WIP Wednesday - T shirt quilt

 

An acquaintance and distant cousin, reached out to me to make a T-shirt memory quilt from her T-shirts. I put together a budget, which wasn't enough to put her off and she duly washed and pressed all of the T-shirts. They have been waiting for me to have a clear day to make a good start on the project. I have never done anything like this before so I have approached it with some trepidation.

That day was today and 5 and a half hours later, all of the T-shirts have been pressed, interfaced and cut up. I have almost equal columns pieced. My maths was a bit wrong on the first column but fixable. I now need to carefully press the seams open, even up the columns and piece it together into a quilt top. First I need to finish a customer quilt that is on my long arm. I made good progress on it yesterday but then my machine started making a noise, so I switched off the machine and will check it out on Friday and get help from my husband with the timing if necessary. 

Monday make - Jeliquilts cushions

Last weekend was the Sewing Shindig virtual retreat and I am exhausted. I did however finish three items with one left to bind, so I am pleased with my achievements over the weekend. I also did about half of the FURY block from the Tattoo quilt from HappySewLucky.

The first class was Foundation piecing with Kelly of Jeliquilts. We had one of the patterns in advance so I may have used it a a leader and ender project over the last two weeks. However I also cut out the pieces for a log cabin pattern which I pieced traditionally. 

For the flying geese pattern, I used a rainbow of handprinted fabrics from my scrap bag. These were printed by Karen Lewis and Lou Orth. The background is Fairy Dust in the Whisper colourway by Tula Pink with a striped binding from the Create line by Quietplay.

 This was made using the Create Fabric line by Quietplay on a background of metallic Essex dyed linen. all of the blocks were cut from scraps. Very satisfying.

I then loaded both cushion panels side by side on my long arm and used my current favourite Chevron Design by My Creative Stitches. Both cushions were finished with a rainbow of Cam snaps to lose. I definitely need to add to my stock of snaps as some colours are completed used up.

This cushion is a little overstuffed so I need to order some 18" cushion inners.

Friday finish - My Small World

 

My Small World by Jen Kingwell was my JMQG UFO challenge for September 2020 and it is complete. Finished. Done. I started this as part of a SAL and had the correct issue of Quiltmania. I even organised a swap on Instagram for the 1.5" low volume squares. I like it now it's finished but for the last few years it has languished and I wished I'd never started it.

I started the year with just the sky quilted on my long arm and when the number was pulled, I finished a few other projects and started quilting one building block a day, ten days ago. It is a lovely mish mash of scraps and fabrics from retreat goody bags. I particularly like the red and white striped rooves and the wood like semi circular door.

It is great to have this finished which just leaves me with three projects for the challenge - 

• TQS BOM Sedona Star which I am now going to add to my daily to do list as I still need to remove the foundation papers
• Tate Modern Quilt which needs to be quilted
• Hoffman Dream Big Panel which I need to finish quilting and then I' cutting it up to make into a bag

This weekend starting at 4pm today I am participating in the #sewingshindig2020 virtual retreat so my aim today is to finish a customer quilt so that I can take it off my long arm so that I can long arm any retreat projects when they're ready. There are only two small cushion covers that would need to be quilted and the other two projects are bags. I also plan to work on the lettering in the remaining Tattoo quilt blocks as a leader and ender project.

WIP Wednesday - Chinese Zodiac

I am WAY behind on the Chinese Zodiac SAL by The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery and I hate being behind. Month six was released yesterday and I haven't even finished month one. I have scheduled in 30 minutes every day to work on this piece and at the moment I am working to catch up on the animals. I am trying to finish on per week and have finished the tiger, and snake so far. The snake was my objective for this week, so I now plan to fill in some of the bottom right fan so I can work on the bottom left fan next week. I want to do this so that I have reference points in the three quadrants that have been released so far.

And I've joined another SAL with Stitchonomy on Facebook. The frame for the 31 little Halloween pictures was released last week and I am almost finished the frame so I can set it aside until 1 October. I just have the top border to stitch.  Visit the Facebook group to see some fabulous hand dyed threads and linens being used for the frames. I a using a plain black DMC thread on a grey linen.

Monday mojo

 Have you found your mojo yet amongst all of the changes brought about by the pandemic yet? At the start of lock down, I as very productive and enjoying the peace and quiet. Currently I have been struggling to find my mojo. I have no excuse not to sew all day as Lizzie is back in Manchester packing up her belongings to move to Aberdeen on Wednesday.

I have joined in the APQS UFO challenge for three or four years and it is only this year when Jersey Modern Quilt Group have run a similar challenge that I've felt accountable to people I know and made significant progress. I have even started adding projects to a drawer ready for next year and they are significantly smaller than some of the projects I had to finish in 2020. 

This month's project to work on for the JMQG challenge is It's a small world by Jen Kingwell which I started in 2016? It has been part quilted for about a year but last week I pulled it out to make progress towards finishing the project.

I have scheduled into my diary to quilt one building per day and you can see my progress so far. Many of us are scared of back tracking over already quilted lines but Angela Walters demonstrates that in the overall scheme of things, it doesn't really show. I have completed four buildings and have three to go so I hope to have the quilting finished by this weekend as I am participating in the Sewing Shindig virtual retreat. I think this will get a machine binding with a hanging sleeve. 

I should finish this before the end of the month and will restart taking out the papers from my TQS BOM 2012 again.

Friday finish - #scrappysummer2020sal

 

And my baby quilt version of the scrappy summer SAL 2020 is complete. I'm not sure my scrap baskets are depleted at all. My daughter has made 40 masks for friends over the last two weeks and the basket is still seems full. However the basket does need reorganising and some re-pressing of the scraps needs to happen.

• Pattern by The Homebody using low volume scraps along with a rainbow of coloured scraps from my scrap basket. 
• Pantograph - Fanfare E2E by Christy Dillon
• Quilting thread - Tiny Tuts by Superior threads
• Binding - Riley Blake designs
• Backing - Wordplay by Windham Fabrics from Sew Hot

I love the texture of the quilting pattern that I chose along with the pastel rainbow variegated thread. I was also pleased to find the perfect backing in my stash of backings. At the beginning of lock down I bagged up my backings with the measurements written on a sticky label so that I could more easily choose a backing of the right size. So far the systems working and I haven't cut into any of my bolts of backing recently.

WIP Wednesday - Peace

 

These blocks are so addictive. Yesterday I did none of the jobs that I had hoped to do but I did some more sewing on the Peace block and I just had to piece a few sections together today. Lizzie left for the slow boat trip to Portsmouth last night and I heard from her at 6.15 am to say she was ready to drive the car off the boat. Two hours later she had stopped outside of Oxford for a break and was about a third of the way to Manchester. I have stripped her bed and tidied everything away and I am feeling like I can conquer most of my long list today. we shall see.

I have now finished the Peace block. It was the most difficult of the blocks so far for pressing as there were multiple seams meeting in the small peace cranes. I think the pops of Tula Pink patterned fabric is working with the plain Kona fabrics.

My plan for Saturday, when stitching these blocks is actually scheduled into my week, I'm going to add the borders and take out the paper from the back of the blocks. I have a virtual retreat in two weeks time, I think and I plan to use the banners with the wording in the large central block as a leader and ender project when doing the foundation piecing class.

Today I am going to quilt the third of five quilts for a customer. The first two were trimmed and collected on Monday. I also want to press my Techno Garden quilt top ready for the next video which is released this evening.