Stitcher's keeper finished

The pattern for this is by Leanne Beasley the author of Vignette magazine. Most of the flowers and the threads are the same as Vignette so this has been a good practice piece.



I particularly like the turquoise dotted moda which is the lining fabric for the piece. I may have to buy some more of it. It goes well with the fabrics I've chosen for the Vignette Block of the Month and also the Bliss scrap bag I purchase earlier in the week.

Led astray

I have a number of blogs that I read regularly, many of them in Australia as I'm following the progress and other work by other Vignette sewers. Yesterday I read that Dilly Dimple had ordered some Moda scrap bags from Hulu I clicked through to be surprised to find it's a Uk store, a few clicks later and I ordered two bags. They arrived today in their kraft bags.

The bags are similar to a jelly roll in that they are the ends left over from a jelly roll being cut and are therefore all from one range, but the strips are various widths. The ranges are bliss by Bonnie and Camille (left) and Clermont Farms by Polly Minick and Lauri Simpson.




And yes I do already have loads of fabric but I actually have a project planned for the strips - the hexagon quilt from Leanne Beasley's Vignette magazine issue 2.



And no I haven't lost my marbles. I thought this would be a great summer sewing project and that I could perhaps encourage some other quilting ladies to join me and work it out of my system. Also Sizzix have some dies from their Westminster range which cut 1" hexagons for the papers and 1.25" for the fabric. So that makes it a demo for Caesarea Quilters too. Also Leanne uses a glue pen to save tacking which I will be exploring and Fiona sells the pens so I can pick one up next week.

Finished block 1

And six weeks until magazine 3 comes out with blocks 4 and 5. I don't cope with pressure well and even self inflicted pressure. I know I can do these blocks at my own speed and take more than the two years that this project is released over, but I know that if I take it easy at the beginning, it will get put to the side. A point in case are the two 2009 block of the month quilts, one of which was previewed in the last post. Both still unfinished 18 months after the last block was published and I did keep up right until then end, but the Thimbleberries quilt lies half quilted. The TQS quilt needs the last border adding and then it needs to be pinned and quilted.

I wrote an updated projects in progress list earlier this week which grew to 11 projects. I need to finish at least eight of them this year to regain some control!! In case you're wondering here they are in no particular order:
1. TQS BOM border needs to be added and then quilted
2. Garden angel small project which would take half a day to finish
3. Vignette blocks - ongoing
4. Thimbleberries BOM - needs to be quilted and binding finished this month
5. Dear Jane - needs quilting - do you see a pattern developing
6. Blue and cream - half quilted but rucked on the back so some unpicking needs to be done followed by some quilting
7. Stitchers keeper - a recent start which I will take to Chez Soi on a Wednesday to progress.
8. Pinwheel party - with Mavis for quilting then all I need to do is trim and bind
9. Hug cushion - ongoing
10. Jelly roll quilt - border needed but not yet bought
11. Jan Krentz - loads of foundation pieced blocks need to be sewn so my biggest UFO.

Here's my first block, the second and third blocks are already pieced and the stitchery traced. I am waiting until it's all finished before stitching the grass line to try and keep the size of stitches uniform all the way around as I haven't yet got my stitch size consistent yet.




And here's some lovely Moda spotty goodness to go with my Just a Hoot fabrics for the Vignette BOM and also for the interior of the Stitchers Keeper. The only one I won't be using is the green as it's too bright for these projects.

April progress

Yesterday was our April crop. It was beautiful weather outside and inside was a hive of activity, that is except for me as I seemed to fiddle with lots and only got a couple of layouts finished from the Gogogetaway. Photos next week of those layouts.

I have been busy sewing my Vignette block 1, which is nearly but not quite finished. I finished my Pinwheel Party quilt at least a week ago, made a label from a spare block and only yesterday pieced together the backing. Today I took it to a machine quilter to do a lovely modern feather pattern on it. Then it will just need trimming and binding. This quilt is a pattern I've written for a workshop in September and I decided to ask Mavis to quilt it so that it's ready for the May CQ meeting as a sample. Less stressful for me.




