Show and Tell

Just on my way to do a school run, but in the absence of having something notable to talk about, I figured I'd do a bit of show and tell. 

I love 30's prints.  This is one I made from leftover four patches.  I will never ever run out of fabric, especially 30's fabrics.  I use every last, little scrap.  I'm pathetic.  This one is a flimsie.  One day I'll quilt it.  But for now, flimsie is fine.

Happy quilting!

Civil War Block No. 1 - Catch Me If You Can

I made this block months ago, when Barbara Brackman first began her Civil War quiltalong.  It was easy.  The next few were difficult and I fell in a heap with them, but I'm slowly working through them and will post more later.

Don't have much of anything to say today.  Hopefully I'll get all my housework-y jobs done tomorrow early enough and I can spend the rest of my free time sewing.  Fingers crossed.

Bye for now.

Sunday Mornings

Sunday mornings are the best.  I generally get to sleep in (the DH and I have an arrangement - he has Saturday mornings, I have Sunday mornings).  One daughter goes out, DH is generally out in the garden, and little DD is generally out following him. 

So I get my time. 

Mostly it's filled up with folding, washing, tidying.  But I do love to get a cup of coffee and surf some of the quilting blogs.

I generally follow a theme.  I'm currently madly into reproduction blogs, and my lordy there are loads of them.  I'm in awe of these ladies and their piecing skills. 

While I had a little time to myself, I took the opportunity to stitch up the latest month of the Civil War Quilt by Barbara Brackman.  This one was called Illinois Roads.  I've made three.  I have a lot of catching up to do!

What I've Been Working On

My current project.

I'm in a quilting group in the town where I belong to.  It meets twice a month at night time, and I don't often get the chance to go.  My husband's job is demanding and whilst he tries hard, sometimes he just can't get home in time to do the child handover.  And as tempting as it is to leave the little buggars home by themselves, I'm not that bad a mother yet.

They have a number of workshop/challenges over the course of a year and one of them is a Paper Bag Challenge.  New to me, but apparently a common thing.  You choose some bits and pieces you like - ribbons, fabrics, buttons, the choice is up to you.  You keep your identity secret by putting your bits and bobs in a paper bag and it is swapped with someone else. 

My swappee has chosen yellow.  Now I'm not real keen on yellow.  I'm not against it, and I've read you're supposed to put yellow in every floral quilt to 'keep it real'.  But let's just say that yellow and I are not really friends.  I am finding this challenge a real challenge, which I guess is kinda the point. I sincerely hope that my swappee likes it.  I'm doing my best.

I won't reveal what I'm doing with it yet just in case she reads this (hah!).  But when I do the handover, I'll show the big reveal.  I do hope she likes it.

A hundred years from now….free pattern

My daughter is at school now.  Her teacher left to pursue other interests amidst a bit of a mid life crisis.  I felt bad for her, I thought she was a lovely, engaging teacher. 

So rather than give her a card as normal people do, I designed the little stitchery below.  And now, I offer it to you as a free download.

Be gentle with me!  It’s my first freebie and I’m not sure that I even know how to upload it. But let’s give it a whirl, shall we?  I hope the size of the picture doesn’t blow away your computer download limit, but I don’t know how to resize them yet.  As I said, I’m a baby.  I think if you right click on the image, and print to a4 size, it should fit. 

A Hundred Years From Now

A free pattern for Silly Goose Quilts blog readers

Please feel free to share this pattern with your friends.

Thankyou and enjoy!

Requirements:

12” x 16” calico or cream coloured background fabric

12” x 16” thin iron on wadding

Light box (not necessary but helpful)

Lead pencil or brown/black micron pen

Coloured pencil or crayons (I used my daughter’s - don’t go silly and buy fancy schmancy ones, cheap is fine)

General sewing requirements

Embroidery hoop

DMC threads - I suggest the following though please feel free to change them:

• 938 brown

• 818 flesh

• 319 green

• 310 black

• 309 red

• 743 yellow

• 962 pink

• 335 pink

• 632 brown

• 209 purple

• 333 purple

• 349 red

• 919 red

• 798 red

• 3799 very dark grey

• 798 blue

Instructions:

Using a light box or window pane, transfer your design to the background fabric of your choosing.

