Archive for the 'patchwork' Category

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FARMER’S WIFE SAMPLER QUILT

Published on November 3, 2011 in patchwork and the workroom. 31 Comments Tags: Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt, quilt along.

I can’t stop thinking about the Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt. Several months ago, Angela & Amanda started a quilt-a-long for it and it seems like everybody has joined it. I have been trying to resist since I have so many projects on the go already and was feeling intimidated by it.

But everyday, I have been seeing blocks like this and this and this and especially this. Now I’m so jealous and I’ve decided that I’m going to start this project in January. New year, new project! In the meantime, I’m going to finish up some lingering quilting projects. It’s a win-win situation.

Any friends out there thinking of joining in? There’s lots of great info and support in the existing group on Flickr. Toronto peeps, we could meet up at Quilt Sunday every month to compare notes and cheer each other on. If you’re somewhere else, let’s share photos and blog posts with each other. All you need is a copy of the book to get going. (We have LOTS of copies of the book at the workroom!)

There are 111 blocks in this quilt. It’s a big commitment, but you certainly don’t need to do all of the blocks. There are versions of the quilt with as little as 50 blocks. The online quilt along is aiming for 2 blocks every week, but I’m just using this is a guideline. Life is busy and some weeks I might not make any blocks and other weeks, I might make four.

Can we do this together? Wanna join the Farmer’s Wife movement with me?

p.s. I’m already obsessing about fabric choices. (Best!)

SEWING SUMMIT MINI

Published on October 23, 2011 in patchwork, scraps and traveling. 7 Comments Tags: free motion, improv patchwork, Lizzy House, mini quilt, outfoxed, sewing summit.

Here’s my improv patchwork from Sewing Summit. Half the scraps for this came from Amanda and the other half came from Lizzy, who let me & Katherine dip into her collection for some bits we wanted for our stash. I really like sewing with other people’s fabrics. It’s fun to sew with fabric that I might not normally use.

I’ve been a bit afraid of free motion quilting. Okay, ALOT afraid. So far all the machine quilting that I’ve done has been straight lines, using a walking foot. I mean, after all the time that I’ve spent putting together a quilt, the last thing I want to do is ruin it with some bad quilting. This is why I knew I had to sign up for the Free Motion Quilting class at the Sewing Summit.

Our teacher, Alison, showed us lots of examples of different styles of quilting and quilts that she had done. She gave us some tips and gave demos on her technique. Then we just had to go for it. We had quilt sandwiches to practice on. This is definitely the best way to learn. Practice on little fake mini quilt sandwiches! There was a lot of wonky stitching on my practice mini, but I really liked the look of the overlapping square pattern, so I kept practicing that pattern over and over. Finally, I just decided to just go for it. SCARY! If you look really closely, this quilting is hardly perfect. But it was really exciting to finally let go and stop worrying about how perfect my little squares are. From a distance, it looks pretty good. Of course, now I want to do all kinds of free motion. I’m going to stick to mini quilts for now, but I can’t wait til I am ready to tackle a larger quilt. Bring it on FREE MOTION!

SUNDAY PATCHWORK #10

Published on September 23, 2011 in patchwork and stitchery. 5 Comments Tags: canning mat, disappearing nine patch, mini quilt.

I’ve been wanting to try out the disappearing nine patch ever since I saw Karen’s quilt a few years ago. When Amanda mentioned that she wanted to make a patchwork canning mat and that she wanted to do a disappearing nine patch, Katherine & I cried ‘quilt along’ right away.

I had a stack of fat quarters already picked out from my Colour Theory Class that I wanted to use. I’m realizing now how autumnal my colours are. That peachy colour just looks so good with the browns.

We’re making 25 blocks that will finish at 5″ each. I was able to start putting mine together on Sunday. The nine patches came together really quickly. Once your blocks are together, you slice them vertically and horizontally through the centre. Then you rotate the four pieces and sew them back together. There are a few different configurations you can come up with when you twist the blocks. Fun!

Canning season is almost done for this year, but I’ll surely have this done before next year.

