We had an abundance of small and medium sized quilts at Flowerpatch Quilters exhibition this year.
These are some of the medium sized quilts.
Firstly 3 quilts made by Annie:
The very appropriately named "Buzzing Around"
"Tree of Life" - a Wendy Williams design
and Annie's own design "Time to Go".
These next three were made by Iris L:
"Wonky Stars" made by the stack & whack method
"Cornish Waves" - a foundation pieced storm at sea
and Iris' own design "Peaceful Piecing".
This is "A Quilter Lives Here" made by Chris - a Mandy Shaw design.
"Finlay's Comfort Quilt" - made with love by Cherrie
"Birds on a Wire" - another Wendy Williams design, made by Liz
"Rose Bowl" by Pauline C
"Warm Heritage" by Arnolda - a cosy woollen quilt to curl up under
and finally "Blue Bird Avenue" made by my friends Ann, Brenda, Dawn, Phyll, Sheila and myself. This quilt has been raffled to raise money for Macmillan Nurses.
It's been so lovely writing this blog and seeing the quilts all over again. Next time - even smaller quilts. - Anita x
Apologies for the delay, but at last I can show you some of the quilts at the Flowerpatch Quilters Exhibition in August.
Firstly some, but not all, of the larger quilts:
This is "Tulipa" by Melody which was longarm quilted by Sandy Chandler
"The Fall Guy" by Karen, also quilted by Sandy
"Luna's Little Monkeys" by Chrissie
"Gardening Makes Me Happy" by Pippa
"Life in Blues" by Elizabeth
"Folly Baltimore ll" by Sue - another beautifully quilted by Sandy
"Mr Noah's Quilt" by Jo C
and part of Pauline C's "Lazy Daisy"
More quilts next time - Anita x
I love looking at the pictures on Pinterest and get stuck there viewing page after page. What a brilliant resource for ideas, especially when you want to make something specific. The latest thing it has had me making (attempting) is button flowers. There are lots on there and they all look so cute that I just had to have a go.
This is the result -
They were easy to make and I used green fabric and Steam-a-Steam 2 to do the leaves.
There are much more beautiful arrangements on Pinterest so do go and have a browse if you're interested.
The rest of this post is about things that I have made as presents for friends and relations.
Having not done any crochet for some years I was pleased with how this white rabbit for Sheenah turned out.
I did get confused between the different names for the same stitches in other countries and had crocheted quite a lot in UK single crochet instead of double crochet before I realised he was going to be far too teeny tiny. He's quite a little bunny anyway! This was another Pinterest find.
And yet another I found on Pinterest is this knitted Dude Doll. This was so simple and just made from a stripey rectangle of knitting. All the shape is in the sewing up. I seem to remember that he is about 4" tall.
A golden wedding prompted me to make this fabric card, having previously made cushions for B & V's silver and ruby weddings.
It was the first time that I tried printing on fabric with my hp printer. I ironed the fabric on to freezer paper and it was much easier than I anticipated and not at all messy.
Finally this is a cushion that I made for Marie-Laure. The design was taken from one of her Mandala paintings.
Never a dull moment! - Anita x
Yet again we were so lucky to have beautiful flower arrangements to compliment our quilts at the recent Flowerpatch Quilters Exhibition. Thank you so much to Maggie, Jane and Mary for their time and their skills.
Here are a few pics from the exhibition.
More pictures of individual quilts etc. to follow ........
- Anita x
My "Love to Stitch" book has been a real delight to sew. I've tried to use all sorts of stitches in its making and it has become a sample book of some of the sewing that I've enjoyed in the past few months. It was my entry for the Flowerpatch Quilters challenge "Love is in the Air".
Here are all the pages starting with the cover:
Now a little bit about each page:
On the cover I've used Sashiko cotton to stitch the letters and then many colours of embroidery cottons to stitch along the lines of the fabric pattern like Kantha work.
Next the inside cover. When I had made all my pages I realised that there weren't any that actually represented "Love is in the Air". Luckily I was off to a jumble sale and bought some music (the Air) upon which to sew some hearts (Love). I did think that I would simply stitch on the music with a free motion design of hearts, but my sewing machine had other ideas and just made a mess of stitches. I took out the threads and perforated the heart shapes with the needle so that I could tear them out. I placed the dotty red fabric behind and couched red thread between the hearts.
Page 1 is a heart made from cross stitches. When Susan Denton visited Flowerpatch she showed many quilts where the hand quilting included cross stitching so I thought I'd try it. I also like the quilting around this heart which is a combination of machine and hand quilting.
Page 2 is the design that we used when practising reverse applique. I added some embroidery stitches
Page 3 is one of the designs that we used in Flowerpatch's charity quilt. again I added embroidery stitches.
Page 4 is another of the designs in the charity quilt. More embroidery. You can print off a copy of this design here.
Page 5 is a lino printed pear which I have embellished with applied fabric and ...... you guessed it - embroidery.
Page 6 is a sample of a Lynette Anderson design. This was a trial to see how difficult it might be and now my friends and I are making a quilt using this and many other of Lynette's designs.
Inside the back cover is a redwork design that I found online. I realised that I had never actually sewn any redwork and it fitted with the theme of the book perfectly.
The back cover uses the same fabric as the front. I have spiral quilted by both machine and hand.
Each page was made up individually with a thin wadding backing. Then they were sewn together in pairs (right sides together, sew around 3 sides then turn the right way out). Calico was sewn to the open, spine sides of the pages and then they were put together by binding all the open sides with the black, gold and green fabric to make the spine.
What fun!! - Anita x
