Flowerdale Quilt and craft group

Today was our monthly get together at our community house.  A very small group this month.

Here are some of the ladies hard at work.  The messy table in the front is my mess!

Here, Jan is embellishing a beautiful vintage print.

This is Sharon's amazing applique quilt for the new grandchild in her life.

Liz has been working on applique leaves with gorgeous fabrics.

This is one of the blocks from Casey's sampler quilt with lots of cow fabrics.

Here, Brenda is hand quilting her gorgeous quilt.

Here, Jenny is working on a beautiful applique block.  Of course you know I love teacups!

Anna is just finishing this quilt as you go with a black sashing.  As always her fabrics are wonderful.

I go confused as I went around the table, because Wendy actually had two projects on the go! Sharon actually had another project going, but it was in the other room being sandwiched.

And why,  do you think I showed everyone else's work?  Of course, because I didn't get much done!  I caught up on my collages for this last week and tidied up my scraps.  Boring.

But we all had a lovely day stitching and yacking.  It is so nice to have a group to go to that is close by.

Happy Creating!

The Quilt and craft group

Today I was at our local monthly quilting group.  I was working on charity quilts.  One is finished, the second is nearly pieced.
I thought I might give you a peek at what the others were up to.

This is a Nancy Halvorsen pattern, done by one of the girls for her daughter.  She is very patient with applique and embroidery and I know this will be a quilt to treasure.

This is a glorious red and white needleturn quilt that is being hand quilted.  There are so many different reds and the embroidery is  beautiful.  It is gorgeous to look at.

This is one of my charity quilts.  It is a very simple design, but uses some of a collection of teapot and tea cup fabric I had been collecting for years.  I love it, but I thought it would be better served in home that will appreciate it.

This is a very large black and cream/pink courthouse steps  quilt being quilted by one of our ladies.  It looks very complicated and is rather dramatic.

This is a rather complicated and interesting star block which is being hand pieced.  Many of the contrast fabrics have gold on them and really caught my eye.

This is a really bright orange and white strip quilt, with interesting snowball type rectangles that I am told are all pieces from the scrap bag.  This lady always does interesting patterns and has beautiful taste in fabric.

And this last one is a stitch and slash sashed nine patch that we did a workshop on a few years ago.  This is the second one done by this lady and as you can see it is all going very well.  It will be good to see this one together next time.

So that was my day, stitch, press and cut, then stitch some more - with lots of chatter in between of course!

Create every day!

The dreaded lurgy

Ah, well, all things come to those who wait, don't they?  I have been offline for a few weeks with a very bad dose of the 'flu.  We Aussies call it the dreaded lurgy.  I am on the mend now and getting back into my rhythm.  It is Spring here and the gartden is blooming, but with it comes hay fever - Yuck!  But you have to take the good with the bad.

In my last post I told you of my new toy - a silhouette cameo!  Before I got sick, I did a little work in my journal with some stencils I made.

I layered two stencils, the flower one and the butterfly one on top of each other, so the flower pattern filled the butterflies.

Then I went around the outlines with a very sketchy fineliner to define it.  The page needs more work, but has been sitting for a bit.

We had our monthly quilting day a week or two ago and here are some of the regular ladies in our new community house.  On that day I was working on one of the UFOs in my cupboards.

Obviously still not finished, but getting close.
Since then, I have really only been doing bits and pieces, between lots of resting.

I crochetted this  beanie for my hubby, who has also been very sick (and sooky, as they are)

I started this table mat, I used my Silhouette to cut the applique pieces.  It will be for our fund raising stall at christmas.  It is an adaptation of a free pattern from martingale.

I worked on a bobbin lace bookmark, that had been sitting around for a while.

I did a little piecing practice with my huge stash of charms.

And I did a little quilting practice on the longarm.  (no closeups neccesary).  If you have been following me for a while, you will know that my hubby created my machine for me.  He is very good at that sort of thing.  He is a fitter and turner by trade.  I used to have it set up on rails, but find this sit down arrangement much easier.
And since it's spring, I thought I'd finish with some gorgeous gum blossoms I picked the other day.

Thanks for the comments on the last post. I will get back to you, just haven't been well enough.

quilting to a timeline

Above are the last week or so of quilting practice.  As you can see, I need all the paractice I can get.
I got a bit bored with these samples and decided to make it a little more interesting.

I decided to tke some simple sketches out of my sketchbook and do a related quilting sample.  Above left, I have a dragonfly sketch and some veins as a quilting pattern. and on the right a stylised pomegranate and some pebbling.  I have also included a word in script on each sample, too.

Above is the dragonfly sample finished.  I used a lilac rayon on top and a white bobbinfil on the bottom.  Although with thread painting I tend to want the bobbin to pop up at times, in quilting, I want it the other way, I would rather the top thread peeked through to the back a teeny tiny bit. 
Below are two pictures of the back.  You can see a little bit of spotting on the back. If I felt it was a problem, or it was for a show, I would loosen the bobbin a tiny bit, as the top is already quite tight.

Here is today's sample, the pomegranate.

Still a bit wonky, but reasonable. 

The thing which is surprising me, is that the handwriting is actually the easiest part of the quilting.  I remember watching some Linda Taylor videos where she always said that drawing your designs many times is the best practice and this has shown me how true this is.  Handwriting is something that I have been doing for a long time.  Other motifs are not as familiar to me and so are not as easy to quilt.  Laura Kemshall on design matters has also talked about being familiar with your subject especially through using a sketchbook.

Now why is this important to me right now?
Well, I am working on a piece that has lots of quilted text on it - Actually forty lines!

Can't tell you any more about that one right now.

But -
I have finished all the blocks for my recycled mixed media piece and will hopefully post them tomorrow.

leaves

I have been toying with the idea of a leaf quilt along the lines of Beryl Taylor's heart quilt for a few months and this week I finally got started.  Here's a brief outline of my construction, which is slightly different to that in Beryl Taylor's book "Mixed Media Explorations" ,

Above, with the book are my design notes and some silk fabrics, chosen for the leaves.

Here, I have selected a cream silk background (A large quilt on which to attach the little mini quilts), and some satins and silks for the mini quilts which will be about 4" square and felt squares for the batting in the mini.quilts.

Here, I have my silk leaves cut out,  cardboard backings and batting to go in the leaves and at back, the  mini quilt foundations and felt, spread out.

Above, I have basted the leaves together, ready to embroider and layered the little mini quilts ready to quilt.

Here are all my pieces set out in a grid arrangement so you have an idea of what my quilt will look like when I have finished all the and sewing.  Of course it is totally unembellished here, but it will be totally overembellished when I am finished with it, lol.
I have actually found that I like this type of work, and get a lot done in the evenings.

Laura Kemshall commented once in a design matters video that it can be easier to do complicated quilting sometimes, because the simple, repetitious quilting become so boring, it is easier to persist at something more complicated.  I find the same thing with constructing my pieces.  It is not that I am patient, or persistent, as some people comment when they see some of my complicated work, it is just that fiddly, complicated work keeps me interested where something simple would bore me and I would never finish it.

Anyway - as I say, "That's my story and I'm sticking to it"

Have a great weekend!