Retreating Wednesday

 My efforts have been comparatively meagre and I was hampered by my leaving spare fabric at home. I have been working on some outstanding Ricky Tims blocks. I have a feeling the last two may be repeats!

Postage Stamp

Double Pin Wheel

Churn Dash

At least I have all I need to complete the tessellation top. I. have two more rows to do tomorrow and the border is cut out too and even the binding.

Tessellation

Strips

I also pieced 11 strips towards my workshop piece for Carolyn Forster's big stitch workshop. 

The rest of the jelly roll got left behind!!! Grr.

There is lots of activity going on all around:  

Julie's lovely basket quilt

Detail

Mandy's flying geese

Marigold's Liberty pinwheels

Debbie's Christmas Braid top pieced in a day

Heather Hasthorpe's pretty camisole beautifully finished
with French seams

Retreat Tuesday

We are in the corner by the piano and very happy with our space.

I usually go on three retreats but the first two were cancelled so we were especially delighted to go on this one. We are in strict "bubbles". I am in 3 by the piano and wear a lanyard to prove it. We sit and sew together and sit at the same huge table for meals. We all have single ensuite rooms though. I am with three dear friends and the other retreaters are from various areas of SE England and I only see them on retreats apart from bumping into them at shows  etc.

Oversized

Trimmed to 12"

I first made my Siblings Together block. I made it bigger so I could trim it back for an accurate result.

These are Carrie's foxy blocks, the same but also varying.

Current Affairs

Well I have embarked on machine quilting the BOM squares, I had to pluck up courage but now started I am enjoying handling those manageable 18" pieces. Only one complete. though and the second on its way.

I am carrying on  with my Lizzie Albright but feel jinxed. My applique on the Honey Bee is awful. When I look  at the applique on my current BOM block, similar shapes, they are fine. I've also managed to  sort out the Dresden Plate, tedious unpicking and resewing but it's flat and meets if not regular. Again my first Dresden Plate on a cushion upstairs is perfect. And the Old Maid's Puzzle is done, that's six so far.

And I've a third row to the tessellations quilt. Then that's probably it from me for a week but from a week next Tuesday 13th here will be lots of activity.

Done

 

Lockdown Logs 73 x 86"

This week I finished the last of the hand quilting on my Lockdown Logs quilt. I'd already machine quilted the border strips and attached the binding so that was it. It's definitely a product of lockdown. The hand quilting was very calming while watching TV in the evenings.

Whoops

My Dresden Plate for  Lizzie Albright did not go well.  I realised there was a problem developing and tried to make my seams smaller. This was exactly the wrong thing to do. When I pinned some of the seams the block began to take its proper shape. I'll resew tomrrow.

Not my finest hour.

Pinned version

r.

Sewing Day

There were just four of  us at our Chartham Hatch sewing day but we were so pleased to see each other. Three of us were hand sewing various complex projects but I was embarking on my tessellated blocks by machine and finished the first two rows.

Let's tessellate

 

An issue from 1995

Having finished my BOMs and sandwiched them ready for quilting as you go I'm avoiding getting down to the next quilting stage.  I am working my way through old magazine runs tearing out anything of interest and discarding the rest. This piece on tessellation caught my eye and I thought it would be good to use with a long held pack of 29 fat quarters from the Sweetwater elementary collection. I'm not particularly fond of these but need to do some using up and I think they would suit a teenager or boy. 

Leftover pieces

My oblongs will finish at 6 by 12". Because of the tessellation and interlocking planning is tricky so I started with on point 1" trimming pieces, then a diagram on graph paper and then stuck the fabric to the centre of its corresponding cross.

First attempt

The cunning plan

The plan was invaluable when laying out my pieces on the floor at which point I needed to do some stitching and some unsticking and resticking on my plan. Once fixed I picked up the 12" blocks and piled them on my board separating each with kitchen paper or napkin and each rows worth with a square of fabric, ready to sew.

