Hexies

After our quilt show at Alberton we decided to make them some coasters as a thank you for being so lovely and helpful and promoting us as they did. Four inches* square was the size we decided on and whatever we wanted to do after that. I was going to do a postage stamp one with really little squares, but then Mel did something similar and despite the fact she told me to just go for it with mine I thought nope, I'm going to go even tougher than little squares. The only thing fiddlier than that I could think of was little hexies and I knew there was a project with them in one of the Zakka books I have. It ended up not being what I wanted, but there were bright colours and linen, so I found a page of 1/2" hexies online and just whipped out this pretty thing.



And no I didn't actually "whip it out", it went in fits and starts and I've only just finished it today and our meeting is tonight. I work best to a deadline :D I was going to sew on the backing right sides together and just turn it out, but as I discovered when I'd sewn it all together, it was slightly smaller than the pattern I'd devised and only just made 4" at its largest dimensions. I ended up trimming it square and doing binding which was a pity as I think it looked great cut before the binding went on and the binding itself looks a touch bulky on a small item. I'm not even sure if turning it would have given that really nice straight-edge look but I don't know how you could achieve it without getting fraying.

Anyways, it IS pretty and I quite like it, I'd even use it myself I think! Maybe I'll have to make some more, although it's kind of a pity to cover it up with a big old mug, so perhaps mine would be used more like this




*yes it's kind of weird that we do these things in inches when in all other aspects of life we're metric! At the very least though, quilting has given me some idea of what 5 or 10 inches is, when before I would have had no idea (I visualise the cutting mat markings). Don't ask me about Fahrenheit or pounds though, or how many inches in a foot.

All my stuff looks the same

I was sitting on the couch eating breakfast this morning when I looked over and saw this pile on the shelf next to me

There is an almost-finished crocheted coat hanger and yarn from that, and fabrics I've been making hexagons from. My first thought was "they all look so good together", my second thought was "they're actually mostly the same colour, I just need to add some aqua to the coat hanger" and then I thought "I'm going to make a matching hanger with aqua in the middle and orange on the outside". And then all my stuff will look the same! :)

New Quilts for Alberton Beds

The New Quilts for Alberton Beds finished yesterday afternoon when we gathered up the quilts into big piles and took them away, leaving the house looking a little less colourful!  I think it went pretty well, we've had some nice feedback and quite a few people stopped by to talk to us on Saturday and Sunday as part of Heritage Week. Unfortunately the exhibition had been put into the Workshops section of the brochure, along with an invitation to come along for free workshops on quilting which sent (some of) us into a bit of a tizzy (ok me) but in the end it was ok. There were a few people who showed up expecting something, but I don't think they were too put out to get some time on a design wall making quilt patterns and then getting to try out hand quilting and binding. One lady, when we mentioned coming along to our group, announced she was a traditionalist and really didn't like the colours of modern fabrics and flounced off, apparently with a mouth like a cat's bum. We all just looked bemused I think! :D So if that was it in terms of active negativity then we did well.



Now what the heck do I do with all these quilts I have back in my house?

I've got a style!

Last Christmas we did a little present swap at our Monday Modern group. I made a pot holder and when Lou unwrapped it she knew straight away who had made it (and so did everyone else). I was puzzled because as far as I know I don't really have a definite style.

I was wrong, I do! I only just realised it though, when I was making up the info sheets for the quilt exhibition and my four quilts were on the same page briefly. I was quite taken aback when I saw them together like that, particularly the first three, because despite being quite different quilts, they're all remarkably similar when judged purely on colour. The oven mitt fits in perfectly so I can see how I was outed so easily!

I'm currently working on a red and white quilt and one with Lotta Jansdotter fabrics in oranges and blues and greens so I'm hoping that means I'm not going to typecast myself too much! I think having a style is great, but not if you don't push yourself to do different things sometimes.

Modern Building Blocks Quilt

Ages ago I did a post about starting to make the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt. I did actually finish it quite quickly for such a big quilt (and for me!), but then it went off to a display case at Alberton without a photo of it finished and it's been there for almost 2 months. We finally set up the quilts for our Monday Modern 'New Quilts for Alberton Beds' exhibition and I got a proper photo at long last.

The colours aren't that great as the only place we could find that was big enough that we could hold it out fully was on the verandah where the lighting wasn't the best. This pre-quilting photo I took for Instagram shows it more clearly.

