Quilts!

The Quilts 1700-1945 exhibit at QAG is so amazing.  There is no photography allowed in the show, but there is a great book with pictures of all the quilts, plus lots of extra information.

This is my favourite – the George III coverlet.  The piecing in the circles is so intricate, and the applique panels are also amazing.  It’s going on my to do list.

I also did a toy drop while we were at the gallery.   In keeping with the quilt theme for the day, I made a little quilt to go with this dolly.  Nothing fancy, just a fat quarter that I had on hand and quilted with loopies.  This was left in the sculpture courtyard before things were very busy, and I was lucky enough to see that it was collected by two little girls with their grandmother. 

 

Love Entwined progress:

I have redone the centre compass, because some of the points weren’t pointy enough and I wanted to adjust the colours slightly.  It meant I also had to redo the 32 surrounding dots but I am much happier with this version.  I’ve started preparing the next stage – many tiny diamonds to be appliqued next

New beginnings

Onto a new project.  And not just any project.  It’s the Love Entwined BOM by Esther Aliu.  I’m looking forward to this one – Esther describes it as an “intense applique” project, and it is definitely that.  I’ve been searching for fabric, and thought I was in luck when I found 6 metres of handkerchief linen in my stash (the receipt  on the bag was from the 90’s!).  It’s beautiful fabric, but I decided it was too sheer for a quilt top.  So I went out and bought some cream quilters muslin to use instead.

Colour wise for the applique, I’m going with scrappy in clear tones (they look murky in that picture, but they are much brighter in person).   I don’t plan on buying anything specific for the applique, and hopefully I can use fabric I already own for most of it.

 

Part 1 is the centre compass and ring of dots.  I chose foundation piecing for the compass, and appliqued the outer ring over the top.  And those dots are teeny, like 6mm across.  I’ve made my dots over a sequin, which is just crazy but it really works.  I’m not going to remove the sequins because it makes a bit of a mess on the back, and the shape of the sequin makes the dots sit up nicely. 

1 month down (almost), only 17 more to go.

RNA entries done

 

Entries for the RNA quilt show are finished, labeled and photographed at last.  I don’t have a wall big enough inside the house to do  the photos inside, so washing line it is.  It’s really difficult to hang a queen sized quilt and not let it touch the ground at some point, especially when you have a feeble arm from quilting.  This quilt is the main culprit for the “tennis” elbow, but I still think it was worthwhile.  I’ve called this one Cirque du Cercles.  It’s French.

I haven’t come up with a name for this dresden plate quilt yet.  I have a lot of left over petals from the small plates, so there will likely be another version of this at some stage.  This one was too big to hang without it touching the ground, even with the washing line as high as it goes.

I heard a bit of a commotion out in the back yard late yesterday and saw this:

About a dozen cockatoos feasting on every passion fruit they could get their little beaks on.  The passion fruit vine is in the corner of the yard and has grown along the fences as well as shooting up into the neighbor's shrub.  I had noticed some passion fruit ready to be picked that were up high in the shrub, and asked my son to grab them next time he was in the yard.  Too slow.  They picked every single one, as well as some green ones off the fence and also grabbed them off the ground.   I don’t begrudge wild birds a feed every now and then but there’s a limit to my generousity.

Blurry action shot:

That’s a ripe passion fruit in it’s beak – they were picking them and flying up to the top of the gum trees to enjoy their bounty.

Warwick retreat

A lovely weekend spent at Glenrose Patchwork in Warwick – lots of sewing finished and lots of ideas for finishing others. 

We didn’t spend much time in the garden, but I ventured out into the cold to get a few pictures:

Lots of roses, and an obliging bee:

I managed to complete the top for my dresden plates, and after overcoming some technical issues managed to pin it all together ready for quilting.  I’ll get started on the quilting this week. 

These triangles were a bit of problem for me – I had wanted to make hexagons out of the triangles, but due to my lack of mathematical knowledge (not realising that the height of an equilateral triangle is not the same as the length of the side) I only managed to get 5 matching triangles from a width of fabric.  So they were all put away in disgust while I tried to work out an alternative finish. 

I don’t have one of these design walls at home, but it made working out the layout so easy for this.  I think I’ll have to rig something up so I can do this at home too. 

I didn’t manage to sew this together, so I’m going to work from photos to reconstruct it

Cirque du Cercles

Almost finished, just the label and hanging sleeve to be completed and this quilt will be ready to enter the RNA show this year. 

The circles were all attached using free motion quilting, and to continue the circle theme I used a pebbly quilting pattern to add texture to the plain background fabric.  It has also shrunk the overall quilt size by about 3-4 inches over the width of the quilt, but I wanted the appliqued circles to look puffy so it has worked really well.  I also gave myself a good case of tennis elbow with this quilt – first with the days of cutting out a bajillion circles, and then with the tight pebble background quilting.

Next in line is this:

A few years ago I cut out all these dresden plate wedges, made a sample block and didn’t like the result – some of the fabrics I chose had a white background and they didn’t look good on the pale background I had picked out.  So I packed it all away and forgot about them until recently.  I unpicked and restitched, and I’m happier with this version.  I have 9 of these blocks finished, and another 30 small blocks for the border done.  I’m hoping to have this finished for the RNA show as well – I think I have about 6 weeks before entries are due so it should be do-able. 

Sunflowers

My garden obsession has moved on from raspberries to sunflowers.   This is a miniature sunflower.  I have planted some giant ones, but they are no where near flowering yet.

I was looking forward to watching this one mature and then giving the seeds to the chickens, but when I went down one day last week I found the stem snapped and the flower hanging down to the ground.  The culprit is a cockatoo that was spotted sitting on the washing line around the same time.  I don’t begrudge them food, but I wish they could have waited a bit longer.

I picked the flower and have it in a vase, I think the seeds are still developing, but I’m not sure.  It now looks like this:

The petals have fallen off, and someone keeps poking the seeds but I think they are still developing.  They are super sticky when you touch them.

And a new quilt – double wedding ring.  A traditional quilt in non traditional colours.  I love red and aqua together.  I think I have enough fabric to make it 7 rings by 7 rings, which is about queen sized according to the maths in my head.  It looks very wrinkly and not flat in this picture, but it is going together surprisingly fast.  (famous last words – I’ve done 4 rings out of the 49 needed to make the top.  My enthusiasm may end at any time.)

Acquisitions

Who knew you could grow raspberries in Queensland?  I’ve never seen a plant ever, but this one was at the nursery so hopefully that means it will grow here.  I’m obsessed with taking pictures of the developing fruit at the moment. 

Chickens!  These have been a while in the planning and yesterday was Chicken Day.  They have been given the highly original names of Blackie, Brownie and Whitie.  Fifi took one run at the fence and quickly realised that she wasn’t getting a chicken dinner.  She just sits and watches them now.  The chickens flipped out when they saw a cat the first time – lots of squawking and carrying on, but they quickly settled down.  There are plans for a couple of Silkies and a duck as well.  It’s probably a good thing that there is a limit of 6 birds.

And the best of all:

A knitting machine!  It took me 5 trips to get everything out of the car and carry it upstairs.  There’s a stand for it which I am pleased about because I don’t have a table that I can use for this. The colour catalogue has a price of $870  and the year 1982 written on it.  I paid $50 – couldn’t get the money out of my purse fast enough!  I had a Singer knitting machine many years ago but didn’t really know how to use it and got sick of dragging it around everytime I moved house, so I gave it away.  I’ve been wanting to get another one for a while now, can’t wait to get it set up so I can play with it.  It looks like all the bits are there.  What to make first?