Two quilt shows and my new project

It has been an interesting week with plenty of quilty news.

I have taken all your advice and started a quilt for myself at last. My fabric is Printemps by 3 Sisters Fabrics for Moda. The palette is a mix of duck egg blue, pale yellows and corally pinks and has a slightly more traditional design.

I chose a pattern by Melissa Corry of Happy Quilting called Summer Breeze. I've been following Melissa for a few months and love her style. She offers masses of advice and tutorials on her blog. Check it out here. Summer Breeze was her first published pattern and is one of many available from her Craftsy shop.

I think this design will show off the fabrics I have chosen. The pattern is layer cake friendly with instructions to cut from 10" squares. I decided the queen size quilt was large enough and this size required almost 2 layers cakes plus 5.25yards of background fabric. Again I have gone for Kona Snow. Luckily Moda manufacture one of the designs in the range in an extra wide width(108") so I have ordered this for the backing. Still not sure about the border though so I'll wait until the top is finished before deciding on colour. I spent a couple of hours cutting and preparing this afternoon and ended up with the prettiest pile of scraps!

Earlier this week I visited the Kaffe Fassett exhibition at the American Museum in Bath. In all honesty I was slightly underwhelmed. It could have been because there was so much hype in blogland about it. I much preferred last years exhibition at the Welsh Quilt Museum. However it was a lovely day out with fellow quilters from Busy Bees. There was plenty of needlepoint and knitting and clever arrangements of various artefacts but the quilts lacked impact despite the colours. The gardens were looking pretty and the Museum itself is worth a visit.

Buttoned hats

Needlepoint chair

The quilting highlight of the last week was the exhibition in my local town of Penarth by the Penarth and District Quilters. This group meets regularly in a local church hall and have years of experience in all kinds of quilting. The exhibition was a real delight.

Marvellous trapunto work on Japanese fabric

There were too many photos and too many beautiful quilts to show. What's more, there was tea and home-made cakes. A fab morning.

I'm sorry if the post is a bit photo heavy but it's been that kind of week- lots to see and admire.

I hope you are enjoying the summer wherever you are. It is going to be a warm week so I might enjoy the garden a bit myself.

Catherine

Preparation for the Cascading Logs class with Jan Hassard at Busy Bees

As promised I said I would reveal my fabric choices for this class tomorrow.  Jan specified 4 feature fabrics in 4 colours (suggesting green, mauve, pink and yellow) and 3 light and 3 dark fabrics in each colour too.

Cottonpatch in Birmingham has a wonderful selection of fabrics and I was drawn to these Philip Jacobs for Rowan chrysanthemum prints. Each of the prints included a small amount of colour from the other prints and I hope this will tie the whole quilt together.

From the left the feature fabrics are:

1. Japanese Chrysanthemum in Green
2. Japanese Chrysanthemum in Purple
3. Floating Mums in Taupe
4. Floating Mums in Magenta

The staff in the shop were very helpful and relaxed about the vast number of fabrics I pulled from the shelves until I made my final selection. The instructions were to purchase enough fabric for at least 3 full width strips of 1½" plus a bit extra so I bought ¼ metre of each and ½ a metre of the feature fabric. Not a cheap class!

I have spent the afternoon cutting the strips and cannot wait to see how they will be used tomorrow. 

I am off to Birmingham again on Sunday as my grandson has chickenpox, poor thing! I suppose that means his baby sister will catch it too. 

Jan Hassard makes the most wonderful and colourful quilts herself, Check out her website for some great photos and amazing quilts. Keep your fingers crossed I can cope with this class. I'll take lots of photos! 

My first Hummingbird blocks

Such a busy day today!

I've joined in the 2014 Grow Your Blog Party  run by Vicki of 2 Bags Full and have started to read some new blogs as well as the ones I follow already. I'm going to try to visit 10 new blogs a day and hopefully, maybe, possibly, I'll have a few more followers. I love the 7 I have but would love to meet people all over the world.

