Whoo Hooo

The dog's dinner!



My favourite block

A young relative requested cartoon owls and royal blue. This gave me an excuse to buy enough owl fabric and coordinates to supply a whole army of owl lovers. All this largesse has caused nothing but problems. I sketched out a design and set too. I wanted to make use of 9" squares cut from a panel. However as blocks went up on the design wall all I could see was a dog's dinner. An owl pellet would have been much neater. I stopped long before the 24 block target and decided to use what I had done for a Linus or Sales table quilt. Ironically the block I made from scraps to complete a 12 block total is by far the most successful, a lesson learned, perhaps.
Now I am making just twelve 15" five patch blocks, four of each design to join with RB sashing.

Completed 15" block

Fabric selection, Plan B.

From the Alcazar, Seville

We've just enjoyed an evening visit to the Alcazar palace complex with its beautiful and extensive gardens, a lovely and calm experience. I took some views as a private reminder of the place. I like to put these photographic memories on a desktop background especially on gloomy winter days. My husband never knows what will pop up when he turns on our shared computer and will often comment. However I also took some pictures for my blog as they are related to quiltmaking.

Colour ideas

Navaho type border

A tessalation

A hexagon arrangement still current

More inspiration

Tiles on the stairs (91) in the Toro del Oro.

I especially like the border and can

think of various ways to make it.

Patchwork Inspiration

Floor of our room in Seville, detail,

We are in Seville at the moment having started off in Madrid where we visited several great galleries but had to be selective about which paintings we looked at, lots of wonderful Goyas and works by Velasquez. We also looked at Picasso's Guernica which seemed as much about drawing as painting, very graphic. Alan has been an excellent courier,taking me on a tour of old Madrid gleaned from an elderly Michelin guide, still accurate and, from the internet,  the first of three walks in Seville. Having lived in Morocco years ago I was very aware of its Medina like qualities. It has been very refreshing to immerse myself in works of art and architecture but patchwork inspiration pops up from time to time. The room here even has a patchwork tiled floor or is it the other way round?

Decorative detail in San Francisco
Basilica, Madrid.

Again in San Francisco

Yet another motif to
quilt.

Keeping up

Since our Friday meet I've sewn one block (but have to amend the corner) and got the other one cut and laid out ready to sew. I daren't count the number of pieces as I might be demoralised.

I need to unpick the misplaced corner piece.

Lots of pieces

Tula Quilt

I went round to Margaret's to discuss our U3A class this term and she showed me this pretty quilt based on one in the House of Tula Pink book. She used William Morris fabrics.

Completed my stint

I was very pleased to complete a second "Bonnie block" today as we have had only a week between meetings. We won't be able to meet at all in September so this was a way to keep us on track. I think I could have chosen my fabrics better here as there isn't enough differentiation and the pattern is lost.

Latest Bonnie block

Catch up

Bonnie block

I have completed another Bonny Block today.
I have also been trying to finish the 2012-13 U3A teaching sampler. The centre is all assembled. I thoght I would add the wadding to the sides and sew and flip the border. I found myself harassed and fighting the quilt when sewing the wadding and the result was wavy so I cut it off and am now sandwiching and quilting the borders separately as I did the blocks.

borders separately as I did the blocks.

Wavy wadding

 Yesterday I visited the Phoenix Quilters' show and was surprised by the number and quality of entries as they are a relatively new group.

Phoenix quilt - a pattern I'd like to
do one day.

I loved this cushion on display at the show.

Charlecote Park

Upton House

On the way back back from FOQ we spent the day visiting two very different National Trust  properties, Charlecote Park, where the Lucy family have lived continuously for 900 years, and Upton House,  Art Deco home of Shell heir, Lord Bearsted who seems to have been a very good egg! I got something of the flavour of the man through reading his diary left out for anyone to peruse.

Rag Rug in the servants' quarters at Upton.

Pietra Dura table at Charlecote

And today I've completed two more
"Bonnie" blocks and am in the process of framing and quilting them and the previous two.

A lot of pieces in this



A lot of inset seams in this!

543 Four seasons Sampler by the Paper Piece Group (8 in all)

543 detail

543 detail

543 detail

Here is my Visitor's Choice quilt made by the Paper Piece Group. Many of their designs came from Maaike Bakker's book which I bought. I already love her strip piecing title. I looked for Makke's quilt in the Art section but there was a blank there. Speaking to her later I learnt it had been stolen by someone armed with a screwdriver. If you check out the photo section of her website, the stolen one looks

like/is (?) the one pictured on the bottom left.

Maikke's book

 

Sunday at the Festival of Quilts

I had a long full day as I stayed to the end to collect my quilt. Today I'm including some general views to try to give an impression of the special nature of this show, particularly the white wall gallery lit areas. My friend, Judi, had the the privilege of her work being selected to go on show in a gallery alongside some other London MQG members. The Quilters' Guild is also setting up its own specialist group for modern quilters and Helen Howes and Heather Hasthorpe seemed to be busy signing up members. .


Heather and Helen manning the Modern
Quilt Group's stand

 



A gallery




Judi's quilt facing and another near left



A gallery



Quilted Creations category



Philippa Naylor's winning quilt in the Traditional section
attracting admirers.

FOQ

"Gargantuan"

Here at the Festival of Quilts at the NEC where I have a quilt on show for the first time. It's my "Gargantuan"  square quilt so called because it's 90" square and seemed a major project. Here I was surprised by how small it seemed. Quilts are well displayed at this show, most on white walls I was at one end of an aisle and friend Tracy's wonderful quilt made from Liberty Fabrics was at the other but hers was in the Traditional category and mine in the Two Person because it has been machine quilted by Maggie Kingston.


Tracy's "My Love for Liberty" quilt.

Before I set off my daughter and family came to visit and Isla asked after the quilt she had started and I promised to finish; I was pleased she wanted to take it home with her.

Mother and daughter

Isla helped to make this!

Lovely Day

at Lower Hardres where I worked on my
Bonnie block and admired my
companions' projects.

Ingrid's quilt

 

Jill's, made with a jelly roll.

Jill's again using Liberty prints

Detail

 

More done

Cushion using Simple Marks fabrics

I finished the cushion I started in Tracy Aplin's handsewing class. It's quite big and perhaps I overstuffed the pad. I'm now sitting on it to try and squash it a little bit.
I've also made a second Bonny block and struggled with this one too. I should remake it but probably won't.

A tricky block

I have been  preparing things to do with the U3A next term which I'll show then. Yesterday I embarked on the next set of Bonnie blocks. I decided to have a change from  templates for the complex block Trish chose for us. I traced the whole lot onto freezer paper, numbered and cut out each piece finished size and ironed them onto the wrong side of my fabrics. I paid attention to grain. The same shape could be on a different grain for different fabrics. Now I am sewing around the shapes and as far as possible leaving them in.
I took a break after writing the above and finished the block which was quite laborious. I had cut the outer white pieces bigger so I could trim the completed block to the correct size only to make a stupid mistake, trimming one side to 6.5" and the other to 6" . I'll compensate to some extent when I frame it.


Freezer Paper block

Here you can see the pattern I'm working from

My (mis) completed block.