Tuesday, 30 October 2012

Bloggers quilt festival

I haven't achieved that many finishes this year, but what I have managed is to finish my favourite quilt ever and I'm so happy I can enter it in the festival found here http://amyscreativeside.com/2012/10/26/bloggers-quilt-festival-fall-2012/

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This quilt started life as a foundation paper piecing QAL with hosted and designed by Becky. I ended up going for a bed sized quilt and it took me over a year to finished. Around the same time, we had a lot of bereavement in the family and I decided to use this quilt to give to a cousin Kathleen in memory of one of our mutual Aunts who Kathleen was very close to.

Becky lives in the US, Kathleen and myself in the UK, but I knew it would go to Kathleen's cottage in Ireland so green, white and gold seemed a good colour choice.

All the fabrics on the top came from stash and I'm sure I broke all the rules; there are solids, batiks and prints of all descriptions in there. I organised my greens and yellows into three piles, light medium and dark and used about 7 or 8 fabrics in each pile. I think I counted 51 or 52 fabrics in total.

To make it specific to my Aunty Martha, I used a sheet from her home I found when I cleared it out.

I pieced it, then quilted in four sections using Aurifil variegated thread in yellow and green. I spent months deciding on how I would quilt it and practised different things. I managed to put the four quilted pieces together in such a way that you can't tell it was quilted separated. Its a lot easier to manage small pieces on a domestic sewing machine.

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Working on the quilting in particular was quite emotional, I thought of Martha a lot but in a good way. A lot of tears were shed over it but sometimes tears are healing, it was certainly the case for me.

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Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats
Memories of Martha
Finished quilt measures : 60″x72″
Special techniques used : foundation paper pieced.
Best Category : Bed Quilt, Home Machine Quilted

Sunday, 28 October 2012

Still alive

I can't believe it is a month since I last posted. I seem to have got sucked into the Twitter/Instagram world more than blogging. I'm ShevvyLondon on both of those if you are interested in finding me.

I haven't done a huge amount of sewing, my lovely sewing machine is feeling quite lonely and unloved most of the time.

I've piece one top that I haven't taken a photo of yet and a few bee blocks. These ones are machine sewn for the FQR Kinky Bee...

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and these ones are paper pieced for the EEEP EPP Bee.

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I have to point out that I'm not to blame for the carpet in the last one, its the hotel I use in the week that is responsible!

I've also been EPPing some more of my own blocks, these are growing quite nicely and I take them all over the place with me.

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Finally, I managed to finish the embroidery I started with Aneela Hoey that is taken from her new book. I now need to decide what I am going to do with it, but I think it will be a cushion eventually.

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Thats all for now - I know it won't be so long until my next post as I want to do one for the Bloggers Quilt Festival.