LizQ3 – Fun with Colour

I’m loving making this because I really have little idea what it will be like when it’s finished other than very bright and it’s great to use all of these fun fabrics I’ve been adding to my stash over the last few years and waiting for the right time to use them. This quilt has now become a bit of a challenge to use more and more bright fabrics but in a way that works well. I particularly like the border strip with the sewing notions on it – it pulls all the current elements of the design together really well, and starts to balance out those naughty shoe-fly blocks.

I had a ball last weekend playing with my collection of bright coloured fabrics from my stash. The LizQ has now developed from making a quilt for a sewing room, to being a challenge to use as many bright fabrics in one quilt as I can. How did this happen??

Displacement was discovered by accident, so were post-it notes, and I’m now adding the LizQuilt to the list of happy accidents. I started the quilt with my shoe-fly blocks (see the entry The Liz Quilt – A Random Project (LizQ1)), and when I added them to the panel blocks I created, I thought they overpowered the picture panels which wasn’t the effect I wanted, as the picture below shows.

So I kept adding borders to both balance the shoe-fly blocks and to increase the size of the quilt (it’s still not big enough to be comfy yet – but there’ll be more on what I’ll do about that in the next post or so). And this is where I’ve pieced it to so far.

While the sewing notions strip looks good (I think) it was fiddly to piece because I had to try to match the pattern. I think I’ll write some notes for the website in the next few weeks (http://sites.google.com/site/bertcollections/) to save some of the traumas with this – I spent a long time getting the first join in the pattern done, and then still wasn’t happy with the result. I pinned it to my design wall with the centre panel and thought to myself “why didn’t I just do it this way”. That had a couple of effects – the second join to me about fifteen minutes instead of an hour, and the join was so much neater that I unpicked the first one I’d done differently and re-did the whole thing. In hindsight I probably should have consulted my books and magazines first but I was on a roll and having fun so it didn’t really matter.

The LizQ is now about the standard width of a fabric so the pieces I have not big enough for the next border, so later this week I’m off to my favourite store in Canberra to get some extra bright fabric to help me complete another couple of borders for the quilt top.

So, the LizQ is proving to be lots of fun, and I hope your projects are keeping you amused too.
Bert.

PS: I’m still working on the Time for Tea Quilt (T4T) in the background as well – I’ll post an update on that once I’ve got the ideas clearer and can share them with you.

LizQ2 – Fun with Piecing

I'm having a fun weekend, switching between building outdoor tables from recycled wood in the garage, to piecing the Liz Quilt inside. The LizQ is proving good fun, as for once I don't have strong concept of what I want the finished product to look like, so I'm just adding a section at a time and making it up as I go along. Yesterday that included managing to put two strips on upside down, unpicking the seams, and resewing them, but I was in a good mood, and Mr Mark was sharing the sewing room with me so that made it alright.

Today I've added a thin blue border to the top and bottom of the centre panel, and then I'm adding a thicker patterned border to that. The patterned border needed some tricky joining of the patterns, which I fiddled with on the first section for an hour or more to get it not quite right… then went I to do the second section I thought, oh, why didn't I just do it this way – and had it done in a quarter of the time. Needless to say the iron, stick and sew method I used the second time proved much easier and gave a far superior result, so I'll put the instructions for how to do this on the techniques section of my website so that you and I can both do this the fun and easy way next time around.

Back to do some more quilting and sawing.

Bert

The Liz Quilt (LizQ) – A Random Project

I had a crappy week at work last week, on the weekend I had the flu , and I was feelin’ blue. So instead of writing a country and western song, I decided to brighten up my Saturday with some seriously bright fabrics and put together the initial blocks for a project I’ve been thinking about for a while. So here’s the story…

Mr Mark forced me to buy a ‘Quilter’s Quips’ panel at a quilt shop when we were on holidays last year. The panel has pictures of a quilter with funny quotes about quilters and quilting on it, and its very colourful. So, it’s the perfect starter for a quilt for a quilter, whose sewing room gets quite cold on winter afternoons. I thought about the fabrics I had and the sewing I’d done before, and I remembered that the first piece of patchwork I ever did was making a cushion for my chair at school when I was all of eight or nine years old. Amazingly, I remembered that the design was called ‘shoe-fly’ (yes, it’s probably supposed to be ‘shoo-fly’ but I remember it as shoe so that’s the way I’ve written it) and was essentially a nine patch block with half-square triangles in each corner. I called my Mum to confer about the design, and she confirmed that this matched her memory of the cushion and that it was red and blue. Mum also mentioned some UFOs she had that she and my grandmothers had started when I was small, so I suspect these may now get handed down for me to finish one of these years as well ;-).

