Applique – Honoring Emma

I was happy to find Lori Smith’s new applique pattern – Honoring Emma– I like Lori Smith’s applique designs because of their flowy curvy shapes, and this one had just the right size of blocks, a small centre medallion, and a good variety of designs throughout the blocks.  (Oh! and her new sampler patterns are wonderful too – I will likely end up starting one of those soon as well :))

I ended up making 3 versions of the first block (well, the two cotton ones aren’t fully finished).  As my optometrist would say, “better A, or better B?  Better B or better C?”, lol.  I’m going with C – the wool applique.

  There’s nothing particularly wrong with A and B, they just somehow didn’t seem right to me – not the look I wanted to achieve.  C is the first wool applique I’ve done and it was fun. I used a flannel background, and wool felt which was I think 60/40 wool/rayon. The layout was much easier than with needleturn, the stitching was quick and easy, and I got to do a bit of decorative embroidery on some of the flowers.  So I will soon move on, finally, to block two.

Try, Try, Again

Anyone who has read this blog, or knows my quilting style, knows that I am indecisive in choosing and sticking to quilt project.  I’ll plan a wonderful quilt, start a block and yuck.  I’ll prep a kit for quilt, then decide later to use those fabrics, or part of them, in something else.  I have sewn countless applique blocks in the past two years, all from different sources and never ending up to be just what I wanted.

The past few weeks I’ve sewn two needleturn blocks – the same but different fabrics – and now I’m making it up as wool applique on felt.  I’ve also sewn one and half bluework blocks, from Margaret Docherty’s Hearts and Tulips book, but came to realize that it wasn’t working out how I imagined.  The past few months I’ve been following Anne Sutton’s (BunnyHill Designs) A Tisket a Tasket block of the month, working it as a fusible applique project.  Now I’m thinking of turning it into a redwork quilt.  I’ll post pictures of all these efforts in the next few days.

Meanwhile, I did get a quilt quilted! (With of course one or two areas tried out, ripped out, and re-quilted).  Here’s the Stars and Nine Patch,

Two more tops!

After almost two weeks without making a stitch with a sewing machine, I got back into it with a bang on Friday morning.

First up was a quilt top that need the intervention of an Exorcist. Really. It was intended to have four outline stitched blocks set diagonally with framed sixteen patch blocks. I had the centre sewn, the pieced border bits made up (see post about "January", below) , and I ordered a wonderful border fabric to bring out the red and black in the fabrics and embroidery. No luck – when it arrived, it was way short than I needed, end of bolt. So back to the drawing board, and a decision to use the embroidered blocks in a wallhanging; and make up some other blocks to add into the quilt, which would make it bigger, without needing the wide border.

After much fighting with the diagonal set, and working out the measurement of the four patch borders, voila! – a quilt called Changes – representing all the variations of this top; and most important the pinwheels representing the whirling challenges of life with two teenagers and my oldest son’s wedding in the fall.

Then I got to a quilt I’m naming Hodgepodge Strippy – I had written about the top in an earlier note. I had some concern that I wouldn’t have enough 4” patches to make up a good amount of blocks for a lap quiilt, and sure enough the most I could make was 20. EQ saved my sanity on this quilt. I was constantly drawing and re-drawing it to use up what I had without running out! What I wanted to do, and would have liked best, was 6 rows of 5 blocks each, with a 5” sash in between each row. But….nope.

So this is what I came up with – even the border ended up to be much narrower than I would have liked because I ran out of fabric. I’m going to use a red fabric for the binding, to bring out the slight pink in the sashing/border fabric. I’d also like to quilt it in such a way that all the plain fabric sort of blends together to make the coloured hodgepodge strips look as if they’re floating.

This quilt will be for my neice, or my sister, depending on how fast I want to quilt it! Neice’s birthday is in June, sister’s is in August.

Both of these pictures could have been better – the quilts are even and squared – but a teenager was being held against his will to hold them up for pictures!

Sewing on the porch

Spring has finally arrived here, and with it the anticipation that I now get to spend more time outside, doing what I like best in the warmer months – applique and hand work.

Over the years I seem to have fallen into a routine of piecing and quilt-top making during the winter, and quilting and applique in the summer. While I do work on all types throughout the year, there’s definitely an emphasis on quilting and applique in the summer. I get to enjoy the weather, and when its too hot, I can sit in the air conditioning and quilt my quilts at the machine. Little ironing is needed, which is great, because my studio is small and even a hot iron on for a couple of hours can really make thngs warm!

It was good timing on my part when I went browsing for patterns at Lori Smith's website about a week ago. She had just posted some new patterns, one which I very much liked called Honoring Emma, An Album Quilt. It arrived yesterday and I was again very lucky to pretty decisively choose my fabrics – decisive is not my strong point!. I enjoyed a lovely afternoon out in the sun, cutting up fabric and making little block kits for the pattern.

Another quilt that I’ve started is from Margaret Docherty’s new book Hearts and Tulips. I’ve decided to sew the blocks with a blue outline stitch with highlights of blanket stitch applique – all blue on white.

I “had” to get in on a a block of the month wallhanging size applique quilt called Summertime (that’s appropriate, lol) at Homestead Hearth. I looked at the quilt and program for a few weeks, and felt it was something I didn’t want to pass up :)

As with piecing, I like to have a variety of applique and handwork projects on the go – none of these are meant to be done this summer, or even this year!

Another top … and a 1/2….done

Here’s a picture of the finished Cottage Crossing quilt top.  The cottage block is from Fig Tree Quilts’ Houses book.

And the centre of “January” is done – it needs a few borders, two of which are pieced.  One is ready to go, the other is waiting for a final dark fabric that needs to be added to the mix.  The pieced blocks are from a quilt in Tea in the Garden by Cynthia Tomaszewski, and the outline embroidery blocks are the Whitework Sampler by Lydia Quigley at the Rabbit Factory.

Machine Applique – Fun with Thread Accents

I love handwork – needleturn applique, outline embroidery, hand piecing, and blanket stitch applique.  But – I have so much on my list of want-to-do’s that I also have learned to enjoy the benefits of applique by machine.

It can be far more than just cutting and fusing shapes to the background.  Over the past few years I have managed a pretty good collection of variegated and heavy threads that I use for machine applique, and for quilting.  I buy one or two every time I buy ordinary piecing thread, or when I’m shopping for a specific thread for a quilt.

I enjoy picking through my threads, and using accent colours to stitch the blanket stitch, or a variegated thread (I love the Sulky 30 wt. threads for this!).  I’ve been working on the first block of A Primitive Garden, a block of the month quilt from  HoneyBee Fabrics.  I knew for sure that I could not needleturn all these blocks – just too much of a challenge physically and for time spent, and I also wanted this quilt to be used and enjoyed (meaning lots of machine washing and drying).  So I thought I might hand blanket stitch the fused pieces…but that was going to be slow going, an outline stitch project is wanting to get done, and at least two needleturn applique patterns are calling my name! 

So I set about the machine applique and am I ever enjoying it!  There is a challenge to evenly blanket stitch around a narrow corner, or a circle….its interesting to pick a thread and see the result on the fabric…and more options available when stitching stems and other bits and pieces.  Almost all newer sewing machines have lots of stitches, and a way to alter their stitch width and length.  I keep a little scrap of fabric with odd shaped fused pieces nearby so I can sew out a stitch and see what happens, before I put it to use.