Peace Quilt

Recently I participated in a challenge to work on or finish a UFO.
The brief was that it was not to have been worked on for more that 6 months.

Being a little 'caught up' in a certain Mystery Quilt - a challenge in itself.... I decided to document all my UFOs and WIPs and Phds.  Not leaving out PNS or PIGS as someone once called them.
**(Non-quilters see bottom of post for glossary)

I listed all I had started, and all that I have not started and came up with an impressive list - and when I tidied some more I found another box.........

HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN MY PEACE QUILT????

for details on the Peace Quilt go to www.margaretrolfe.com

It is a Work in Progress.  It Is going to take me a while.  

I have a card with boxes drawn on it. 

And each box represents a Crane.

As you can see...

......Four down Ninety Four to go...

It is going to take a long time,

but if it looks anything like this

It WILL be worth it.

Photos are of the Original Quilt

Taken at the Melbourne Quilt Show

July 2005

**WIP   Work In Progress

     UFO UnFinished Object

     Phd    Project Half Done

     PNS  Project Not Started (Fabric and Pattern bought and still in the bag......)

or PIGS  Projects In Grocery Sacks (see above)

My Patch Collection

I collect souvenir sew-on  fabric  patches.

It has become a bit of a ritual that anywhere we go - if there is a local information centre we will call in and check out the patches.  Not all towns have them, so unfortunately they do not find a place in my Quilt.

Each patch has a block and the idea is to do a quilt as you go style hexagon quilt.  

I pull it out occasionally and try to work out the best route to take - 

Do I do rows starting with the oldest patches in the top  corner - OR do I spiral them around adding more and more ???? 

The rate I am going it will be big enough to cover the CAR.

And then there are the patches others have brought back for me.....

And I have enough patches from our South Australian Adventure to fill a book.   

Maybe they will need their own quilt.

Either way......the patches are multiplying -- 

and the quilt is and always will be a WIP.

Block 4 - Flowers for Me

Progress on ...My Heart's Desire Quilt

The Fourth Block which requires 3 companions as well,  had the extra challenge of an added sawtooth border and the appliqué spilling over onto.........I have no idea.
We were also warned that we would need an extra 2. 1 meters of a contrast fabric for next month......

Flowers for Me

Choosing my fabrics is a excruciatingly lengthy process for me as I audition fabrics to get the right combination. Judging from the comments I have received so far......I think I got it right.

Fussy Cutting - Can You see the Join?

My DD is just learning to quilt - a necessary distraction from her day job....

She has just completed her 3rd quilt top but came up against the issue of not having enough width in the fabric to cut her borders from.  The fabric she was using would have just shrieked a join so....

The solution....FUSSY CUT IT.

Can you see the join?

Maybe this will help..........

All up, I am hard pressed to find the join even when I am deliberately looking for it.

It took a little extra time and fabric.  We found a suitable repeat in the fabric, cut along it allowing for a turnover (seam) and then appliquéd the pieces together with small hand stitches.

My Avatar.

The image I have as my Avatar is a photograph that I took of my Christmas gift to one of my Sons about 2 years ago.

 He had made himself a Quill from a Chook Feather and a Biro insert - so when I saw this beautiful Quill -  it just had his name on it.
Yes. It does work - they are mainly sold for Bridal Registry signings.

I was asked today about the fish.

So here is a photo of the carved Fantail Goldfish.
I bought him at at Op Shop many years ago for about $2 .00 and apart from a little piece of his tail fin having been broken before I found him, he is is very good shape.

These ones, were bought by my Mother almost 40 years ago from a Chinese gift store.

They too are carved timber.

They are only about half the size of the one above and were Chopstick rests.

WOW - An awesome exhibit and a patch for my Quilt

Another cloth patch for my collection!

Saturday was my Mum's birthday.
She would not appreciate if I told you how old she was, sufficient to say it was a milestone birthday.

Not knowing what to get someone that doesn't want anything - I decided to take her to see the TUTANKHAMUN EXHIBITION that is on at the Melbourne Museum at the moment.

It was awesome - I grew up looking at photographs of the treasures in books. And to stand a few feet away from some of them - to see the detail.......
So see up close the amulets and jewellery, to notice the minute seed beads threaded onto a diadem, the engraving on a golden dagger, and then realise that these things were made by hand 3,300 years ago......
The quest for  Immortality and an Afterlife was certainly successful - but not as they could have ever imagined.

My most useful tool

It must have been ONE OF THOSE WEEKS...
Esther certainly has had one, with her photocopier dying and the binder getting jammed -

At our place, Saturday was one of those day's..  A beautiful fresh (made for me) mug of tea somehow got caught in my computer power cable and ended up all over the bench, narrowly missing my laptop AND my nearly completed BLOCK 4.

That all nicely cleaned up I went back to my project, and promptly got my foot caught in the Iron cord.
Later that night.  I sat down and wrote the following to post today...........

********************************

I have been working on Block 4 of My Heart's Desire and today I have been thinking of the tool that  have found that I use the most.

