Red and white

This weekend I've been working on another new quilt.

It's just a small one this time; a table runner for Australian Patchwork & Quilting. I had all the foundations ready to go and all the fabrics cut, including the border and binding.

Because of the white background, it was important to trim the dog-ears from the red pieces so they wouldn't show through the front of the quilt when it's done, so I had a pretty pile of  scraps on the table. Normally I chain-piece and don't end up with so many thread-ends, but to start with the seams on my foundations were only in the centre, so I had to pull each piece well through the back of  the machine before putting the next one in, leaving me with this big pile.

I had plenty of uninterrupted sewing time because Saturday was the start of the sailing season. A a couple of weeks ago Simon bought a third boat (this one for Eleanor), so the three of them were down at the sailing club for opening day all day. It needed a bit of superficial repair work first (above).

The blocks came together really nicely - until I realised I'd used the wrong colour in for one piece in two of them. It's a real pain going back and replacing pieces in foundation-pieced blocks after the fact. It can (usually) be done - and I did it - and I'm glad I did, but there were four-letter words said! I'll be extra-careful when I check the instructions now. The fun part comes next - quilting it.

Icy

My latest applique quilt, Icy, is is the new issue of Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine (Volume 24 Number 3) which should be available in stores locally any day now.

It's the Christmas issue, but I chose to use my special snowflake fabrics (even the background fabric is a white-on-white snowflake print!) because I love the colours and of course the imagery, even though it's hardly representative of an Australian Christmas!

All the applique pieces are shaped like feather plumes, and were appliqued at the same time as the quilting; shown in the photo below:

I use Lite Steam-a-Seam2 for all my fused applique. It gives the best hold without adding stiffness and prevents fraying effectively, plus I love the temporary hold you can get from the heat of finger-pressing the pieces in place. It's finally back in production and hopefully back on the shelves after almost a year - read the story here. Fortunately I had (have) a large roll on hand!

Some of the smaller plumes ended up with little snowflakes positioned really nicely at the tips! The aqua plumes are only about 1.5" long.

The texture is lovely; I could spend ages running my fingertips over this quilt!

All the applique is done first in matching threads, then I filled the background in white McTavishing. My McTavishing style is constantly evolving. This time I experimented with breaking up the larger expanses with some longer, curvier swirls and used more echoed Cs to fill in spaces that I have previously.

Oops! I've just noticed a tiny unquilted gap in the photo above - can you spot it? It only needs a single line adding; I'll do it next time I'm quilting.

I've also realised that plume applique shapes placed in some sort of circular formation is becoming a bit of a habit recently, for example:

(Louise)

(Splash!)

Hmm. There are a few more plume appliques on another upcoming quilt, too! As much as I love them, it's time for a change, I think!

This little piggy

It's school holidays and last week over just a couple of days, Eleanor and I quilted her first quilt. First we went through the process of pulling out about a dozen threads of various types in coordinating colours and I guided her through auditioning them and narrowing down the options until we found her favourite.

I started by making her draw out the meander on paper a few times, which really didn't impress her, but it's just so important to get an idea in our head and muscles of what we're going to quilt. Jamie Wallen reminded us of this in his class at AMQF and I took special note to tell her!

It's quilted in a simple meander spaced at about 1in, and we finished it in 6-7 sessions of 10-15 minutes each. As I do with James, I stand Eleanor on a child's wooden chair in front of me at my machine, and she rests her hands lightly over mine as we quilt. By the end she got quite good at understanding where we'd need to go next to fill in the spaces.

She's been at me ever since to finish it off, so tonight I had a view of these and plenty of other pigs (she chose quite a selection of pig prints for her backing!) while I hand sewed the binding down.

Eleanor has already chosen several fabrics for her next quilt, which she insists will be for me!

Gathering thoughts

I'm still gathering my thoughts for a summary post on my classes at AMQF, but I have to say Jamie Wallen was my unquestionable highlight. I did a Thread Fusion class with him yesterday morning and was blown away. I learned so much, and had so much fun! WA girls, he's heading Perth this weekend, and I advise you to drop everything and get into his class(es) any way you can!

 (Magpie lark on the footbridge)

At the end of the day, this time with camera in hand, I decided to wander over the new footbridge towards Adelaide Oval and act like a tourist for a while.

(Festival Centre behind the waterfeature off the side of the new footbridge)

Today I'm piecing though. I've a stack of water prints out, but I'm not working on a beach scene. Instead, so far I've created three of these gradations from dark to light, to which I'm going to add some appliqued sections.

This quilt is headed for Australian Homespun next year, so there will only be peeks until then.

Lucky to be in Adelaide

This time every two years I say how lucky I am that the Australian Machine Quilting Festival is held right here in Adelaide. It brings fabulous national and international quilting teachers to my doorstep! The 3rd festival opened on Wednesday and today (Thursday) I took the day off work and went to a couple of classes - I have more in the next 2 days.