It was quilted in an all-over geometric pattern by Carol Fearon at Art Quilts in Onehunga. I love the way the shapes reflect the angles of the block patterns. Although part of me likes it for the bright solids and some of the blocks are great and I'm glad I did it, I'm still not a fan of the sampler quilt - they're just too busy and jarring to my eye. Luckily not everyone's like me and it's going to a friend who does like them!

If you're in Auckland come along to the exhibition at Alberton - not only do you get to see a bunch of nice quilts there's a fabulous old house to look through as well!

Moda Modern Blocks

Along with several people in my quilt group I'm going to be working on the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt, a few blocks at a time, over 2015. It's quite a challenge for me on a couple of levels: firstly, I'm not a big fan of quilts with a variety of different blocks, they don't appeal to me aesthetically - to my mind they look random and jarring. That's just me I know, other people who I like and respect love that sort of carry-on so there's obviously something in it and because this one doesn't immediately offend me I'm going to dip my toes into the deadly seas of chaos. Secondly, I don't like all the colours used in the pattern so I'm going to have to choose quite a few for myself and to be honest, for me that way madness lies. I'm going to be doing a hell of a lot of second-guessing myself and over-thinking but I figure as long as they're all colours I like then it should be ok in the end.

I went through my stash to find solids and discovered that I don't have a lot and that my warm colours don't play well with my cool or some of the blues in the pattern so I'm going to have to buy a bunch to bulk out the warms and all of the cools. I've been such a good girl on my fabric diet for the last couple years and now look, I'm going to be kicking off 2015 by falling off the wagon. Let's hope it's not the start of a slippery slope! I'm going to make do with fewer fabrics than the pattern does, I think that might provide a bit more cohesiveness as well as being cheaper.  Here's what I have so far

November block lotto

I'm not sure why I feel guilty that I did the December block lotto before November but I do! Here is November's made using the tutorial at We All Sew. It's nice making two blocks at once like this and I like the result, although I'm really annoyed that I messed up the direction of the lines in the blue fabric like I did. Hopefully it annoys the recipient less than me!

Back sewing

I must admit to sewing burn-out after Hallowe'en and I wasn't at all upset when Mat banned me from the sewing machine for a couple weeks! To be honest, by the end there I wasn't having much fun, the low point being when I realised the reason I'd had such an awful time getting the collar on Mat's waistcoat to fit was because I'd put it in upside down - I must admit to a few tears at that point. I made that bastard fit though! I've eased back into non-fraught sewing with a couple blocks for the Monday Modern Xmas meeting.

The block is called Migration by Lynne Goldworthy and is in the Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine, issue 11 I think. It was fun to put together and I'm loving all the crisp points and lines. Next up is a churn dash block for last month's block lotto!

Wonky Stars in vintage sheet fabric

I just looked back through the archives and on the 17th of September 2012 I posted about making the initial sample block for this quilt to show the Monday Modern ladies what I wanted to do for my block, and I think I bound it at the beginning of August this year, so a speedy two years! No-one in their right mind would ever accuse me of being fast at this quilting biz.



It turned out pretty much like I was hoping it would which is nice, but I'm less sure about the batting I chose and the quilting. I should hasten to add that the quilting was done by Carol Fearon and it's superb, but I didn't really know what I wanted when I took it to her, it being the first time I've had one done professionally, and I think the fact I'm a bit unsure about it means that I DID actually have an idea in my head that I didn't communicate to her properly. I took along a picture of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' and said something along these lines please and she interpreted it really well. I think in hindsight I might have been after more the wavy horizontal lines rather than the circles. But hey, live and learn and it really is quite amazing! I also wish I'd gone for a thinner cotton batting. I used a woollen one and it's too stiff and the quilt isn't particularly snuggly. Is that because the quilting is denser than quilts that I've done myself or is it the wool batting? Or both?

Anyways, I couldn't have done it without the Monday Modern girls (ladies? women? what's the right term here?) so a big thank you to them for doing the initial lot and then a few extra when I was despairing of ever getting done. I got there in the end!

Oh, and I like the back almost as much as the front :)

Oh, and two of the fabrics in the back were from dresses I had back in the 70s - guess which ones :) A hint, they're small because I was small.