COLOUR THEORY + MINI QUILTS

Published on September 17, 2011 in colour, patchwork and the workroom. 3 Comments Tags: colour theory, Lizzy House, mini quilt.

Somehow I was catapulted out of August into the middle of September, (WTH?) so don’t mind me while I reminisce about the last bits of summer.

Colour Theory + Mini Quilts with Lizzy House was a phenomenal class. The first class was spent mixing paints and learning about colour theory. It felt like being back in art class, but it truly drove the lesson home. Right away we were putting together dynamic colour palettes that surprised us. I saved mine and I’m making a mini quilt out of it this weekend.

For the mini quilt portion of the class we had to design something from scratch. I’ve done lots of improv quilting, but never really planned a design, so this was a challenge. We were also supposed to try to only use solids. Another challenge for me since I rarely use solids.

I added one more personal challenge on top of all that. I wanted to try to convey transparency with my design where parts were overlapping. Let me tell you, I was frustrated by the whole thing. But for me, I know that this means that I’m actually learning something!

My mini turned out to look just like my sketch and I can’t tell you what a thrill it was the first time I pieced together a component with the transparency layers.

It was really special watching each individual mini quilt come together from a sketch to a little mini work of art. It was even more special to see everyone achieve little milestones of personal challenge and achievement. I’m not going to lie, there were some joyful tears at the end of this class. Yep. That’s the kind of teacher Lizzy House is.

SUNDAY PATCHWORK #9

Published on August 4, 2011 in patchwork. 4 Comments Tags: mrsmcporkchop, star-y log cabin, sunday patchwork.

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on my Star-y Log Cabin quilt, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. (that counts for something, right?) I finally promised myself that I would devote a Sunday Patchwork night to make some headway with this quilt top. (which was designed by Amanda)

It’s pretty fun to start to see it come together. It’s definitely a much bolder palette than what I tend to go for and it feels pretty good to step outside my normal ‘grey’ palette. I have about five more rounds of logs to do, so I’m just about half way done!

SUNDAY PATCHWORK #8

Published on July 20, 2011 in colour and patchwork. 7 Comments Tags: improv patchwork, mini quilt, pinterest, sunday patchwork.

The beauty of a mini quilt is that you work through a colour palette or style on a very small scale and feel like you’ve checked it off your list. It would be impossible for me to work out every colour combination I’m in love with as a full sized quilt. Plus, I’ve recently decided that my life needs a wall filled with mini quilts.

This melon and grey combination has made several appearances on my Pinterest colour board. (1, 2, 3, 4!) Grey plus anything is always a favourite for me.

I’m testing out some new ways of doing improv patchwork. For this piece, I made up a rule that I must use equal amounts of all the fabric I chose. I cut a strip of fabric that was 6″ x 2″ of each fabric and started sewing. I wanted to keep it really simple, so I didn’t chop up my sewing too much as I went along. I like how it just ended up being equal squares and rectangles. So simple.

I’m feeling like I need to be more experimental with my quilting designs. I have not yet braved the world of free motion. (soon!) So, I’m still exploring the world of straight lines. I decided to take out my Hera Marker for this and see how it worked for marking my quilting lines. It was perfect!! It allowed me to quickly mark my design with a ruler as I went along without leaving any chalk or ink lines behind. I was surprised at how well the indentations marked the lines for me. This is definitely a new favourite notion to use.

I finished this mini quilt in four days from start to finishing the binding. Wall full of mini quilts should be a breeze, right?

HAND QUILTED HOOP TRAVEL BAG

Published on June 29, 2011 in patchwork, scraps and stitchery. 9 Comments Tags: hand quilting, sunday patchwork, The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery, Travel Hoop Bag.

No matter how busy I am, I make sure that I carve out some time in my week to sit down and do some crafting for myself. Especially right now, these little projects are keeping me sane!

You might recognize this as a Sunday Patchwork project. I had decided that the pieces needed to be hand quilted and made into a Hoop Travel Bag. I started the hand quilting back in March and I was finally able to finish it off when we went to the cottage.

