Saturday stitching

It is a cold cold day here today. After dropping to -5 overnight at 11am this morning it has only reached 2. I have stayed indoors by the fire and been stitching a few clamshells. I now have enough made to make something of a decent size, and the tin is overflowing, so its about time I joined a few.
I bought a few fat 1/4's from the V&A museum and I was a little disappointed with them, but thought they would look good in a scrappy English quilt. I have made clamshells with them and love them now!

On Saturday we had our Ann Daggs class. The girls on a Saturday, plus and minus a few over the years, have been meeting for about seven years and making special quilts. We have shared births, deaths and marriages, divorces, lost a few favorites due to interstate moves and found a few new special members to take their places. We have almost got lunch right, so on Saturday we confirmed what quilt we will start next year.
meanwhile here are their Ann Daggs quilts.

This quilt belongs to Juliann

And this quilt belongs to Susan

Jeni's quilt is rich and vibrant but still has an old feel to it

Teresa's quilt is quite a lot like the original

Chris has stayed more or less up to date despite having two lots of surgery on her arm!

and last but not least here is Beth's quilt. we decided this quilt has the most "antique" feel to it.

As you can see they do their teacher proud!

Sydney quilt show and lots of catching up

I am a bit behind in getting to this blog! thanks for all the concerned emails!

My father is getting better by the day and has a little quality of life back. He is up and about, going outside and even doing a few things around the garden this week. We went down to see him last week and he was looking the best we have seen him since Christmas.
After a weekend in Melbourne I flew the next day to Sydney to the quilt show and stayed a few more days and had some time to myself to wander around, see whats happening in the world of interior decorating and caught up with some friends and lots of fabric club members.
there werent as many quilts as I expected at the quilt show, but all the same some beautiful work.

Karen Cunningham gave me permission to put a photo of her quilt on our blog. This was probably my favorite quilt for many reasons- I have started this quilt and now have its beginnings shoved in a box. The quilt was hand quilted beautifully ( I felt some of the quilts at the show were so over quilted) and it hung straight. And most of all I love the quilt!
So here is Karen in front of her quilt doing white glove duty and looking like Miss Darling Harbour.

Here is the next little piece of the Ann Daggs quilt. Each month I cant believe how quickly it comes around and I dont think I have achieved anything between classes this time! I have a really busy July ahead of me so I will have to give up sleeping I think. I do enjoy watching the Tour de France, so I might see quite a bit of it this year.

We have had some great fabric delivered this week so I will go to work tomorrow with my camera and do some more posting in the next few days!
Happy sewing, Susan

catching up

I think I should have had this block posted up here several weeks ago!

and now for Ann Daggs

and finally the next piece of The Browne Sister's sampler

I goy myself into such a muddle when I did this block. I cut the pieces out in Melbourne, when I was at my parent's home when my father had a stroke a few weeks ago. Thinking I would be organised, I cut the pieces out for blocks, this one and the one in reverse. I tried to put them away carefully so they would not get mixed up and somehow they did. When I came to sew, it was like a jigsaw and and I have bits that should be on the other block on this one. I have tossed the rest and will do the second one a bit differently!

going dotty

Its been so long since I wrote a post! My father was in Melbourne in hospital for a month, he came home and then two weeks ago had a stroke. He is quite good now, getting better daily and we also had my mother's 80th birthday last weekend. In  between I have written the fabric club newsletter, sewn the next applique block for fabric club and tried to keep up with all the other work. I have a few more urgent things to do by the end of next week and all should be smooth sailing from there!

I have lots to post. I love quilts with lots of dots so I am always searching out the best way for me to make those horrid little circles. I can applique a circle the size of a 20c piece or larger quite well, as long as I have a good template to begin with to mark the circle well. If its a small circle I need to make it over a template. I punch out cardboard circles sometimes, but usually now use the mylar circles we have at the shop. I gather up the fabric over the template, starch the circle, press, let it dry and then remove the mylar. There are about 4 circles each size so its not too tiresome getting up and down from the ironing board. It means I dont need to cut the quilt from behind and as the plastic is so thin you can get a great finish.

