A Trip to Loop

Not much has been happening recently. I have a backlog of hand quilting to get through which is taking its time. In the meantime though I met up with Rachel and we went to Loop. I haven't done any knitting in a long, long time so we decided to buy some wool and start something new.

I'll admit, the shop is expensive, but it's very inspiring as everything in there is so tasteful. It really gets my imagination going in a way that the wool department in Selbys just doesn't. Here is the brilliant window display





So here is my purchase. Two skeins of Cascade 220 in pink and yellow.



I have decided to make one of these! which you can buy from Rebecca Danger's Etsy shop.



I thought it would make a fine present for Arthur as long as he doesn't mind the pink. Unfortunately I don't own any circular needles so I can't get started. I might have to get on my bike and see if I can find some as I think it's a great bank holiday monday project.

Bank Holiday

So here it is. My grandad's pillow cases. The cotton is so soft and cool to touch. Can I really cut it up? Gulp.



I sifted through the enormous scrap bag I have. I have decided that I have to use some scraps with every quilt just to get it down a bit. I think doing a small hexagon quilt will help reduce the mountain, but that's a long way off. For now, I have just pulled out a few things including a great stripey sheet I got from Emmaus with Ray for £1!



I opened Kim's bundle I bought which I always hate doing as it never looks as perfect again.

I really am on a roll here!



I even started laying it out. All I need to do is start sewing!

Maybe I'll just do some gardening on the terrace first. Prepare myself and decide which kind of quilt I am going to make! I might just start and see what happens. Not much of a plan I know...

Worn and Washed

So Mum and I decided to go to see Kim's show. We are huge fans after having done the day course Kim offers. It's just such a lovely concept, All these faded soft fabrics; favourite old sheets, soft shirts, brushed cottom pyjamas; all reused and put together in bundles which you can just make into simple strip quilts. We were quite excited about the show as Olney is a very beautiful place and I have finally worked out how to use the sat nav.

In the end mums 'crew' who all gang together and go on road trips to shows and shops decided to join us and off we went in Angela's bright red mini, whizzing down country lanes in the fens, sneezing at the oil seed rape fields which were in full bloom.



I was a bit sad we weren't doing the class again as it was a lovely venue and would have been a great day to just dedicate to a project. The show itself was lovely. There was a great array of quilts made my people using Kim's bundles, all of which looked really soft and handmade. If you're not familiar with Worn and Washed, here is a rundown.

Here is a classic bundle



Here is the classic strip quilt you can make really quickly



And that's all there is to it! But the exhibition showed what people had done to take the idea that one step further. It was really great to see what it could all lead on to.

Here are a few of the things I really liked



I think the quilt on the left by Ruth Eglinton is lovely. I love the mixture of blocks and applique. The colours are also very faded and lovely. I am thinking I might ask Kim to see if there is a pattern available or else I will try and work it out myself. I even like the slight puffiness of the quilting. I am not sure how you achieve that effect, perhaps merely by washing it lots.



I also really liked Liz Tew's quilt, which you can't quite see as it has quilts on top of it but I didn't want to touch the display as it was so perfect. It seemed pretty simple. Just long rows of three up strips with white white strips which had been quilted with hearts.



I loved all the washed out tones, the use of stripey sheets and the whiteness of it. It's also a great chance to do some more Durham quilting on the white areas. I think I might actually make it!



I bought the roll for this quilt of Kim's below but now I am torn and think I must make Liz's quilt above. Oh I shall probably end up making a mismatch of both and wish I had stuck to one of them. I am so fickle



Here are some other lovely things



This quilt was tiny squares, slightly wonky which just made it seem perfect.



This one was a bit more complicated than the norm but I liked the quilting around the star and mum was quite taken with the button in the middle.


This one reminds me of the Petra Prins quilt kit I have stashed away for a rainy day



I think overall, that I have decided that I like it when the strips are small. I'll probably change my mind though, but this tiny quilt was lovely.



One day, I will dive into the whole Liberty thing. It is so tempting.



