Purple and green quilt nearly done

We had typical winter weather this weekend with frequent showers. We did get to the Farmers Market on Saturday but there were definitely fewer people about and you had to have an umbrella. Sunday there were bursts of sunshine for which I am always grateful for.

The weekend saw some progress on the purple and green gridlock quilt. The quilting isn't perfect but it is done. Interesting how the quilting is always better near the end of the quilt compared to the beginning. Today should see some tidying up and the binding going on.

Nearly done.

Quilting in progress.

It will be so good to get this quilt done and ready to go to Australia. Deadlines can be a good thing especially when you are slotting extra projects in. I am looking forward to getting back to what I should be working on though, the pile has been growing while working on these gridlocks. 

The next show and share for the Top 5 is next week which will be the second one for the year and so far I have had nothing on my list completed. I had been working on them until I made the decision to make these gridlock quilts. Both of the ones that I have been working on need the quilting to be completed. I will try hard to get one as close to completion as I can by the club meeting next week.

My sewing machine is calling, I have some stitching to do. Until next time, happy stitching everyone.

Donna-Maree

Progress on Home Coming Lane

Yes, there has definitely been some movement with this project. 

I don't like quilting big quilts any more, well to be honest I have never liked quilting larger quilts on the machine, my shoulders and patience really just don't cope with it at all. Quilting is supposed to be fun and if it isn't fun, then I just don't do it. 

This probably explains my reluctance to quilt anything and complete things and why I have so many UFO's lurking in my sewing room and any other place that I have been able to stash them around the house. This is exactly why the Top 5 group at club has been established, it was an idea sparked by a conversation about these UFO's and the need to tackle them. My stack of UFO's was made very public last year when I presented my quilting journey at club and showed many flimsies amongst my presentation.

Yes some of these flimsies are due to just needing some mindless sewing during semester breaks while I was studying a few years ago and others were waiting for me to up skill myself so I had the techniques and confidence to do the next step without wasting all the work that had been put into it already, nor waste the fabric. There are many reasons why our projects end up in the UFO bin.

However, I digress - last week we had our first show and tell for the first quarter of the Top 5 group and I was incredibly disappointed with myself that although I have been chipping away at this project, it wasn't completed in time for this reveal. It was very exciting seeing everyone else's completions and hearing how long they had indeed been UFO's before graduating to a completion and while I was excited for them all I couldn't go past the fact that I didn't have anything completed.

I tend to over think things and I haven't been able to decide which batting to use for this quilt, which is silly really thinking about it now. The purpose for this quilt is to hang on the wall and once I realised that either of the two choices were going to work there was no stopping me. So Tuesday saw me grab some batting and some backing and I put my sandwiches together. 

I had decided a while ago that I would 'quilt as you go' this quilt in four sections. Each block is 25" square and so I decided to just go with that. 

Yesterday I cleaned my machine - it sure doesn't take long for the lint to build up - and I couldn't put it off any more. Without thinking too much I just started, I worked out where I was going first and just did it. I decided to stitch in the ditch around the house blocks, the appliqué flower, vine and bird blocks and the pinwheels. The stitch in the ditch will give the wall hanging a good base and some definition as the quilting in the scrappy squares will be different to these areas. 

Funny isn't it how you don't notice things when you are putting the quilt top together but notice things as you are quilting them. On the second block I noticed that two leaves somehow avoided the blanket stitch brigade, yet I was so sure that I had checked and double checked everything. 

The 25" squares are working very well, they are a very good size to get through the machine while quilting and are easy to turn and roll without too much bulk, they were also a really good size to batt up on the end of the kitchen bench.

Today I will carry on, at this stage I have no idea what I am going to do next but I am sure it will come to me. Until next time, happy stitching everyone.

Donna-Maree

November is moving on

I don't know where the last few weeks have gone. I have spent some time away with mum to get the results from some tests. We are just waiting now to hear when her treatment starts.

We spent some time with mums brother and his wife along with their grown daughters calling in to catch up with us too. It is really nice being so welcomed and having the support from extended family especially through these stressful times. My sister who lives in Australia was here for several days which was nice and my sister who lives in Auckland managed to get some time off which allowed us to spend an afternoon and evening all together with mum. It has been a very long time since mum has had her three daughters all together like that, special quality time. The time spent with mum, my sisters and my relatives made me appreciate anew the support of people who care about each other. 

I worked on my hexies a little while I was away and it was very special sitting with my Aunty Bev and us both working on our hexies together while visiting with each other. My hexie collection is growing, I will have to start sewing some together soon.

I have spent some time doing more organising in the sewing room and have now completed sorting all fabrics into bins by colour. This took longer than I thought it would and I now have better knowledge of my stash. I don't think it matters how large or small your stash is, I do think we all have more fabric than we remember and I do have more than I thought I did.

This afternoon I watched some videos on machine quilting by Leah Day and then had a bit of a practice session, trying out a couple of the design ideas I had seen on the videos. The first one was a meandering ribbon type design, this was more difficult than I thought it would be. The scale I was doing this on was a little small and I will try it again on a bigger scale. 

The second pattern I did was a curved line pattern which I really enjoyed doing and love how it looks. I think this one will appear on some quilts in the near future. 

The biggest thing that I got from watching the videos of Leah's today was to give myself permission to play and explore and that practice will develop my repertoire of designs while developing my self confidence in using them. Yes, I knew this already but sometimes it is good to have a reminder.

I also spent some time de boning some of my husbands shirts that were worn around the collar. The shirts were still in good condition other than the collars and will make a good contribution to my strip drawers and scrap bins.

That is all for today, so until next time happy stitching everyone.

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway...

I have many quilt tops that have been sitting quite a while waiting patiently to be quilted, occasionally I can hear them calling to me as they want to be quilted and promoted to being out of the cupboard.

I have been procrastinating over quilting these quilts, but I am beginning to feel totally blocked by them as there are lots of ideas for new quilts in my head and I know that I can't begin them until I have dealt with this pile. I am also aware that I have an opportunity of time at the moment to deal with these now and that opportunity is fast running out. 

One of the reasons also for my procrastination is that four of these quilt tops are for gifts for very special people in my life that mean a lot to me and I want to do the best job that I can do on their quilts. A lot of time and money has been invested in these tops already and I am scared I will stuff it up as I haven't machine quilted for a while now.

So I pondered on this and decided that I needed to do some practice, but I really don't see the point in practicing on a practice sandwich. 

I am not sure when I created this little wall hanging, but it was my version of machine stitching or thread play and at the time that I created it I was quite happy with it. However lately I keep looking at it and can't help but think that it needs some updating. I used this as my practice piece and this is the result.

This is the result of my practicing and I learnt a lot through doing this. I started by doing the lines in the petals with variegated thread but this drew up the fabric around the flowers, so I had to work out what I was going to do in the background to even it out a little. The background also needed to be a design that was completely different to the flowers otherwise they wouldn't stand out. Circles seemed to be just the right thing. Then the borders desperately needed some taming so I flicked through my book to get some inspiration and decided on the continual curves around the edges.

I purchased Angela Walters book a few years ago now to help me through the inspiration slumps that happen when you are machine quilting and for when I don't know what to do next. I find that it definitely helps me work out what my options are.

I am happy with the end result, it isn't perfect but it is done and I am much further ahead than I would have been if I had done nothing and let the procrastination continue. I felt the fear and I did it anyway and I feel better equipped to tackle the pile of quilt top that are waiting for their turn at the machine.

I love getting your feed back so please feel welcome to leave a comment.

Until next time

happy stitching everyone.

Donna-Maree