I’ve been working on these little oval appliques for a couple of months and have about 50 or 60 of them done so far. I’m using batiks and hand-dyes for this and just love how the rectangles are turning out. 225 of them are needed for the pattern — or possibly more, if I decide to make this a large bed quilt.
One table runner is quilted and the binding is almost finished but I can’t post a picture till after Christmas. Another one is going to be quilted today. My machine quilting skills aren’t fabulous — but they’re better than my machine piecing skills.
Lester seems to be doing better now that the vets have him on both Aspirin and Plavix. It’s so scary — every time he meows loudly I run to see if he’s okay and there he is playing with a toy and “talking” to it.
Hybrid Blocks
The points on these two blocks match much better than the one I did totally by machine — and no more bulky intersections! I printed more of the HST’s and QST’s and it was a snap to put together the flying geese, QST and HST units by machine and then put the blocks together by hand. Thanks to Inklingo we really do have the best of both worlds. One can do things like flying geese, HST’s and QST’s with the machine and get those units put together really quickly and accurately. Then, to get intersections that one can fan out and get rid of those incredibly bulky areas, one can piece the rest by hand using the stitching lines that Inklingo prints on your fabric. Of course, for those who are much more comfortable with their machines than I am, I’m sure this would go together in a snap all by machine.
For me, the idea of a hybrid block — done partially by hand and partially by machine — is the perfect solution. I’m really quite excited by this and am even looking at other blocks that I can do in this hybrid fashion.
Who knows, maybe I’ll actually get comfortable using the sewing machine. 🙂
Seven Sisters Table Runner Progress and A LIght Bulb Moment
It’s halfway done now and is going together so easily, thanks to Inklingo. I’m using 1.5″ diamonds and triangles from Collection 3. At this point, it’s almost 26 inches long. The next two blocks will be more shades of green/turquoise that all go together quite nicely. I actually have the third block almost finished and ready to attach to this so hopefully by the end of next week that will be the third of the four Christmas gifts finished as far as piecing goes.
The light bulb moment? Well, I’ve been studying my Christmas Star block and realized that I could — and I’m going to — use the sewing machine to piece the units such as the HST’s, QST’s and flying geese and then put the units together into rows and rows together into the block by hand. This will, I’m sure, make a block that I’m much happier with. I just can’t get over the bulky intersections one gets when using the machine!! But I’m thrilled with how fast I can make the units by machine.
I will definitely get the best of both worlds. Thanks to Inklingo, I have the seam lines already printed on my patches so don’t have to worry about that. I’m really quite excited about this as I can see having these blocks done relatively quickly. My plan is to do 30 blocks, 15 with green centres and 15 with the red centres. While the quilt may not be done for this Christmas, I will be working on it over the Christmas season — and that’s fun! This weekend I plan to get at least one block done with the green centre and one with the red centre. I can’t wait to see how they go together!
Christmas Star — part 2 of adventure
The block was together in next to no time. The flying geese, HST and QST units were incredibly easy and fast to do with Inklingo and I had absolutely no precision rotary cutting to do, no curious math to cope with, no stretchy bias edges to deal with and no bits of paper to pick off. For a novice at machine piecing, I’m pretty pleased with how the block turned out.
I have been using Inklingo for about a year and a half now and have made countless hand-pieced items, including the shabby chic king-sized quilt, but decided to find out what machine piecers love about Collection 2 — and I’m sold! This may actually encourage me to become a machine piecer for some blocks.
The only real problem I had was with the bulky seam intersections when sewing the rows together to complete the block. My machine seemed to really labour at the intersections and then the seams tended to get a bit crooked. I’m sure this is me not having experience using the sewing machine for piecing and I intend to try another block of the Christmas Star on the weekend when I have more time and see if I can put together a perfect one.
All in all, although this block will go into the orphan block box, I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I’m enough of a perfectionist that I want to do better. One thing’s for sure — I will be able to make this quilt top really fast! I had the pieces printed and was at the sewing machine within minutes.
Christmas Star Adventure
No pictures to post — yet. Picked up Vol. 16, No. 2 of Australian Patchwork & Quilting yesterday and fell in love with a few quilts — particularly the Christmas Star one. So I have decided to try making the Christmas Star quilt before Christmas. Using my sewing machine. This is unheard of for me as I do 99.99% of my piecing and appliqueing by hand.
However, I really want to try out Inklingo 2 using the machine. I’ve used it for blocks I’ve made by hand and love how easy it makes HST’s, QST’s and flying geese. But for this Christmas Star quilt, I want to try to make it by Christmas and, no matter how fast I might be at hand piecing, that is definitely not going to happen unless I haul out the machine.
