Sewing away and at home

Sewing at Lower Hardres Village Hall

I got back from the retreat to enjoy two days of friendship and and stitching, one at Lower Hardres and a delicious Usual Suspects lunch day at Judi's.

This is Tansy's wonderful top following a pattern from an Australian designer

Meanwhile at home I have been completing the big stitch quilting on the Carolyn Forster strippy. At Judi's I asked for reassurance about my choice of surplus jelly roll strips for the binding.

Carolyn Forster Strippy 45x54"

The fabrics are pretty
but too washed out to
photograph well.

I have completed the top from Mandy Munroe's workshop and am very pleased with my fabric choices.

54" square

Then it was time to bite the bullet and rearrange my sewing room furniture for a machine quilting session. It wasn't so bad once I got started. I've quilted and attached the binding of the Peggy Martin Jelly Roll Jive and I think I have enough of the binding for the Marti Michell fat quarter log cabin which I am currently quilting.

Set up for machine quilting Jelly Roll Jive

Choice of Binding for both 
Westminster quilts

Diagonal lines on log cabins done but more to do on the straight and around the blocks.

When I've finished machining for the day I pop this giant tea cosy of a cover on my machine. I used left over pieces and  then machine appliqued flowers to decorate.

  

On a final note here is another Carolyn Forster inspired project, her BOM from Today's Quilter magazine, currently on the bed.

Virtuous sewing

 I have joined the Jelly Roll Jazz blocks and and a right hodge podge they are too. I now realise they are really called Jelly Roll Jive but Jazz seems more appropriate given their clashing nature. I now understand (too late) the process a bit more. The bocks are made by joining 4 WOF strips lengthwise and the cutting the into squares and the squares crosswise into HSTs. If you cut eight 8 1/2" squares and four diagonally in one direction and four in the other direction you can make blocks like the centre two. If you just do four cut half one way and half the other I think you will end up with half the blocks turning one way and half the other so that  lights will meet up with lights and darks with dark from block to block - good to try out with paper first.

Alternative version

I also unearthed some blocks from a Marti Michell class whereby 4 fat quarters were folded and then cut to yield the exact sizes for four log cabin blocks. To add more will be quite a lot of work but it seems a pity to waste them and I now have masses of Kaffe Fassett/Jacobs etc FQ's thanks to the Mary Ann Corp bequest and a Fat Quarter shop fabric club.

The apple fabric was my starting point

There was a lot of the border fabric for the interlocked "rings" quilt and tucked in the folds was a magazine pattern I have long intended to use it for. I assembled some fabrics and got to work only enlarging the border to 6" instead of 4" to make it 49.5 by 59.5. It's a simple straightforward quilt but very likeable. I've pieced the backing and will prepare the binding so it is ready to quilt when I finally have an outlet.

Completed quilt top

In the evenings I am big stitch quilting the strippy from Carolyn's class and enjoying it so much it will be quite densely covered in the end.

Marking central lines with soap.

And those masses of "Kaffes" - I am aiming to convert this 

into this