Charity quilt

This has been a long time in coming but I finally handed it over to Helen last night. Several months ago she gave the Monday Modern group a bunch of fabric in FQs and asked us to make quilts for a charity she's involved with. I'd just seen some lovely 'low volume' quilts and wanted to try making one that didn't come across as pale and uninteresting. I don't normally just start making a quilt, it takes a lot of agonising and measuring and pondering, but with this one I just did it. I decided to sew the straight strips at a diagonal across a piece of muslin and then sew the bigger pieces together. I discovered that a FQ doesn't allow for much width when it's on an angle, and that different pieces were different widths. In the end the quilt was a little smaller than I wanted, but it would have meant another strip and then would have been a bit wide.

I discovered a few things with this quilt: firstly that I quite like low volume when it has a bit of colour in it, and I really like grey and white. Secondly, getting just the right amount of colour is very hard! I don't think any of the greens worked, the middle stripe because it is too much green and the green leaves because the background is a cream and there is too much green. The red Dutch fabric at the bottom of the middle panel is too much red, while the red just to the right of it is just right. Thirdly, sewing strips across the bias of a foundation fabric results in some distortion. I found the strips didn't always sit nice and flat, so I'm thinking perhaps it would have been better to just sew them together in a long strip and skip the foundation.

It was fun though, I enjoyed the process and liked the outcome. If I hadn't put in a few fabrics I wasn't 100% happy with it would have been hard to part with!

My new quilts on old beds

We set up the Monday Modern quilt exhibition at Highwic House this morning and it was a lot of fun - what a nice way to spend a sunny Sunday morning, lugging quilts all around a gorgeous old Victorian house and strewing them artistically on beds and chairs and any surface that wasn't already full of objects. Hazel came too and helped a little and enjoyed it so much she thanked me for letting her come.

The quilts looked so nice on the beds, and some of the locations were quite stunning. Pop over to the Monday Modern Flickr group to see some of the others' quilts, I've only posted my two here.

Being a perfectionist

Many (many) months ago it was my turn to have bee blocks made by the Monday Modern group.



It really is exciting to have them done for you, and they look great all together! The lovely ladies got me up half a Queen-sized quilt - and the rest are up to me! 

I'm finding the concept of 20-odd blocks a bit daunting! I'm not a fast sewer at the best of times, and envy those who are - I spend a lot of time visualising (which is free and can be done on the couch), then worrying, and planning, and working up to cutting and then cutting (which is the job I really loathe and put off), sewing and then it usually sits awhile while I work up to doing a back, then it sits awhile longer because I don't like quilting much on my little machine. See even my description of the quilting process is long and drawn out! So I've started back into the stars but I can't quite remember what my plan was for the bits I already have cut out so it's going to be slow getting back into it and then I'll have to do a bunch more cutting - I'll need to find the original tutorial I used to make up the instructions I handed out (if I can remember which one it was). The main problem though, is how SLOW this is going to be because I have to press each seam as I make it, and that slows things down big time. I'm better at not being totally perfect at things than I used to be, but I still require a certain standard from myself and I can't be slapdash. I don't think I'm being OCD or anything, I just wouldn't be happy if I knew I hadn't tried my hardest to do the best job I could. I don't care so much if the result isn't perfect, well ok just a little, more that I tried hard. Not pressing the first seam when making the individual points would be slacking off in my books. Why am I so hard on myself when I'm not on others? See I'm just using this blog as cheap therapy ;)

ETA: I came back to change how I worded this post, I don't know if anyone else thought it sounded a bit whiny and self-pitying, which I didn't intend at all, so hopefully now it reads more like I intended! Plus I've been working at not pressing that first seam today (with mixed results on the personal development front).

New Quilts for Old Beds

The Monday Modern quilt group is putting on an exhibition at Highwic House here in Auckland starting on the 18th. It's such a great pairing, an old house and new quilts, I think we're all pretty excited about it! It's nice and casual too, the quilts will be displayed on the beds and around the house, so along with the quilts you get to see all the other neat stuff at Highwic. Given my professional interest in the past, combined with my love of modern quilts, I'll probably be all overcome and stuff.

If you want to read more about it, here is the media release from Highwic. I have to admit that when I googled the exhibition I got kind of a rush to see that the first page was almost all about us! Now I suppose I'd better go and finish the binding on my offering...