The weather here today in Wales is pretty mixed; one minute sunshine but cold, the next blustery showers. Roll on Summer! I spent the morning in the conservatory cutting pieces for my Hummingbird Quilt. It's for Alexandra, my 4 year old granddaughter who is a lover of all things pink and rabbits. I hope this is moving a bit away from baby pink but still girly.

Secret Garden fabrics plus a couple of new solids

The first blocks came together quite easily once I had made sure that the seams met exactly. I love the way the points are (quite) sharp too. I have a Kaffe Fassett fabric that is really bright that might do for the backing but I'll wait until I have done most of the blocks before deciding this time. I have 9 metres of fabric that I chose for my first quilt and none of the 3 were right.

I think it will be really pretty and just right for Alexandra.



I'm rather in awe of all the stylish blogs I've visited today and would welcome any ideas to tidy up this blog and make it more attractive. There is such a lot to learn!



Have a fantastic weekend, no matter what the weather is like,

Catherine


UPDATE:  I've linked into Celtic Thistle Stitches with the "New to me in 2014 party". I think I'll be linking a lot. So much to learn, so little time. New to me on this post are the foundation paper pieced hummingbird blocks. My first try at FPP. Not too bad if I say so myself!

Frustrations and some progress with quilting

Struggling with blogging!  

I hope no-one saw the above sentence which I published by mistake this morning. Still trying to add the Bloglovin button properly but other issues resolved blogwise.

I spent an hour this morning folding the edges of my Sampler quilt in and tacking down. Then I tried multiple distraction techniques in order to put off the dreaded start of hand quilting.

Quilting techniques had been covered in the last lesson of the course I attended at Busy Bee Patchwork in Newport. I had practised for an hour in class on an orphan block with very little success. I could not seem to catch the backing, the thimble kept coming off my middle finger and I felt like I had no hope of ever conquering my demons.

I am determined to make this quilt totally by hand even if it is the last time I do this. I tried a few different marking techniques and decided to use 1/4 in. tape for most of the blocks. I will do some echo quilting around the appliqué shapes with outline quilting of the geometric shapes.

It was as well there was no-one else around for the first hour as I got increasingly annoyed with my attempts. The stitches were now catching the backing but were uneven and too large. I kept referring to my books for tips and eventually I got into a rhythm and my stitching improved. I managed to quilt just about half of one of the 12in. blocks and once the quilting is finished I may return and re-do the first bit.

Quilt top at last session of beginners course

Quilt top after basting

The colours look quite different in the two photos The basted top is nearer to the actual quilt as the photo was taken in the conservatory. I used a daylight lamp as the weather has been so awful today.

I chose Kaffe Fassett fabrics with some Moda Crackle in green for the background. The Kaffe Fassett fabrics are Guinea flower in yellow and Lotus Leaf in antique. On reflection it was not the easiest colour palette to work with for a beginner. In fact it was challenging! Bright colours seem to appeal to me. These fabrics just leapt off the shelf and I could not put them down. I chose a Kaffe Fassett broad stripe for the backing. Fortunately this goes surprisingly well with the top.

Enough for now, time for dinner…...

nothing ventured, nothing gained!

2014 and time for new beginnings. The Christmas decorations are all put in the loft

I reckon that it's never too late to try something new, so this is it. Hold my breath and jump in. I've been reading sewing and quilting blogs avidly since I took up patchwork during 2013 and want to learn how to document my progress. This seems as good a time as any so I'll introduce myself.

I'm a Grandma to 6 beautiful grandchildren, mum to 2 daughters and step mum to another. I'm married, retired and live in Cardiff,UK. I knit, sew, cook and now learning to quilt and blog. Who would have thought it?

Patchwork combines creativity, skill, time for myself and a chance to meet new like-minded people. I'll be posting photos of my first sampler quilt which was just basted today and all my new projects. I would really love your comments and encouragement on my journey.