Great Northern Quilt Show, Harrogate

Lovely day out with my friends Chris and Sue.

I did an Autumn Landscape workshop with Sally Holman and a Hexagonal Twiddling session with Jennie Rayment.  Enjoyed them both very much.  Bit difficult to see without my armoury of illuminated magnifiers and daylight lamps but I worked slowly and will finish them at home where all my equipment is to hand.

Will post pictures when the projects are complete.

Below are my purchases.  I was very restrained as there were many stalls piled high with my sort of treasures.  Four Christmas fat quarters, Spice Trail elephant theme fabric bundle and a five fat quarter bundle of hand dyed fabrics.

Foundation Pieced Hand Dyes

I've pieced these bits of hand dyed fabrics onto a calico foundation.  Another blanket for Sparky when it's done.

Hand Dyed Quilt Complete

All done.  Used utility stitch 19 to bind and quilt this one and its just the job.  Not too intrusive but a firm holding stitch.

Quilting the hand dyed project

Janome 8900 QCP Stitch Bible

I've started creating a Stitch Bible for my new machine.  I have the Craftsy Worksop, Stupendous Stitching, by Carol Ann Waugh and that is the first lesson.

I'm using Bottom Line in the bobbin and 100% cotton is definitely better as a top thread as it gives more coverage than polyester.  Don't have much pure cotton around other than rather expensive quilting thread so will put it on my shopping list.

Hand Dyed Scrap Quilt

A couple of years ago I did some hand dyeing which turned out well.  It left me with a lot of cotton and calico samples.  I've been cutting them into 2.5" strips and have pieced them together.  It's a shame for them to lay in a drawer.  I thought Sparky would like some new quilts for his bed and these are just the job.

There's probably enough left to do a couple more when I'm in the mood.  I've used leftover wadding and zig zagged pieces together.  It's time I found a use for the wadding, it's so wasteful throwing it away.

Now to find a suitable backing.  I've definitely done some stash busting recently.

Accufeed - Absolutely Fab

It took a few minutes, and a little bit of advice from the husband, to work out how to attach the accufeed ankle and foot.  Once I understand how it goes together, no problem.  It is much easier to change over than the 7700 which is one of the main reasons for getting the 8900.  I have little, sometimes no central vision so I have to rely on peripheral vision, magnification and touch to get things where they need to be.

At this stage I only have the zig zag accufeed which came with the machine but I'll be buying a 1/4" one when I can.  

Quilting this scrap quilt with a serpentine stitch was the last job I did with the 7700.  I've used the new accufeed to zig zag around the edges before trimming it up and applying the binding.  Used the default zig zag and it went round without a problem.

A 10/10 for the Accufeed!

Wonderclips vs Tesco Office Supplies

When I saw Wonderclips being demonstrated I thought there's something to stop me bleeding on my quilts.  Pins are difficult to see these days and I generally "FEEL" them first,  OUCH!

Then I saw the price of Wonderclips.  OUCH!

In Tesco's stationary department I found these fold back clips.  Bright and easier to see and 50 for £1.  One pack has almost gone round this smallish quilt so I'll get another packet or so for larger quilts.

Quilt in Progress

Moda summer breeze charm squares sashed with som blue tone on tone from my stash.  Started on the 7700 and now demonstrating that the 8900 does not have the same issues/difficulties travelling over seam intersections as the 7700.

So far, so good it is a pleasure to sew with.  Still lots of features to work through.

Janome Horizon 8900 QCP

My new sewing machine arrived today.

French sewing roll

 

Made this today. Bit diddly. Hope it's going to be useful.

February Block of the Month

I had a go with the Balkan Puzzle which is one of the February blocks of the month at Craftsy.  It should have come out slightly larger than 12.5" and then be trimmed to size.  Mine came out at 12" square so it's too small.  I'm going to reset my 1/4" foot and try again.  I looked at the discussion part of the class and quite a few folks have had the same problem.  You need to use a real scant 1/4" seam.

Here's a photo of how it turned out - I have enough fabric to repeat these colour choices.

Filigree Christmas Tree

This is a wall hanging made from an old issue of Popular Patchwork magazine

Fits nicely on the front of the treadle sewing machine cabinet on ehich is stood our tree this year.

Craftsy Block of the Month 2012

I'm a bit late starting this Craftsy Clock of the Month 2012 but we have decided to do it at our Friday Quilt Bee with our beginner quilting friends.

Click here to get this free course from Craftsy

Here are the two January blocks I made today

This is my first attempt at quilting since losing my central vision last month and it hasn't been too difficult with the aid of various daylight lamps and magnifiers.

If I slow down and stick to simple I should be fine. for now.  I can't see the needle area of the sewing machine, but guesswork and touch seem to be working OK.

I might even get to the February blocks tomorrow.