These are two of my favourite quilts with lots of dots. This quilt is a reproduction of a quilt made by Salina Browne in the late 1800's. A friend owns the original antique quilt and he gave me permission to reproduce it and sell the pattern.
The second quilt I made a few years ago, and my pattern is one of many versions of this quilt. I think the original may have been a red/green quilt. Ours is called Dorothy Dumpling.

there were lots of dots in both quilts, but the end result makes all those little dots worthwhile.

Tomorrow I will post the updates !

Lucy joins the ballet

I set myself a challenge a week ago to have an enormous amount of work finished by the end of the month...so far so good!
Christine has been busy too over the past few weeks. So here is some of her finished and almost finished quilts.

The first quilt is the same as the Hope Valley quilt I am making, except Christine's blocks are a little smaller. We both felt we would have preferred the corner squares to be a little smaller, but then when the quilt is finished, we loved the result. I have not finished mine!

A quilt pattern we gave away at our summer school a few years ago proved to be an addiction with Christine. She has been stitching circles ever since. They are a lot of fun and very mindless at the end of a busy day. This is about quilt no 6 I think. One went to New York for their new grandson, and a few are at the shop. This one Christine's daughter, Louise, has coveted.

And some exciting news for those of you have attended summer school and met Joy's gorgeous girls. Lucy was invited to be a full time student at the Australian Ballet school next year. We are very proud and excited!

The Girls

Two of my very favorite quilts are "Emma" and "Frances". Emma hasnt been home in a long time, she seems to have found refuge on a wall at the shop.

Emma is a adaptation of an antique quilt from the USA which appears in the book"Quilts in America" by Patsy and Myron Orlofsky. The original quilt had handkerchief in the centre. It is just a small quilt,perfect size for a cot.

Frances is an adaptation of an antique quilt from Florida. This quilt was a commission for the movie "Charlotte's Web". The quilt was not used in the end, but it was a fun experience making it. The attention to detail required by the art director back in the USA, was a lesson that I take with me to every movie now, about how moods, time atmosphere etc are created. The staff were all wonderful to work with. At the time of making this quilt, Florida was bearing down for cyclone Frances. My sewing room looked like Frances had hit.

tools of the trade

For what its worth, here is my opinion on a few things tool wise.
templastic: we have a few templastics on offer and I prefer to use them to freezer paper to make my templates.
 There is a nice lightweight one we have at the shop which is what I use for 99% of my templates.

Advantages: its easy to cut out , therefore the templates are accurate, and I dont get sore hands trying to cut it out. It can be marked with a pencil, which means I can use a compass on it, and when making templates for paper piecing, I can easily cut it using an old rotary cutter blade, which means nice accurate templates. I place it over grid paper and mark dots on the corners with a fine lead pencil and then rotary cut.
 Disadvantages: it only comes in a A4 sheet.

The other templastic I use is a 1/4" grid templastic, which is difficult to cut but great for something you might be using 100's of times. because it is difficult to cut I dont use it unless I really need to. With small shapes, the scissors can easily go slightly off the marked line, which can mount up to a lot of inaccuracy in your quilt.

when neither of these templastics will do the task, I use freezer paper. I dont recommend any other paper than Reynolds.

threads: I have tried just about all threads over the years, and for the past 5 or so years I have only used Aurifil thread. It is silky and leaves very little lint in the sewing machine. Nice long pieces can be used for hand sewing, and the no 50wt is wonderful for applique. It does not knot up on itself, and blends into the applique fabric, making the stitches barely visible.

I think you should test your threads for colorfastness, washability, and wear and tear.

Today I needed some bias that was interesting for a small project. These new fabrics that have come into the shop were just what I wanted. I loved the cream/black ticking for a background fabric, but it has made great bias. The black stripe has me thinking about "antique stems".