D is for Disappearing Blocks

There are lots of different Disappearing Block. Basically these blocks are traditional blocks which once made are sliced up and the pieces put back together to make another block. Jenny Doan, from Missouri Star Quilt Company is famous for the many different Disappearing blocks she has demonstrated on her YouTube channel.

I have made 3 different "Disappearing" blocks using her tutorials. 

Disappearing Pinwheel

Disappearing Hour Glass

Disappearing Nine Patch

WIP Wednesday... on Thursday

Running a day late again. Had planned to write it last night but after a lovely long soak in my new bath I went straight to be. Never mind

Getting ready for my first bath in our new bath. Complete with Lush bathbomb

What have I been working on this week?

Made great progress on Disappearing into the Blue. The top is finished. Yay. Whoot. Having thought it was finished last week I then decided it needed another border... a white one so that the lovely binding fabric I bought would stand out. I worked out how much I would need of the tone on tone white for a narrow border (1" finished) and went to buy it... found some great stuff in backing width and the shop's minimum cut was .5m. I only needed about 50cm of the ordinary width stuff so had double and more! So thought... might as well use it up and instead made the border 4" (and still had leftovers) The quilt has ended up 93" x 103" (or something like that) I didn't get a photo of it when it was laid out at patchwork yesterday. No room to do it here so... you'll have to imagine it

I am now in the process of making a pieced backing from the leftover blue fabric from the top. With the smaller pieces thus far I have a piece 43"x83". I will put the bigger left over pieces around the edges so they will get trimmed back not the pieced littler bits. I have two strips of left over piano key border. I'd accidentally trimmed one stip to 4" when I made it instead of 4.5" so that went into the back along with the leftover bits and all the too small tag ends. I also made up a bit more in order to get the 2nd strip long enough. I think it looks really cool. There is the strip of white tone on tone not needed for the borders in there as well.

New Project. Riverwalk
I have been working on a green banner to use in church too. I started a blog post just about it on Tuesday but didn't get it finished. I might complete that blog post to fully explain it. Meanwhile I'll just say I am using heaps of different green scrap fabrics. I am using my 2.5" strips, bricks and squares plus 4.5" squares and strips. Its coming on. I have it about 2/3s pieced. I don't think Fixit Guy was overly impressed by it. He tried hard not to sound too negative but today I showed our minister Suzy and she was delighted by it. FG is much more of a literal guy... doesn't do the figurative too well!! I think I will call it River Walk cause it was inspired by my walks by the river. Or then again I might find a biblical reference to trees and rivers and call it that. If you have a suggestion then please let me know

  

I received the ruler I ordered to trim up my half square triangle blocks. Its a Quilt in a Day ruler. That means that I'll be able to start work again on my black and white with a touch of red trip around the world quilt. Need to come up with a name for this quilt as what I refer to it as currently is way too long.

No further progress made on Teddies and Pinwheels or Twist and Disappear (Disappearing Nine patch with a twist) They both have tops and backs done. Just need to get the batting cut (or do a bit of Frankenbatting) and pinned. Should surge ahead and do them so I have a finish for Sunday but it isn't going to happen. Tomorrow is all booked out and we go away on Saturday for the weekend.

Other non quilting works in progress.

The Bathrooms.
Both are almost done. The family bathroom should have been all finished BUT there was a problem with the shower leaking under the door and the water not running to the drain in the floor. They pulled up a couple of tiles and relaid them to fix the drain problem but having hassles with the seal under the door. Sigh. It looks beautiful though and I had my first bath in the glorious tub last night. It is deeper, wider and longer than our old one so it actually fits me (short and slim I am not)

Since this photo was taken the painting of the trim has been completed and the ugly blue tape has come down

En suite is coming along. Fixit Guy has to paint it and the builder is waiting on the shower screens. We are going to move back into our bedroom today which will be nice. The weather has been chilly this last week and I miss my electric blanket. We didn't move it onto the spare bed. Probably should have just gone out and bought myself a second one!

Almost there! So close I could just about squeal. 

Fixit Guy's retirement.

Tomorrow is his last day. Yay. Today he is at meetings at another mine in another town. He took his replacement to show him the ropes. Tomorrow he has to hand over his laptop and his mobile (cell) phone and will drive his car home for the last time. Someone will pick it up from here over the weekend we presume. (unless someone drives him home and drops him off!) He has emptied his car of all his own stuff and has bought home a box or two of stuff from his office. He has taken his personal stuff off the computer and the phone. He has a new phone - bought last week with help from Fangirl. Also a new computer (with same assistant). His new car is on order and should be here at the end of the month. We have to wait for his redundancy payout to come through before we can pay for it. So... transition to retirement is progressing well.

