Project Linus

Another Linus finish. 

Not the best picture, the colours are brighter in real life! 

These orphan blocks have been languishing for over 10 years, they were a first try for background fabric. I felt the seagull fabric was too busy and too dark for a big quilt. 

I recently had a sort through and decided they had to be used or go, so now they will cheer up a poorly child, hopefully. 

I like the seagulls and their dinosaur relatives in juxtaposition. 

The border blues came from my scrap users system stash, the binding is scrappy. 

It was quilted with gifted polyester thread. 

Full speed ahead

I have spent the day at full speed, layering and quilting a 6' x 7' flimsy that has been on the shelf for 5 years.

The flimsy is made from crumbs and needed lots of quilting to keep it stable. 

All those seams!  This one is going to have to come with a warranty. I have spotted two places that gape whilst quilting, I have an idea for applique repair  that I can sneakily add and name the quilt to make it look as if it's on purpose.

I used a low loft Hobbs batting that I got in a sale. It is still really heavy!

My nerdy side came out: how many stitches, how much thread in the quilting?

An estimate: 

1.  7' x 6'flimsy
2. quilted 125 rows along the 6' length
3. approximately 11 stitches to 1"
4. 6 x 12=72" 
5. 72" x 11= 792 stitches per row
6. 792st. x 125 rows =99,000 total. 
7. As the rows are not straight add 15%=113,850 stitches
8. 113,850 stitches /11=10,350inches of quilting.
9. That is approximately 0.163 miles/0.26 km of sewing
10. Thread: loft of wadding is 1/16" so for each stitch add 1/16" ; 113,850 stitches x 1/16" =7,115  sixteenths of an inch= 444"
11. top and bottom thread total : (2x 10,350 ") to 444" =21,144" of thread
12.  0.333 miles or 0.54 km of thread. 

I think....................that's a lot of gifted polyester and odd reels of cotton used up!

It's been a while

I have been too busy sewing to bother with the blog, very remiss of me. 

'Sisters Square Dance' is under the needle this week, a Christmas gift, no pressure! it is over 100" square, so the only way to stitch it on my Bernina 440 is in the ditch, and that is a sumo match!  I will have to hand stitch a little in the centre of each star to stablise the whole thing. 

Back to work!

Still in the groove

 I am a novice machine quilter.  This morning, doing this lap size (for a friends sister who runs a charity for children with learning difficulties) I have learnt a lot-about stitch length, the wisdom of using pins instead of safety pins (ouch!) to sandwich, rolling the quilt properly, how the walking foot works.    And I keep telling myself that children are not the quilt police!  One down, eight to go!  Binding on next.

In the last few days sewing binge since I have a new sewing room, everything I have done has been for someone else, so last night I sewed some bow ties together for MY quilt. I have over 1000 pieced and ready to be assembled, they finish at 3 inches. This is the layout I have decided on. Most of the knot sections are a different colour to the bows: I had all the squares cut and lots of 1 1/12" strips in the bin, so I used those for the knots. I am pleased with my accuracy on these, they are going together well considering they were pieced over several months.

Could I possibly.....

.........get a quilt done as a Christmas present, with all the other sewing commitments that I have promised?   I have been tidying up.  I found these blocks, that I was going to add to to make a bigger quilt.  The project had been temporarily shelved as non-urgent.   There are enough here for a double bed topper once the sashings are on.   This is the trial layout.  I can already see things I'm going to move! I have four favourite blocks, all of which I would like to use in a quilt on their own. The blocks will finish at 12 inches.

If I didn't use 'made' fabric in these just strips from the bins, they would  be quite quick to do.

Another four projects. Agh!

Last night I had a bit of a practice  for the baby quilt, then got frustrated and actually started it.  In the end I came up with a design I've called Lollipop trees.  I am not at all happy with my quilting, but this is my first complete quilt that I will have free motioned all over, so I mustn't expect too much of myself.  The first few were not good, I wanted to unpick them but didn't! I will finish these this evening. 

The border will be the adapted Wormholes pattern I used on the pink charity quilt border.

Then I have four things to sew sashings on!

I have one orphan block, and lots of the 'made' blue fabric left, enough to make another 'orange and blue', I think.

Getting down to business

Last weekend I started quilting one of the charity play mats. I used the walking foot for this design but the back still has a couple of wrinkles in.   I will look at it tomorrow and see if it needs to be unpicked.  I put it aside, frustrated, and haven't looked at it since!  The quilting is done in back and white variegated thread.  I'm not sure how I will quilt the borders yet.

I am determined to crack free motion quilting, so I made up some practice sandwiches  with an old poly cotton sheet and scrap wadding.  You aren't seeing the results, they are awful!  Doing more of this tomorrow.

Today I cut the red sashing and made up this quilt top, the picture is of a border audition:  I went with this fabric.   Can't say too much about it at the moment as it's a gift and someone may just sneak a look!

Tonight I sewed the binding for  1 of 8 table mats in the VE1 series.  For those not regular readers, here is the inspiration.

A little wobble, I wouldn't say I fell off the wagon!

I went for a constitutional stroll to my local shops: there is a wool/sewing shop there run by a lady well over retirement age.  They have just started running patchwork classes and there were a few bolts of cloth, so I bought a metre of pink and half a metre of yellow very cheaply with the cottons I had gone for.

That means so far this year my total fabric purchases are 2 1/2 metres. I am VERY proud of myself!  I still look in the online stores at sale times , put things in baskets, then don't buy.  I think I may be cured!

I need to buy quite a lot of machine quilting thread for the Threadplay ribbon design I have decided to do on this quilt, as yet un-named.  You can see from the blocks picture how busy it is: I think  strong ribbons of colour will be the only thing that will tie it all together.   I will buy the polycore thread from Empress Mills-I have used their pure cotton machine thread for a while.  The polycore is £12.50 for 7500m!

Quick, quick!

I have put together a baby quilt, from the bow tie stash.  It's all a bit of a panic as this is the only time I will have before the end of the month. Wish I'd had more time!

 


I quilted it with the walking foot rather than free motion: although the curves weren't supposed to be symmetrical, they were too tight for the walking foot really and are more uneven than I intended!

 


The sex of the baby is unknown, hence the random colours.  I cut the trusty ice cream fabric for the backing but now its on I realise its rather PINK!  I used a variegated green on the back to quilt. picking up the ice cream green and trying to offset the pink. I like the quilting on the back more than the front!

The front is sewn in a heavyweight rainbow dyed variegated.  It needed a lot of quilting as it will probably get a lot of washing.  Either the thread was poor quality (it was rather furry) or the eye in the needle was too small (probably) as every so often it would break down and fray in the eye, so I have a few ends to secure.

I learned a lot doing this quick project.  As time was so tight I didn't have time to worry if it was 'right' or good enough, my usual train of thought for most things.  Probably why I'm not a great 'finisher'!




Not sure what to use for the binding, don't want to 'pink' out the front with ice cream fabric! I will try to find a brown or an almost white cream.  Or yellow.

Almost a flimsy.....

Mini moths ironed and pieced into four strips..........

 

.............and about 20 bow ties made in the process.

The top is ironed and ready to smooth out and measure  to find the final cutting dimensions of the mini moth border sections: I should be layering this next week!  

Looking forward to my first machine quilting experience.