Christmas in July / QAYG Update

I have already shown two of my Christmas in July items that I sent for the swap as I made them. I can tell you now that my partner was Kaye from Kitten Stitching. Doesn't Kaye & her blog sound like just the most purrfect match for Hun-Bun & I. Kaye has two delicious kitties called Milo and Furio, more about those pretty kitties later.

 

My first parcel was the Christmas bon-bon filled with toffees.

 

Next was my star garland in it's little bag.

The next present was an added bonus - Darrell Lea Chocolate Bites, Blueberry and Pomegranite Licorice. This was a new product to me so I had to buy a pack to test for quality control before I could confidently send one to Kaye. I'm please to say it passed the test and scored very highly on the Yummo scale so was added to the parcel.

 

 

Earlier this month I did a post here about the fun I had at a WAQA Quilt As You Go workshop. This is one of the few classes I have done where I put what I learnt straight in to practice. I knew for my main Christmas in July present I wanted to make something for Kaye commemorating her beautiful furbabies Milo & Furio. Finally I decided on a free stitchery by Red Brolly of her famous cat Brutus (or my famous cat Brutus (Brunnie) - opinions differ but he always thought those patterns were all about him) opening Christmas presents. I personalised them by making the cats the correct colour and adding their names on their presents.

 

For Milo I used a variegated black and grey thread. For Furio it looks like I used Hun-bun fur but who knew DMC would have a variegated thread in the colour Ginger Ninja???

 

 

I was very happy with the finished stitcheries and I took a few weeks to ponder what sort of table runner I would design to show them off best. In the mean time I did the quilt as you go workshop and thought that would work perfectly. I broke out some of my favourite red and grey Christmas fabrics and a table runner was born. I am very happy with the front but the back could be a little neater. I warned Kaye that her gift was my first full QAYG project but of course she was very kind about it and aren't we all harder on ourselves than is sometimes necessary. Whose going to be looking at the back when there are kitty stitcheries to admire?

 

 

I did some basic line quilting through the layers and watched a YouTube video a few times to get the 90 degree and 135 degree corners bound correctly. I also machine sewed the binding and find it gets a much flatter result that my usual masses of tinsy wincy hand stitches.

 

 

Kaye said she loved all her pressies especially her kitty runner so my mission is completed!

 

Another great swap - thanks again to our beautiful swap mama Cheryl from Gone Stitchin. If you go to Cherll's latest post there is a link to all the blogs of the Christmas in July swappers - so many great Christmas gifts to look at. I can see my to-do list growing longer & longer....

 

It's all wet & stormy tonight in Perth but at least our 2 degree lows are now up to 8 for a few days. If this rain keeps up I won't have to mow the lawns, more time for sewing....

 

Happy stitching

Tracee xx

 

Quilt As You Go Workshop QAWA

Hi all, I've been trying to do this post for two days my camera wouldn't come to the party. It suddenly decided that downloading it's pics was so 2012 and it was going to hang on to them thank you very much. NO amount of swearing & cursing, jiggly, changing batteries & playing with settings was going to change it's mind. Today it has decided to work as normal. I think the change of mind came about because I got my old camera out of the cupboard to get some pics of Hun-bun looking angelic in the sunlight so Nikon thought, oh crap! I'm going to be replaced and decided to get back to work.

 

Doesn't he look so cute & fuzzy. In pure cat style, he had found the only warm spot in the whole house, on my sewing table in the window of what is supposed to be the formal dining room. It is a much more enjoyable room as the study, sewing machine room and cat sitting room. As you might have guessed Perth is experiencing winter, lovely sunny days & bone jarring 2 degree mornings. I hope to have two days at home next weekend so the fire is going on to warm up the place. It might take me 30 minutes to get the fire so it stays alight but I'm going to do it! Boy would us Perthites complain if the temps ever got into the minus degrees. I am definitely an acclimatised Perthite now & not used to the -10 degree frosts we got regularly in my youth in NZ.

 

 

Now on to the real news - my day at the WA Quilters Guild Quilt As You Go Workshop. It was conducted by one of our local superstars Stephanie Knudsen. Stephanie is a convenor of our Contemporary Quilt Group, an accredited Quilt Competition Judge, an award winning quilter and travels far & wide giving classes. More importantly, she is lovely, imparts her knowledge in a way that is easy to understand, is generous with her time and has 101 samples to look at to get further ideas. It was a very enjoyable day and jam packed full of happy quilters.

 

 

Now on to the fabric goodness. In the morning we used a charm pack to do some blocks both with & without wadding, the lighter ones perfect for a tablecloth with top stitching & two layers of fabric for stability.

 

 

The block on the left is the same back & front, has wadding inside & made by an ingenious method where you turn all layers right side out at once, no struggling to get the wadding through a tiny opening. This is currently being used in our Community Quilts as it is super quick to make blocks and they just need a decorative & strong joining stitch and the quilts are ready for their new owners. The block on the right is the unlined one.

 

 

If it was up to me I would still be trialling top stitches for these blocks but time was short & there was lots to do so Stephanie (obviously sensing a ditherer when she saw one) pointed out a stitch on my machine & with no change to the default setting we were off. I used some leftover Oasis charm squares so my samples are very pretty. I seem to have a vague memory of Stephanie telling me 'just use the one on the top of the pile' as I was spending much time matching my squares again.....

 

Next we tried mock cathedral windows - I can see myself using this in future projects. Again there was top stitching & while I hated my choice for this one (too big & bulky), that will be easy to rectify in future projects.

 

 

Below is our next block, both the one I managed to get horribly wrong & gappy and the better second try. I think I got my cutting wrong on the first one - how hard is it to cut a charm square in to 4 squares??? Trying to hurry I think....

 

 

 

Next we moved on to doing multiple blocks in the foundation piecing method and how to join them together. A little more care on my stitching in the ditch is on the agenda with this all machine sewn method

 

 

In the afternoon we moved on to doing multiple blocks in the foundation piecing method with or without the backing attached straight away and the numerous ways to join them together. I chose to make foundation pieced blocks without backing while I did the top layer then adding the backing with some simple machine quilting (YES I choose that!) and then joining and stitching the double borders down. I had this fabric already put together for a quilt so sliced off a few strips of each to make these blocks. I love the fabrics but wonder if too many blocks would be a bit overpowering. I am thinking maybe a plain block between each one that contains all the fabrics. You know I won't rush in to anything, I'll ponder that for awhile.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's my day & it was a great one, helped along by my good buddy Tracy being there sewing beside me (from Outback Craftaholic blog) and looking after all of us as the Workshop Convenor of WAQA. Cuddles with her scrumptious baby daughter were a highlight too.

 

So last night about 1am I cut out a tablerunner to make in this method for one of my swap partners so can't wait to see the end result with the addition of a stitchery or two - can't possibly make the leap to machine piecer & stitchery free projects just yet....

 

Happy Sunday friends. HB is back on his sunny spot with the addition of his favourite farmyard blankie to lie on. Life is good!

 

Happy stitching

Tracee xx  Hun-bun xx