Back to the wonder of a land in winter

Phew, it would've been a lot easier to just say Winter Wonderland, but I already have a blog post with that title, and I don't like to repeat.

The second row in this round robin row quilt has snowflakes on either side of a central embroidered panel. I figured it would be quicker to do the piecing rather than the embroidery, so I made the six star blocks first. And that was when I became unsure about which fabric to use as the background for the stitchery (which I'll stitch in black). So, as usual, I tried out some options and snapped some pics.

My original choice - the central fabric is white with pale blue stripes running horizontally (and not used anywhere else in this row).

Second choice - same blue as the snowflakes. Too much blue?

Last choice - I used this shirt fabric in the centres of the snowflakes, so reusing it here would give it some cohesion I guess. And the subtle shading adds interest.

Okay, so before I started typing today I was up in the air about which one to use. But now, after loading those pics and explaining my reasons for selecting each one, I've settled on a final choice.

Tune in in a few days to see which one won.
Or leave a comment, let me know what you think!

Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland is a round robin quilt created by Becky from Patchwork Posse. Actually, it's a row quilt, so not done in rounds, so I guess that makes it a row robin? Also, she hasn't created it all -- just the first and last row and the finishing off; there are about 10 rows in between which are designed by guest quilt bloggers.

I'm not sure if I've explained it properly, but it's heaps of fun, and this is the third time I've done it. (One day, there will be a post about my other two.)

A rather monochrome palette. The fabric is mainly recycled shirts. The blue in the background is a sheet.

Row 1 is four Delectable Mountains. I haven't sewn mine together into a row yet, because I wasn't sure in what order to arrange them:

Light to dark progression

Random placement

Alternating position and shading

Hmmm... I think I'll just leave that decision until later on in the series... where this row is placed in the quilt may help me decide how to balance the colour.

There's a new row posted every two weeks. Row 2 came out today.



Making a winter themed quilt top sounds just perfect for the weather we've been having here. It was 29 degrees yesterday (Celcius - not sure what that compares to in Fahrenheit), which was the hottest in the country. Last week it got up to 32 degrees; it was so humid, even the weeds were wilting (I am fully aware there are many parts of the world that are far hotter. I am only commenting on my own experiences).

That is why summer is my least favourite month: I don't like sweating. And the UV from the sun isn't safe -- among the worst in the world. The weather man says to stay inside/out of the sun between 10am and 4pm.

So piecing stars and embroidering snowmen is very therapeutic.

Flowers

Even though I've had a break from blogging, I haven't had a break from sewing. While watching TV coverage of the natural disasters occurring around the world, I was busy with a needle and thread. Various things have been worked upon...

This pic I took in February - the last "official" border on the Patchwork Posse round robin. I've actually added another border of my own devising since then. I'll show you that in a day or so.

Border of flowers, embroidered and appliqued

Pretty cool huh? Each flower centre is unique, and all made from leftovers of other fabrics used in the quilt.

Yellow flower on the left will have a button in the centre, after quilting.

What I've learned today:

It's not always a good idea to work on more than one project at the same time.

There is the above quilt, which I'm itching to get quilted (first have to get/make the backing). And there is also a quilt I began early last year, which my daughter was going to have to keep warm with last winter (i.e. June - August). Then, the goal was for xmas. Now, the goal is her birthday - which is in one month.

I'm trying, I really am. (In case you're wondering, I've yet to show any pics of it.)

It doesn't help that I've "misplaced" two blocks. Instead of wasting time looking, I've decided I'll make a couple of replacement blocks.

That's bound to make them turn up.

Pink, yellow or blue?

The quilt so far

So I was playing around yesterday, auditioning which colour background to use on the next border in my Patchwork Posse round robin quilt. Just as a recap, here's a pic of the quilt so far:

The next border is made up of tall flowers. I couldn't decide which fabric to use as my background in this border - this one will be rather dominant, so I really don't want to get it wrong. I thought about making up some practice blocks, to trial several colours. But I'm too lazy - AND I don't like having spare blocks left over that won't be used.

