Family News

This is what my lounge room looks like when my nephew comes to visit.  Actually, this is tidier than usual because I have an ice-cream container full of fabric scraps which he likes to scatter all over the room.   

Over the weekend I cut and laid out a little lap quilt for him.  His bed quilt is too big to drag around and I want him to have something smaller for when he is watching TV.  He helped me pick the fabrics for it, and he understands that I am making it for him.

 

I am using those nifty numbers again (thanks Janette).

Feather Options

Yesterday (Friday) I did a workshop with Jane Monk on Zentangles.  I really enjoyed it and I will upload some pictures soon.

This weekend I am babysitting my nephew Xavier.  Right now he is having his afternoon nap.  He has been asleep for over three hours, and I want to wake him up to play some more.  I am sure all the mums reading this would be thinking WHAT????

Anyway, whilst he has been asleep I have been playing with my brand new Bamboo Fun tablet. 

Last week I was given a stunning quilt by one of my long time and favourite customers.  (The quilt was made by her sister, and is beautifully pieced).  She wants feathers in the pink diamond area made of hexagons.  But how to place the feathers she left up to me.

Here are three options that I am considering. (I am still learning how to use the writing pad, so the feathers are a bit wonky, but you can get the idea.)

I like options 1 and 3 the most, as option 2 looks a bit messy or overdone to me.

What I really like about option 1 is the balance it has.  I am concerned with option 3 that the curved cross hatching might take over a bit.

Comments are welcomed.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

I might go check on my nephew, and make a bit of noise. :-)

Illumination

This is another one of my favourite quilts.  I pieced the top in 2006, and quilted it in 2007. 

This quilt really pushed me out of my comfort zone.  Whilst I had made scrappy quilts before, it was never quite on this scale, with the number of different fabrics.

I was trying to get the effect of an explosion of light towards the top right; toning the brown fabric from there, with shadowing of the star blocks.  

I used left over pieces on the back.

Rose Lattice

I am making more progress on the My Quilts page, and feel like the end is in sight.  It has been a lot of work getting this page done, but it has been really worth it since it is something I have wanted to do for a long time.  Still a little bit more to go, but nearly there.

I pieced this top in 2009, and quilted it in early 2010.  The design quilted in the border was from a Dover stencil book which I enlarged and changed slightly.  The rose quilted in the blocks I drew using inspiration from a rose in a piece of fabric I had in my stash.  Both the border and rose designs were traced onto the quilt using a light box.

After quilting, I coloured the border design and the roses in the white squares.

Anzac Day

Yesterday was Anzac Day, which is a public holiday here in Australia and my beautiful new niece was born at 9.47am.  My brother and his partner haven’t decided on a name for her yet, and are calling her their ‘Little Anzac Cookie’ for the time being.  I think the name Cookie might stick.  I can’t wait to hold her for the first time.

In the afternoon we went to see the Collingwood-Essendon football match at the MCG.  It was a sell out game and we were in the third from last row, right up in the nose-bleed section - but the view was still good.  The weather was perfect for it, and I am glad we were in the shade as it got quite warm in the middle of the day.

My sister brought my nephew Xavier with her but he didn’t have a seat of his own so the four of us shared caring for him during the game.  But as Paul is the current favourite, Xavier sat on his lap for three quarters.  I am sure Paul didn’t mind, but there were times when the game was getting tense and Xavier was making it just a little difficult for him to see what was going on.   

There were a couple of men behind us who were extremely loud and Xavier found their yelling very fascinating. He spent most of the first quarter just watching them.

Why Do I Quilt Freehand?

A few people have asked me why I only quilt freehand. 

The main reason is that I find it more fun, and it suits my personality and style of quilting best. 

I like working from the front of the machine because I like looking at the quilt and the fabric as I am quilting.  It allows me to do a better job because if there are any problems with the pieced top I am better able to correct it.  (For example, ease any fullness between the quilting stitches.)

I have developed a large number of freehand allover patterns, and can easily change or combine these patterns to whatever looks best.  Basically, if I can draw it, I can quilt it. I can easily go around elements in a quilt like appliqué as part of an allover pattern. I can also do a different allover pattern in a wide border than in the centre of the quilt as part of one continuous allover pattern.

So apart from enjoying it more, I feel that freehand gives me more flexibility in what I am able to do.

And for customers, this means that they aren’t getting an allover pattern with exact repeating designs; rather they are getting more creative quilting where the basic elements are repeated in a changing organic pattern.  I put a little bit of me into every quilt I do.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t admire what can be done with computerised systems, nor does it mean that I won’t consider doing this in future.  I am always open to change.  But right now I feel that freehand allows me to really enjoy my work, and offers my best to my customers.

Nifty Numbers

I had time for a little bit of sewing on one of the projects I am working on yesterday.  I finally got the sashing finished, and decided to put them all up on my design wall last night.

I had been complaining for a while that every time I lay out the blocks for a quilt, and get them just right, when I pick them up to sew them, I manage to mess up the order, and one or two end up in the wrong spot.

Well, early this year, Jeanette surprised me with these nifty numbers that she had made, laminated and cut out.  So last night I used them for the first time.  I decided to place the number in the top corner of each block to ensure I put the piece back in the exact same spot and with the right orientation.  

 They are working really well!

Yesterday morning we visited my niece and nephew.  Paul is like the pied piper of kids, and Mila and Asher like to climb all over him.  In this photo they were playing circus acrobats.