Practice, practice

My ten minutes a day practice turned into more than an hour or two and now I think my eyes feel like the owls in this fabric. I must remember to blink occasionally.

Opal owl by Tina Givens because you might need to know.

And it came wrapped up in this lovely tissue paper, like a present. That would be a present from me to me along with some background fabric. I tell you that they have some good priced Kaffes at that shop.

Onto the free motion quilting practice. I even tried some hyper quilting on this one. I like it.

I've been trying out some background fillers.

Really, I wanted to be able to do some casual quilting, you know where you can take a scrap quilt and do something informal? Nothing that would end up like a cardboard quilt.

I got a bit keen on the feather again, they're just so addictive. A light variagted thread made this one a bit fun but the quilting is a bit dense for my liking  but this would be nice on other projects and you can change the scale. The blue washout pen on the spine is all the marking required.

And the back looks cool too. I do believe I'm having a good time and loosening up, why I might even say I've graduated from beginners and into the intermediate stage, a good place to be. Oh happy days at the machine and I love you Patsy Thompson DVD's.

By machine and hand.

When we were learning to write at school, we would practice every day and I'm convinced if I do the same with machine quilting, I'll improve. I'm still learning how the machine should sound in relation to how fast I push the quilt sandwich through. I'm still having some little thread nests on the back at the stop/start points and sometimes, I swear the needle has a mind of it's own.

I was considering having a wine as a relaxant but carried on without it. I hadn't done any practice for about a week and a half and It showed. I had got rustier. There's the first lesson I learnt today.

I don't need to be a super duper machine quilter but I do want to be able to know what I'm doing and I'll get there because my middle name is tenacious.

The applique has been nibbled at, not as fast as the first border but it's going good.

This quilt  isn't mine but I don't think the owner will mind a little peek, I hope not anyway. It needs finishing off with some perle quilting. The quilt begged me to bring it home, take pity on it and finish it off. I really love working on this one and I'm privillaged to be entrusted with it.

Today I was also trying to get some bread made with big holes and crunchy crust, like a ciabatta. The holes taste the best  you know. This was a little left over dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, just enough for two rolls for our lunch. The easiest bread in the world to make. If you're inclined to have a go, I found a link for you to the basic recipe here.

If you do a Google search, you'll even find videos.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

It seems like I don't have much going on at the moment. I did my best impression of a kitchen goddess and tried out these cheesy feet. I didn't really like them , they were virtually a cheesy pastry but appealed to my sense of humour. I think I'll send the fun cutter to my grandkids and they can make sweet feet instead. That or look for another cracker recipe.

I'm also still making  bread regularly and not only is it cheaper, it's not full of preservatives and other unknown numbers of ingredients. Who remembers all those numbers anyway and whether they're bad for us or not.This one happens to be a sourdough.

We've been making the most of some nice weather in the weekends and doing the odd day drive. It's so nice to be out in the countryside.

One shop I visited had some nice linen and a few fat quarters which I thought would be perfect for making pouches.

I was also looking for this book which I've been eyeing up for a while. When Nat posted her tea cosy, that was it, I decided I did need the book and I found it, now I just need to search out some wool.

The other sort of place I have a good time hanging out at is stationery and office supply shops. That sounds a bit nerdy but there was a reason for going.

This is what I was after, a trestle table to do my hand basting and any big fusible ironing job. The good thing is that it folds up for storage.

My little distraction this week on the sewing front has been this block, It was just a quick fix but I loved it.

Glorious Applique

You know about the Glorious Applique blog by now don't you? I hang out there a lot because there are some darn good appliquers over there, all stitching away on Kim McLean's patterns. If you're not following along by now, you're missing out. There are a few tackling the new Roseville Album, Vases, Birds and Other Things. I bet you thought I'd have succumbed by now. Kim McLean has even started blogging there and I think we're in for a treat when we see some of her other quilts.

I was happily cutting away pieces for my Stars and Sprigs one evening. When I'd finished doing that and while I had scissors in my hand, I thought I might as well cut up the pattern sheets that just happened to be hanging out in the same room. Then I thought, I might as well cut some freezer paper pieces for a block, just while I had scissors in my hand you understand. You can see where I'm heading, right?

Next day, I thought to myself, well I might just cut up a few pieces of fabric and see what they look like on my background. Maybe I could even prep blocks and bag them for later stitching pleasure. Just think how organised I'll be after Stars and Sprigs. At this stage, I'm not thinking about UFO's. It's a slippery slide but I'm still convincing myself that I haven't started it. I'm just prepping don't ya know.

I did post about my progress on the Stars and Sprigs over at Glorious Applique and I'm beavering away on border number two, even if those blinkers have slipped a little.

Hand quilting tools

I've got two  new hand quilting tools to share with you. The first one is a  quilting hoop for hand quilters. It was kindly sent to me from Harry of Barnett's Laptop Hoops to try out. I use a 14 inch hoop, my arms are quite short really, like the rest of me so this is my ideal size.

At first it took a bit of getting used to but I persevered as it's a little different from using a normal hoop.

This is the bottom part and as you can see, it has a base that you put under your legs to hold it stable. The black knob is to change the angle of the hoop and the metal hardware is actually a magnetic lazy susan. That's the ingenious part of the whole setup. You can very easily rotate the hoop as you work. It rotates 360 degrees and tilts to many angles.

This is the  hoop that magnetically attaches itself to the lazy susan and it just gets placed on and pulled off really easily. The part that I love is having two options for hand quilting, one with the stand and this hoop part that can sit on your lap that you turn manually.

I actually prefer to sit on my leather couch with my feet up on the foot stool because having short legs is such a pain you know. I am a little worried about the base under my legs on the leather but that could be fixed by putting something on the couch first.

I love, love this black knob, so much better than a metal wing nut.

What you didn't know is that I have a lot of pain and fatigue in my left shoulder area and supporting my basic hoop when it has a large quilt in it restricts how much quilting I can do in a sitting. With Harry's hoop, I don't have the same problem as the hoop is supported in my lap.

The other advantage is that when I need to do the odd stab stitch, both hands are free to do that easily.

The only disadvantage is that the base is heavy with the metal hardware which is to be expected and once you have set it up, it's not a problem. I'm still learning about getting the large quilt positioned but I think that's practice and will come with a bit more time.

There are several quilt hoop designs available and I think perhaps the magnetic tilt and frame might have suited me better, just because of the way I work in a hoop. In any case, these are made with a lot of passion, attention to detail and what quilters want.  There are also videos on the website  to see how they work, go check them out.

Have you tried these new clover needles? The price had put me off but I finally buckled and bought a pack. There's only six needles and they cost more than double for my usual pack.
I tried the fisrt one and liked it a lot, I thought they were very sharp at the tip and indeed seemed quite strong. The needle glided through the layers.

I was happily quilting away on my second length of thread when the eye snapped off when I pushed the needle through with the thimble. Could have been a fluke.
Threaded up another needle, didn't even get the thread used up when the same thing happened. Not a fluke, I think I'll keep these ones for hand piecing, the needle is not holding up to the force I'm using.