In the morning I went to a lecture/demo by the talented Judi Madsen from Green Fairy Quilts on the use of straight rulers. I'm definitely going to have to rig myself a foot that will work with rulers on my 820 (I've seen a few hacks) and get a quilting ruler and try it out. I really wish Bernina would make a free-motion foot for use with rulers. There was an opportunity to take photos of a few samples after the class, but it was very crowded, and silly me forgot my proper camera, so I just looked.

After lunch I had a break and enjoyed some quiet time reading by the Torrens. It really was lovely, with families out enjoying the parks in the holidays, the new footbridge in use and reflecting the sparkling water, Popeye and the paddle boats going past, and this local below who sat with me for about 5 minutes, before nearly clipping me with its wings as it flew off:

In the afternoon I went to a lecture/demo by Linda Taylor called Feathered Dreams. I was especially delighted to see Linda on the list of teachers, having discovered her back here, when I quilted this feathered quilt for a friend. Unfortunately scheduling clashes meant I could only fit in one of her classes, but I'm so glad I went; she's a brilliant teacher! Even with only my iphone, I couldn't help take a photo of this beauty she'd brought in, but how I wish I had my good camera to take a better photo of it!

(detail of quilt by Linda V Taylor)

I think I will have feathered dreams tonight! And tomorrow I will take my camera!

Spring

Here are some progress photos on a spring quilt I've been working on.

I can't show more photos before it's published, but it's in purples and greens, and uses the lovely scallop print from Tula Pink's Parisville. It's come almost entirely from my stash, including the white-on-white snowflake I used for the background.

I dithered for ages about whether to make it scrappy or not and went for scrappy. I'm not sure why, because scrappy isn't really my style. I do like the finished quilt top, but I think I'd've loved it if I'd stuck with my instincts!

There's applique as well as piecing, and it's more of the plume shape which has shown up in quite a lot of my recent quilts. And the quilting matches the applique.

Louise

Louise is in the current, 20th Anniversary, edition of Australian Patchwork & Quilting (Vol 24 No 2), and is one of my favourites:

It was rather appropriately inspired by a lovely weekend Simon and I spent here in the Barossa Valley for our wedding anniversary last year, but I chose the name because it's also my middle name. We were there in early summer, but I chose these lovely autumnal colours which make me think more of sitting in front of a roaring fire!

I started the quilt with a selection of creamy text and map prints, augmented by some tone-on-tones - including, of course, a snowflake print! Perhaps I should make it my aim to include something snowflakey in every quilt...

Then I added the applique pieces, including about 130 of the grapes. Thankfully my planned applique technique was quick! But when I pinned the top up it became clear that the orange plume towards the upper left was far too bright, Fortunately I hadn't fused them properly at that stage, just enough to hold, and was able to heat the offending piece and peel it off to replace it with something more fitting.

The applique was done after sandwiching,a double line of free-motion quilting in matching coloured thread right at the edge of the applique. To save my sanity I used the same variegated purple for all the grapes.

The background is filled with dense quilting that took ages, but I love it I'd been wanting to try it for a while; it's a random combination of swirls, clamshells, pebbles and 'c's. It's a wonderfully flexible design to fit around all the odd shapes, and the only challenge is keeping it balanced. I'll definitely be using it again, although it's not something for huge spaces.

The instructions and pattern are in the current issue of AP&Q if you'd like to make your own version.

Grand Coeur

I'm going to try and ease myself back into regular blogging by sharing the two quilts which have been published since I vanished from here. In that time we've had a fabulous family week at the snow - the highlight of which was probably tracking myself skiing at just over 115 kilometres an hour! I've also been busy with work, meeting some other publishing deadlines, and writing a dozen or more blog posts in my head!

This is Grand Coeur.

It's actually named after one of the ski runs at Falls Creek, where we were skiing a few weeks ago. I chose the name because the grey background print and the red print look snowflakey to me, and it means 'Big Heart' in French.

It's made entirely from a fairly new fabric range called Primrose Sands by Australian designer Helen Stubbings. I was honoured to be asked to design a quilt to feature the fabrics. I actually ended up using a limited selection of the range for my baby-size applique quilt (it's about 40in square).

The hearts were layered from three different fabrics and I had fun showcasing the stripe in an unusual way - and of course I couldn't resist using the stripe for the binding as well! But to add more definition to the edge of the quilt, the binding has faux piping (that red strip is actually part of the binding!).

I used quite a few different quilting designs which came about more by accident than design - but looking at the whole quilt, I think it works perfectly. The feathers in the centre were chosen because I was tired of the swirls, but now I love the contrast, and feel they wouldn't show to such effect if the background quilting were matching feathers.