Charity quilt challenge

The latest Monday Modern quilt group challenge is going to be making a quilt for charity using fabrics from Helen's post-quilting shop stock. She brought along a couple of boxes of FQs and told us to go for it. At first we're all "yay it's like Christmas!" but then faced with so much choice I actually found it a bit daunting! I started out going for blues and greens but then suddenly remembered Rita at Red Pepper Quilt's Instagram post yesterday morning with a WIP shot of a 'low-volume' quilt she's working on. It made me all happy because it looks like spring so I thought I could go with that kind of fabric selection. Luckily I had my phone with me to have a look at it because she's got some surprisingly bright colours in there, which puts paid to the idea I have so far subscribed to that 'low volume' is just a euphemism for 'pastel'. This is what I ended up with:



I'm not 100% sure about all the fabrics (I've already pulled out three to return to Helen which don't go, although Hazel is very keen on one so perhaps I'll just buy them), and I'm sure I'll add in some from my own stash but I have a pattern in mind, and two months to do it - stay tuned!

Other things that are making me happy at the moment:

 Kowhai flowers and spring arriving





This photo taken in Edmonton - it's so Canadian it makes my heart ache a little.



And this little girl and her pug and how much they love each other (he does really, despite the pleading look in his eyes here!)

Bee blocks

Only a week until I head off to Canada for a month! Can't wait. :) Before I go I'm hoping to get my scrappy trip around the world quilt done up for an exhibition the Monday Modern group is having in September. I need to find some time without Ollie around so I can get it all laid out and basted. However, that's time that's hard to come by! The thing about pugs is that they just want to be with you all. the. time. Allthetime. If he's not by my feet he's on them, or trying to be on them, or on my lap. I know they call some small dogs 'lap dogs' but they really aren't good on laps like cats are, Ollie is always slipping off or having trouble knowing where his legs and paws should go. Anyways, despite Ollie and packing I'm hopeful!

I had the last two bee blocks to finish up for the start of the month, I forgot to take photos of Heather's but here is Stacey's. She just wanted us to do a 12 1/2" block for her, our choice, from the four fabrics she supplied. I decided to have a look through Modern Blocks (the 99 blocks one) to see if anything took my fancy and ended up doing 'Stuck in the Middle'. I really liked it, quick and effective.



I've never really seen the appeal of the cross-hatched fabrics, though I know they're popular, but in a block like this I can see their advantage, they really conceal the seams well, as did the yellow dots although they show more in the photo. I thought that made the block even more effective, as the shapes really do look like they're set into each other.

Bee blocks

This poor neglected blog, I feel bad! But I just haven't felt the desire to blog recently, not sure why. I think perhaps I'm just not finishing things the way I used to, and feeling like I don't have anything to blog and then getting anxious about not blogging so I don't blog and so it goes. I might try and see if I can break the vicious circle because I do actually have a few things to show off.

Doing bee blocks for our Monday Modern group really does let me finish things which is always a nice feeling!

The first two I did were for Louise, out of this delightfully gothic fabric by Tula Pink. I don't know that I'd want a whole quilt out of it but it was fun doing two blocks! That's the best thing about bee blocks I think, you can just love something on a superficial level without committing to a whole quilt. The block itself was also great - big and easy and very effective when put together with the others. I gather it's also Tula Pink.





The second lot of blocks were for Cris, and she gave us a pile of solid strips and told us to go for it, keeping a log cabin in mind.



This was a lot of fun to put together. The first one was pretty straight-forward, and I kept it fairly traditional. There was quite a lot of fabric left over so I thought I'd just make another one, but ran out of long enough pieces towards the end. But I liked the pieced strip I made for one side, in a desperate attempt to finish it. It wasn't quite enough though, so I had to add a couple of strips out of my stash to get it to size. My husband wasn't at all sure why I was doing that "just give it to her like that" he said, but I really wanted to finish it for me! Which probably says a lot about why we all do blocks - not necessarily out of the goodness of our hearts but because we like the challenge and playing with other people's fabrics - all fun care and no responsibility!

I'm determined to get out another post in a few days, so check back soon!

Emerging from the fog

In less than two months we've bought a house, put our old one on the market, sold it, packed, moved, and largely unpacked, kept the cat in for 10 days, tried to clean cat pee out of carpets (our old house was all polished floor boards), and after a drought dealt with constant rain and no covered deck or garage to keep things dry until we find a place for them. Yeah. And now I am starting to think about things artsy crafty again - it really does feel like emerging from a fog of packing and boxes and general logistics. When I got to stitching group on Wednesday, after about a month off, I really felt like I was returning to real life!