Anyway, so I drew up my shoe-fly design, found some bright pink and turquoise fabric that matched the panel and was still close enough to red and blue. I then remembered that my cushion had a print in the corner triangles, I’m not sure what it was though. So, I dug out a white fabric with small brightly coloured buttons on it and put that on the corners, and put strips of it on each panel section so the blocks are all 9” square when they’re finished.

My next challenge is the borders and balancing the strength of colour in the shoe-fly blocks, but that’ll be the next installment.
Have a great week.
Bert

T4T6 – May template is on target, but the design was a bit testing.

I’ve done a lot of rework on the Time for Tea project in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve now got my clock design going. But never fear – I’ve still made my teapot template, so if you need another teapot, you’ll find it on the website at http://sites.google.com/site/bertcollections/templates/teapots.

The redesign has taken me a couple of weeks, some fun drawing and research, and some painstaking work to do. As I mentioned in the previous post, I decided to redesign the centre of the quilt to be a clock face. This means its gone from being a table scene like this…

..to a clock face like this…

I was getting a bit frustrated with the whole design earlier in May, and I seemed to have the best ideas when I got into bed to go to sleep at night. So I’ve now resorted to keeping my sketch book and a pencil beside my bed so I can jot down these ideas when I think of them. I’m not sure it’s the most romantic idea but it seems to work and got me over the quilter’s block. The other thing I did, which scared me a bit, was scanned a sample of each piece of fabric. This helped me refamiliarise myself with the fabrics when I realized I’d forgotten what was in my blue and white collection, and now it means I can also trial different fabrics with the templates on my computer. But, this does seem like something my mum would do, so it did scare me a bit :-)

So, having put in several more hours of work and plenty of random thinking between other things, I’m now more comfortable to proceed with the general design and more templates. Halelujah!

I hope the quilters block stays away for a while now and I (and you) can have some more fun with it.

Happy stitching,
Bert

T4T5 – Gone potty with appliqué – April was a success

Today was fun. Having got myself a new glue stick during the week, I’ve been playing with freezer paper appliqué to further test my Modern Twist appliqué teapot template (try to say that five times quickly!). Here’s what I ended up with...
While I’ve decided I like the result I’ve got, I’m still deciding if this is worth the extra work to use the freezer paper method. I like the rounded edge, the extra layers, the ability to use less stark stitching and the general texture of the freezer paper method. The down side is, it is more fiddly, and I’m not sure it’s worth it yet…So the results we have for the different colours and styles of the Modern Twist teapot are shown in the photo below.

I’ve been thinking some more while I’ve done these three, and I think the design of the quilt is going to change a bit – to now more obviously include a clock face as part of the centre panel, so I think what I might do is use a combination of the different appliqué methods, with the ‘stick and stitch’ method for the appliqué in the background (as its not worth the bother if it will be covered by other layers anyway) and the freezer-paper or similar for the foreground teapots. So what all this means is also that I need some more teapot templates to experiment with to test this view – and probably to explain the general layout of the quilt so you can all picture what it might be like as well.
Happy stitching,
Bert

PS: I drafted this post on 26 April and then neglected to load it - that's why we've got April in the May section - Doh! Bert.

A Mother's Day Diversion - Cards

There’s so much to write about today, I’ve been up to all sorts of things. But first a quick diversion. In preparation for Mother’s Day I decided to experiment with patchwork cards for my collection of mothers. I found some instructions that were a useful starting point at http://craftapple.wordpress.com/2006/08/23/quilted-cards-tutorial/. I made three and they took from about 15minutes to an hour to make depending on how complex I made the design. I varied my approach to craftapples' in that I did use fusible interfacing as the backing for the fabric instead of paper – I like the soft look this has, and it’s easier to work with on my sewing machine. This was a great project and easy to do – I felt very satisfied having played around in the sewing room for a couple of hours, finished more than one thing, and made something that someone else will enjoy. Here’s what the result looked like.