The hearts were quilted along the lines of the fabric print. There really wasn't any other option. They needed quilting densely - the comparison photo above shows how puffy the one on the left was before quilting - and I couldn't bring myself to detract from my favourite print by quilting something else all over it. Luckily the print lent itself well to quilting along the design, although it was quite fiddly - the closer photos above show the actual stitching better.

The pattern for Grand Coeur is in Australian Patchwork & Quilting Vol 24 No 1. It was the August issue, so in Australia, you'll need to check via here for back issues.

The family that quilts together

The last few weeks have seen a lot of quilty activity in this house. Eleanor, after little interest for the past 18 months, suddenly rediscovered an interest and finished the top of her quilt in a burst, decided to add borders, and pieced a back (from a selection of mostly piggy prints) and is about to start quilting it with me:

James, after an extended break after the rush to finish his quilt for publication, finally got around to adding the borders to his latest creation, which we now need to sandwich and quilt:

He then picked this vibrant combination at Riverlea Quilts on Friday:

We just popped in for a few things - it was way past time to replace my original 24 x 6.5in ruler amongst other things, and I let them both browse. He immediately lit upon the floral (it's for a gift) and I helped him find the butterflies to coordinate.

Meanwhile, I've started piecing with this selection of black and whites. I don't have a deadline on this one yet, and it was fun to get back to some piecing. It's a design I've had waiting for a while, and I'm looking forward to seeing it come together.

Splash!

Splash! is my most recently published quilt, which you can find in Australian Patchwork and Quilting Vol 23 No 11.

It is an is an updated version of a swap quilt called Snowdance (below), which I made several years ago.

I've been asked many times about a pattern for Snowdance, and Splash! is the answer. Of course, when you use a pattern, you can change it up how you like, so you might choose to use the brighter colours of the original, or to leave it smaller by not adding the narrow flange and extra border of my new version!

But I love the extra space, which allowed me to add some extra plumes into the quilting, both inside and outside the appliqued wreath.

And the feathered quilting in the border really adds something while staying subtle and keeping the emphasis on the applique.

I enjoyed quilting these small feathers, and found it easiest to mark a perimeter line so I didn't risk quilting beyond where the binding would be sewn on and chopping off the tips of the plumes. Some are mighty close, but they're all there!

The background is McTavishing again. It's interesting to compare how differently I quilt the same style with a several more years of experience!

Snowflake stash

I've always loved snowflakes (actually, to be technically correct, the pretty things are snow crystals) and have quite a substantial stash of snowflake fabrics. That's despite the fact that I instantly reject any prints which portray them with 8 'branches'! But I have a hard time cutting into them. Anyway this week I delved into them for an applique project made entirely of snowflake fabrics - from the background, to the applique pieces, to the binding, and yes, even the backing!

Here's just a little peek. It's packaged-up now and off to Australian Patchwork and Quilting; you'll see it as a project in a few months' time.

I think I need a piecing project soon, but next up is helping James and Eleanor work on their quilts while they're on holidays.

Floating

A few weeks ago I finished the commissioned beach scene I was working on and sent it off. I'd meant to blog the photos, but life keeps getting busy. I've been knitting and quilting, and have been sniffling my way through the first half of the 2-week winter school holidays with James and Eleanor

In reference to both the boats on the water and the hot-air balloons in the sky, this one is called 'Floating'.

Every beach scene I make is different, although as I make more of them, there is less structural difference between some of them, and the variations come in the form of fabric selections and details. Some of these are specific requests, others more serendipitous or aesthetic. In this case, my customer hadn't specifically commented on including a kite in the sky as I've done recently, so I decided to use the new balloon fabric I had (and was keen to use!) instead. Not knowing whether it was for a child or not, I felt this was a better choice (although after fusing I realised I'd placed them a bit too centrally - normally I'd place them a bit more off-centre, but by then it was too late!).

The turtles below were a specific request. I've only used them once before, as they're hard to blend in. This time I helped with that by adding an extra appliqued turtle over the seamline - and the fun appliqued crab near the bird.

The palm trees were also a request. They're fused applique, as are the other applique details. I used batik fabrics and chose to use a palm print for that section of sky as well, which I think added some nice depth. (It just so happened that I had the right print which fitted perfectly into the gradient I was creating for the sky, in just the right place.)

This detail image below shows the applique stitches. The other appliques are stitched on with fine clear or matching threads in a small blanket stitch, but I chose to applique these with a free-motion line close to the edge at the quilting stage using a 40wt glossy thread. And then I went over the trunks to create the texture I wanted. I drew the leaves freehand and then adapted them as I cut them out.

This quilt has now safely arrived in the US, and I've spent the week working with some of my beloved (and more seasonally appropriate) snowflake stash.