Therese's Spools

Therese has been working on her spools for a few weeks now. She wants to make a lap quilt for her nephew but with only these blocks it will be too small.

We decided that the easiest way, without making more blocks, is to add a 2" border to frame each block then join them together, that, with a good width of border, should do the trick!

Scraps, Scraps, More Scraps

It has been questioned many times, "do scraps actually multiply?"... For sure something happened to mine. This is a small pile from one drawer, I have 7 drawers ... full! I have to get this lot in some sort of order before I move, all that time in a removal truck who knows how many times they will multiply!
The bigger pieces I cut into 3 1/2" strips, I plan to make a lasagne quilt with them. The rest will be sorted using the "scrap users system" ...

I have 29 crumb blocks finished. I want this to be a kingsize quilt. I could just finish one more block, sash them all and call it a lap quilt... hmmmm ,that would look cool on my sofa...

Arco Iris A Metro

Arco Iris A Metro is advertizing new workshops. One in particular caused my curiosity to get the better of me. Well, it states that even beginners could quilt beautiful designs, circles too!!! .... how could I not be curious?
It was all very interesting and such a cool way getting complex quilting designs... and yes CIRCLES!!!
I won't say any more... I took this picture of some of the ladies during the workshop, if you want to see more... you will just have to sign up for Paula's workshop! You will enjoy, I promise!

T'June's Table Topper

This is another paper pieced project. I made it for T'June a few years ago, she has a round table so this was just the job. The flower/cactus parts are hand dye fabrics and the pattern is from a magazine, I'm not sure which one though as I only saved the pattern page. It was a weekend project and has very simple quilting.

Daff's in the Quilt Cave

I think this was the first time we had almost everyone working on the same project... Paper Pieced Daffodils.

These are the fabrics that Therese bought to make her daffodils with

Rosalia, (our Blue Lady) making her colour chart, this project is like painting by numbers...

These are Sally's fabric swatches all neatly sorted ready to begin...

Only a few hours later Therese had a small section of the pattern completed.

Sally got to the same stage... these are stems to the daffodils... just incase you couldn't see that!

Ursula had a little difficulty joining a few segments together, this called for a little 'fudging'. She is using some of her hand dyed fabrics from a workshop last spring.

Rosalia struggled with the paper piecng in the beginning but, by the end of the day she had all these sections done.

Rosalia has been working on the border blocks for this log cabin project. We put the blocks in place to see the result, lovely!

Jackie has 24 of her 40 kimomos done, now she is using paper piecing to perfect the tricky angles of the sleeves and is finding it much easier, and much faster too.

Arabela quilted one of the charity quilts, wearing her posh gloves and looking very chic with her shirt complementing the quilt!

Quilt Cave

Helen popped over to show us the fabrics that she produced at the last Hand Dye Workshop. A rainbow of colours!
Helen is taking over my basic quilt classes at Arco Iris A Metro, pop over to the blog to see what fabulous workshops Paula is offering!!

Ann-Marie only started quilting recently and is well and truly bitten by the patchwork bug! This is a little doll quilt embellished with pretty lace.
Garen started cutting fabrics for a Disappearing nine-Patch quilt, sorry no photo this time but if she brings it on Thursday I will get a picture, she's using gorgeous fabrics to make it!!

Garen's Selvage Edge Quilt

Garen finished her selvage edge quilt. This is not a good picture, the quilt is much brighter than it looks here, and not at all blurred!! ha ha ha
She came over to my Quilt Cave to make a sandwich... sooooooo much easier than basting on the floor, with aching backs and sore knees.... the ladies are going to miss my tables!!!

Quilts In The Garden

I thought I would post a few more pictures from the "Quilts in the Garden" exhibition that I went to whilst in the UK last week.
I stood looking at this quilt and wondering how the lady had decided to do her quilting the way she had..., it didn't make sense at all to me.... Duh... it was the back of...
this quilt! There was stippling between all of the black ironwork, it was lovely, and, once I understood what was going on, I thought the back was a great idea...
I had a brilliant idea, to take pictures of the awards won by some quilts, given my memory capacity these days... he he
this is the quilt that won first place in the 'bed quilts' category, very accurate piecing, probably paper pieced to get such sharp points....
a close-up of the fabulous hand quilting.

This is a very simple design, fun to practice various quilting skills. It would be great for using up scraps too.

I looked at this quilt for ages, it was one of my favourites. My Lilly loves daisys so I find that I am always drawn to them... silly huh...

