The Lost Poster Quilt

My Lilly Poppet came on line today. She isn't often available, too busy having fun. It's good to hear that she is happy. Last year I made this quilt for her. The story of how it came to be is below the photo.

During our annual home leave trip, Elizabeth, my daughter, went shopping in Manchester with a friend. She treated herself to a poster and was extremely happy with it. She loved how it looked like it was moving. She carefully carried it through the airport on the way home to Portugal. Unfortunately, she left the poster at the gate as we borded the plane. She was very upset with herself. 

I remembered that I had a quilting pattern book with a similar design in it. 'Triangle Free Quilts' by Judy Hopkins. I searched through my fabric stash and found the exact same colours as the poster. The greens are mostly hand dyed fabrics. I called the quilt 'The Lost Poster'. Elizabeth was thrilled with it. It is just like the original poster".

Birte Quilts

Birte just sent this photo.
She had told me that she wasn't going to make a Square Dance quilt until she had her other projects finished, hmmmmm, I bet she will finish the top today!
I though it would be good to show this project done with commercial fabrics.
I used hand dyed ones.... ? Obviously you don't need green toes and blue fingers to make this quilt look good!!

Quilt Class...

Yesterday was a teaching day at Paula's . One of the new ladies who only started on Wednesday bought her quilt top in finished! in just 3 days, definitley addicted!! She quickly put together a pieced backing, so I was able to demonstrate making a quilt sandwich, the ladies where fascinated, as they had never thought about how it was done, some didn't know we put 'something' inbetween the back and front.

Again, I was so busy, I never had time to take photos. I will put my camera in my pocket next week, hopefully it will remind me to use it.
This is a photo that Paula took a while ago, when classes first started. It is very snug during classes, we move round like a game of solitaire!! It is good that we all have a great sense of humour too.

PIP Quilt Camp

Yesterday I went along to PIP Quilt Camp. Alda was working on this beautiful Sunflower wall hanging, she quilted the background first and is now in the process of hand stitching all the tiny flower petals and leaves. The centre of Each sunflower is embelished with beads.
Alda will be teaching us how to make this quilt in a future PIP Quilt Camp.





Luisa always looks this happy when she is sewing!



Sally has now mastered her meandering free motion quilting, she was practicing read for the Jenny Bowker workshop next weekend


Jackie cut her fabric for her second Kaleidoscope quilt.




Milly, left, having guidance from Ursula with her block placement.
There will be another 2 day PIP Quilt Camp on 9th & 10th of May. http://pipguild.blogspot.com/ for more information.

IWP Quilt Group

There is a lot to say about this photo. The IWP (International Women in Portugal) is a melting pot of women, it's quilt group is no exception. Here we have, from left to right, Luisa from Korea, Ursula from Germany, Therese from Jordan, Susan from Scotland, Arabela from Romania with her little boy, Abel who was born in Spain, I (taking the photo) am British.
This Kaleidoscope quilt top belongs to Susan. This photo doesn't show it's true beauty, Sue did a great job. Now to tackle the borders as it isn't quite big enough..... watch this space!

This is Therese, left, helping Anneliese (German) hold her first quilt, a Rail Fence design, every junction matches perfectly and the hand quilting is really good. Can't wait to see her next quilt.



And here, AGAIN, our Therese with her Log Cabin Quilt, bound and almost finished. We will do labels next week... and only then will it be finished!

We Dyed Again!

Yesterday was another fabric dying day. Garen came over at 9:30am with 7 metres of wet white fabric and went home round 6pm with a rainbow of colours, (there was a school run and a scout meeting inbetween, it doesn't take that long to dye) anyway, to say she went home happy is an understatement!!! I think it is fair to say that she is now addicted! I took loads of photos, mostly of the lovely colours but here is the one I will share with you.

As you can see, i am no expert at planning my photos, apart from Happy Garen, you can see my reflection in the window, you can see that I put my washing in the house, to stop Garen changing the colour of it, and down in the right corner there, my Molly is treasure hunting for something in her bed, she burries her dog biscuits there! The room behind is where we have our quilting meetings on Thursdays, hence the iron and the fabrics on the walls. such a lot to look at in one snapshot!!!
Today I was teaching at Paula's http://www.arcoirisametro.com/ , we had 3 new ladies, all very eager to learn. There is a lot to get through in a beginners first class, I was so busy I forgot to take any photos....


Remember I said that we had made 'proper' Bargello quilts at our first quilt camp.... this is the lovely one that Ursula made....