The card size is about 4”x6”, which is within the standard card size limit and so it only cost me 55 cents to post each one as well. I was curious to find out from my mothers how these survived the interstate trip with the postman, and I’ve advised that they are in excellent condition. So, I think we can call this a success, and I’ve found another use for the little scrappy bits of fabric that are too small for most things, but too precious to be thrown away.

Happy crafting for another week.
Bert

T4T4 – Testing the Template and my patience ;-)

I’ve been busy making wine today, so with the couple of hours of the day left I decided to do some more experimenting with the Modern Twist teapot template…
Last weekend I took this template and appliqued it using the ‘stick and stitch’ method and two different colour schemes. I was trying to figure out whether the design would be effective as one solid piece, or look better with a bit more contrast. Have a look at the two blocks below and make up your own mind…



I’ve done a survey of the people who’ve visited this week, and the consensus is that the teapot with the contrast is much more effective than the plain one - the plain one loses the great shape of the teapot into one amorphous mass. I also quite like the effect of the contrast block despite the brown which generally isn’t a favourite colour of mine.

Having now decided that the contrast block worked better, I want to also experiment with different appliqué techniques. The stick and stitch examples from last week look fine, but they are still a bit flat, and I’m never entirely satisfied with the durability of this approach given that there are still raw edges ther. Set on experimenting further today, I’ve decided to try the ‘freezer paper’ method as well, to see what results I get.

So, I experimented with different scraps of fabric that I have and my crude-but-effective design wall to figure out what to combine. Next I ironed on and cut out the pieces but…when I went to stick the seam allowance I discovered that…my glue stick had turned into a dried out, rubbery useless thing. Doh! So, the rest of the experiment will have to wait until next weekend when I’ve been shopping and upgraded my glue stick. In the meantime I’ll write some notes for the bertcollections website on using a design wall and wait to see if any of you have comments on the two different versions of the modern twist block as well.

Happy creating for another week.
Bert

T4T3 - The First Teapot Template

Today’s achievement is I’ve made my first teapot template, and started to test it. Since my commitment last week to making one teapot template per month, I’ve done some thinking, and scribbling, reworking and testing and the result is the first template in the teapot collection – which you can now download from the template section of my website at: http://sites.google.com/site/bertcollections/templates/teapots. The first block is called modern twist because it’s inspired by a chrome and black teapot, and I like its largely traditional shape, but with a modern twist of being sleeker and shinier.

I’m going to do a couple of test pieces with this template before I decide the best method to make it with. The first option I’m trying is the ‘stick and stitch’ method using adhesive backing to attach the pieces to the background, and then sewing around the shapes. I think I’ll also try freezer paper to see how the results differ.

I’m also doing two variations of fabric on the first test pieces as well (as shown in the photos below). I want to figure out whether the teapots work better as one continuous piece of fabric or as a combination of fabrics.

From the cutting and pasting I’ve done this afternoon, I think I prefer the combination, but I’ll wait to see what it’s like once its been stitched.

That’s all for now, and happy stitching.

Bert

T4T2 - Applique Designs

Well I’ve just decided to set myself the challenge of designing and making one teapot block per month this year – call it a late new years resolution if you like. This will keep my Time for Tea quilt progressing, and leave me some time for other projects too.

As I’m designing this quilt from scratch, I’m starting with pictures of tea pots like those shown here, and then turning these into appliqué patterns. The idea is that I’ll end up with 12-15 designs as key components for this quilt, and I can work on refining the centre panel design as I go as well (further info on that to follow in an upcoming post). I’m also going to try designing the blocks with my basic computer software to see how I go, and so that I can share these blocks with you as well (and you’ll be able to download the patterns from my website http://sites.google.com/site/bertcollections/). We can see how many potty quilts we can make together, and maybe we’ll have another quilt designed by Christmas.

I’ve included some pictures of tea pots here for inspiration, and if you have pictures of great tea pots, please email them to me at bertcollections@gmail.com – your favourite pot may just become part of the design!

Happy stitching,
Bert