WIP Wednesday

I've had a busy productive week, much more productive than I had thought it would be this time last week. We were planning on heading to a national park camping spot where we wouldn't have power so hence there would be no machine sewing for me. However it turned out that where we were planning on going wasn't suitable for caravans... well they wouldn't let vans go there so guess it wasn't suitable. Instead we ended up at a campsite by the lake at Yungaburra which was powered so... lots of extra bonus sewing time.

As detailed in my Sunday Stash report I had a number of finishes - 6 hand towels, 2 Christmas Stockings and a casserole cover... so they are no longer works in progress but completed works.

I got stuck into what I have been calling my doily quilt but given I am not real sure how to spell that I am instead going to call it Handwork Heritage. 

The doilies and other pieces of embroidery that I cut up to include in it came from a variety of sources. I have things that came from my Mother, my mother-in-law and my aunt. All of their "stashes" included pieces which belonged to their mothers and aunts as well. They have all become totally mixed up. The handwork I cut up was all soiled or torn. I couldn't bring myself to cut up pieces that were in good condition. I also cut up some embroidery that was machine done - factory produced items. I had no qualms about slicing into those. I had prepped the pieces before I left home to work on whilst away.

Many of the pieces had crocheted edges that I didn't want to lose so I sewed on edging strips to make a new edge (I should have taken a photo of the process as I am having trouble explaining - I put a piece of appropriate width under the lace/crochet and did a flat seam.  I did the same sort of things to make the scalloped edges straight and also to give a backing to the pieces that were more lacey. I made all the pieces 6.5" square.

The next step was to add the 1.5" strips to their edges. I used pink and purple pieces from my scrap box. I have ended up with 121 pieces that are currently 6.5" x 7.5". 

I am almost out of suitable colours. I still have to add the other edge to the blocks which will consist of another 6.5" strip and a 1.5" corner stone. 

The final project that I have been working on this week is the Bonnie Hunter String X quilt. I have called it Scrappy X and Strippy X in other blog posts I believe. Can't hold the proper name in my head.

I had previously made 59 of the string centres of this block and I was tossing up whether to make another 5 when I got home (not have suitable fabric for the foundation piecing) and make it 8 x 8 blocks, or to leave 3 blocks for the back and make it 8 x 7. When doing the Handwork Heritage blocks I found I had enough leftover fabric from the trimmed up items to make another 5 backings. So I went ahead and made 5 more blocks and trimmed them up. Then I went onto the next step in the process - cutting the ends of the strip blocks so that the strips are shaped to run diagonally across the block. Bonnie's instructions involved attaching a triangle of the appropriate size to the underside of a ruler and using that to position the ruler on the block. It worked really well and I now have all 121 boat shaped string pieces. 

I will now have to wait till I get home to finish these blocks off as I didn't bring suitable background fabric. I now also have a pile of little triangles that I will have to do something with... they look very cute - I wonder if they would make a border....

 

I've also started working on the zipper pouches I had prepped for this trip. I have put together 3 of them, all to the same pattern (can't remember where I found it ... sorry) 

I added tabs to this one ... or a little handle and a tab. I was going to add them to all of them but kept forgetting till it was too late. Ho hum you get that.

For one of them I used fabric I had put some iron on contact stuff on.. sort of laminated the fabric. It didn't work so good. The fabric looked fine whilst I sewed it but when I had to scrunch it up to turn the bag back the right way (as you do when you are sewing a lined bag) the fabric wrinkled up a lot and separated a bit from the plastic leaving it looking less than professional. 

Its a shame cause the red zip looked great with the black and white fabric. I'm wondering if I could reiron it very carefully with a cloth between the iron and the plastic... It might not be suitable for resale but Gamer Girl is a keen Pokemon girl so she might find it in her Christmas stocking.

So that is my WIPs for this week. I am happy to be making good progress on various ones. How about you? Have you made any progress on your WIPs this week?

My other big WIP is of course our travels. We are approaching the end of our 3rd week of travels in North Queensland. This last week we have left the coast and have been spending time on the beautiful Atherton Tablelands. We had 4 nights at Yungaburra and enjoyed 4 kayaking trips out on the lake (ok I had 3 and Fixit Guy went out once on his own) and saw Playtypus playing in the water.

