Lovely Lurex!!!!

More Misadventures with Metallic Thread!

It's been a whole week up on the frame with this extra large quilt top from Sue-  more metallic thread and lurex! It loaded up relatively easily; I had learned from experience, from the last oversized quilt I did for her, how to fit it on the frame with the minimum excess bulk. The metallic thread, however, was a nightmare from the start.  Same tension issues and skipped stitches as before. It must be something I'm doing wrong. To begin with, for every hour of productive stitching - I had to do 3 hours unpicking! 

But I tamed it in the end and finished it today. I liked the black and orange combination, but not sure that the lurex added much. 

Meanwhile, down in the sewing room, I've worked out the design for Christopher's rainbow quilt. I thought I'd been so clever and found a set of rainbow coloured mechanical pencils for colouring in the design sheet.

When I started to use them, however, it turned out they all had grey lead inside!! DOH!!







This month at Studio Quilters, Viv started us off on this wonderful technique from Jenny Rayment's 'Tucks, Textures and Pleats' book. 

Great opportunity to try out some decorative stitches on the Brother machine - very effective on this folded calico background. I can feel a cushion coming on! 





And here is the result of another little experiment this week:

I was trying out the 'Simply Squares' block (from the book by Sarah Wellfair of Goose Chase Quilting) starting with a smaller square - 2 1/4" instead of 3 1/2".

But it took forever to grow, so I stopped and made them into these two little pincushions. I had intended to demonstrate the method to the U3A group this week, but we ran out of time. It will keep until next month.

So now it's back to that rainbow. I've done yellow and orange so far. 

This one is going to be fun!

Happy Quilting Everyone!

Janet

www.englishquilter.co.uk   

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Rainbows and Blue Sky

And a Storm at Sea on the way!

What a wonderful day at Festival of Quilts on Saturday! 
It really is quite overwhelming, even though I have been so many times now. You just want to see everything at once and hardly know where to start. (Many thanks to our lovely Ann Kelner for organising the coach again.)

It was every woman for herself, as we all went our separate ways after agreeing to meet up for lunch. This year I decided to have a good look at the main quilt display first, before hitting the trade stands. It was all good - not all to my taste of course, I'm definitely not a modern girl! But there were some stunning entries in all categories. Most astonishing and inspiring was the display of miniature quilts by Japanese artist Kumiko Frydl. Now I like to work with small pieces, but hers were something else - just exquisite! Much as I'd like to try something like this, I have decided that if I don't start using bigger pieces up soon, I will never make a dent in my stash.

With this thought in mind, I started shopping, trying hard to resist all the lovely fabrics on display.  I didn't have as much of a 'list' this year, but have promised to make a 'rainbow' quilt for my friend's little lad, so I could fully justify buying these solid colours for that. I thought solid rather than print for a boy and I have several variations of Storm at Sea in mind. That will be a fun project. 


The rest of my shopping was mostly confined to essentials... some spare bobbins and needles for Auntie (my long arm machine)... and some interesting new rulers for the long arm, from Crafty-UK. I'm looking forward to trying these out as the choice of tools is so limited in this country. Look out for spirals and curves appearing on my quilts soon! I also bought an open toe quilting foot for the Brother as I'm determined to have another go at free motion on the domestic machine - I am embarrassingly bad it!

Looking at all the lovely fabrics and projects on the stalls made me think about the fabric I already have and how I could make something with it myself. So Instead of coming home with a full shopping bag, I came away with a mind full of inspiration and I can't wait to get started! Oh I did indulge myself with one little charm pack of Edyta Sitar's new collection for Andover Fabrics called Blue Sky. Oh come on! That was very restrained!



My 'Mystery Quilters' have been working well and some of them have finished already! Have a look at my Facebook Group, to see pictures of their progress. Don't forget to visit me at ENGLISHQUILTER for more details if you would like the full instructions and I will send you the PDF (for FREE until the end of August - NB: Don't try to buy it - just send me an email request via the contact page). 

Next up on the frame is another massive quilt top from Susan Mashmoor, with more metallic thread! So you might not hear from me for a couple of weeks!. 

Happy Quilting Everyone!

Janet

www.englishquilter.co.uk   

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STAR-CROSSED CHAINS

Mystery Quilt Revealed!

Well here it is! I have called it 'Star-Crossed Chains'.

I liked the impact of these colours - not my usual palette - although I could have chosen a stronger yellow against the white. It was fun to fill in all that white space with dense quilting.

I had even more fun with this scrappy version! I even got to use up some leftover units from Bonnie Hunter's quilt, as well as making a dent in that stash of 'twosies'.

The variety in the background gives it more depth and warmth I think.

The quilting on this one is more relaxed.

Thank you all so much for joining in and for your feedback along the way. I can now finalise the complete instructions.

Don't worry if you haven't finished yet - Take as long as you like and enjoy it. And please send me pictures of your progress.

Visit me at ENGLISHQUILTER for more details if you would like the full instructions and I will send you the PDF (for FREE until the end of August - NB: Don't try to buy it - just send me an email request via the contact page). 

If you are a member of my Facebook Group, please feel free to share pictures of your progress.

Happy Quilting Everyone!

Janet

www.englishquilter.co.uk   

Thank you for visiting my blog and for leaving your comments. Please share on Facebook, Pinterest and Google+ etc

UFO Has Landed!

Now THIS is why I never throw anything away!

So, I am supposed to be going to a UFO day at Connecting Threads this weekend - better dig out those eight pointed star blocks I made from the leftovers of my Scrappy Star Quilt - Oh and those sample blocks I made from Tula Pink's 100 Modern Quilt Blocks at Sandy's group. That should be enough to keep me occupied for the day.

OOPS! I started playing with them and look what happened!

These were the 6 inch sample blocks. I duplicated a couple of the ones I liked and left out some where the colours didn't look quite right (UFO for another day)!

I had to set this one on point in the middle, because otherwise it looked asymmetrical and (for me) it didn't work anywhere else.





These eight pointed stars are part pieced and part solid. I had been practising those 'Y' seams. So confident am I now, that I unpicked the odd one out today and re-positioned the setting triangles and corner squares and got it right first time.

Most pleasing of all was the border. I had saved these left over 2 inch half square triangle units from one of my earliest quilts (Alison's Angels 2006).                            

 I just knew they would come in handy one day!!

I kept the size down so that I can back it with a single width of fabric - so it will be a nice lap quilt size.

On Monday, I quilted and bound my scrappy version of the Mystery Quilt ready for the 'Big Reveal' this weekend - WATCH THIS SPACE!

Happy Quilting Everyone!

Janet

www.englishquilter.co.uk   

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