New Fabric, New Blocks but Problems Ahead

I bought this beautiful fabric from Amitie

Lucky me, it was on sale!

And started to make some blocks.

I had bought a roll of linen from Spotlight months ago and used it for all sorts of projects. Unfortunately I have run out of it with half my blocks unfinished. A dash to Spotlight was unsuccessful as they had run out of the plain colour. I now have to wait for a new shipment and of course the dye lot is bound to be different.

Meanwhile I started hand quilting my Snowball Quilt. I had meant to machine it but the machine has been playing up big time. I think it needs a major service but I have no idea where to get one. Last time I found a wonderful man who comes to your house, has a cuppa and lovingly cleans and revitalises your machine. Alas he is nowhere to be found.

I am quilting Snowball with perle 12 as it has a thin batting and I wanted it to be a bit more delicate. I got out the trusty freezer paper, traced some plates to make circles, ironed my stencils on the snowball and sewed around it. Freezer paper makes great templates. I would never draw on the quilt in pencil, which is what I saw a lady do in a store. She said that she washes the quilt afterwards and the pencil comes out. My templates can be reused lots of times. The only pain is that I have to keep getting up to iron another few on.

The granny squares have been progressing too. They are so portable and easy to pick up for a few minutes that they are my school day time filler (not that I have much spare time).

I'm just going to keep going with these till I run out of wool. Actually they are more bamboo than wool. Really soft. I bought 8 balls for about $25. They had a great sale on and as this was a first time project I didn't want to spend too much. Wool is so expensive these days. 

My issue with these squares is that you have to sew in all the loose ends (boring) and also my tension is terrible. Sometimes it's nice and tight and sometimes really loose so the final sizes of the squares are all different.

Holiday Sewing

At Last the Wheel of Fortune quilt top is finished. It's not very big but those diamonds were such a pain, I was glad to see the last squares being stitched in.

I had about 20 squares left and a few diamonds and I laid them out and arranged them in a neat little square with the diamonds acting as a border. My no. 2 son, who loves tessellations, asked if he could play with them. He created a fantastic new pattern that I have never seen before. I spent the next day cutting more fabric to complete his idea. Now I will have to be working with diamonds again. I'm not showing his lay out yet. I need to psych myself up to drawing all the seams and pinning them all together. May be a few months away yet.

I also made a square block which I will be sending to Japan to be part of the Tokyo Quilt Festival. It was originally blogged about by Ayumills . The thing I like about this idea is that the block will be joined to other blocks, sent in from around the world. The blocks will be made into quilts which will be shown and then auctioned off with all proceeds going to the tsunami victims. Last show they put together 86 quilts!

What else have I been doing these holidays besides freezing?

I've started a quilt using some of my 30's reproduction fabrics. They have been sitting on the shelf for way too long. I have 19 blocks finished and 11 half done.

I made a couple of pot mitts for a teacher friend who just got married. The teachers all pitched in with money for a big present but I just wanted to add a little something extra for her on a personal level as we team teach our class and I was dying to use some new fabrics I bought.

I added an extra pocket at the back to fit your fingers in to get a better grip but stupidly quilted the mitts vertically whereas had I done it horizontally the mitts would have folded in your hand much more easily. Live and learn.

Diamond quilt is being hand quilted and it is looking beautiful.

Snowball Quilt is stretched.

I guess that is where most of my sewing time has gone. I can't believe I go back to work on Monday. I do have a crochet class to look forward to on Monday night though! Wish me luck.

Waste Not

You know all those corners you waste when you snip off the corners on a snowball?

They make great borders!

Snowball Stress

I've had some Philip Jacobs fabric sitting around for about a year now. I really didn't like it when it arrived and didn't know what to do with it. So yesterday I started cutting it up to make a snowball quilt. I sewed for hours and at the end of it realised how disgusting the colours were that I had chosen. Not the Philip Jacobs but the pink and eggshell blue corners I had sewn around it. It really was awful. All hideously pink and baby blue.

As I slept on it, the family tiptoed around it in disgust. 

Today was unpicking day. Most of the pink and blue had to go. It was replaced with browns, greens and denim blues. 

The unpicking took hours. It was so wasteful but worth it. It's still not my favourite but at least I can look at it!

I hated all the waste from the chopped off corners so I've started sewing them together to add a border.