patchwork – Page 5 – 3and3quarters

Two Years Later…

Two years ago, on this very day, I found the guts to start writing a blog.

I was nervous, unsure and a little bit scared at the thought of writing and publishing my own quilty work on the internet.

But I was looking for a challenge, an expressive medium and a chance to reach out to other creatives around the world!

And two years later, here we are! Still writing. Still making. Still challenged!

I thought for today’s post I would look down memory lane of the past year – reflecting on the good (and plain-right exciting!!) things that have happened over the past 12 months!

Main picture: Me with my Minimalist: 101 quilt at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show – my first ever entry into this show!

From bottom left to top right –

1. Hexie Cushion, detail. (I looove hexies!!)

2. London Phone Booth Embroidery, detail. (I wanna go to London so bad!!)

3. Mini Cot Quilt – hospital donation.

4. Painted Flowers Embroidery. (Click here to watch it come to life!)

5. Double Wrench Mini Blocks, quilt top only (ATM!!)

From left to right –

1. Olfa Rotating Cutting Mat – featured in my 5 Quilting Tools I Couldn’t Live Without post & video.

2. Small Plates Lap Quilt – This quilt featured in my Fast Forward Quilting video!

3. Scrumptious Double Wrench Mini Block units ready to be ironed. (Simply delightful!)

4. Coloured Hexie Stack. (I looove colour!)

5. A snapshot of my Fiskars Rotary Blade – featured in my #instagramjunkie post.

From left to right –

1. An array of fabrics used for Quilt Expo 2013 at Spotlight

2. Xavier’s Baby Quilt – read the post here.

3. Hexie Pincushion (Click here for the video tutorial!)

4. Lovely fabrics used in the Double Wrench Mini Blocks

From left to right –

1. I Heart Colour wallhanging – machine paper pieced wonky log cabin blocks designed by yours truly! Quilt made from 100% scraps – nothing new was bought to make this baby!!

2. Sewing Notions – from the post #instagramjunkie

3. Tape Measure – from the post #instagramjunkie

4. Scissors Embroidery – made specially for my new sewing room door.

5. Scrap-Happy String quilt, detail.

This also happened during the year…

And this is what happened in my life behind the blog…

Main picture: I became an Auntie again!! My fourth nephew, Xavier, was born in August! (Isn’t he just the cutest!!)

From left to right –

1. I decided to grow my hair out long – I’ve always had it really short (think, pixie/short-bob style for 6 years!) and decided a change was in need! (Change is a good thing, right?)

2. I took my ‘challenge’ mantra to the next level and started making YouTube videos featuring quilty stuff, life stuff and lots of other stuff. (I think of it as a cleansing [and confronting at times] way of finding my self-confidence…). Don’t forget to subscribe while you’re there – it’ll help boost my self-confidence even more!! 😀

3. I drank a lot of tea!

So…wow!

It’s definitely been a busy year!

And I’m thankful it’s been a busy one, otherwise I would’ve just gone insane! Literally…

Thanks to everyone who has ever read my little blog and has left messages of encouragement and support! It really does mean a WHOLE LOT!

I’m terribly excited to see what the next 12 months will bring!!

*whoop-whoop*

Happy Sewing Friends! xx

Oh! And one last thing…

This happened during the year too –

My own precious sewing space!!

My place.

My hub.

My den.

My heaven.

10 Things I Hate About Quilting

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!

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!

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….

***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!!' — ‘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!<

Need I say more…??

>Hate 8: The Stash Equation: I don’t need it, but I want it.<

A small snippet of my 'stash' — 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!

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.

Simple.

Happy Sewing! xx

From Humble Beginnings: Stash-Happy String Quilt

Incorporating selvedges & a rocking Elvis print!

Sweet Prints: Teapots, Watermelon & Cupcakes!

One more block to piece & then it's ready to be sewn together! — One more block to piece & then it’s ready to be sewn together!

Happy Sewing! xx

Hooray for the weekend!!