I've also started back on the Monday Bee blocks which I'm shockingly behind on. I had four to do, and I've just finished Carolyn's 'Cheery Canary' improv block. The brief was only 25% of the block in prints, and a canary must appear once. The others had done such great blocks I really didn't know what to do, although I did know I was jealous of Megan's effort which put small triangles and then squares in mind. Eventually I had this mental image of yellow squares tumbling across the light grey, gradually turning into dark grey triangles. I think I came fairly close, although it's not quite as I'd imagined. I think that's partly due to the number of seams in the block which I find kind of distracting, but hopefully they will be less noticeable after quilting.



It was quite satisfying to put together!

I also found the photos I'd taken of Laurina's and Linda's blocks, both of which were nice to do - I thought the technique for Laurina's hexagons was fascinating, especially the way you end up with two very different-looking blocks from the same two sewn-together strips of fabric.



Now on to Shelly's, Mel's and Karyn's!

Glenys' bee block

Glenys wanted us to do a Converging Corners block for her, and gave us all an assortment of coloured and white scraps.

The concept of converging corners is pretty simple, you just build up the block with strips which are part white and part colour, putting the colours in the corners where they form a V. When they're all put together they produce these multi-coloured starbursts across the quilt. I was quite excited when she told us what we were going to be doing because I've loved the pattern since I first saw it.

The block is 15 1/2" square, which is a fair few strips as I discovered! I don't know if there is any way to judge how much you should extend each strip past each other to get the best effect, I sort of feel like I was too conservative and it doesn't have that really dramatic zigzag effect of the original. I think I could also have gone with bigger strips given the size of the overall block. I think wider strips would automatically allow you to have larger steps between strips. But I'm generally pretty happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to see everyone's together! I had to add in a few of my own scraps because you actually need quite long strips by the end and I'd used up the longest ones too early.  Live and learn, which is why bee blocks are so great - you can practice on some other poor person's quilt ;)

I'm now caught up with bee blocks and can turn my attention to my stuff - and Christmas!

Giveaway reminder and Megan's squares

Just a reminder about the Little Craft Store giveaway that I'll be drawing tomorrow - pop over here to put your name into the draw!

At our last Monday Modern meeting we had two people come with their bee blocks so I'm going to try and get them both done before the next meeting on the 5th. Unfortunately I can't go because Mat's working out of town for most of this month and I have a feeling that leaving your seven year old sleeping in a house by herself is frowned on by society. It's also Guy Fawkes so it probably works out well that I'm home to let off fireworks if we haven't done it on Sunday night instead (I hate having to do these things on the wrong day if they fall on a school night, totally sucks the fun out of them!).

Anyways! I've just finished Megan's blocks and I thought she might like to see them. She's asked us to make blocks for a quilt something like Red Pepper Quilt's 'Slice and Dice' pattern. The fabrics are all shot cottons, although the green looks for all the world like silk, it even has that lovely sheen to it. They're more subtle in real life, the photo has made them look a bit neon. At first I was rather intimidated by the concept of these blocks but once I started thinking about placement and the order of things it was much less scary, and quite simple in the end. Even sewing on the bias without the walking foot didn't seem to present much of a problem as long as I kept that piece against the feed dogs and the on-the-grain strips on top.

They look kind of matchy don't they. I really didn't intend them to come out that way, I thought I was doing two quite different blocks but when I was 3/4 of the way through the second block I looked at them both and had a total d'oh! moment because they're almost identical. I mean, usually when I think I've been innovative with something and discover that someone's already done it, it's a stranger, not me! Just stick them at opposite ends of the quilt Megan, and no-one will ever notice! :P

Vintage sheet wonky stars

I made up this block as a sample to show the bee participants. I love it! I had this vision in my head of what the quilt would look like when I came up with the idea, and I think it might actually look even better in reality (which as you crafty people know isn't always the case!).

I used a star block from the Modern Blocks book to get me started, but will do up some different ones to keep things from looking too samey-samey. I really did feel that I didn't have enough variety in the sheets when I was making this up, when of course I have heaps - maybe I need help?

ETA: You can see more of my blocks over at Jaffa Quilts and Milly Made It - it was such a thrill when Megan and Karyn's posts popped up in my reader over the weekend - I can see why people get addicted to bees! I love the variations they've come up with, and I need to get working on my own.