Last week they had a farewell morning tea for him at work (early cause his boss was going away) and they are having another night time farewell for him next week (after his boss gets back). That works out well for us as this Friday Fangirl is in Brisbane. She will be back by next Friday and Massage Man (26 year old son) will also be in town. He lives in Melbourne. Kombi Boy (21 year old son), his partner Gamer Girl and our youngest son (19 year old whose blog name I forget atm) are both in town because they are university students and its currently holidays. We are going out for dinner to celebrate anyway.

Fixit Guy has a list of projects he wants to work on and has a large number of options to look at as far as volunteering about the place. There are all manner of people with a definite gleam in their eye when they hear a) he is retiring and b) we aren't planning on leaving town.

I celebrated the other day when I checked his wardrobe and realised he had enough shirts to see him through to the end of the week and that meant I didn't have to iron the work shirts that were in the basket

On Monday afternoon there were 4 shirts hanging up, and 4 work days to go!

so these two puppies got to go into a drawer. And I retired from work shirt ironing. Yeah

linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Wip Wednesday. Some progress made at last

I finally made some progress on the backing for Not So Sombre Stars.

As outlined on Sunday I saw  a quilt on a Facebook group that inspired my design. On Monday I started to cut the strips and squares I needed for the block.. I decided to make the quilt 7 x 7 8.5" blocks with a border to make it big enough.

I calculated that I was going to need
210 cream or white 1.5" squares as cornerstones for each block and the sashing.
196 6.5" x 1.5"of varying colours
64 blue 8.5" x 1.5" strips for the sashing

I cut the blue strips for the sashing from some of fabric I had to be repurposed but the rest of the units I needed came from my 1.5" scraps.I had about 30 cream and white 1.5" squares already in my stash. The rest of it I cut to size from the strips in my stash. I chose strips in reds, greens, yellows and purple. Some of the yellows were more orange.

Top right the cornerstones in a mixture of whites and creams. In the box the 6.5" x 1.5" strips and below the box the 8.5" x 1.5"blue strips for the sashing. This was cut from what had been a banner in our church

Tuesday I finished cutting the coloured strips and started sewing the strips to the signature blocks I had collected. 

I only had 10 and they are all done now. Just have to chase up the rest of them. I told people to use permanent marker but one person has used pencil and another has just given me some that I think are non permanent marker. I will have to label the quilt dry clean only. I don't want to leave them out of the quilt or to ask them to redo. I guess its the thought that counts.

The finished signature squares. 10 down 39 more to go!!

Disappearing Into the Blue
Finally had a sewing time up at the patchwork rooms so have made some progress on the Disappearing Into the Blue quilt, my disappearing pinwheel quilt done in blue and white. It was great to get some work on it has been a few weeks. I got the pinwheel borders on.. Next I am going to put on a narrow white border and then a piano key border. Will have to check it out on the bed again to work out how much larger it needs to be. Then to work out the backing. I was going to buy some wide backing fabric for it but I do have a lot of the blue fabrics I used on the front left so it won't be hard to piece the back.

Sewing Room
Not sure if I have mentioned it or not but I did get my scrap basket emptied.- almost. I still have a little bit of cream fabric to cut up and now bits of 1.5" stuff is going in there. Small stuff that I need to cut into squares or bricks leftover from the strips I have cut into 6,5" strips for the signature blocks. 

I asked Fixit Guy for a design wall for my Mothers' Day gift. He has suggested that we put in on the wall where the bookshelf currently is. He's suggested we transfer the contents of the bookshelf to the kitchen dresser we got from my Aunty's home which we intend to do up one day. Fangirl said she would like the bookshelf! This would probably work except for the old sewing notions that are stored on the bookshelf which are more for display. Might have to get Fixit Guy to make me a small set of display shelves for those things. 

Fixit Guy's idea is to use the wall behind the bookshelf as my design wall.  It is the obvious choice.

Some of the random bits and pieces on the bookshelf including the dust.

Some more sewing stuff that was my mother in laws and model sewing machines. And more antique dust

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Throwback Thursday Baby quilts

I have been making quilts for my great nieces and nephews since the first one was born. Actually I lie. The first one I made was for my first great niece Olivia born in 2005. I had a great nephew Caleb born 2002 for whom I hadn't made a quilt for at that point but I rectified that soon after. My latest great nephew, born just a few weeks ago was my mother's 19th great grand child. (with 8 children and 24 grandchildren that number is only going to grow!) They each have a quilt from their great Aunty Pip. Side note.