What a week! I’ve been so overwhelmingly busy these past few days that I’m so glad it’s the weekend!

The last two days I’ve spent at the Craft & Quilt Show at Darling Harbour where I helped man our stand full of our latest issues and associated quilting products.

Of course I took full advantage of my time there to go shopping and spend a ridiculous amount of money on fabric. I mainly bought fat-quarters in mind of a new quilt idea bubbling in the back of my brain. Let’s just say, for now, it will feature the use of a lot of spotty fabrics!

I also bought a beautiful Amy Butler fabric which I’m thinking I could use as a feature print in a quilt sometime in the future.

I also found the sweetest Babushka Sailor Doll, who is now a new addition to my sewing table.

*******************************************************************

So one of the biggest thrills (as well as the most loserish in the world!) a quilter can get is the purchase of a brand new, shinny, fang-dangle iron! And I, as a quilter, had one of these wet-your-pants-with-excitement moments last weekend when I bought our new iron.

It’s just so pretty and fancy! And yes, I understand that I am the dorkiest, most insane and weirdest person ever in the world to be so excited over an iron. Everyone in my household thinks I’m crazy, and you know, I don’t blame them because I would think the same thing if the roles where reversed. But for a quilter, without an iron you can’t get clean precise lines to match up or have all your blocks lie flat resulting in a flat pristine quilt top that will obey your every command. In patchwork and quilting, an iron is just as important as your sewing machine, fabrics and threads! Hence, my giddy excitement and wet pants.

So of course I had to find a legit reason to use this new piece of appliance that had come into our household and my June Craftsy BOMs where the perfect excuse! Plus I knew I could get them done in a few hours, curing me of my sewing addiction for the day.

With a twist to the old nine-patch block, I’m really pleased with how my fabric choices work in these blocks, especially the Greek cross – the bold pink print fabric really makes it pop!

I’m about to get started on quilting the Butterfly Cot Quilt, where I’m going to take a big bold step and stipple (or free-hand machine) quilt around the butterflies. I haven’t done very much free-hand quilting before – let alone on an actual quilt – but I’m all for taking on challenges; doing it, learning from it and loving the result! How will you grow in your skills if you don’t give new things a go right? I hope to get started on it this weekend as I’m so anxious to get it finished as I think it’s going to turn out really sweet and charming!

I’ve begun the first steps of figuring out how to create my How does your Garden Grow? quilt competition quilt by mocking up a smaller scale of the quilt design and playing around with a few of the techniques I mentioned in my last blog. I think I’ve come to a conclusion of which direction to go in to construct this one: English Paper Piecing. It’s going to take a while and require a lot of patience but I think it’ll be worth it in the end!

So there’s a lot to carry on with during the weekend and maybe, just maybe I can hopefully squeeze in an extra few hours at the Craft & Quilt Show and explore its inspiring goodness and tempting products in my own time, at my own leisure. Maybe. If I have the funds to spare it!

Happy Sewing!! xx

A Diamond Jubilee Celebration fit for a Queen!

If you’ve been living under a rock, in a cave, under the bed or are just plain ignorant, you may have been unaware that this weekend was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The hype about this event has been building up for months and the UK has been dressing up the London city streets with an abundance of Monarchy pride!

As a great lover of all things British, and the fact my dad’s an Englishman, we celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in style in the form of a ‘simple’ Sunday dinner.

I decked out our table with some red and blue gingham fabric, a Union Jack printed tea towel the folks bought back from their European holiday last year, my Grandmother’s 1950’s print frame of the Queen when she was younger along with fancy crockery, glasses and goofy crown hats!

We had Coronation Chicken sandwiches, a Victoria Sponge, Jam Tart and Shortbread biscuits. We started dinner with some sparkling grape drink (non-alcoholic for the teetotallers in our family) followed by leaf-tea in fancy cups and saucers with our dessert. We truly enjoyed ourselves by doing something different while acting silly with our posh little pinky fingers in the air as we sipped our tea and spoke in posh English accents – well attempted to anyway!