 We had a couple of bike rides (one for me 2 for him) We visited The Malanda Markets, the Taste of the Tablelands as well as The Cathedral Fig Tree 

and the Malanda Falls. We also attended Atherton Uniting Church on Sunday.

The front of the Atherton UCA church. 

On Monday we moved on to  Herberton where we spent 2 nights and visited Herberton Historic Village which was beautifully set out and full of fascinating things. I remember going to a museum with my mum and having her exclaim at seeing things she was give as wedding presents in the museum! It was my turn this time - toys I played with as a child featured in their toy display as did books I owned as a child. How to feel old in one fell swoop.

I remember getting one of these dolls on a stick from the local show. I felt soooo spoiled.

We stayed at a really quirky caravan park in Herberton, called The Wild River Caravan park.  It had all sorts of interesting bits and pieces tucked away including a tee pee, totem poles at odd places and the most amazing seat on a verandah.

looking good for a sit

the mail box out the front

They feed the sulphur crested cockatoos in the late afternoon

After 2 nights there we have moved on to Ravenshoe this morning. After setting up the caravan we went for a drive around the district including going on Waterfall Way and visiting 5 waterfalls (and missing the turn into a 6th and deciding not to bother with a 7th)

Souita Falls

Milla Milla Falls

Elinjaa Falls

 Having been waterfall-ed out we went to Mungalli Creek Dairy and enjoyed a cheese tasting and had a Devonshire tea. Then we bought up some chocolate, cheese and yogurt and have returned to our van for a rest. (and to undo the button on our jeans)

We plan to have 2 nights here at Ravenshoe and then... not sure - perhaps Mount Garnet and then onto the brother in laws places. They live on cattle stations north of Charters Towers. We hope to have about 10 days between the two properties to catch up with family 

Going Green

I've just joined Bonnie Hunters Facebook group Quiltville's Open Studio. She is a prolific poster (and sometimes she posts twice cause she must have her instagram account linked and so what she puts there also comes across to Facebook)

She has put up several links to several free scrappy quilt patterns from other bloggers/designers. I enjoyed checking them out and have downloaded the patterns to my one day file. Some of the downloading was easy... there was that option offered. But for others I copied and pasted the patterns to a word document and saved it that way. I have included the designer and the website where I got it from in the document. Gotta give the credit to where it is due.

I was itching to get started on one of them immediately and chose this is the one I do first. Its from Little Miss Shabby

I like the on point setting

 

Her pattern used 2.5" or 2x1.5" squares. After "Playing in Sunshine" I didn't have  many 2.5" squares left so decided to do it in 2" squares. That meant the white squares were 3.5" square instead.  I decided to feature green squares (just like in Playing in Sunshine I featured yellow squares) and this meant that one in almost every pair of squares was a green or had green in it. I say just about cause I didn't decide to feature green till I had already sewn 20 or so. 

Because the squares I am using are smaller than the pattern the overall quilt is going to be smaller so I decided to add another row and because its on the diagonal this actually meant 2 rows... It meant that instead of 18 blocks I needed 32 blocks. Because I wanted the green to dominate the quilt I had to cut a few more green squares from my 2" strips but apart from that the squares came from my stash. I avoided using blue squares because I hope to make a quilt featuring the blue squares some time. I didn't use white or cream either as I was using white for the bigger squares.

Ready to assemble I had to put a white squared strip either side of the 3 x four patch strips. Its a bit embarrassing to admit that I had to unpick a few cause I put the 4 patch strips either side of a white square strip... In one case I unpicked the mistake only to sew it straight back on incorrectly again. Grr.

Looking at the pattern I have been working out how I could have sewn it in strips. Instead of having lots of 3.5" white squares that end up as 6" squares when the blocks are sewn together I could have cut 6.5" white squares and assembled the quilt as one big block - sewing the 2" squares into strips of the required length ie 9 pairs, 27 pairs, 45 pairs etc plus  lots of 4 pairs and put the thing together in stips... not sure if I am making sense but I know what I mean. I think I made my 2nd quilt something like that... oh so many years ago!

As of tonight I have all the blocks assembled and on my design wall. I still have to cut out the set in triangles. At the moment I am calling this quilt Going Green