Sallie Waring at Flowerpatch

Our last Flowerpatch Quilters meeting was in March and, sadly, we don't know when our next meeting will take place. Everyone is sewing away at home hoping that we may still be able to have an exhibition in August.
It was lovely to have one of our own members as a speaker for the evening. Sallie was a member of Flowerpatch quite a long while ago and has rejoined us in the past couple of years, so she had lots of work to show that we hadn't seen before.

One of the first pieces that she made was a superb Baltimore quilt after tuition with Jo Colwill of Cowslip Workshops. Here are just a couple of the very detailed blocks.

I apologise that this one is out of focus but I love the oak leaves, acorns and berries so just had to show you.

Another link to Cowslip is this quilt that shows the shady seating area under the turf roof. There are always an abundance of beautiful flowers to enjoy.

I love this one. It is part of a snowy winter scene that Sallie made after a workshop with Susan Denton.

This picture shows part of a quilt made some years ago - Sallie has chosen lovely colours for her Lone Star.

Lately Sallie has made numerous A4 quilts - it's such a fun way to try out new techniques.

Many of Sallies quilts reflect her love of nature.

Thank you Sallie for an enjoyable, colourful and informative evening.

Stay safe everyone and keep smiling - Anita x

Half-Square Triangles Mini Quilt Challenge

A mini blog post about a mini quilt challenge!
I have just finished making this mini quilt for the latest Curated Quilts Challenge.

It measures just over 10" square and the colours are those picked by the organisers specifically for the challenge. This is really what draws me to do these particular challenges as they are nearly always colours that I wouldn't have dreamt of putting together. I'm intrigued as to what they will look like and I try to use all the colours.

The challenge title is HST/Subtraction and I have called my quilt "Colour Loss".

I quilted it with grey thread in a randomly spaced grid and bound each edge in a different colour.

Stay safe and well - Anita x

Flowers and Wood Turned Vases

My man does like a bit of wood turning on his old lathe and I like nothing more than the challenge of making flowers to put in the little vases he creates.

Today I have made delicate cherry blossom on a twig of cherry wood to compliment his "onion" shaped vase made of elm wood.

The flowers are made from small squares of vilene, coloured with Inktense pencils, and I followed this pattern to make the petals. The centres are narrow rectangles - coloured, edge snipped, rolled and then pushed through a small hole in the centre of the flowers. The flowers have a thread through the back of the centres which is tied onto the twig.

This is a taller vase made from pine for which I have made a single rose. 

The rose is made from a strip of thin fabric which is folded in half lengthwise.  I followed this pattern to make the rose which you can see on pinterest. Mine's a bit of a bodge but looks OK. I added two leaves to the stem which are simply cut from two layers of fabric stuck together with Steam a Seam 2. The wire which attaches them to the stem runs between the two layers of fabric.

This vase is turned from wild cherry wood which has lovely bark.

I made jolly felt flowers with button centres for this one, following these instructions.

My button flowers are in a small vase made from a log which had split and the split then filled with blue resin before turning.

Finally the lovely tulip vase he made some time ago from pear wood which I filled with watercolour paper roses.

What fun! - Anita x

Embroidered Seed Heads, etc

The rain and wind keeps on here in Cornwall so more sewing and I'm really enjoying having a go at machine embroidery.
This is my second attempt:

I have sewn rectangles of different fabrics to my base fabric before starting on the stitching. All the seed heads are slightly different to those on my first picture and after the machine sewing in dark grey I have done some hand embroidery - just straight stitch, back stitch and french knots.

I wasn't sure about the background so this is another I have sewn on plain calico.

This one is all machine embroidery apart from the dear little red flowers.

Finally a reminder of my first attempt which may still be my favourite - I love the daisies!

Happy sewing - Anita x

Questions and Cake at Flowerpatch

We had such fun at Flowerpatch Quilters last Thursday. The evening was titled "Questions and Cake" and there was plenty of both. Members had decided upon most of the questions at the previous meeting and anyone and everyone had an opinion on the answers so there was plenty of chat and laughter. To give you a taste these were some of the questions posed:

• Do you wash your fabric before you begin? - Most said "no" except for fabrics that will shrink a lot like calico.
• Do you follow a pattern or prefer to go your own way. - Most people seem to do a bit of each, even within the same quilt.
• What sewing gadgets would you recommend? - Lots of ideas here.
• Are pressing mats worth the expense? - The two people who have them think they're wonderful.
• What do you use to mark quilting lines? - There didn't seem to be a definitive answer to this and everyone seemed to have problems, especially with dark fabrics.

Etc, etc - I'm sure you get the drift and it was a thoroughly informative evening.

The cakes made by the committee were delicious and much appreciated. We all decided that it was an evening worth repeating in the future.