Before our fancy dinner, I had dedicated the afternoon to watching some of my favourite British films.

I started with About a Boy then treated my self to the ridiculously funny and classic Bridget Jones. I did have all intentions to watch Four Weddings and a Funeral but Downton Abbey was on TV and I couldn’t miss that! There are plenty of other British titles that rank in my top favourite movies; The King’s Speech, Pride & Prejudice (BBC version – swoon over Mr. Darcy!), Persuasion, The Inbetweeners, Love Actually, Bend it Like Beckham, Mr Bean etc. I would need a whole week to watch all of these titles to truly enjoy every moment!

My movie afternoon-slash-evening became the ideal time to continue appliqueing the butterflies on the Butterfly cot quilt that’s currently in the making. Only four more to go, with 24 butterflies in total! Yay! Once they’re all secured, I can sandwich the quilt up with wadding and the backing fabric and get ready to quilt!

Saturday evening, with a stubborn itch to do some sewing, I came up with this Stacked Coins cushion cover using some coordinating scraps from my scraps tub. No pattern, no instructions. Just my imagination and mind’s eye helped to create this little gem.

It’s now ready for a quick bout of quilting and then the quirky pear print backing to be sewn on (with a zipper or buttons I’m not sure yet) and then stuffed with a cushion in-fill and it’s ready for the lounge!

I’ve finalised my design for the Quilter’s Guild of NSW’s under 35 years quilting competition based on the theme How Does Your Garden Grow?

Just a sneeky-peek…I can’t give the whole idea away just yet! Today I was researching into how I would actually construct this beauty. It’ll definately have to be some type of Foundation Piecing, either string or paper piecing or English paper piecing. I’ll have to do some mock up testing first to find out which would best. Any suggestions??

Happy Sewing! xx

Here’s to a Summer We Never Had!

One of the best feelings in the world for a quilter is the spark of excitement you get when starting a new quilt! It’s all about that instant thrill and buzz you get when finding the right pattern, mixing and matching the right colours and prints and then beginning! The first cut into the fabric, the first sight of a crisply sewn and ironed block lying on your desk, the feeling of triumph and satisfaction rising in your chest! *sigh* I just love quilting!

So obviously after that stirring paragraph, I’ve started a new project!! Whoo! Complimenting my addiction for half-square triangles at the moment, I found this very quick and simple pattern from work that we give out for free when a new range of quilting fabric comes in. This was for Denyse Schmidts’ Daisy Mae quilting range we just received, in which I swoon over and must touch every time I’m at work! You can find at Spotlight’s homepage, print it out and make it yourself!

Unfortunately, I didn’t use D.S’ fabric as I’m a poor art student and really need to start using the endless amounts of fabric I have stacked up all over the place (it was very hard to restrain myself from buying new fabric!). I chose a beautiful cool colour palette of lime greens and turquoisey blues with brilliant white homespun. Very summery indeed!

160 beautifully crisp and freshly cut triangles ready to be chain-stitched….what a beautiful sight!

I chose these four prints as each pair complete each other, the colours are similar and I love using different sized prints as they add movement and contrast to the overall look of the quilt. Plus I really like them….

Admittedly, at the point I took this photo, I hadn’t yet ironed my rows or stitched them together to finish it off, but I was way too excited to finally see how it had all come together and look so beautiful! Since sewing all those 160 triangles together, I was astonished at just how quick this quilt came together and at how easy-peasy it was!

Now that Autumn has arrived here in Australia, I’ve decided to dedicate this quilt to the summer we never had. To those who have no clue what I’m talking about, all it ever did this past summer season (the last three months and counting) was rain. I think we had maybe 7 or 8 days of the beautifully hot Australian summer sun and that was it – the rest of the time it rained. And still is. So here’s to a summer we never had!

And now I’m up to the dreaded part of basting….I hate basting! But I’ll suck it up and just do it as I know how ridiculously sweet it will look when it’s finished!

Happy Sewing! xx

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