Fixit Guy is a woodturner and when my nieces and nephews get married he makes them a turned wood lamp. I think I got the raw end of the deal. He's told them they only get one lamp... if the marriage fails, take it with them. But whilst so far there has only been one marriage for each niece or nephew... they have each (apart from one) had more than one child so I am busier. I told them... no marriage no lamp, and we have to be invited (I'm a tough auntie) One nephew had a very small wedding and we didn't get to go but Fixit Guy is a softie and he made them a lamp anyway. Just realised that we don't have a photo of his lamps... he's not the photographer. I am. The recipients of the lamps have always been very appreciative of them and treasure them, and guard them jealously... one of my sisters (I have 5) offered to look after her son's lamp as he was moving house but he insisted he take it with him.

I must ask the family to take photos of their lamps and send them to us. We don't buy shades for them usually. We give them money to buy their own. A few reasons for this. 1. we don't know their taste or decor 2. There is not much choice of shades where we live and they will have much greater choice in Sydney where most of them live or visit regularly 3. They are hard to transport safely. We live 2 000 km from most of them so much easier to hand over the money and let them do the work. (Fixit Guy doesn't really agree. he would much rather hand over the finished product complete but for the reasons above I always fight him on this and usually win)

I digress. Baby quilts. So... I have made at least 19 baby quilts for my lovely great nieces and nephews. I have made some for other babies too... special ones who qualify. I have a cousin I am very close to (I made him the Tie Quilt for his 70th birthday see Family Reunion ) I am also very fond of his 3 daughters who were like my little sisters. When his 6 grandchildren were born I made each of them a quilt. I have also made quilts for 2 of my girlfriends grand children, my daughter's friend's baby and for two babies born to our church family this last year. That makes 30. Wow. Hadn't realised it was so many!

I don't have photos of them all I realise - bit of a slip up there but will include photos of some of them

My first baby quilt for the gorgeous Olivia who is 9 already. I was on an internet group and taking part in lots of 9 patch swaps. I was making and receiving lots of nine patches but not using them very much. Making baby quilts changed that

Above is Caleb's quilt top and below is the quilt back. Both featured Snowball blocks interspersed with nine patch blocks from the monthly ninepatch swap I was in (different colour or theme for each month)

I had made some hand dyes and gamely used them in a quilt for my cousin's first grandchild born in 2004. It was another very simple design

Laura's quilt featuring nine patches made from hand dyes and plain squares, also hand dyed fabric

Having made a number of very simple baby quilts I got a bit gamer and for Sienna's quilt in 2006 I used a pattern from a magazine called Tic Tac Toe.

Sienna's Tic Tac Toe Quilt

I got even gamer for the next baby, Ella who was born at the end of 2006, my brother's first granddaughter. I even bought a pattern for her quilt! I can't remember what it was called though. I liked that it featured the teddy bear as when all my nieces and nephews were born I gave them a jointed bear in brown or gold

Ella's quilt

Charlie, the daughter of my niece was born in 2008, not long before my father died. I can't remember if I made her quilt shortly after she was born or if it was a year late. I went back to full time work a month after dad died and I had very little time for quilting for the rest of that year Carlie's quilt was another slightly more complex design using eye spy fabrics again

Charlie's quilt

At one point I got very busy quilt making with quite a few great nieces and nephews coming in quick succession. I know at one point I had 7 quilts to make in a 12 month period and I resorted to very simple designs. 6" finished eyespy squares in a 5 x 5 grid with borders. I did get a bit creative after a few of them and made them alphabetical quilts. Some of my choices for what things started with got creative. 

Riley's quilt .. alphabetical

Sarah's quilt - not alphabetical

The one exception to this rather boring 5X5 6" squares was the quilt I made for Cooper, the grandson of my Australian friend born in the USA to his Aussie mum and American Dad. Cooper couldn't have a boring eyespy quilt. He had to get his Aussie on

Cooper's quilt featuring Australian animals

A special little baby girl was born into our church family in January and I was delighted to have a special quilt I could give her. It wasn't a baby quilt as such being one that I had made in an online mystery quilt (I can't identify it as it is an ongoing one. I don't want to spoil it for people. I did almost put a link to it and then realised... hmmm not a good idea!!)

My last quilt made for my great nephew Liam, born in March was a departure again from what I have been doing. It wasn't a baby quilt at all. He is the 3rd child for my nephew and his wife. They love the quilts I have made their older children and use them on their beds. They are a bid small for this use, being cot sized so I offered to make this one bigger. I used the Disappearing Pinwheel pattern from the Missouri quilt company  I only got around to posting it to them this week and they received it today and sent me a delighted text. I am glad they like it as I have to say it is one of my favourite quilts that I've made.