This week I've been working on quilting the border of my 2009 Thimbleberries Block of the Month. I thought a sample was needed to bind for our guild meeting on 18th April, but in the end it wasn't needed. I applied the binding I cut at least six months ago and then added two more strips in accordance with the pattern. Unfortunately I had cut the original strips half an inch bigger, which I didn't discover until the binding was almost finished. Not enough fabric to cut two more strips, so this morning I took apart the binding and this afternoon, I've sewn it back. It's now finished and will need to be hand sewn to the back of the quilt. A perfect job for taking to the Mill every Wednesday. Not that I've finished the quilting of the quilt, but that will be completed after our trip to Liverpool.

Gogogetaway

Another successful event. I liked six out of the seven classes I chose and here's some of what I completed. The rest will follow when finished.

The first layout was by Lorraine and I loved the idea of stripping off the top layer of the die cut and putting chipboard shapes underneath and embossing them. Several classes over the weekend had embossed details.



Probably my favourite layout of the weekend because it involved sewing!! Though the embroidery floss was rubbish and the eye of the needles provided were too large, but I had some sewing in my suitcase so not a problem. Also my photos were right and I was able to finish it all in class and bought myself a new signo white pen to highlight the alphabet stickers.



Kirsty's hybrid class suited my Egypt pictures perfectly and the plane moves across the page. I still need to fire up the A3 printer and get into hybrids more.



And finally the only photo I took all weekend. Fortunately however there is a group photo taken by Kirsty, who we hope will visit Jersey very soon.

Vignette blocks 2 and 3

I'm not sure if I've already posted a photo of this cushion I finished for the Eisteddfod. The cushion top had been finished for a couple of years so I just needed to make it into a cushion with a zip closure. I will be giving this to a friend tonight to go in her topiary inspired kitchen.



Yesterday I did some work on the Vignette block of the month. Issue two arrived over a week ago and contains blocks 2 and 3. I have done all of the piecing apart from the shoo fly blocks around the edge and have started embroidering the middle block alongside block 1 to keep me interested. The original design had the red dot border and the cream pieced as two 18.5 strips, but as the width of fabric is 44", I used one long strip. The other variation is the stripes that I've used which were meant to be 1" finished squares but as there are several large striped fabrics in the "It's a Hoot" collection, I thought it would work well and I'm happy with it. There are no flowers to fussy cut in my fabric so I fussy cut the brown and teal stripes for the 2" squares.



I am also working on block 1 of the BOM too. Issue 3 is out on 1 June so I need to press on, otherwise I'll be three blocks behind.

2011 Eisteddfod

On Friday I visited the Eisteddfod exhibition to see how my entries had fared. This is a walk through of some of the entries.

The prize winners including Astra's Makower butterfly. A worthy winner but Jane would like to know what the tune on the edge played as.




Sue Jones beautiful Hawaiian quilt on the left with lots of hand quilting.



My "Behind the rainbow" quilt from the Jan Krentz workshop which got a platinum. I'll be interested to see the points awarded as platinum is 95 and over.



Janet Grady's Jan Krentz quilt - I call this one the difficult class. Mine is still in pieces as I haven't done the paper piecing. However all my diamonds have been sewn and blocked.




My black white and red quilt got a silver and my topiary tapestry cushion a silver, not surprised with the later as there was a mark on it.



Ella's quilt which won Astra's 20 anniversary challenge.




Alex's four seasons embroidery. Alex has definitely found her voice in embroidery. She has always preferred hand work to machine work.




A scarf which was awarded gold. Pretty but as I've made one of these in two hours I know how easy they are.




The Caesarea Quilters quilt for Trees for Life and a lovely chicken quilt (of which there were two very different versions).




Cath Challinor's lovely Japanese quilt which wasn't given a high enough award IMHO.



Sarah Matlock's cute doll.



Judy Bailey's Jan Krentz quilt. Very different colours and quilting to my version.