Watch this Space!

Ladder Stitch Tutorial

I often need to close a hole invisibly on a turned quilt or craft project and my stitching always likes to show where it's not wanted.

There are lots of really nice tutorials and free patterns on Quilt Taffy and here's a link to a well illustrated guide to the Invisible Closing Stitch.

Just Hands On TV

I subscribed to Just Hands On TV about six months ago.  For £6 a month you get to see two new videos each Friday.  This sounded ideal - Friday is my day off and to settle down with a cappuccino to watch two quilting videos after showering and dressing sounded like the perfect relaxing way to start my weekend.  (You can get to watch a limited number of non subscriber videos for free if you choose not to pay the £6 fee.)

On the first Friday I couldn't find my two subscriber videos so emailed the owner to ask what I was doing wrong - what I had found was a lady talking about an exhibition which I thought was an advert to get you to visit and a further video showing how to use a particular plastic ruler - for that to be of use you would have needed to buy the plastic ruler from the web site so I just took that for another advert.  The response from the owner was that those two videos were indeed my two paid for videos.  Over the following months there were a few videos of interest to me but some were quite short and usually finished before I got to the end of the cappuccino.  In December one of the offerings was a very poor quality video showing someone talking about mini quilts and I decided to call it a day.  My decision was more than confirmed when one of last Friday's videos was a 1 minute 24 second demo of how to sew a quarter inch seam with your sewing machine.

I consider myself to be an intermediate quilter who is working on improving more advanced techniques and I would reiterate that some of the Friday videos I saw were very interesting, but I don't feel there is enough advanced material to hold my attention.  Some of the videos are introduced as a "quick and easy" way to do something - I don't want quick and easy.  I want to continue stretching myself - I can find quick and easy quilting projects all over the internet for free.

I don't want to dismiss this website completely because if I was a beginner it would be a fabulous place to learn all sorts of "quilty stuff" and give you lots of tasters to inspire and develop your own ideas to begin your quilting journey.  Give it a try and see what you think, you can cancel your payment at any time if you use Paypal and there are lots of videos to browse through when you join.  We're all different and what doesn't suit me may be just the thing for someone else.

When I decided to spend this £6 a month it was to be instead of buying more and more monthly quilting publications and I can confirm that I stuck to this and haven't bought a quilt magazine since last June - pat on the back for me for sticking to that!!

Quilt Shopping

Looking for Osnaburg with no success I saw some ricrac in many colours so I bought some red, blue and green to have on hand.  I often see it used in projects and have never got round to getting any.

Here's an unusual fabric - it's a bit like jelly roll by the yard - lots of different design stripes across the width of the fabric.  I thought this might be good to use as sashing around my redwork squares.

Here's my first attempt at redwork.

Here's my second square - still needs the water soluble pen marks removing.

Lastly a nice piece of sewing themed fabric to add to stash - the camera flash has made it look much lighter than it really is - think darker blue!

Quilt Binder Set

Janome Canada have really gone to town with this accessory and produced several excellent tutorial videos on the Quilt Binder Set.  When I first saw the binder (and the price) I was sceptical about how well it performed and how it would work with mitred corners.  It's not a big deal putting a double fold binding on by hand, in fact it's nice to have a straightforward hand sewing project to sit and relax with, but it is time consuming, and I don't have that much spare time.  Click here for all the videos.

There is a learning curve with the binder and I think it will take some practice getting into the swing of it but the video shows that a neat job is achievable.  There's never any shortage of help from my husband when there's a technical issue to sort so if I can't get it set up, he will.  There's one in stock at my local shop and I've put my name on it for after Christmas.  With Christmas and birthday money and a bit of help from next pay day I should have it up and running in the New Year.

Ferret Workshop

I need a lot of leaves for this wall hanging, I have a growing number in the box and the other two photos show the veins being free motioned on in the second batch of fabrics.  It is taking some time but Paul has improved the lighting in my sewing room so I can work on the dark evenings and it is really giving me lots and lots of practice with the FMQ.  My confidence is growing and I am so relaxed whilst working.  I feel ready to work on a full size quilt now.

Star Quilt Workshop quilt nearing completion

Step back to September 2009 by clicking here  I came home from this workshop to find that my instruction sheet was incomplete - there was a border required after the stars and before the pieced triangle border - what size should it be.  The handout said the size "would be discussed in class".  Had it been?  I couldn't remember at all.  I did what I could and completed the four pieced triangle borders and put together the star blocks for the centre of the quilt.  Then it was suspended in bits from a hanger to keep it from creasing and remains hung away safely for a couple of years...........Yes! A couple of years.

Quilt University to the rescue.  My second course with QU was Math for Quilters (more on that in another post).  From this I gained the confidence to do the maths and work out size and dimension to complete THAT star quilt.