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
