Here in Australia, we’re well and truly into our spring season (YES! *fist pump*) with temps reaching up to 30+ degrees already! I love it but can only imagine what summer will be like! (I’ll be living in the pool!)
But moving on from my random weather update ramble thing…ahem..my days have been so jammed packed of doing so much stuff!
And of course the most important stuff would be sewing – duh!
Over the last four days I’ve been prepping, prepping and prepping some more (phew!) all to be ready for the Spotlight Quilting Expo on the weekend.
And if you can believe it, after all that prepping there’s still more to do! (Will it ever end!!)
Prepping the fabrics before ironing, cutting and piecing.
But there’s no need to panic just yet…I’ll leave that until Saturday morning as I’m rushing out the door! eek!
Amongst all my prepping for prepping (huh??), I squeezed in some time to make some little mini quilts for a warms-the-depths-of-your-heart kind of cause.
These mini quilts have been specially made as part of a donation drive at my local Spotlight for the Neo-Natal and Maternity wards in one of our local hospitals. These little quilts will help brighten up the wards and add a homey touch to what can be a very stale and clinical environment. I think it’s such a wonderful idea and these hospital wards are always so thankful for donation drives such as this!
*Oh, I’m getting all emoch*
So, I shall continue on my way, prepping for Saturday and keeping the rising panic at bay while I inhale an unnatural amount of Raspberry M&M’s!
‘How can you be so strangely addictive and yummy at the same time?!’
Diet starts Monday! (Maybe…possibly not…no it won’t.)
There comes a time in every quilter’s life where nothing seems to go right and it all falls apart…. The quarter-inch seam allowances aren’t matching up, you’ve burnt your fingers on the vicious hot steam pouring out from the iron when pressing your seams, the quilt is too big to fit on the ironing board, the pattern that you thought looked easy becomes the pattern from hell etc…
Today I share with you my top 10 hates when it comes to quilting. The worst thing is, most of these have happened to me in the past week….
DISCLAIMER: Prepare yourself for a whole lot of whinging!
>Hate 1: Puckering while Quilting<
Every quilter knows that a flat smooth quilt is a good quilt; a flat smooth quilt is a neat quilt; a flat smooth quilt is a ‘professional’ quilt.
And yet, after endless attempts of getting every inch of my ‘quilt sandwich’ flat and smooth after basting and ironing, unwanted puckers evade the surface, leaving me frustrated, annoyed and determined to get the most flattest, smoothest quilt surface in the history of quilting!
Shoo! Annoying puckers!
But then I think, ‘Pfft, fat chance! You’ll never please your internal OCD Monster when working with a medium that moves so freely like fabric does! Silly Billy!’
>Hate 2: The ‘Laws’ of Pressing<
Law One -Setting the seam: The process of setting a seam requires one to press on the seam to ‘set’ or ‘anchor’ the thread into the fabric before pressing the seam open to one side, thus resulting in a flat seam.
Yeh, I do that!! But nine-times-out-of-ten the seam on the back usually has other ideas, folding over the opposite way leaving my seam bulky and twisted!
A Twisted Seam!
I then have to re-do the whole process, which screws up my rhythm and usually results in a good steam burn because my frustration blinds me of my common sense around hot angry irons!
Law Two – Quilter’s Must Always Press to the Dark Side:
Not always necessary.
Stuff the rules!
I’m doing it my way!
>Hate 3: Flat Seams will be the End of Me!<
The time when all seams need to be sewn flat in all the same direction and there’s always that one little #@&$!% that does not want to conform!
The One Seam Join That Does NOT Want To Play!
‘Damn it! Where’s my unpicker!’
>Hate 4: Scrap or not Scrap? That is the question.<
You know what I’m talking about – those little pieces of fabric that are too small for any real use BUT still maybe useful if you were to ever get time to make 5-cent piece size hexies or some weird fabric collage….
Poor Lil’ Scraps!
***But secretly you don’t want to get rid of any fabric scraps because you’re a serial hoarder and don’t want hurt the fabric’s feelings….just sayin’.
>Hate 5: The Joys of Cutting with a Rotary Blade<
So you’ve set your fabric correctly on the cutting mat, the ruler is in the perfect place at the perfect measurement and you cut – yay!
No.
The cut has been made but you didn’t press hard enough on the rotary blade and now you have those few little strands of thread that don’t want to be parted from the Mother fabric.
‘Noo, I don’t want to leave! You can’t make me!!’