Now, I wouldn't normally show this sort of thing; I usually prefer to display the finished product, and not the messy in-between stuff. But I've been reading a number of blogs lately that show the design steps people take, and why, and that made me realise I like these peeks into other people's thought processes. So I think it's important to share our ideas.

So what I did was, I laid the quilt top out on the floor and arranged around it some of the fabrics that I'd used in the quilt already (I'm not introducing any new colours into it this late in the game). Then I chose some other scraps in colours I thought would go, for the spacers between the flowers. Then some stems, and the flower heads. Yes - the flowers are white - each flower will be decorated with applique and/or embroidery. I used more scraps to show that in this wee exercise.

There is no sewing or cutting involved here; I'm just playing with folded fabric. Just to get a basic idea.





What do you think?

 -- Which colour do you prefer?

--  How do you "test run" an idea?









What I learned today:

You can use Paint to edit a photo.
(The program, not the art medium! Although the latter would work, just not in the same way. And there'd be a bit of mess to clean up afterwards.)

Simple, huh? I thought I needed some fancy photo-editing software; instead, I can just use the same thing that my kids use to draw scribble pictures.

I do realise that everybody else out in Blogland, and probably the world at large, knows this already, or better yet, actually has some fancy photo-editing software - but this is me, and after several years of feeling my brain turn to mush after having kids, I feel strangely empowered when I'm able to figure something out. And if I can help just one other person with these sometimes irrelevant things-that-I-learn-every-day, then I haven't wasted my time.

Birds and butterflies

"Photo tomorrow, rain or shine."

That's what I said yesterday. What I didn't allow for was the wind. Waaay too blowy outside to get a nice natural-light pic of my quilt, so I had to resort to pinning it to the curtains in the living room.

Why did I pin it to the curtains? Because I wanted to take a front-on photo, rather than laying it on the floor and having it look like a trapezoid quilt. (If you know your maths, and you  have some experience of trying to take a decent photo of a quilt, then you'll know what I'm talking about.)
So anyway, the lighting wasn't the greatest, but at least it was natural light, which is way more real than that yellowish hue lightbulbs exude.

Newest border on left and right sides - crazy-patch blocks and crazy-patch applique butterflies. Good fun!

One little bird (if you don't count that chicken below it)

And I finally got around to finishing off the birds, which belong in the second round. Which was way back in November.

For the embroidering part, these are much like the butterflies, featuring blanket stitch and running stitch on the applique pieces, and beak, feet and plumey tail in backstitch.

Two little birds (again, minus the chicken)

  


I so love these birds! I drew them myself, working through a series of design developments, until I got it right.

(Hey, there could be a blog post in that - I still have all my roughs, AND, I have to post every day for a month - NaBloPoMo.)







What I learned today:  Pinning a quilt top to the curtains will make tiny little pin-sized holes in the curtains. These little tiny pin-sized holes look rather big when you first discover them, but that's only because the light from outside is shining through, showing them up. I bet I won't be able to tell tomorrow.

So, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams... Don't Panic.

Two down, two to go...

So these are the butterflies I was talking about in yesterday's post. Blanket stitch on the wings, running stitch on the body sections, and back stitch on the cute curly antennae.

And these are the other two. Each butterfly has a different colour body, which I've matched with embroidery floss for all the stitching on that particular butterfly.

Crazy patch blocks, to be sewn with the four butterflies, to make a crazily colourful border.

What I've learned today: Do the daily blog post earlier in the day. At 10:51 pm, as I write this, I'm too tired to think up wonderful prose.
Good night.

7th of February

Cat update: Tabitha's tail is no longer drooping. The vet medicine is doing the trick!

Weather update: It didn't snow today - no surprises there. But it wasn't hot, either. Cold and wet, not summer weather at all. Although it made a pleasant change to yesterday. And the plants are no longer drooping.