I'll stop now. I know I am gushing, but what can I do? Worn and Washed is exactly my kind of thing, whereas a lot of other kinds of quilting isn't always on the mark for me. At heart I am small sprigs of flowery faded fabrics and Little House on The Prarie. I have fought it, but I can't help myself. I always seem to return to it. My mum gave me my grandads old stripy bed linen years ago as it held such lovely memories for me. I can see it in one of these quilts, I have just never had the guts to cut it up. Bank holiday might see the scissors coming out!

Progress

Rachel asked me what I was working on the other day so I thought I would post it up here. The answer is... I am hand quilting the 60° degree Material Obsessions quilt.



After thinking that I would never have to hand tack a quilt together ever again now I had discovered 505 spray glue, I have since come to the conclusion that its gluing properties are very weak and unless you are about to whizz it through a machine, it fails when constantly twisted on the lap over a week or two. I don't mind though. I have been feeling that my quilts were rather too flat; too perfect. I am seeking the puffy scrunchiness of an old-fashioned much loved quilt. A quilt you might find in Bagpuss' house. Although, this traincrash of colours would hardly feature there.



I have decided this is the kind of quilt I would have in my Barbican flat, my Erno Goldfinger flat or my Frank Lloyd Wright house. It is kind of 50s 60s quilt.

Anyway, I went to my local craft shop which is kind of one up from a pound shop. It's the cheaper side of craft equipment which is actually great as there are lots of great things in there. One of the best things is that they stock a full range of Gutterman thread. I just bought some of their cheap thick thread in orange, yellow, turquoise and blue and decided to use all of those randomly on the quilt. The finer, more subtle specific quilting threads I have are all in pale colours and just didn't see to fit. Plus a pool of King Tut is £6, whereas a spool of Guttermans is £1! Mum would probably tell me that there is a very good reason for that... but then she did tell me spray glue was not a good idea. One day I might actually start listening!



Yeah, so every evening I do a little bit more. I would say I am half way almost. It's a huge quilt, but I am doing very big stitches so they show up. All the spirals are just done by eye, well I sketch the next bit with a white pencil so then I can not think about it for a while. The last spirals I did were all traced and measured so this is an experiment. I will line then up side by side and see which is the most successful.

Finished!

So at last the speaker quilt is done. I am free of the task which has been sitting on my list if things to do for what seems like years.



I based it on this lovely Amy Butler quilt really. Although her one is a bit too wonky for my virgoan tendencies.



I did the same as before by sewing an odd patch of buttons on it and using the letter function on the Bernina to write some words associated with its owner. I did them all really badly but I quite like that.





And I also tried some of the other decorative stitches that I never use.

Now that is out of my system, and now that my 'Warm and Natural' wadding arrived from Quilt Direct, I am ready to baste together my big psychedelic quilt this weekend. I am a convert to the spray glue method. I washed my last quilt in the washing machine and it seemed fine so spray glue is cool with me. my mum thinks it takes away from the process, but basting is my least favourite part and is always the moment where I stop a project and out it away forever, so I think, well, you might as well choose not to spend time on the things you don't like.

60 Degrees

This weekend I decided to give in to the endless demand for the second speaker quilt. Rather than do the same thing as before, I decided to do something different using the same sort of fabric. I decided to practice 60° triangles with the newish 60 degree ruler. It's much easier than the template I was using before. I thought Id's experiment with bigger seams in an effort to improve my precision as they always seem off.



Fighting the stretchy nature of the bias is really frustrating. It didn't make it any easier really, just more bulky, but at least I know now. I just used a lot of spray starch and tried not to pull the material too much as it warps the shape. I also drew a line on the plate of the sewing machine to help with lining the material up when you sew it. That definitely helped when it came to the ends which have a tendency to move weirdly. I have a little wooden cuticle pusher which I used to hold the material in place up until the very last minute it is sewn which made life more precise but it still isn't perfect.



I couldn't work out the maths enough to make it a perfect fit so I evened it up with the leftovers from the last quilt. I'm pleased about this as there was just enough and I had no idea what I was going to do with it otherwise as it was so pindling.



It's all ready and waiting to just be quilted now. A job for next weekend methinks.