Now to sort out which fabrics I want to use and get them printed with the shapes I need. I’d like to have at least one block of this done by mid-week and will be taking pictures of my progress as I go.
An Almost Finish
This has now been quilted. The long-arm quilter did the most beautiful work on it. Unfortunately, we can’t get a good overall shot because of the size of it — it’s 122 by 86 inches. As soon as I get the binding on, we’re taking it to a friend who has a professional photography set-up and getting some good photos.
However, here are a couple of pictures of it — the front and back. The back really shows the quilting design well.
On the Christmas present front, things are progressing. The Wedgwood blue and white table runner is really coming along nicely as is the Seven Sisters variation one.
Lester, our wonderful big Maine Coon kitty, seems to be holding his own but has to have an echo-cardiogram done in December so they can see if his heart function has gotten worse.
Progress Report
I am making slow progress on this table runner, but the first of the five blocks is complete and all the pieces for the remaining four blocks are printed and cut out, ready to stitch.
The one diamond that is sticking out is going to be the connector to the next block of this runner. I think it will be quite striking, as the coloured fabrics I’m using are all from the same line. I hope it turns out as nicely as I’m hoping.
I am making much better progress on the other table runner I’m working on for Christmas. It is really turning out quite nicely. It’s in a Wedgwood blue and white and will be, I think, finished within the next 10 days to 2 weeks.
In the meantime, we have had a real scare over the past 3 or 4 days. Our eldest kitty, Lester, who will be 9 in December and who has heart disease, threw a clot on the weekend as a result of which his tail was just dragging on the floor. Until today, that is. Today he started to lift it up again and I think the clot must be dissolving. Our vet is researching what meds to put him on next. The thing that I find frightening is that even while on Plavix he threw a clot like this! However, I’m very grateful that he seems to be fine other than the tail issue. Things could have been a whole lot worse.
Table runner progress
I don’t know what happened to this photo — the colours of this are much richer. It’s half finished in this photo — and I hope to have it totally finished by the end of the weekend, quilting included. Maybe whatever photo we take then will turn out better than this did! Two Christmas gifts left to go — I have all the pieces printed for one of them and the design figured out for the other, so this will be a hand piecing marathon!
I’m setting my 2008 quilt goals — I think. I want to make a lap quilt of the tiny star rectangles, complete a blue and white Texas Star quilt that is already in progress, a blue and white Seven Sisters lap quilt also already in progress, and make a pink and cream quilt. I love the look of pink and cream quilts — but need to find a pattern that I want to work with. Guess all the old issues of magazines and my quilt books are going to get a workout over the next couple of months.
I was absolutely fascinated by this alpaca that I found at the Creativ Festival last week. I can’t work with or wear wool, DH can’t wear wool and a friend suggested I try alpaca. We saw a booth at the Festival with all this amazing alpaca yarn and, after feeling it and not immediately getting itchy, I bought two small skeins to make a scarf for DH with — figuring if I can work with it and he can wear it, then I’ve found something perfect for us both.
This is the cute thing — each skein bears the name of the actual animal that the yarn has come from! So this little scarf will be made from Sno Jo. 🙂 Don’t know why — but that just makes me smile. Gorgeous yarns at that booth from a variety of alpaca farmers in Ontario. I’ll definitely be back for more!
Tiny Stars
I made this the other day with the 3/4-inch diamonds and other bits using collection 3 of Inklingo. It was a test piece for me — I wanted to see just how much fun it was to put these little stars together. It was fabulous. They go together so perfectly and quickly. Uh oh — now I’m thinking that I’ll use a bunch of hand dyes and batiks and make a lap quilt using them set in these little rectangles with plain rectangles for the alternate blocks! The finished little star rectangles will each measure 2.5″ by 2.25″. Guess it’s going to take a lot of blocks to make a lap quilt, but they go together so fast that I think I can have the top done by spring.
Tomorrow I’m off to our Creativ Festival. I can’t wait! My shopping list is ready — although I think it should be called more properly a wish list. However, there are a few items that I am determined to find!
Little 9-patch blocks
There’s something about hand piecing little 9-patch blocks — definitely addictive! These are made of 1″ squares I printed using Inklingo and they go together incredibly easily.
I have had the worst flu I’ve ever had and was basically unable to do much of anything for close to ten days. I was so grateful to have these and some other bits already printed and ready to stitch. Didn’t have to cut strips or anything else, just a needle, some thread and was able to stitch when I had no energy to do anything. Even holding a book at times seemed like a huge task. That is one nasty flu that’s going around. If someone around you is coughing, run to get away from them!
I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with the 9-patches and I do intend to make quite a few more of them, when I finish with Christmas gifts. Perhaps these will turn into a small lap quilt.
Quilt Obsession 