Round robin update: I feel I've done quite a bit today, with crazy-patching.

Yesterday's progress pic: two untrimmed blocks, another trimmed to 6.5", and showing the reverse side of another.

Back and front views: all that paper must come off, and it's so fiddly to get the little pieces out from under the stitching lines! These two blocks are for the butterfly wings, so I used my very small scraps in order for them to be wildly colourful.

Butterfly bodies, waiting to be stuck down and winged.

What I've learned today: Don't use very small scraps for crazy-patching, especially if you're stitching to a paper foundation. Smaller pieces to sew means two no-so-good things:

1.  The paper must come off, eventually, and all that stitching is going to impede progress.
2.  All that stitching, close together, creates bulk. Which will be hard to sew through. And I'm planning on doing (yet more) raw-edge hand applique. Yes, by hand. How crazy am I.

Which means I'd better find my thimble. That nice thick metal one.

Another border!

Whoops, the day is almost over and I'm late doing the daily post.
It's been a very busy day here; the first day of school for the year for my kids. And h-o-t. 32 degrees C. (I have no idea what that is in F.) And very windy, too. Hot northerlies, the kind that get the laundry dry super-fast.


In quilt news, I've finished another border on the Patchwork Posse round robin. This one was designed by Beth from EvaPaige Quilt Designs. It was super-easy, and super-quick.

Problems arose, however, after I had finished piecing the first border, and was ready to attach it to the rest of the quilt top. I neglected to take notice of the part of the instructions that said to "measure your quilt". I had assumed mine was right. Well, the strip that I'd pieced measured what it should; it's just that the rest of my quilt was around 1 and 5/8 inches shorter.

Despair hit me. I hate unpicking seams and resewing. Even more than I hate pressing.

So I fiddled with the numbers, and counted the seams between blocks and sashing strips, and figured that if I resewed - without unpicking - each of these seams, but go in about 1 millimetre on each, then it should turn out about right. And about right is okay with me.

And it did work out all right; there was just a tiny bit of trimming (1/8") at each end, to make the new border measure what it should.

Yeah, and then I read that the most important thing is that the sashing strips nearest the edges should match up with the thin border strips on the previous round. They did... they just don't anymore. Well, the theme of the quilt is "whimsy", after all.


What I learned from this experience can be summed up very easily: read instructions, more than once, and measure things!
But it's perfectly fine to make mistakes; I believe it's the fastest way to learn.

Butterflies and leaves

I know, it's been a while since my last post. The old pc was outta action for a while. Hubby spent the last few days of his summer holiday fixing and upgrading things. Hopefully all is well now.

The most recent border on my Patchwork Posse round robin quilt took rather longer than expected. I did enjoy doing it, however. There's something quite relaxing about hand-stitching, even if some days only saw me manage to get one leaf finished.

Holding down the quilt so it won't blow away
during the photo shoot.
Isn't she helpful?

In cat news, Tabitha has caught many more bumblebees. My bed is still the Chosen Place to bring them and play. But she has now discovered butterflies. I wasn't overly concerned when I first noticed her noticing the lovely flittering movement of a cabbage white. But a couple of days ago she brought inside a monarch butterfly. It managed to escape when she opened her mouth and let it out. Luckily I soon caught it, and let it out the window. Now I feel guilty for having swan plants, as they are a major attractant for the monarchs.


What I've learned from all this:

1. Don't let the kids use my pc. They click on things they shouldn't. Grrr.
2. Don't blame the kids for everything! It's not all their fault. Relax!
3. Make more time for myself.
4. Distract the cat.
5. Relax.

Bumblebees and bunting

For my latest effort in the Patchwork Posse round robin, I decided to challenge myself.

Bunting? No, just chain-piecing...

