by Delft tile designs.
We used many bright colours in the making of our blocks rather than the usual blue.
The apple and pear are our own creations.
If you'd like to use the designs yourself this is a link to a printer friendly copy - Apple and Pear
We also sewed the simple heart in a circle which we used when practising the applique technique at our September meeting.
Our applique blocks will alternate with ninepatch blocks in the finished quilt. These have been made up with 2½" squares of calico and neutrals.
Finally I must mention the amazing quilt by Annelize Littlefair which was the real inspiration to make this charity quilt in so many lovely colours. It's called "Journey". There is a picture on my previous blog post, but it in no way does the quilt justice.
I look forward to showing you the completed quilt in a few weeks time.
Our next Flowerpatch meeting is on 14th February 2019 when Brenda Thomas will be talking about her quilts of our coastal villages .... and much more. This will be such a joy.
Happy Stitching - Anita x
Christmas, a special birthday and New Year rather got in the way of me doing the latest Curated Quilts challenge. In actual fact I didn't even get started until the beginning of 2019 and entries had to be linked by the 2nd of January. Nevertheless I do like a challenge and the colours specified were well outside my comfort zone. Part of the challenge for me is to try and use them all. Also the challenge was curved piecing - something I'd like to do more of, so I couldn't resist having a go.
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| 12" x 12" |
I have been dithering for some time as to whether or not to write this post as I'm not happy with the result of my efforts, but it's interesting to try and figure out the reason. I think that it's simply the colour combination doesn't appeal to me. Maybe that's always the case when we look at quilts and really the one's we like are just made in our favourite colours, the actual design plays second fiddle.
This is a link to the Curated Quilts website where you can view all the mini quilts that were entered. Do go along and try to pick out your favourite. Much harder - try to decide why you like it!
Happy Sewing - Anita x
I've never sewn a string quilt but I love some of the designs that TheEclecticAbuela comes up with on her blog and, with my two baskets of tiny scraps overflowing, I thought it was about time I had a go. I intended to make a mini quilt, but just went with the flow and ended up with two square panels to use on each side of a shoulder bag. I thought that this would be a really easy project, but I seemed to have to make quite a few decisions.
I started by cutting strips less than 1" wide from my fabric bits, although I did cut the really short pieces for the corners a little wider so that they wouldn't completely disappear into the seams.
Decision 1 - should I cut dominant fabrics narrower so that they don't ..... dominate? By the time I came to do the second lot of squares I'd decided that the answer was "YES"
I've marked a couple of the 'too wide' strips, in the first block that I did, with arrows, but there were more which I unpicked and changed.
I cut out 2" squares from paper - this is the size that I wanted the string squares to be before sewing them all together. I sewed 4 string squares at a time, without cutting the threads between them, so as to save on thread ...... and thread snarl ups.
I laid a strip across the paper square from corner to corner, right side up.
Decision 2 - should I mark a diagonal line across the paper square so that all the fabrics are at the same angle? "NO" because the wonky angles made the finished block more interesting ...... and even if I tried to keep them straight they'd be sure to go wonky!
I laid another strip on top of the first, right sides together and sewed them together with a small seam allowance and short stitch length.
I folded back the second piece of fabric and trimmed off some of the excess fabric around the edge of the paper square.
Now I could carry on in the same fashion, stitching all my seams through the paper (and sometimes I lost the plot and this is what I did!!), but it's a real drag when you get to the end of sewing the square and you have all that paper to tediously remove. Instead I sewed the next seams just through the two layers of fabric with the paper folded back out of the way, checking each time that the paper square would be covered by the new fabric.
In the pics below I'm adding more strips of fabric in the same way.
Once all the strips are sewn on I trim the edges back to the paper size.
I do like before and after pics - so this is where my squares get a makeover! Don't they look a mess before I trim them?
And on the back only one stitching line through the paper which tears off quickly and easily.
Then Decision 3 - how to arrange the squares for my finished block - I did both 6" blocks the same and (Decision 4) I pressed all the seams open. I added a check border. I laid them on some thin cotton wadding and machine quilted a spiral on each, starting just off centre and extending into the border.
These are the ingredients for my bag:
- 2 sides. I sewed some brown fabric from old trousers to the edges of the blocks to make them 10" wide by 11½" long
- 2 gingham linings the same size
- A 36" handle - the longest I could cut from a trouser leg. Cut 2½" wide and folded to make 4 thicknesses. I would have liked this a bit longer so I made the handle holding loops longer to compensate.
- 2 handle holding loops cut from the brown check
- A zip (from the trousers) with a brown check tab on each end. I would have liked the zip to be an inch longer but heyho.
I made up the bag in the same way as my last Sashiko Bag including a Boxy Bottom.
I didn't make much of a dent in my baskets of scraps. The blue/red/pink basket looks untouched and the "every other colour" basket seems just as full, but not quite so colourful!!
Well done if you've stuck with my marathon of a blog post to the very end .... and "thank you". - Anita x
I'm linking up with Fiber Tuesday
After an evening of reverse applique at the September Flowerpatch meeting I really wanted to carry on practising the technique. I'd been reading a lovely book by Gloria Loughman "quilted symphony" and felt inspired by her use of pattern within landscapes.
This is my take on Caradon an amazingly beautiful man-made landscape in SE Cornwall, sculpted by quarrying and mining in the past. It measures approx 12" x 9".
It's one of my favourite places to walk and I always take lots of photos whilst there.
I started my wall hanging by drawing the curved horizontal lines on paper and, using Gloria's method, traced them onto freezer paper in reverse. I ironed this onto the different fabrics, trimmed and folded the top edge over the freezer paper to make a hem. Then they were sewn down in order starting from the top and sewing along the top edge with the blind hem stitch on my sewing machine.
The triangles and "circles" and lines were done by reverse applique, tacking various coloured fabrics behind the main landscape.
Here are some close up pictures of the applique and stitching.
I extended the mustard yellow landscape area into the border binding after sewing on a tiny flange of the orange fabric. See this post on how to add a flange insert.
Life is Good - Anita x
At Flowerpatch Quilters we like nothing more than spending an evening surrounded by old quilts. Especially when they are accompanied by their very knowledgeable owner Sara Price - The Quilt Lady.
Sara started by showing us a quilt that had been especially made for a four poster bed with the corners cut out to accommodate the posts at the foot of the bed. She explained why some of the colours in the quilt had faded more than others as the quilt would have been originally made with very bright cottons and chintzs. The greens and purples are fugitive dyes and readily fade whereas blues remain strong. This quilt was made by the English Paper Piecing method and I hadn't realised that sometimes the "papers" were intended to be left inside the quilt. Only 5 minutes into Sara's talk and I've already learnt a lot!!
The next to be shown was a small folded log cabin - each strip was really narrow. Sara thought the design made by the positioning of each block to be very unusual and would love to know if it has a name.
There were a lot more quilts to follow including one which was made by a Cornish soldier in India. This wasn't done on papers, but the squares were barely 1" and it may have been used laying on the floor of a tent.
A silk and velvet tumbling blocks
A four patch scrap quilt in Springtime colours made by an 80 year old lady.
and many, many more.
The final quilt that Sara showed was a "Red Cross" quilt. These were sent from Canada to the UK during the war and given to those in the greatest need. You can read a little more about these on this Quilters Guild website page.
All in all a fascinating and friendly evening - thank you so much Sara.
Our next Flowerpatch meeting is on 13th December at Cowslip Workshops, when Jo will have us doing some exciting sewing in the cafe. Please bring along sewing kits.
Happy Stitching - Anita x