Although I own a hoop bag already, this was the first one that I made. I had trimmed down my patchwork pieces to the final dimensions of the outside pieces in the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery pattern and followed the instructions from there. It came together really quickly and was so fun to make. It took me just over an hour to construct the pouch and I was almost giddy when I finished it. Sewing is good therapy.

I am doing more and more handwork. It’s perfect for trips, stitching outside, watching movies and hanging with friends. Right now I’ve got an embroidery sampler project, a cross stitch project and an English paper piecing project in progress. Ideally, I’d like to have a hoop bag for each of these. So, I think I need to make myself at least two more. (an extra one for good luck)

SUNDAY PATCHWORK #7

Published on June 14, 2011 in colour and patchwork. 13 Comments Tags: half square triangle, hand, mini quilt, sunday patchwork.

This Sunday Patchwork spans the last three Sundays and lots of hours in between. It started with an idea to do a mini quilt in aqua, yellow and cream. A big part of my love for this colour palette was this Windham fabric. I picked out a selection of fabrics from my stash and had it in my mind to ‘whip up’ this mini quilt top in a night. I also had it in my mind to do it all in tiny half square triangles (HSTs) rather than my usual improv piecing style. I wanted structure and repetition for this mini quilt.

Well, that first Sunday night, I barely got through cutting all the squares of fabric, marking lines, sewing, slicing and ironing over 150 HSTs. The next morning when I got up, I jumped on the sewing machine and started to sew them together, but I didn’t get far. Those teeny tiny HSTs (they are 1″ finished) got really wonky, really quickly when I started putting them together. I could see right away that in order for me to get all my points perfect and to keep things square, I was going to have to hand piece this mini quilt.

I learned about the joys of hand piecing from Carolanne. It is an amazing way to sew incredibly accurately. When I made my patchwork skateboard last year, it was all pieced by hand. It might take a bit longer, but it’s so satisfying and you can do it on the couch or tucked in bed.

This hand piecing project couldn’t have come at a better time, it has been the best therapy for some long, stressful days. Completely focusing on the stitching gave me a great escape to clear my mind.

I put the top together with no plan and just randomly sewed the pieces together. I originally thought I would have all the HSTs facing in the same direction, but decided to do some alternating to create some movement within the piece. It will finish at 12″ square and is made up of 144 half square triangles.

I love to take photos of the back of my work, especially when all the seams line up and create perfect little shapes. That is the best!

I gotta say, I love it. A LOT.

Tonight at the Stitch n’ Bitch, I’m going to baste it and figure out how to quilt it. I’ll probably also be thinking about my next mini quilt, which is going to be inspired by ice cream colours!

HOUSES! PROGRESS

Published on May 25, 2011 in patchwork, scraps and the workroom. 8 Comments Tags: houses, machine foundation paper piecing.

I took Victoria Day as a sewing day to catch up on working on my Machine Foundation Paper Piecing homework. I have just one more house to do this week before I sew it together and add my border before Saturday’s final class. I can’t wait to see them all come together. Take a look at how different and awesome Agnes’ and Suzanne’s came out. There is so much personality in everyone’s little houses!

SUNDAY PATCHWORK #6

Published on May 3, 2011 in patchwork, scraps and the workroom. 6 Comments Tags: houses, machine foundation paper piecing, paper piecing.

I really miss doing patchwork if I don’t get to do any for even just a couple weeks. I started taking our new Machine Foundation Paper Piecing class on Saturday. We’re making an incredible wall quilt designed by Johanna. I have been wanting to learn paper piecing FOREVER.

Sunday night, I tackled some of my homework for the class and completed the first row of houses, plus one tree. It felt great to get back into my Sunday routine, to make a mess with fabric bits everywhere and to sew until the wee hours of the morning. This technique is a ‘game changer’. It totally unlocks a whole new world of patchwork and I’m so excited by it. Not only can you show off your fussy cutting, but you can showcase awesome scraps of fabric with these intricate designs.

If you want to see some incredible paper piecing possibilities, check out this, this, this and this! I can’t even believe the awesome-ness people come up with sometimes.