Apparently it wasn't enough of a challenge to sew 12 pinwheel blocks - a pattern which I'd not done before (hey, I'm still quite new at this, okay?). Instead of following the instructions and making each opposing arm of the pinwheel out of the same fabric, I decided to use a different fabric for each piece. That's 48 different fabrics. All out of colours that would tie in with the quilt's colour scheme, which is (I hope) country-ish. But all that wasn't so hard.

The tricky part was trying to match up each block to be colour-coordinated - because my orderly mind had decided that would be better than having a random scrappy look. Methinks my orderly mind needs to take a holiday once in a while, and let my lazy/creative mind take over, and things will get done a lot faster!

But not to worry; I'm happy with the end product. And my 11 y.o. enjoyed helping out by positioning the blocks for me. She has a good intuitive sense of colour.

**********

Hubby decided to "help" too. Thank goodness I'd finished all the cutting by then, though!

... finished pinwheels, pre-trimming...

Perpetually fascinated by my rotary cutter, he decided (upon my mentioning that it was getting quite blunt) to sharpen it for me.
So he got out the knife-sharpening steel from the cutlery drawer.
He tried.
It looked sharp.
He cut paper with it.
He was pleased with himself.
I tried it on fabric. Just lightly, as I remembered how sharp it was when new. No good. Pressing harder, still no good. Firmer still, like when I last used it this afternoon.
"It's blunter than it was before!"
He was somewhat surprised. But not ready to be defeated, he got out his other blade sharpening thingy.
With the same result. But I was quick to reassure him:
"Don't worry, I'll buy a new blade tomorrow when I'm in town."
"Hmph. How much are they?"
"Ummm... aroud ten dollars I think."
"What?!"
...

... and blocks attached.

A bit later I came back into the room to find darling hubby with his knife sharpening stone. He must've gone hunting through the garage, because I don't remember having seen him use it lately.
And so he put the rotary cutter back together - which didn't take very long as he was getting pretty good at it by now - and tried it out on some more paper.
It's a good paper cutter.
But sadly, hopeless at cutting fabric.

**********

In other news, my 11-month-old cat loves to chase bugs, flies and bees. Okay, she started out like a normal cat, by liking the look of birds. But she soon discovered that she couldn't catch them. She has much better luck with smaller critters. Like beetles, and moths. She just loves it if I have the porch light on at night; it's a veritable moth fest!

But Tabitha's favourite at the moment would have to be bumblebees. And as it's the height of summer here right now, there are a lot of bumblebees around. I can actually understand why she likes them. They have a cool deep buzzy noise, so she can hear them coming from a mile away; they sit and do their bumbly business in flowers which are usually around cat-height; and best of all, they buzz around s-l-o-w-l-y. Which gives poor Tabsy a very good chance of catching one.

Today, she caught one. She brought it inside, so she could have a proper play with it. She let it go just inside the door, but managed to re-catch it. Not willing to take the chance of losing it again, she trotted through the lounge, down the hallway, into my room and jumped up on the bed before opening her mouth and letting it out. I managed to catch it in a cup and take it outside; one whiff of the fresh air and it was off.

Within an hour, Tabitha was inside again with another victim in her mouth. Not wholly in her mouth; half of it was sticking out. Which is a really funny thing to see. A true Kodak moment. Now I had just been photographing my quilt-in-progress, so the camera was out; but by the time I'd turned it on and it was ready, she'd dropped the bee, which was now crawling around on the floor.

Long story short: it was soon safely out the door. And the cat had to find something else to do. Luckily for her, she hadn't had her fill of sleep for the day yet.

**********

What I learned today was an efficient way to catch bumblebees. Get two cups/glasses/plastic containers, preferably see-through. Coax bee into one cup, using other cup to gently nudge it if necessary. When bee is safely ensconced in cup, put other cup over top, trapping bee, until you can safely give it its freedom in the open air.

It's December already?