Iron the wadding to the wrong side of your background fabric. Fix the embroidery hoop in place.

Using two or three strands of embroidery floss, stitch design using our photo and picture as a guide. I have used a basic backstitch for all of the embroidery except the eyes, which I have stitched using a french knot. I’ve assumed a working knowledge of these stitches. If you are a newbie, there are loads of free tutorials online or on you-tube that can help you out.

I’ve given you a list of DMC colours that I have used, however feel free to adapt your pattern to reflect your own tastes. I used the following:

all words - 938 brown

faces, arms, legs - 818 flesh

grass - 319 green

eyes - 310 black

mouths - 309 red

first girl

hair – 743 yellow

bow – 962  pink

shoe and dress – 335 pink

second girl

hair – 632 brown

bow – 209 purple

shoe and dress – 333 purple

dog

body – 3799 very dark grey

mouth and nose – 310  black

first boy

hair –919 red

shirt, shorts, shoes – 349 red

second boy

hair – 632 brown

shirt, shorts, shoes –798 blue

Remove your design from the embroidery hoop.

When design is stitched to your satisfaction, lightly shade the dresses, shirts, dog and hair to your liking with coloured pencils or crayons. Start lightly, and continue shading until the design is as dark as you wish. Lightly press your design on the wrong side.

Now that your design is finished, you can do with it as you wish! I have framed mine in a wooden frame purchased from a cheap shop, though you could easily make a wall hanging from it either. My design should fit into a 9” x 7” frame insert, though check before you cut!

Thankyou for taking the time for stitching my design. Please check my blog often as I add new things!

I do hope you like it.  Please drop me a line or a comment if you have anything to say!

Happy stitching!

SG

Eye Spy Quilts

I’ve always been a structured quilter.  I like things to be balanced. Wreaths to be curved and in a circle.  Borders not random, but evenly placed.  I do not like this style of quilting:

http://www.dsquilts.com/

and I apologise in advance if I offend Denyse Schmidt but I’m sure my little opinion matters not so much to her.  I appreciate the quality of work and the not wanting to redo old ground, but it’s not me. 

This is me, by the way:

 

http://themarmaladecatpatchworkdesigns.blogspot.com/2008/10/double-wedding-ring-at-ballarat.html

 

Totally delicious.  I adore it.

 

Back in 2000, I (like many readers, I assume) joined in lots of millenium swaps for 3” squares.  I had a wonderful time and met (at least in cyberspace) lots of lovely people from all over the world. 

 

But I could never find the right Millenium Quilt pattern, no matter how hard I tried.  They all seemed to be too … messy for want of a better word.  Not structured enough.  So I left the box of squares.  And in the great mouse-capade episode of last week (dead mouse in the ceiling, smelly dead mouse smell in the most precious room of the entire house, the sewing room), I unearthed them again.

 

Now I’m a more experienced quilter, I’ve realised that 3” squares are tricky little suckers to use.  But that was 11 years ago (Oh. My. God.) and I know stuff now.

 

Purely by chance, I was browsing on quilter blogs and found a wonderful eye spy quilt.  The eye spy quilt was another on my bucket list that one day, I’d like to start.

 

So in the interest of not starting any new projects till I finished the one before it…. I started a new project.

 

This one is so easy.  You stitch fifteen three inch square (or whatever size takes your fancy), stitch them together into five rows of five, border them with a plain homespun, and there you go:

 

I think that’s a fabulous idea to use up some of those three inch squares.  I do sincerely apologise for the original quilter of this design.  I tried for far too long to find your website.  I’ll happily give you credit if you let me know.

 

So that’s tomorrow’s job.  Let’s see how we go.

Till then, happy quilting!

When the world gets too much...

Today has been one of those days.  It shouldn't have been, it started out fine.  Child one at school, child two at a rare morning of daycare.  Free time for me. 