I love the quilting on this quilt....

This one was very different, it reminds me of Susie Krage's work, a friend I met in Mexico.
Everyone loves sunflowers, if you click on this you should be able to read the sky...

... of course, it won an award....

Here's a close-up, I bet this lady had fun making this project.... if you click on it to enlarge the picture you'll see what I mean!

Quilt Cave

My Quilt Cave was buzzing yesterday. It feels good to know that people missed it while I was away.
Ursula has been busy over the Easter break. She quilted her Bargello quilt and came up with a perfect name for it..."Tardes de Verão no Guincho" that's "Summer Evenings on Guincho".
Guincho is a beach far west from Lisbon (apparently great for surfing) and Ursula's Bargello colours really describe the way it looks in the evenings. If you look closely at the stitching, you will see that she used the #4 Bernina stitch that the group discovered recently...
... and the borders are full of waving palm trees. Ursula was telling us how much her quilting has improved since she quilted so many charity lap quilts... as they say... 'practice makes perfect'
Jackie came to play. She needs 40 Kimono blocks and has been slowly producing them over the last year or so. The deadline for the quilt is not far away now so she is back in top gear!
Anita practiced her paper piecing skills during the break to produce this star block. Next week she will start the Daffodil wall hanging which is described as an 'intermediate' project.
Rosalia (Blue Lady) had to trim 78 half square triangle block ready to make the borders on her log cabin quilt. She decided that she is not a big fan of trimming....
Much to my delight, Regina came. She started a new charity quilt. It will be her favourite log cabin design. She spent the day cutting all the strips.
Ana brought in a pattern for a Dresdon Plate quilt as she wanted to learn now to make the blocks. They look lovely but we will search for an easier way to stitch down the curves.
Irene rooted around in the left over charity fabrics box and had enough small bits to make this block... just after telling me she wasn't going to start anything new... he he he
Anita always brings fabrics with which to practice new blocks and technics, I hope she will join them to make a sampler once there are enough....

Therese was the first to dive into the box, she was happy to find a little piece of white fabric to correct a mistake.... next came Ana who found a good green, joined by Anita who chose small pieces of portugese Chita, closely followed by Irene who found all the fabrics for her Dresden Plate block. No matter how many times we dip into this box, someone always finds that perfect little piece.... just after this little group, Regina was happy to find just what she was looking for too.

I'm back in town!

I'm back from my travels in the UK, back in sunny Portugal.... not, it's raining! This is the tent at Trentham Gardens in Staffordshire where they held the anual quilt show called "Quilts in the Garden". I was a little disappointed by the size of it when I arrived, but once I got inside I was VERY happy! I took 212 photos of quilts. The picture makes everything look very grey but it was actually a lovely day. I'll just show you these few pictures for now. I have so much to do to get the ship ticking again... I was really happy to see New York Beauty quilts. I love these colours and the borders just set it off perfectly. Unfortunately I can't find my programme to give any of the makers' names. I took this closer shot seeing as some of us are considering making our own versions.... you can also see some of the quilting design, I think it was hand quilted... simple and very effective. Here's another, embellished with applique. I like how this one spills into the borders.

Birte's Bunny's

Birte finished another wall hanging this week, in pleanty of time for Easter. I'm not sure why we have Bunny's for Easter... aside of bringing us chocolate eggs that is.

Quilt Class

Susana has her floor cushion top quilted. She will use thicker fabrics on the other side to give better 'wear and tear' to the cushion.
Her next floor cushion will have pineapple blossom blocks for the top.
This is Noemia's Pineapple Blossom quilt finished with a scrappy border......
These are blocks made from the bonus squares. They will have this fabulous blue as the sashing. The design is diagonal so Noemia won't have to worry about lining up the squares.


These are more bonus squares stitched into pinwheels. After a quick lesson on "crumbs" Noemia started to produce blocks to use inbetween the pinwheel blocks, they will be set 'on-point', just for a change, so she will need to make side and corner crumb triangles too.
The scraps seem to multiply when they are allowed out of the box....
Maria made a sandwich and, after buying a new walking foot, made good progress with the quilting.

Adelaide has been working on her Kaleidoscope blocks. At quilt class she decided to go back to basics by making a rail fence table runner. It is such a simple pattern and such a lot of basic patchwork can be learned by making one.
Amalia called in for a little guidance with her Kaffe Fassett project... looking good and just needs border strips to see the top complete.