Apart from the obvious Iron, which I dropped on Saturday and promptly redesigned the front to what the family is calling a "Custom made Skeleton Iron" - they have no intention of gluing the pieces back on (any time soon) for me -  and say that I can now see EXACTLY what I am pressing.

Hmmmm makes you wonder How many of us would BUY and Iron that was designed like this? (OK clean it up a bit and tweak the design...)

No, apart from my Skeleton Iron and my Mini Clover Iron my most useful tool is a pair of  tweezers.

These I got at a quilt show to use with a machine foot (that I don't use).
They are useful in that I can pick up and  fold the fabric - hold it tight and press
All with out burning my fingers.


WHAT IS YOUR MOST USEFUL GADGET?

Ooooh - I am doing a Happy Dance.....

I GOT A POSTCARD .....

  

Thank you Flossie. 

A little early, and It made my day.

My first quilty postcard.

and all the way from Alabama USA.

WOW - Helping a Friend out with Y Seams

I opened my Emails this morning and was greeted with "......I'm new to quilting and I can't get the "Y seams set in ....any suggestions?"
So today I spent the morning making  the next block in my work in progress. My Women of the Bible Quilt, and I felt the easiest way to explain how to set in a "Y seam" is to show how!

I hadn't made this weeks block yet - so here goes.......

I decided to Foundation Piece this block, for 2 reasons -
Firstly my friend had foundation pieced her block and I wanted to do the same (for consistency).
Secondly - I found this "You 'Beaut" way of doing foundation piecing this week and had to try it out.
I did my square in a square foundation and sewed 2 x 1 1/4" strips together.

I then created my outside border pieces using the Freezer Paper Technique.  The beaut part about this method is that you fold the seam lines out of the way, sew along them and then press the fabric to the Freezer Paper and when you are done - it just peels off - BRILLIANT.
No itty bitty annoying pieces of paper to pick out from between your stitches.

Sew the 1st  border piece to the square in square block.

Make sure you DO NOT stitch into the seam allowance

Continue around the centre block until all border pieces are on - Yes it is a bit 'flappy' at this point.

Now comes the fun part.....

Fold the block DIAGONALLY forming a triangle.

You should now be able to see why it was important not to stitch into the seam allowance.

You can now sew the corner pieces together,
finishing the seam at the corner.

(Sorry the pics are a bit dark - my work light is elsewhere!)

Remove all the remaining papers - you have probably taken bits off as you have been sewing.

Tidy it all up
Give it a press.
And trim to size.

And there you have it.

1 x 6 1/2" Open Window Block representing Michal.

This quilt is part of a weekly on-line Bible Study each week we study one of the Women from the Bible and make a quilt block to represent that Woman.

The block "OPEN WINDOW" represents Michal.  (You can read about her in  I Samuel 18-19, 25, II Samuel 3, 6, and I Chronicles 15.)

My Sewing Space

Ok, It is a long story, that may well start "Once upon a time"............

Once upon a time when there were just 2 of us and 3 bedrooms. I had a sewing room.  It was a nice room with a big window that looked out into a very large yard full of fruit trees and birds.
Fast forward a few years and the room needed to become a bedroom and I scored, during an extension, a different room,  but lo, the children continued to grow and it became necessary to renovate - and I gave up my sewing room. (Mind you - I have a very nice bathroom,-- but no sewing room).

You think I would have tidied it first!!

I now have an area behind the sofa in the family room.  It is not a huge area but it is mine.


So the space isn't anything to 'write home about'
                                                                                                             
                                                                                 BUT...I have an AWESOME IRONING BOARD

                 Which doubles as a design wall!

I would show you a photo of that but it is a little blog shy.....

Cool 'board isn't it DH helped me make it one Saturday.
It is 6' x 2', padded, with a quilted calico top and sits beautifully on top of two 2' x 4' folding resin tables.


The tables, purchased from Bunnings (for non-Aussie readers - that's a hardware store) are VERY useful around the quilt area.

I use them to extend my machine table when I need to quilt and they fold up out of the way when they are no longer required. - Perfect!



   

WOW:- Work in Progress On Wednesdays

Today's Google Banner 

Happy International Children's Day everyone!

My 'Spoilt Ones' have just had their favourite Chocolate Cake made for them for desert - ok so they are not technically children any more - but they can still have cake!

I have used this morning baking, catching up on emails and had a lovely half hour with Esther (via a repeat of Channel 31 Community program - "Susan is Craft" on line) while I finished stitching the binding on my quilt.

YES.  MY QUILT.  I have finally finished Margaret Kirkby's "Sunshine and Shadows" lap quilt & it is for me.

For My Mum's Birthday 2005

I realised one day that although I have been quilting for 6 years (not very long I admit) I do not actually have a quilt in the house. I thought this odd, so -What have I been  doing and where are they?

This one for my Mum, was the quilt that got me to look at quilting seriously.  I had previously made a cot quilt for a Factory Owner who wanted to showcase the fabric that they had.

Considering that I knew nothing about quilting I did a very good job of a Pink and White Log Cabin!
I must do another - one day.

Sunshine and Shadows

I concluded that of all the quilts that I have finished - not one has been kept.  So I think I will hang on to this one!