This weekend has been yet another extremely wet and windy one as we're in the middle of storm "Dennis". I've not bothered to step outside the door today and have had a lovey time sewing. I find it hard to practise free motion stitching (feed dogs down on the sewing machine) - it can be a bit boring, so I decided to do a picture with free motion instead. I have been wanting to stitch seed heads and umbelliferae etc for some time and, not being much good at drawing, I have copied shapes from pictures on Pinterest. These have been taken from "Snapdragon" .

I'm hoping that now I have copied I shall be able to design more of my own little pictures ........ I think it's raining tomorrow, too! 😀 I'm thinking that the next one will have machine and hand sewing - this one is all done by machine. They will probably be used as pages in my next book.

Happy stitching - Anita x

Flowers in Vases

I loved every minute of making this little quilt.

It measures roughly 31" x 25".

I started by sewing the vases of flowers using needle turned applique with embroidered stems and adding a little embroidery to the vases. When almost completed I did some shading and colouring with Inktense pencils - that was a bit scary as I could so easily have ruined all that applique work! This is a before and after using the Inktense.

Here is a link to the drawings of the flowers in their vases if you'd like to use them anytime. They measure roughly 5" x 7". -  Flowers in Vases

My applique was sewn on a cream fabric measuring 6" x 8" plus seam allowance. I sewed a strip of 8 flying geese 2" x 8" to the right hand side, 4 geese 8" x 1" to the top, a 2" x 9" strip of strings of scrappy fabrics to the left hand side and 5 square within square blocks measuring 2" x 2" to the bottom. This made an interesting block 10" x 11" ....... or thereabouts. (add seam allowance to all these measurements)

The string strips are so handy as they mean you can adjust the width of the block, if need be, before adding the squares at the bottom. I sewed all the flying geese by the "no waste flying geese" method in SuzyQuilts - Super Simple Flying Geese Tutorial

These are the other 4 blocks

You can see that I have used the Inktense pencils on the petals, vase and some of the leaves. I always imagine that the light is coming from the top left-hand corner. I was tempted to add a shadow of the vase on the cream fabric but was too frit!

I sewed two rectangular blocks as below to fit to the top and bottom of the middle flower/vase block. These measure 10" x 6½ "

I joined the 2 blocks on the left, and on the right, with another string strip so that I could match the length this made with the centre panel, by adjusting the width of this strip.

These are the 3 panels that make up the quilt

I quilted by machine along some of the seams and by hand around the applique and in the small yellow squares.

I sewed a narrow green border to the top and both sides of the quilt and then added binding in a blue and white fabric which I had used sparingly in the string strips.

And a final look:

Mixed in with the pleasure of a finish is the rather peculiar feeling of loss - this quilt doesn't need me anymore!! Best move on to the next ...... quickly!

Happy Days - Anita x

Afterthought ........ this photo edited pic gives an idea of what the blocks would look like made up into a larger quilt.

5 in 1 Flowerpatch meetings!

For various reasons I haven't written posts for our last few Flowerpatch Quilters meetings so this is a bit of a round up.

September
We started the new Flowerpatch year with a 4 corners evening. Sue showed some very intricate embroidery stitches and everyone had a go at sewing them, Iris explained how to make a snazzy zipper pouch for wonder clips (watch the video here), I encouraged members to have a try at using Inktense pencils on fabric and Dy showed how to sew multiples of half square triangles and flying geese.

October
This is our AGM meeting each year and also the evening when we hand over a cheque to our charity. We were delighted to welcome Paul Ford of the Cornwall Air Ambulance Heli Appeal to accept our cheque for £1700 , and to give us a very interesting and amusing talk about the work of the Air Ambulance. I believe that they have now almost reached their target for a new helicopter. After the business of the AGM committee members showed some of their UFOs most of which were many year's old.

November
I was really disappointed to miss this meeting as Abbieanne Searle gave a very entertaining talk about her sewing. By all accounts everyone had a great time - so much so that Abbieanne is making a return visit in late 2020 to do a mini workshop with us.

December
Our Christmas evening at Cowslip Workshops was, as usual, a very friendly and relaxing evening - Jo is the perfect hostess. We sewed stuffed hearts, appliqued with embroidered pictures. Thank you Jo, and also to Arnolda for some of the preparation work.
This is my finished hanging heart

For most of December we had a Christmas tree displayed in Launceston - firstly at St Mary's Church and then in the library. Dawn designed some very cute donkeys and sheep to hang on it.

January
This is the evening when the blocks come together for our new charity quilt. This year we are raising money for the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and very appropriately our quilt is called "Wildflower Meadow". Here are some of the blocks:

Yellow flowers

Red flowers

and Blue flowers

We spent a lovely evening sewing on extra flowers.

Next month,on the 13th February, we are having a question and answer evening when I think we'll all learn a lot by pooling our sewing knowledge. For instance one of the questions will be - "What is your favourite "can't do without" sewing gadget?" I'm really looking forward to hearing everyone's answers ..... and there's cake, too! - should be a fun evening.
There's also another challenge in the offing. We're sewing "Finchies" - all will be revealed.

Happy Sewing
Anita x