I have made quite a bit of progress over the years that I have been making quilts. Hope you have enjoyed this retrospective.

Linking up with Throwback Thursday on Quiltin Jenny's site

WIP Wednesday

I had less time than usual to work on projects this week. Thursday I had the service at the aged care home and then I did my 2 RE lessons. I usually do these Friday but Friday morning I flew to Brisbane and didn't return home till Sunday night. I have done some work though.

Sombrero Stars

I made the backing for the quilt using the brown fabric from an old mattress cover and a linen table cloth centre. I cut the edges off the tablecloth as it had a pale green pattern in them which just didn't go with the front. I know you don't see the front and back at the same time but... it just didn't seem right. However I had to add some extra fabric to both the width and the length as the brown and cream just weren't enough. I had some pieces from what I had used for the sashing on the front of the quilt and added two strips to the width and one across the middle for the length and it ended up looking quite affective. I had hoped to get up to the quilting rooms during the week to pin it out but ran out of inclination so got it done after the meeting. Now to find the time to get it quilted - hopefully by Sunday night so I get to count it in my weekly stash report. I'm getting tired of not having any finishes.

Disappearing into the Blue
I had hoped to get some work done on this today at the club rooms but got involved with another project that our group needs to get done. I did get the remaining two sides of the white sashing sewn on. There is always next week to work on it! I am up to the pinwheel borders next

Chrysalis 
Last year I made a banner for our church which featured a vine going the length of the banner. During Lent we put "grubs" on the vine and then on Easter Sunday morning we changed out the grubs for butterflies. 

The vine banner.

This year I thought that I would try to make some chrysalis  to add to the banner. I used some hessian from old stretchers. I used the part that had already been sewn to go through the sides of the stretches and just hemmed one end, stuffed them and then tied off the tops.\Not sure that they are working. They look like hessian bags. Maybe if I sew the bottoms so as to round off the corners it might look better. They can't look worse ! Not my most successful crafting effort

         

Sunflower banner
Each year our town holds its local "Sunflower Festival" over Easter. We are twinned with a city in Canada that also has a sunflower festival but at a different time of the year. The prize for the local winner of the Sunflower Princess competition is a trip to Canada for their festival and likewise their princess gets to come visit us for ours. Our patchwork group has been asked to make a wall hanging to give to the visiting princess. Due to some delays and stuff ups we only just started to make it today so we are working against the clock to get the wall hanging made by next Wednesday night. Another lady and I worked after our meeting to get the fabric cut for the project. Another lady did a little bit of sewing for us. We will meet again tomorrow to sew some more of it. We have someone who has volunteered to quilt it and then it will be getting the binding, the hanging sleeve and the label made. It involves some hand applique and I have bought that bit home to try to get done tonight. I am going to be busy!

The stem and leaves of the banner... my evenings entertainment

stitching stitching stitching

See more WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

WIP Wednesday

Last week I powered through the quilting of 3 quilts and got them finished up. It was so satisfying. There won't be any more finishes for a little while now I think. (see Stash Report)

Since I finished off the last of the quilts on Saturday night I have been busy

SOMB Quilt 3
I have cut fabric for my next quilt which again will feature the 5" 9-patches made from the shirts from the swap at Patch n Peace 2013 - another quilt in my Shirt off my Back series (SOMB) These ones will be 14" finished star blocks. I plan on having the quilt 5 x 5 so 25 blocks in all. I might call this one "Not so Sombre Stars"

cutting the squares and rectangles for the star blocks

SOMB Quilt 4
I have also cutting fabric for the last of the SOMB quilts which will also feature a star in the centre but these ones will only be 9" finished but they will have sashing and that will make it a decent sized quilt. I will make it 5x6 in order to use up the last of the blocks. I will have 4 left over... they can go on the back... unless I incorporate them into border some how. What to call this one though... Sombrero Stars. Working the SOMB theme to the last.

The centres of both Not so Sombre Stars and Sombrero Stars will feature the 5" 9-Patch surrounded by 4 flying geese. In the Not so Sombre Stars there will be a rectangle on behind the flying geese block and a 5"square piece in each  corner. The finished block will be 14".The Sombrero Star will be smaller. The corner blocks will be 2.75"square and the finished block will be 9" finished. In total I am going to be making 220 flying geese for the blocks. I must be crazy... and I was thinking about some in the borders. I might rethink that one!!

