Heat wave!

What do you do when the temperature is 44 - 46°C (and cooling to a balmy 30°C overnight) for over a week?  Well my solution was to hide myself away in my house with only two rooms to live in so the air conditioner could (mostly) keep up.


Of course I needed something to do in this time and so I put together this quilt top.  

One heat wave's worth of work!

The quilt is one that I bought as a quilt kit from a craft fair some time ago.  However, it was a funny size- bit bigger than a single bed but way too small for a double bed.  I wanted to make it bigger and so the easiest way, given the simple design, was to add an extra row and an extra column.  That meant more material, and I fluked some perfect material at a market on a recent holiday to Canberra!It isn't totally done yet- I need to decide if I add a sashing around (and need to go shopping for said sashing).  And since the kit did come with enough black material for the backing only for me to use it up making those extra rows, I also need to get some black material and batting- time to check out the patchwork shop around the corner.Extra bonus- here's a pretty sunset from my Canberra holiday.

I've made a quilt!

Many moons ago I started a quilt.  This is a brand new craft for me because looking around my tiny unit, I thought what I really needed was another craft!

Well I've been slowly plugging away at in off and on, and I'm happy to say it's finally done- including quilting and binding it (which I was going to do using this great method I found only to goof and sew the binding on the wrong side first so I had to hand stitch the binding instead.  D'oh!

Overall I think I'm pleased.  I can see flaws, particularly in the quilting where stitches are not all the exact same size (free motion quilting is not easy!) but it's not too bad. Plus it's nice to see the difference in the first square I quilted (the middle one) and the last ones.  If you were thinking of getting into quilting, I think this was a great way to learn some different techniques to see what things you enjoy for future projects.

Front of the quilt- if you look closely you can see the patch borders are sometimes different widths to fix the different patch sizes.  I like to call this a unique style feature :P

Back of the quilt.  I liked the idea of the back not being a boring single bit of material, plus it meant I could use fabric I already had since I didn't have any one piece of material big enough to form the back.

I've been making the most of the last of my holidays (plus it's been too hot to do anything productive outside!) so this is the first of a couple of posts that I've got queued up.  I'm aiming for a once a week schedule until I run out of things to post about (unless you want to read about my exciting stories of marking once school's back).

More Nine Patch Quilt Blocks

Many moons ago I started a nine patch sampler quilt as a way of learning some new skills.  One patch of procrastination later and I have learnt a number of things.

While straight lines are easy...

They can get more complicated when the fabric pieces become smaller...

But put together in the right way make pretty stars.  This is my favourite block so far.

However, multiple pieces coming to a point are nearly impossible (I hate to think about how many times I had to unpick and redo seams on this one.  Lets just say that this block and the next were responsible for me packing things away for so long)...

 And curves are Abominations Unto Nuggan and should be banned!  This patch is called Drunkards Path and I think that's because it describes the quilter after making a quilts worth of these blocks!

Still two blocks to go before I face the next saga- putting it all together and quilting it. 

Nine block quilt- first two blocks

I've always admired quilts but up until now I've not tried making anything much myself.  But now I have a sewing machine that is not evil and I have a friend with a online fabric shop (Bella's Patchwork) with lots of pretty fabrics, I've no excuses (well aside from the lack of time, money and having lots of other crafting projects on hand already but they're merely minor details!)

I bought a book 'Quilting for the first time' by Donna Kooler.  It covers all the basics and covers a range of common techniques used in quilting.  Now in theory, one should take a book like this and start at the first projects, developing skills in the simpler projects before attempting the more complex projects.  But I'm can never be bothered with the first projects generally.  They are often for things that I would never want or use in a blue fit.  I do NOT like 'country kitch', which I'm afraid many of these projects often remind me of.  Or I just get caught by a lovely pattern towards the back.

This book was no exception, the project that caught me was the last of the book- a miniature quilt (about 1m square when finished) that is made of nine different traditional quilt blocks.  I figure it isn't TOO outrageous a first project since it does allow me to learn many different techniques.

Step one was to work out what fabric to get and it's hard!  Trying to work out what to get and what colours to use- tricky stuff.  I ended up getting several patterns of Moda's whimsy series since at this early stage, I can use all the help I can get.  Using the one manufacturer and series meant that all the colours should match.  I also got a small 'charm pack'- pack of 5 inch square pieces of material- because I thought that I could use some for smaller bits (but I don't know now I'm cutting out pieces how sucessful that will be).

But right now I've got a big pile of fabric to play with, and I hope it's enough (or I can get more before the end of the range!)  To date I've only cut out material for two of the nine blocks.  Here are the blocks and the book I'm using.

The pinwheel was fairly simple to sew (I started with it first for just that reason.

The Bearpaw block was harder- it turns out that (to my amatuer skills anyway) that there was a mistake in the book with the size of one of the blocks wrong (too long in one side by one seam length), plus trying to get the triangle squares in the right orientation took several tries.

Still, it's a good start. The cynic in me thinks that is because things will go wrong at the end when it's much harder to put right but hey, at least it means I can have fun in the mean time with nothing going wrong *ducks cautiously*  Now I need to work out what colours the next blocks will be so I can cut out bits of fabric... man, quilting is hard!

First experiments with free motion quilting

Since I bought a new sewing machine, I've been wanting to find more sewing projects to get my money's worth out of it!  One thing I've always admired but never really gotten into before is quilting.  The only quilt I've made has been a small 1m square art quilt (that I really should do a post about later).  It was made on my old (evil) sewing machine and was quilted using straight lines and a walking foot.

But one of the things I have discovered in my internet wander in search of quilt information was the idea of free motion quilting.  In particular, the awesome Free Motion Quilting Project which has hundreds of different ideas for quilting.  So I bought myself a free motion foot and sat down today for the first quick play.  Below are attempts #1 and 2:  an attempt at Bamboo and Stomach Lining from the Free Motion Quilting Project's large repertoire.

Hmm, I think I'm going to need to do a little practice before sitting down to try a quilt!  Also, trying to free motion on material with a bit of stretch in it (offcuts from a skirt I made last week) adds an extra challenge!