Hexagons

So I have been thinking about doing some hexagons (or English patchwork if you want to be technical). I have no idea why. It's all done by hand ye olde fashioned way and is a tonne of work unless you just make a pin cushion.) I have many other projects to do, but I quite like the idea of something I can do by hand, little by little. I am not quite sure if it is madness yet. I am still working it out. And I am not quite sure what would look nice. Should it be modern prints, totally random, with a bauhaus colour theme or small pretty sprigs. Plains and patterns forming larger shapes, white bits? Who knows, it is just a small idea lodging itself in the back of my head. Above are some different examples that have caught my eye.

1. The Pillow Talk { Swap } , 2. Eggs from just this morn, 3. Always work in progress, 4. Four, 5. Pillow Talk swap round 3, 6. YIP 365.299 :: Honeycomb Hexagon quilt from Fresh Quilting, 7. girly hexagon quilt, 8. checking out the hexagons...., 9. Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt, 10. butterfly hexes, 11. Hexillow, 12. Milk & Honey

I would also like to mention at this point that I left my crochet granny squares lying around in a pile for so long that they got infested by moths so I have had to wash them and put them in the freezer. I have a bad track record with these things, yet I yearn to start them.

SImple Quilt

I have so nearly finished this quilt. It's the first quilt I glued instead of basting. I did this as it was just getting so dirty on the floor and it was too big so the stairs kept getting in the way.



I think I might have to try basting my next quilt on a table. I am going to have to wash it, it is so dirty, but part of me is quite excited to see how this turns out. Although I washed all the fabric, I don't wash wadding and this quilt is made of lots of offcuts sewn together so it could well go all wrong, but I don't think I would mind that either. The backing is an old sheet and the whole thing is really soft. I kind of want it to go old and knackered and be something I can just bung in the wash without being too precious over it. With this in mind I machine quilted it quite heavily. The only problem with that is tying off all the ends. I Still haven't finished them so I still haven't washed it. I am going to try and make it my mission to do so.



I decided to make thick borders for this quilt so that they were soft and floppy, but I did them in continuous binding and I got the measurements wrong as the binding so so much thicker. So I had to make these funny corners. I actually quite like them, they seem to add to the softness, but they are a mistake. One I won't make again.

I started this quilt when I was in my last house as a moving in gift to myself for this house. That was over FIVE years ago. Shows how behind I have been. This is my simple boy friendly quilt based on one I saw by Conran in Libertys that was so expensive it was ridiculous. I wish I had taken a photo of it.

This weekend

I bought some new material as a get well soon present for myself, from here. I have really been trying not to as it's Chilford on 13th March and since I am finishing off projects I don't really need any. But at last I have finished the stripey quilt. I am just tying off all the ends then I shall show it to you. As for Chilford, I feel I have earnt the right to go as I have finished this huge unfinished project. Now I just have to apply myself to the multi coloured dream quilt and then I can finally start on the sawtooth star quilt.



In the meantime I am also knitting. I am practising cable stitches from my Cabling book I received for Christmas. I'm not quite sure what I will do with the squares when they are complete. Maybe make them into a multi coloured blanket for a baby as they are every soft. We'll see. I'm doing them in pockets of free time so they won't form into anything for a very long time.

Pendant Making

I did a silversmithing glass this weekend at Rachels Studio with Rebecca. It was great! I was very rubbish though. It's so hard to get things straight. In the end I just decided to do something that was supposed to look rough and wonky. I wanted to make sure I finished it in the time so I just set about making two big hoops and bashing them flat.





I should have filed and polished the finished thing more but well, it just takes so long and I am such a wimp I got sore arms and fingers by the end of the day. Hitting your finger a few times with a hammer is no joke I can tell you. I can't quite wear the finished thing as one of the jump rings came unsoldered, but once I fix that then I am well chuffed.



Rachel cut her big circle out of flat silver which looked lovely.



Here is her finished necklace minus the polish.



Here is mine after the polish! I sat sanding and polishing all the way home on the train! I wish I could sign up the evening course and make more things!