Oh my, it's been a long while since my last post. Things have been quite frantic at home, what with the school year ending (the kids are now at home with me full time for 6 weeks or so (along with hubby, who's taking 5 weeks off for his annual leave, to have a decent break over summer)), and getting ready for xmas -- which is only 6 sleeps away!! How did that sneak up so quickly? I believe 2010 has been the fastest year on record. I really do not know where all the time has gone.

On a brighter note, I've sewn the latest border on my Patchwork Posse round robin quilt. I left it until the last possible moment, as it looked quite complicated. But the instructions were easy to follow, phew. Now I know how to do seminole piecing! One of the best ideas was to use starch. I'd never used it before, so that was a learning curve. But overall, the part that took the longest was choosing which colour fabrics to use.

I managed to get it into the Flickr group in time to go into the drawing, and I won! Yay! What did I win, you ask? A pattern from Morning Glory Designs and a copy of Quiltmaker's Magazine, 100 Blocks vol. 2.

Yeeha, first time I've won something online!

What I've learned today: starch is my new best friend :o)

What I stitched today

I still have to figure out how to crop photos. Although in this pic the mat that I lay the quilt top on adds a nice textured border, I think (that's my excuse, anyway).

The latest border isn't quite finished - there's supposed to be applique birds in the reddy-brown top & bottom centre spaces. I'd like to have a NZ fantail, 'cos they're such pretty birds, but I'm not sure if it would fit in with the theme of the quilt. Unless I can get a whimsical fantail shape that's easy enough to applique. But if I can't, then I'll just settle for something simple, cute and birdlike.

Today I learned that I need to get more done! Only a month until xmas. I'll be sewing a lot of pressies this year, instead of buying them. Using the sewing machine to save money, that's gotta be good!

Breakfast

I made hot cross buns for breakfast this morning. Yes, I know, there's no cross on top. I don't bother with that anymore. The recipe calls for the iced crosses to be piped on. I used to do that. But there'd always be loads of icing left over, so I'd end up decorating around the crosses, making spiderwebs and suchlike. Then one day I was feeling extra lazy, so I just added a glob of icing mix to each bun top. No more RSI from holding the piping tool too long, yay.
And the good thing about having hot cross buns for breakfast is that the girls actually ate some. They almost always skip breakfast, preferring not to eat first thing in the morning. But the aroma of baking buns was too much for them today; they just had to succumb.


Here's some sewing I did yesterday. It's for the round robin I'm doing. There's still some cutting and patching to do with these pieces.

(In case you're wondering, the zebra print fabric is my ironing board cover.)

Because nearly every crafty blog seems to have a feline mascot, I think it's time I introduced Tabitha.
She's feeling rather pleased with herself here, having found a dog to sleep on. The dog in question is actually a pencil case. The pencil case belongs to my 9-year-old, who at the time of receiving it collected dogs. She called it Pencil Dog. Nowadays he's just called Pencil, and his chief task is to transport the coloured pencils to and from school. He's very good at his job, and gets to rest every so often. But he looks rather surprised to have a cat plonk herself down on top of him!

And because I had to wait so long for my pics to load (Blogger is being somewhat temperamental today), I went down to my sewing room and chose some fabric for my next little project.

(Yes that is a xmas tree in the background. No, it's not too early. The stores are selling them, so we bought one. And used it straight away. I'd much rather have a real tree with that real-tree-smell, but hubby is tired of the hassle. And I'm tired of finding pine needles in the carpet for months afterward.)


Today I learned that cutting out fabric takes a LOT longer than you originally think it will.
Estimate a time. Double it. Then double it again.
And add five minutes on, just to be on the safe side.

Round Robin

Last month I joined in a round robin over at Patchwork Posse. Starting with the centre block, a different designer adds a round every couple of weeks.

The theme is "Whimsical", and it's a whole lot of fun!

The centre block is a mix of embroidery and applique, in a gorgeously cute garden scene.

The second round (well, two sides actually) features more flowers, with more applique and embroidery.

What I learned today was that I need to figure out how to crop photos. Toe shots aren't cool.