The block for Sombrero Stars. I haven't made the flying geese units... just folded the squares over to get the idea

The block for Not So Sombre Stars.

With all of the quilts in the SOMB group I have tried to only use recycled/re purposed/second hand fabric. I have used a lot of the fabric/linen that I bought home with me last October from my Aunty Doris's estate. She died aged 99 years and 9 months in Sept 2012. A year later her daughter-in-law was still making her way through all the stuff that Doris had collected up in the almost 70 years that she had lived in the house now occupied by her son and his wife. I helped with the sorting out for a week and was allowed to have any fabric that I thought might be useful. I came home with a suitcase of doilies, old sheets, new fabric etc. A lot of this has gone into these last two SOMB quilts.

Disappearing Into the Blue
Today at Patchwork group I worked on my "Disappearing into the Blue" Disappearing Pinwheel quilt. All of the 44 pinwheels needed for the border are completed and pressed. I finished the blocks for the centre of the quilt last week. Before I can put the blocks together I need to buy some more tone on tone white fabric as I haven't got enough of the fabric I used in the blocks left. No new photos this week but here is one I put on an earlier post

The finished off disappearing pinwheels.

Marchalong

The idea of March-along is to spend at least 15 minutes every day in March  doing something quilt related. Sewing, cutting, reading, sorting, watching a class online, browsing quilt related websites ... anything quilt related counts

It started on March 1st but I didn't hear about it till later in the first week. My first weekend of knowing about it got a bit sabotaged by life.  

Friday 7th I left home at 10.45 AM to drive 4 hours to Mackay for our church (Uniting Church of Australia) Presbytery (Central Queensland) meetings. They are held every 4 months (well 3 times a year) around our presbytery and the minister and a member of the congregation goes to  the meetings for each congregation. I am the journal secretary ie I take the minutes so don't represent our congregation. I traveled with our rep, his wife and our minister. No chance to sew before I went (Does a bit of tidying up of my sewing area count? Hope so) I flicked through a quilting magazine in the car. We had meetings that night 7.30-9 PM

Saturday Meetings started at 8 AM and ran through till 9 PM (we do get morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner breaks) I looked at another magazine when I got back to our unit and also read some blogs during the day when I didn't have to be paying attention

Sunday. Worship 9-10.15 was the closing activity of Presbytery. We stopped at Spotlight (big fabric/habbie/craft/homewares store) for about 20 minutes... not for me but our minister. I had a brief look at fabric but no purchases. Home 4.30. I got organised for some quilting ... don't think I started that night although I might have. I didn't actually sew

Monday. Got me my quilty on well and truly. I started quilting my "Pretty Pinwheels" Disappearing Pinwheels Quilt from Missouri Star Quilt Company. Worked on it all day and eventually got it finished including binding

Tuesday. Worked on my "Sombre Blue" My Shirt Off My Back Recycling quilt. Its from a challenge that we had at our 2013 retreat where we swapped pieces of men's shirts and had to make a quilt using the fabric. Got it done including the sashing

Wednesday Our regular patchwork group get together (we have our own rooms and can go up there whenever we like but our regular sewing day is Wednesday) I was up there from 9-3. I worked on my other disappearing Pinwheel quilt which I am doing in blues. I've called it "Disappearing into the Blue". I got all the blocks assembled by the end of the day and had even started on some of the pinwheels for the border.

Thursday I ironed my disappearing pinwheel blocks.

Friday I started quilting my Brown SOMBrero (my other Shirt off My Back quilt which features some brown sashing instead of blue) after dinner. Ran out of the thread I was using so had to stop mid evening

Saturday Finished quilting Brown Sombrero including the sashing.

Sunday I have started cutting fabric for my hopefully last project using the fabric from the SOMB blocks. I had made 350 nine patches from the fabric. Have used 121 in Sombre Blue and 144 on the front of Brown Sombrero and another 20 or so on the back. Have just under 60 left to use up. My aim is to try to use just recycled fabric in all the projects. Currently cutting extra fabric for the block I am planning on using in the last one. Its going to have the nine patches in the centre of a star block. Cutting rectangles and squares to make flying geese units to go around that as well as corner blocks etc. Having fun trying to figure them out.

Monday Continued cutting the scraps for the block. I am using fabric from old curtains, sheets, doona covers, shirts.... its fun but time consuming. I will get there... eventually. Don't think I am going to have any finishes at this rate for a while though.

Pieces for the star blocks I am making

Any fabric not the right size for my next quilt I am cutting up to go in my scrap boxes

You can read more about Marchalong at Scientific Quilter