And my free time was lovely, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I even pushed the boat out and brought two lattes in the one morning - what a splurge!

But then I picked child two up from daycare at lunch time and for whatever reason it went down hill from there.  It began with me breaking my tooth and now having only half what was there originally, and it ended ten minutes ago with child one having a rare lapse and peeing her child seat on the way home from school.  But not in my daggy old car that doesn't really matter.  Oh no, in my husband's spick and span work car that he is very, VERY precious about.  I'm surprised he even lets us mere mortals in his work car.

And there was a whole lot of boring crapola in between that didn't go my way.  Pout.

So I'm supposed to be helping child one with her homework and instead, I'm stealing ten minutes to myself. 

I find when the world all gets too much, like today - all I want to do is escape into my sewing room and shut the door.  I don't want music, movies, distractions.  I want to just put my head down, bum up and sew all afternoon.  Those times are so few now.  I love my family to pieces but I do find the older they get, the more they demand of my time.  There are parties to go to, ballet lessons to drive to, netball lessons to attend.  And I know it will only get worse. 

Anyway.  Big deep breath, happy face on.  Tomorrow I'll try and unearth the digital camera from underneath the mountain of crap that it's hiding in and show you some quilt eye candy.  Or Quilt Porn, if you're naughty.  I'm not naughty, of course. 

:)

Happy quilting!

Coming Clean

I spent a large amount of time over the past month organising.  Mainly my sewing room, but some other things as well.  It's my aim to have a clean sewing room, with everything in its place.  It's also very important to me to have a photographic record of all that I have done.  I started making photos of all my quilts years ago, and mostly I have been faithful to that.  Consequently, I have many photo albums filled with quilts, and bags, and cross stitches, and so much more. 

I think there's a touch of the hoarder in me and I find it hard to settle if I can't finish things.  But I'm also  great starter, and I have so many UFO's in my cupboard, and PIGS (which I learned yesterday meant Projects In Grocery Sacks), and magazines and patterns that I feel I will never settle in my sewing room, which is meant to be the one room I can totally relax in. 

So I have a quandary, a dirty little secret.  I don't know if I should just Ebay the lot of it and declutter, or if I will regret it forever. 

As I said, all a bit of a quandary.

Been gone long time...

I've been meaning to post, really truly I have.  And suddenly I look and it's three months since I last updated. 

A lot happened in that time.  Mostly my beloved lap top has gone bung.  Bung is a technical term for *&^54 itself.  I've had it into the computer doctor and whilst it now opens okay, which it wasn't doing before, I am now forced to type like a beginner and go niccceeeee annnnnnnndddd slooooooooow.  If I go too fast the computer falls over in a dead faint after an attack of the vapours.  Which is rather frustrating. 

There's also a dead mouse in the ceiling over my sewing room. Yes, we've looked for it.  No, we can't find it.  So all my sewing room stuff is now in my spare room so that the smell doesn't go through everything and meanwhile my mother in law is coming to stay this weekend and I'm going to have to sort through everything and put it back into the smelly sewing room so that she has someplace to sleep and I'm not at all angry/stressed about that situation AT ALL.

So between the dead mouse thing and the computer gone bung thing, I've not been a good blogger.  Sorry about that.

But the plans for the freebie block of the month are progressing well.  As in, I've taken the folder out of its box and put it on the table.  That's a start.

So, hopefully tomorrow I'll post a little more, if the fading wallflower of a computer will let me.  If not, I'll see you again in three months!



Free Block Of The Month

Coming soon!

Because I have discovered how clever I can be at making my own PDF's, I have decided to join the ranks of other more worthy quilt designers and offer to you a free row by row block of the month.  This pattern comes from one we used when we owned a quilt shop and was designed by me, and as there is no longer a quilt shop, there's no reason that I can't offer it to you, my enormous readership (hi mum!) for nothing!

But I haven't made it into a PDF yet, so check back real soon!  And tell your friends.  It's a mix of piecing and applique (you could either buttonhole or needleturn), and it's a row by row.  And it's delicious.

See you soon!