Journal Quilts - 2009

I was reminded recently of the Journal Quilts that I sewed - one each month for a year. On looking them out I was amazed to see that they were made in 2009 - how time flies. I thought it would be nice to travel down memory lane and write this blog post about them.

January shows trees that I saw on a walk on Davidstow Moor, with the shady side of each covered in wet, velvety moss. It snowed in February and then froze so that the snow on the wood stack changed to crispy ice.

In March we walked on Dartmoor and the water in the West Okement River seemed to be black. The Hazel coppice has a yellow carpet of celandines in April.

In May blackbirds built their nest in the wood stack and we visited the Fitzwilliam Museum while in Cambridge in June - this is the ceiling.

It's always lovely walking the southwest coast path and, in July, the buddleias are in bloom. August shows the "hot garden" at Rosemoor Gardens.

On a trip to Derbyshire in September we visited Arkwright's Masson Mills in Cromford. October I did some printing with leaves and did Kantha stitching inspired by Tricia Warman.

Finally a trip to family in Sussex inspired the Seven Sisters in November and December saw us laying waterpipe to our house across a neighbour's field. It was a very cold job!

I so wish now that I'd continued making journal quilts for other years.
Happy Stitching - Anita x

Still Life - a different perspective

What a joy this little quilted wall hanging has been to make and I'm pleased with the result, too, a win-win! It measures approx 9" x 11" and is inspired by the brilliant lino prints of Jane Walker. I love the way she captures two different perspectives in one print.

I find that when I want to do a picture quilt it is much easier for me to draw it small - less intimidating than a large blank sheet of paper. Then I use my light box to make copies changing a few things as I go until I'm happy with the result. I scan this last copy into my computer as a Jpeg and then I can crop it in my photo editing. I insert it into my office draw program and make it the size that I want before printing it out. I can only print A4 size so if I want it larger I have to crop the scan into two, or more, so that I can print 2 A4 sheets, or more, and tape them together.

I trace my picture onto the reverse of some light coloured base fabric (and in reverse). I usually use calico, and I sometimes trace it onto the front as well if I think this will be helpful. For this picture the lines on the back were the more useful as I sewed much of it by needle turned applique.

Here are some close ups:

Apples and Pears

A Vase of Flowers

A Jug

And an extra pic to end

I loved doing this little quilt so much that another still life is in the planning stage.

Happy stitching - Anita x

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