Thus resulting in an edge that is botched and hacked, has pulled threads and has left you in tears on the floor because you have weak puny muscles that prevent you from simply cutting a line in a piece of fabric.
The world can seem very unfair sometimes!
>Hate 6: The Worst time for a Quilting Craving<
There’s nothing worse than the self-inflicting torture of quilting on a hot summer’s day. I find nothing fun about sweating under a heavy quilt just to soothe my weird urge of feeding three layers of differing orientated fibres through a sewing machine.
And yet I still do it.
Every.
Single.
Year.
>Hate 7: The bobbin running out at the worst possible moment!<
Argh!!
Need I say more…??
>Hate 8: The Stash Equation: I don’t need it, but I want it.<
A small snippet of my ‘stash’
I know I don’t need any more fabric. My family knows it as well as my crafty friends.
And yet I keep buying it.
I have no room for it.
Boy, I don’t even have enough money for it!
But it keeps rolling on through the door and into my stash.
Why only today I bought two new fat quarters.
Why?
Because-they-were-a-D-O-L-L-A-R!! Who in their right mind would give up such a special like that!?
Nuh-ahh, not me!
I found room for it.
>Hate 9: Pesky Joins<
No matter how well I secure my joins (that is: two seams coming together and sitting at a neat T-Junction) with pins, there is always one that just does not want to match up no matter how well I’ve measured and sewn the pieces of fabrics together. Thus resulting in mismatched block joins and seams that look like a dog’s hind leg!
Yes!No.
Boo, I say to you!
>Hate 10: Runaway Quilts<
That moment when you’re trying to feed a quilt through the sewing machine but it keeps runaway from you due to the sheer size and bulk of it, ruining your attempt at quilting a decent straight line.
If I were super-human and could morph eight arms out of my torso, maybe then would I be able to achieve the near impossible of perfect quilting on a domestic sewing machine.
Regrettably, I do not live in a Marvel comic so I will need to settle on rare but occasional burst of fits of frustration to get me through the dreaded ‘runaway quilt’ quilting phase.
End whinge.
And yet, after that mindless rant and rave, I could not think of one thing in the world that I LOVE and that brings me more joy than quilting (apart from my family, nephews, friends, my dog, God, food, my car, my independence and my BED!).
The passion is hard to explain but can be easily seen simply through the dedication I have to my blog.
I love quilting and my life would be simply colourless and boring without it.
So, a few months ago my cousin in the U.K asked if I could make her quilt…and of course I said yes…
So here’s a very quick way of how it was made!
Sally (my cousin) wanted purples and lilacs in her quilt, so I set off first finding the best block/quilt design that jumped out at me and gave me an insight of how to work and manipulate her colour choice. I found a great picture in google images of this quilt using shades of green blending in to neutral and white toned fabric. It was titled ‘Jungle Rain’ and it was exactly what I was looking for!
These are the fabrics I chose that I thought best suited and that Sally would like as well as the original picture of the ‘Jungle Rain’ quilt I followed from.
After figuring out all the correct measurements and cutting all the pieces, I started to assemble the quilt top by laying out the coloured squares, following my picture guide, from the lightest toned fabric up to the deepest. Only then I started to realise just how big the quilt would eventually be and mentally prepared myself for the task ahead…
Once I was happy with the placements of the squares, I started sewing! I added cream sashing to the opposite sides of the squares to make 15 long strips. This then started the process of framing off the squares, allowing them to stand out and make a bold statement on the final design of the quilt…
After sewing all the sashings on and sewing the strips together, I began to add the border to finish off the quilt top. Only now I could really start appreciating the graduation of colour and tone between the purples, lilacs, neutrals and whites. It’s easy to say that I was mega pleased with how it was coming on and just how awesome it was looking!
So now it came to the step of quilting I hate with a passion: basting! This quilt is close to queen size and it took all of my safety pins plus extras that had to be bought to baste this baby up! But with alot of persistance, patience and alot of cursing, I did it and started the mammoth task of quilting it.
I chose a really simple but effective straight-cross quilting that gave a tradtional and elegant feel to the quilt. And added great texture to the front and back!
Finally onto the finishing touches, binding, in which I chose to use one of the deeper purples to bring all the colours together and tie it all up and……ta-dah!! The finished result!
And the back…..which I think is as awesome as the front!
And that’s it! Now it’s ready to be sent over just before the cold winter months come along in the U.K….
3and3quarters 