Patchwork party progress

I purchased fabric for the border yesterday from Fiona. The red goes well with the fabric but isn't a shade of red I'd usually buy. I now need to calculate how much backing I need using the same red as the border joined with stripes of jelly roll and a label.



Off to Zumbathon this afternoon. It starts at 1pm which means an early lunch.

March 2011 Friday night sew in

Whilst Nick and Matthew went to ATC, I sat to sew on my Vignette block 1.




Elizabeth joined me and subjected me to Comedy Relief on BBC1. I managed a few slow flowers and stems on my block but no great progress, I'm still finding my way on making the stitches all the same size. I'd like to finish this block in March so that I have two months to finish the next two blocks which are even larger, or so it seems, than this block.




One of Moica's button bracelet kits arrived today. That's going to be fun to put together. I might replace the green buttons though as I never wear green.

Pinwheel party centre finished

Now I need some fabric for borders. I had spotted a lovely yellow that Fiona had but now that there is yellow on the outside of some of the blocks. I'm now not so sure. I'm going to see what Fiona has on Saturday and take it from there. I have plenty of jelly roll left to do some scrappy borders so it will grow quite quickly now.

As I can't sew anything more on it today. I've been surfing for machine quilting patterns. I think I've found one called fascination that will suit. What do you think?

Monday finishes

A few easy finishes for a Monday morning. All I needed to do for this scarf which is very chunky was sew the ends in. Easier said than done when the wool is so thick.



Whilst looking in Linnea of Sweden for fabrics, Lizzie and I saw a canvas with coloured mother of pearl buttons spelling out the word love for £55. I had two canvasses from an unsuccessful class so they were painted red and cream buttons stuck on in a heart shape. I have then sewn them on as I like the look and the buttons won't fall off. This is for the Beaulieu Craft stall at the summer fete. How much do you they should ask?



And last but not least, a gorgeous scarf from wool sent to me my Claire as a get well pressie. Just my colours. The weather might be a bit warm to wear it today unfortunately. This only took two hours to knit and I finished it off this morning with the last few rows and sewing in the ends.

March 2011 crop

Four layouts finished at the crop yesterday. The first should have been a quick finish but I spilt a bottle of flavoured water everywhere and I had to replace the kraft background. All I had to do yesterday to start with was replace the two draft printed photos with properly printed photos. This is layout is based on the February Blueprints to go from Scrapagogo.



My second layout was based on Shimelle's 2peas class 4 by 6 photo love. I've used almost all of that sheet of star paper which is very usable and most of the packet of Tim Holtz tickets. It's good to use stuff up.



Another quick layout was the February pages for Year in review which is also a Scrapagogo inititiative. I think I will continue to use the Basic Grey basics each month for the background as they are a good neutral background with a bit of interest. As the layouts are only 6 by 6, it only takes half of a sheet of paper and a few embellishments.



Last page for the day which just needed the journalling to be added today is a sketch support two pager for which I used the scalloped paper plus the papers and stickers I received yesterday morning from Sketch Support for a challenge I won about three weeks ago. I was delighted with the prize, but disappointed I spilt some water on it and there was no alpha or twine. I love the corrugated flowers and the button stickers.



Another good crop - thank you Jenny for the French biscuits and the loan of the Martha Stewart grass punch and knitting needles. Thank you to Joanne for helping me clear up the mess the water made.

FNSI March

Once a month Heidi hosts FNSI (Friday Night Sew In). As Nick and Matthew are both at Air Cadets on a Friday night, I plan to join the FNSI for the first time this month. Now what shall I sew? I think perhaps I might work on blocks 2 or 3 of Vignette as issue 2 should arrive tomorrow.



Perhaps if my magazine doesn't arrive, I'll have to continue to work on block 1. My list of projects in progress seems to be growing not shrinking!!

Getting bigger

Here's how far I got yesterday. Having thought I would do a five by five grid of blocks, when I had done all the X blocks (double pinwheel), I decided I had enough fabric to make the quilt 5 blocks by 7. There will also be enough fabric left to do a border and binding.