Blocks layered up ready to sew

Layout

Although the sewing isn't challenging I shall have to be careful about the arrangement as the cross pieces are matched with four different corners which link up to form further crosses.

Three blocks

 

As we were out on Monday visiting my daughter and climbing One Tree Hill (affording a lovely viewpoint over the Weald of Kent towards Tonbridge) I didn't finish my Lizzie Albright blocks till Tuesday. I got a bit over confident with the Churn Dash and it isn't quite as accurate.

I am using a collection of 40 rainbow fat eighths from various designers and manufacturers and a pack of greys I've had for a long time as part of my using  the good stuff drive. I shall keep going with first ones I picked out until they run out and then choose another combination.

At first I thought I might use a roll of Tula Pinks and related fabrics but decided the designs were too large for the small patches and small prints and tone on tones would work best. 

New Venture

 

In an burst of enthusiasm I signed up and paid up to join Ricky Tims'  Lizzie Albright quilt sampler classes. I liked the idea of learning lots of different blocks from Ricky. I will use them differently from his Attic windows quilt setting and I won't do the complex border because, very conveniently, I don't like it. Meanwhile I plan to do the blocks on Sunday (when the video comes out) and Monday.

We started last weekend by video - the classes are streamed so we have useful permanent access.

The blocks are 8" so nine patch designs don't work easily. Ricky has provided templates and cutting guides to get round this. I do know how to draft round this problem by slanting a ruler from corner to side of a square so that you have a measurement divisible by three (or 5, or 7) and placing a dot at the divisions and using these to mark vertical lines, Then repeat the other way. Anyway to my surprise my final Dove in the Window block came out exactly 8.5" square.

Milestone reached

 

Yesterday in short order I made four more centres for the setting blocks, square in squares to add to the two stars from the day before and having cut all the pieces out, finished all six blocks comfortably. I laid five out on the reverse of the quilt on my bed. (I forgot about the sixth which was still on my display pad).

I decided on my final arrangement, took a photograph and labelled the blocks. My original plan was to join the blocks and quilt but I now plan to follow Carolyn Forster's directions and quilt as I go but by machine as I have enough hand quilting on the go.

I know I could have put my blue blocks to form a focus in the centre but I don't want to! 

As a postscript I've been reminded of a sort of fishnet pattern I used on earlier hand quilted quilts and may use it on the Jan Hassard HST quilt currently in progress. (I need access to a die cutter before I can proceed on that one.)

Off and On

 At the moment I am putting single quilts on our bed laid crosswise. It isn't very cold at the moment (though our bedrooms are cool being built into the slope of the site) and it's a chance to enjoy them more fully. 

Quay Quilt

This is the quilt I took off my bed yesterday. This dates from 2000. The Q in the centre refers to my group Quay Quilters which used to have a tea towel with blocks printed on to sell at their quilt show. I drafted the blocks and made the quilt. It was started in Kuala Lumpur at the end of our year there and finished back home in the UK.

A River Runs Through It quilt

The one on my bed now was made from Mary Fisher (the Aids campaigner) fabrics I bought from her at Houston. I have made several quilts whereby four fabric repeats are secured on top of each other and four identical stacks are cut and arranged to form new patterns. Squares give the most options but here are HSTs (two options) and QSTs (one option) as well as strips. It is hand quilted in fish net style. I love it.

Substitutions

 

The blue block on the left is too strong as is the the "spare" on the right replaced at the top left

When I laid out my blocks one stood out like a sore thumb  because of its busy background as well as the bright feature fabric. 

The miscreant!

I had already made two of the penultimate block as I thought I might need a choice. I chose the softer version.

IN

OUT

Although it would be nice to draw a line under making these somewhat complex blocks I decided I had to remake the earlier one. I tried to draw in more colours and used up the last of the blue fabric.

The new version, tamer but a better fit.

This time I foundation pieced it which speeded up construction though it was funny how hard it was to visualise the end result from looking at the FP papers.