WIP Wednesday

Beanie

Having finished off Boyo's beanie (which has barely been off his head since I made it. As I write this he is wearing it) I started work on one for Beast. He wanted black. I found a tutorial on the net for one using a different stitch. 

However it didn't work out properly and was ugly so just before I finished off the ball of wool I decided to unravel it all and start again. I'm making up a pattern now and like it better. My attempt didn't look at all like this. Not sure what I did wrong but I'll have another go at it...perhaps using a thinner wool

Kombi Boy wants a beanie too. He's asked for dark grey which I don't have any of so his will have to wait till I get to a wool shop, hopefully tomorrow when we are in Rockhampton

POD Block Challenge

I am up to date with my blocks from this having made this week's one. There are only 4 blocks to go in this challenge. I have at least one I want to redo because when I wrote the name on the books I had the block upside down at the time. Doh. I regret writing the names on the books. It is so time consuming to stitch the names on and I have often been in a rush when writing the names on to embroider over and my printing isn't as good as I would like it. I am not going to do any more and hope that the ones that I have done won't make the rest look out of place

 New one released tomorrow which I won't be able to work on till after the weekend as we head out tomorrow lunchtime for a Chrysalis Flight.



I finished a banner for church this week... so its not a work in progress. I got it made between WIP reports. I wrote about it in my last blog (here) Today I took it up to the church and hung it. 

Unfortunately its hard to get a good photo of the banner in situ but the light streaming through the banner gives a rather special affect and I am starting to think about doing a sort of stained glass banner utilising this light... stay tuned.

Playing with Nine Patches quilt - a pattern by Charlotte from Scrapitude. I've got the top together. I put a golden yellow border on it and I think that will be all I will put on it. However I am still thinking about it. I might yet do something more spectacular with it.



 My friend Tina has finished her quilt She pieced the back completely from squares. Isn't this cool? She's upped the ante on this one. I am going to have to do something special for the back even if I don't do anything crazy special with the borders.

  

My friend Kym has finished quilting both the quilts I sent her last week - That's Scrap in a Box which I reckon looks like a lattice so am calling it Lovely Lattice and Crop Circles. She is posting them back to me tomorrow so should be here early next week.

Speaking of Crop Circles. It was a mystery quilt from the Patch n Peace weekend I went to at the beginning of June. Another lady, Vivienne, has finished hers and put photos on our Facebook page. Hasn't she done a lovely job. I love her border and have already warned her that I might be appropriating it for one of mine. Perhaps this is what I can do on Nine Patch

Black, White and Red Charity Quilt

My friend Lindy and I are working on putting together blocks made by our group in a block of the month challenge we had going earlier on in the year. As well as the 9 blocks that we put into the centre of the quilt in a basic 9 patch configuration, we had some 5" and 2.5" black and white half square triangle blocks and some 2.5" and 2" black and red hst that we are working into a lovely border. We haven't finished the border yet but made good progress on it today.

 This was the photo I took today to show Lindy (who was sick today) how far I had gotten with it. Also we were trying to decide whether to use red (as in the bottom left corner) or white (top right) to fill in the spaces. We've decided on the red. Might call this quilt Newspaper Mama (Its Black and White and Red (read) all over)

 

Stash report -

I've done a lot of sewing this week but have had no finishes.

I got the next POD block done.. yest the same week as it came out. How good am I... again. This week will be a struggle cause we are away all weekend and then we will have visitors so I'll probably be behind again by next week but you get that. At least I am up to date for now.

Sent 2 quilts off to be long armed... when they get them back and finished off there will be some big numbers to add which will be rewarding.. .but meanwhile I am pretty stagnant.


I've made great progress with Playing with Nine Patches, another quilt by Charlotte from Scrapitude. The centre part is together and I just have to do the borders. I was thinking about doing something special with them but am back to thinking that I'll just do some straight borders in a couple of different colours, the first one being bright yellow... but I've been known to change my mind so watch this space.

this quilt has 738 2.5" squares and I didn't have to cut any of them. They all came out of my scrap drawer of 2.5" squares and I still have some left.. half a box of them. That is really amazing

Currently on my design board is a banner for church. I only started making it this afternoon and I have made great progress on it. The basic banner is done... now for the embellishing which is going to take the time. 