I have all the X blocks part sewn, apart from one, so I have decided to take a break today and my aim today is to add my photos to my instructions to make sure I have all the photos I need. Then tomorrow I can recommence sewing and I should finish the X blocks and hopefully all of the Y blocks too.

Today I am celebrating the end of two weeks of post-op injections. I can leave the house whenever I want!! So the plan this morning is to:
Find the alien invasion cache which had disappeared
Go to quilting and do some stitching on my vignette block
Pick up dinner from M&S
Book car in for the warning lights
Pick up key for Saturday's crop
Do banking for Nick

And then add photos to my instructions. It's going to be a full on day.

Progress from day 1

And don't the blocks look pretty. However I've just spotted some unpicking that needs to be done. The block on the bottom left has the wrong fabrics paired together on the outside, which means I have a mismatched block upstairs too.



Shower next and then on with the stitching.

Feeling more like myself

Lorraine led a very successful cardmaking workshop on Saturday as a fund raiser for St Helier Sirens WI. We had spoken about me perhaps doing a similar fundraiser by running a jelly roll workshop. Three ladies on Saturday's course, said please do, so I think the dice is cast. Despite being very tired last night I ran up a test block and did one of my infamous line drawings with a cutting scheme for one block.

Last night I got to thinking, if I'm doing notes for the workshop, perhaps I could write a pattern. Then I had a look at how to develop an E-book. Perhaps I should just make the quilt first and then think about patterns. However whilst waiting for the nurse to come this morning and give me my penultimate injection, I have written up the pattern.

After the nurse came I headed off to buy two jelly rolls (Lovely by Sandy Gervais for Moda) from Fiona at You Neek Quilting. Then I braved the not too big crowds at Waitrose for the first time. Loads of different products. All too inviting.



Time to have lunch and start some cutting to test my pattern - "Pinwheel Party".

Vignette celebration

To celebrate the publication of issue 2 of Vignette there is a giveaway of fabric on the Vignette blog to make one of the projects in the magazine.

Vignette progress

Whilst recouperating from my day surgery op on Tuesday, it was the perfect time to stitch some more of this Block of the Month whilst putting my feet up.

The original uses a range of fabric by Lecien which is not readily available in Europe so I chose the following:
Patterned fabric - FQ stack by Moda called It's a Hoot by Momo
Script fabric - Sunkissed by Sweetwater for Moda
Spotted fabric - Moda essential dots in Lipstick
Background - Moda Marbles in baby white - although it is actually cream / off white

For the label I tried printing the pattern on to the fabric which I'd ironed onto some freezer paper. This worked reasonably well, but I hadn't realised the bounding box was 6" but the unfinished size was 7" so I've added in the turquoise frame to cover my mistake. Just a few stamens to add to the flowers in the label and then it will be time to trace the stitchery border. This I will be doing with Frixion pens which I saw on a blog which iron off. I have tested them on some scraps and they really do work. And you can buy them from Amazon.

sketch support winner

I can't quite believe I won the sketch support challenge and keep returning to look at the lovely prize. Here's the prize which includes some of the impossible to find baker's twine. I only managed to find three identical packets ( brown and red) in Florida and it was a Jillibeans product too like the prize.



It looks like a lot of the product I've won is also in the March 2011 Gogo kit so I can play along with the challenges with the product I've won.

Needle case

We returned from Guernsey earlier than planned yesterday so I was at a bit of a loose end. I had seen a needlecase on Sew She Sews which I put together quickly using leftovers from the sail riggers bag in January. I took it to quilting last night, and I was helping with the demo, Anne, a new member, offered to hem the binding. the original pattern has the binding being machined on, but I didn't have enough fabric left over to make a 2.5" binding so it had to be 2" and handstitched.





Great news yesterday - I was picked as the winner of last week's sketch support challenge with my Blues Brother layout and have some lovely Jillibeans Soup goodies coming my way, including some lovely corrugated letters in pale blue (I love the green and white versions I already own).