Old Friends

Well, isn't it funny how you don't hear from old friends for ages then you get all the emails at the same time? It is lovely to keep in touch.

Yesterday I heard from Frankie, possible my bestest friend ever, we met in 1999 when I lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, she just finished this fabulous quilt for her Grandaughter, I just had to put it here, it is all hand quilted, Frankie does beautiful work.

Then this morning I had an e-mail from Elaine, who I met when I lived in Mexico City in 2003. Another possible best friend, I have a lot of best friends! Anyway, this photo was taken in Mexico, Elaine (right) and Anitta (left) when we were working on Mile-a-minute quilts. We laughed so much that day, this is a favourite photo, I remember the day as if it was yesterday, we had Chilaquiles for lunch!
I love my friends in Mexico, the quilt guild has a webpage full of information and photos of my best friends!! he he

Birte's Quilt

Today Birte sent me a picure of her Kaleidoscope quilt top. I thought you might like to see it. She did a fantastic job. Just before Birte left Portugal last October, we cut all the fabrics together... was a very fun day!! of course we laughed a lot, as always with Birte!!!

Square Dance Quilt

This morning I have been playing with my hand dyed fabrics. I decided to make the Square Dance Quilt, brushing up on the method ready to teach it. It took me ages to choose the fabrics, I get so attached to them and hate cutting into them... silly really, as I can always dye more!
Eventually, I sorted this little hic-cup and cut the 25x 6" squares. This is them sewn together, complete with border.
You have to cut round a template on an angle to get this effect. This is all the pieces put together ready to sew. I think is very clever how the blocks also form a border. I am working on another pieced border.
Enough sewing for now, it's time to walk Molly... while the sun is shining.

Scrappy Bargello

Progress.... I got all the strips sewn into sets. I even got three sets cut into the 2" strips. I stopped because I still need to show the ladies on Thursday (I didn't do it this week with so many being otherwise occupied for Easter) I also will demonstrate the Bargello method to the ladies in the classes at Paula's ( http://www.arcoirisametro.com/ ) as I said before, I think it is a very visual thing to learn. Easy once you know how though.....
After very carefully ironing the sets and joining the ends to make tubes, I trimmed one edge and then cut the 2" strips.

Then unpicking horizontal seams in order to make the blocks move up diagonally, i will need 3 sets like this and 3 sets moving diagonally down to get the zig-zag effect.

This is a photo of my first "proper" Bargello quilt. I went to my first ever quilt camp ( with http://pipguild.blogspot.com/) and this was the project we did. If the PIP ladies read this and want to send photos of their Bargello projects to me, I can post them here also.

IWP Quilt Group

Arabela's quilt in progress made with fabrics from Prague.

Trudi bought in her Scrappy Bargello, she started it on Saturday and finished it yesterday, well almost finished as it has no label yet. She pointed out fabrics from her maternity dresses and her kids clothes, now adults.

Ladies bought their scraps and sewing machines and set about making crumb blocks. I have demonstrated these before but they hadn't yet tried it. This is Sue crumbing!

There were only 7 of us today because of the Easter holidays.

We were very productive, though.

Hand Dyes & Bargello.

I found my sewing "umph" today. I got all the 2"strips sewn into fours, they will go together very quickly from here. I would like to have at least one tube complete to show to the quilt group on Thursday. Last time I tried to describe how the Bargello tubes work I saw a lot of blank faces. It is always easier to see it for real.

I also washed those georgeous hand dyed fabrics again, here they are ironed and ready to use, not yet though, i like just looking at them for a while.

Quilt Class

So, my new camera is very easy to work. Funny, yesterday, most people hid when they heard it turn on ......! I had a fun day with the ladies at Paula's . I got there early to get everything set up, so Paula's mum, Manuela, had time to play free motion quilting before the ladies came for class. I forgot I had a camera though, so I don't have any evidence for you this time .... but next time! Everyone was quite productive during the afternoon. Celeste has almost finished her log cabin Easter Bunny quilt. She has done it all by hand, sewing the tiny log cabin blocks whilst on the bus each day, isn't he cute! Just needs the binding now

We usually finish the class at 6pm, but everyone was so enthusiastic that we were still there at 7pm. I guess they are already addicted to patchwork..... now how did that happen?

my new camera

I got a new (first ever) digital camera.... what is a girl to do???

Take lots of pictures to share with her family and friends, of course!!

So, I started this blog, I have no clue how it will come together, I am not a computer whizz, far from it.
Now... how do I use this camera????

Watch this space.........??