The "vine" is only pinned in place while I work out exactly where I want it to go

I've started making the leaves to go on the vine. I want them to be 3 dimensional so won't applique them down but attach them so they hang off the banner. 15 made and probably 30 more to make

The other work I've done this week has been on shirts to go to the school in Zambia that the Charity Our Rainbow House runs. Our group, Handmade Love has already made dresses for all the girls and now we are working on shirts for the boys. I can't count any of them as finishes either as a) I didn't contribute any of the fabric for them and b) we haven't actually finished them (minor details I know... but rather telling) 

My friend Serana sent me this photo of me hard at work in Peggy's kitchen yesterday

And then there is the knitting loom. Boyo got his beanie (and proud of it he is too. He's hardly taken it off) I've started one for the Beast but I unpulled it cause it was ugly... I was trying a new pattern. Have restarted, another new pattern but one of my own making and so far so good

So... nothing to count as far as finishes go however I do have some fabric to count in the "discard" area. A couple of weeks ago I tried my hand at chenille work. I used 5 pieces of fabric together - mostly repurposed fabric for the inner linings but the top fabric was a panel of some daisies. I was thinking of making it into a cushion cover. When I did the sewing and cutting I did it on the straight of grain, and not on the diagonal. As a result it has just unravelled and unravelled... can't get it to stop... it will unravel to nothing if I keep brushing it and so I have decided to call it quits and throw it out and try again. - 5 pieces of fabric .45m x .5m total thrown out 1.05m

 
I haven't purchased any fabric - have resisted all the offers on Massdrop despite there being several gorgeous fabric bundles on offer. No little surprise packets from any of my family or friends either so nothing to put into the fabric in section so that is a plus

So my stats for  week Week 26

Fabric Used                                1.05

Fabric Added                              0     

Year to Date

Fabric Used                               70.32

Fabric Added                             35.35

Net Fabric used                        34.96m

I am so looking forward to getting those 2 quilts currently getting long armed finished. They will so change those figures about so that I will have used a heap more fabric, and especially bump that net fabric used up so that it is much more than fabric added. 

The scary thing is that despite having used almost 35m of fabric.. .my stash doesn't seem to have gone down all that much!

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times

Throwback Thursday - nine patch quilts

I started quilting in 2001 when a friend dragged me along to a patchwork class at a local shop. Soon afterwards I joined some online quilting groups including one
"Southern Cross Quilters" especially established for quilters in Australia and New Zealand, or for Australian and New Zealand quilters who were living overseas. So many online quilting groups were (and still are) dominated by quilters from North America, especially the USA. This group was to cater for the Australian and New Zealanders.

Part of what was offered were online swaps and block exchanges. The swap that was particularly for newbies like myself were the 9 patch swaps. Each month there was a theme or a particular colourway for the swap. We would send our blocks into the swap hostess and she would divide them up and send them back to us. I can't recall how many we were allowed to make but I know it was carefully done so that they would fit into an A4 envelope and qualify for the large letter rate.

I participated with great enjoyment in these swaps over many many months. The different themes meant that I had to go shopping for fabric because as a newbie quilter I dind't have a stash to draw from. I loved getting the parcels in the mail and seeing the array of blocks and the ways other people had interpreted the theme. The trouble was I was busy making the blocks and was accumulating quite a stack of them but I wasn't actually making them into quilts. Eventually I decided that rather than making these 9 patch blocks I really needed to make quilts so I stopped being part of the swaps. I intended to rejoin once I had made up some of my blocks but some how I never did.

I don't recall all or even many of the different themes that we had but some I do recall were Christams, music, jewel tones and sewing related. I recall these because the quilts that I made from these blocks I still have or I gave to family and I have photos of them.

There may have been more than one Christmas themed swap or else we were allowed to make extra blocks or I made extra blocks for myself. I don't recall but I do know that I made two small lap quilts as gifts. ONe was for my mother and father and the other was for another couple I called Mum and Dad. They were my Sydney parents when I first went to live in the city to attend college. They belonged to the church I attended and each Sunday night they hosted dinner before church for the youth group of the church. At one point I dated their son, until we both realised we were just good mates and not at all romantically inclined towards each other. (we still are mates although we don't see much of each other)

My Mum and Dad with the Christmas quilt I made for them

Gotta show you the back too

Mum and Dad K's Christmas quilt

Mum and Dad K's quilt with grand daughter Leah

back of Mum and Dad K's quilt

The musical blocks I was making in to a quilt at the time my middle son, Kombi Boy was learning the saxaphone in the school band. He decided that the quilt must be for him as he was the musical one. Not sure how he came to that conclusion as both his older siblings Fangirl and Massage Man were also in the high school band. Later his younger brother was also in the band. In fact the other 3 stuck with their music for far longer than he did. Whatever... I was pleased that he was showing an interest in what I was doing and he scored the lap quilt.


I had intended to make a cover for my sewing machine out of the sewing related 9 patch blocks but the sewing machine had a good hard cover so it wasn't needed. Later I got another machine that was a good bit larger and I have now got an even bigger one so I am glad I never made a cover for the first machine. Instead I made a bag to carry my cutting mat in. I still use it frequently.

Some of the other blocks were made into baby quilts for my great nieces and nephews and my cousin's grandchildren.

They eventually all got used. The nine patch swap was a good way for me as a beginner quilt to start to get involved in the wider patchwork community. It was a long time before I joined the local patchwork group and my support and education came from the online community. I was more meticulous when making blocks for swaps, correcting any split seams of flip overs, squaring up the blocks carefully, making sure my seams matched. It was a great way to hone some skills