Stitching News

 

Shirley came to play. She needed to purchase just what she needed for some Faux Pipped Binding to finish this quilt. Can you see the fabulous quilting? This is a favoured design by many of my customers and students, so easy!

Deb's has been stripping for ages... she needed ten strip sets and each one had 4 fabrics... that's a lot of straight lines and great practice for the scant quarter inch patchwork seam. This week she was able to perfectly press all those strip sets and chop them all up again! You can see the pattern coming together nicely. It's the Cats On The Fence design, but with Deer, no cats.

Oh My Goodness!

We are all watching Cheryl, and all the fun she's having, while making this quilt top with great interest. It's from the book Organic Applique... Yes, of course it is availabubble in my very own shop as are all those fabrics, Ha! It's so different isn't it? 

Fabulous & Finished

 Lots of projects have been finished recently. Almost everyone is saying that 'Next Year' they will start festive projects much sooner!
I never heard that before did I?? ha!

Our Pam's delightful Festive gifting stockings are fabulously finished, Toot toot toot. Pam has quilted lots of the tiny details so these are extra special and they will be loved. They might have started of as  run of the mill Stocking Panels but Pam has worked her magic on them.

All those tiny folded triangles for the Prairie Points have been given a new home. This is a very special Secret Santa gift, I'm surprised Suzie can give it away! It's a fabulous, pretty fast, finish so toot toot toot Suzie! 

Princess Jackie's granddaughter designed this quilt, sort of all by her very own self, the girl has talent eh! All Jackie had to do was follow the instructions given... I think the granddaughter is about 8 or 9 years old so the instructions might have been a little bit vague.

I'm not sure, but I think this is the back. Jackie quilted a rabbit and some leaves and lot's of beautiful things, like flowers in the borders. If you click for a closer look you might just make them out. Toot toot toot Jackie... tooting for an almost finished and fabulous, even thought there's a tad more stitching needed for the binding as we won't see it again.

This extremely cute sheep quilt belongs to Rose, soon to be Granny Rose... I'm pretty sure the new baby will be well supplied by hand made lovely-ness for ever. The dog is modelled on the real one, how cute is that! Toot toot toot Rose, a fabulous finish and all in very good time too.

Just in the nick of time, Fiona can breath a sigh of relief as her Table Runner is no longer causing trouble.... It is not only fabulous It Is totally finished and looks great on it's new table. Toot toot toot-etty-toot Fiona!

Stitching News

 Do you remember me making this cushion? It's no big deal if you don't remember really, as it was back in November 2017, ha!

Lots of my customers made a Festive Bunting Cushion of their very own after seeing this one. This week Suzie decided to make another one. By the time she had chosen and prepared her background pieces and folded all the tiny Prairie Points (pile under little green arrow), it was time to go home!

Jan's First quilt sandwich! It's a good size as it is and Jan chose to make it smaller than the pattern suggested. She's only made a Table Topper before so quilting this will be her Sewing Prevention Season challenge. She has a Juki DX7 now, so it will all be fine.

Shirley very proudly held up her fabulous and finished Dinosaur quilt. Although the pattern is made up of traditional Log Cabin blocks with Quarter Log Cabin centres... can you see that? This pattern has been made up by Sheila, all by her very own self... mathemisms included.

Dinosaurs leave big footprints don't they!!!

What a fabulous addition to the back of this gifting quilt...

Toot toot toot Sheila.

Stitching News

 We've had quite a rush on sandwiches just lately...

Pam came to make her very large and quite stunning sandwich, it is larger than all my tables pushed together so we pinned it in two stages. This is going to need big arm muscles to quilt... Our Pam will look like Popeye when it's done!! 

Fiona was so relieved to be getting her binding sewn on to this festive table topper. It has been a real challenge for her as none of the little panels were printed straight enough on the fabric. It's almost there now, just a bit of hand stitching on the back.

All Day Di made 4 little pram quilts with Winnie The Pooh character fabrics a while ago. They were a perfect hit for when baby arrived. She soon grew out of them though, baby not Di. No problem we decided... Apartment joining comes in handy for all types of situations. All Di had to do was unpick the original binding from all four little quilts and the rest was easy... what a great idea!! Joined up apartment-ly with some lovely fresh binding fabric.

My Mum Gwynneth finished her festive gifting cushions. 

How cute are they!

Both have been made from kits, available to order from my very own shop...

Both have a hidden zip in the back too.

Toot toot toot Mum, two fabulous and finished projects!

Stitching News

Don't tell her that I told you about this... but ha ha ha ha! Bev asked me for quilting ideas. This is her first quilt and she wanted to try something different after the shadow quilting on the Rail Fence rails. I suggested little tree shapes, her fabrics have trees on them so it would look really good... 
Bev drew one tree onto a piece of paper, cut it out then stitched around the template, to see whether she liked this method...
Yes she did, she held up the quilt and said, as she looked at the front side,
" Oh yes, look how good it looks..." 

"Look on the back" says I, "the quilting shows up great on the back"

One Festive Cup Coaster... she didn't notice the machine working harder to quilt through the extra layers! Good job Bev has a seam ripper! We only laughed a lot!

Number two Tomte for Farmer Lynda... she discovered a very good way of quilting the hat part without stopping to tie off the threads. We've all seen this little fellow pop into the shops now and lots of social media stuff... maybe we set a trend!!!

Rose continued working on her baby gifting project. 

There's a lot of quilting still to be done but there's no rush. 

Little round bits need Steady Eddie type stitching.

Shirley made a great backing for this sandwich, you will see that soon as this quilt will be finished lick-etty-split... It's a special Christmas Gifting quilt.

Christabelle made a sandwich with the most delicious fabric on the back. She pattern matched it very carefully... sometimes that is just the ticket, even though it can be a little tricky...

A few days later Chris sent this picture of her quilting in progress. My word that looks professional! but it's all been done by Chris on her Juki... all by her very own self and we are ALL Very impressed!

Fabulous & Finished

 Two for one...

New Sue made this lovely quilt. She's made the design before but in a different colourway. It's a Jelly Roll friendly pattern, I think from a Jelly Roll book, which just means that all the little squares were two and a half inches cut, with the addition of the Snowball blocks.

It's going to be gifted to a very lucky lady

It has an absolutely beautiful Art Gallery fabric on the back that was a perfect co-ordinator to Sue's quilt top fabrics. It shows up the lovely quilting too.

Toot toot toot Sue, a fabulous finish, as usual!

With so many small bits left over Sue was able to make this lovely cushion to go with the quilt. Simple and very accurate diagonal line quilting, Perfect really, we do love a straight line!

A perfectly hidden zipped backing finished it off just right.

More toot toot toots Sue, fabulous and finished must have a fanfare!

The "Bleep Bleeping" Dog!

 Our Norma lives in a family home that recently received a much loved and longed for puppy. So small and cute and cuddly... well he was small, is still cute and maybe not so cuddly... he's enormous now and teenager-ish. 

In the summer of 2019, do you remember? everything was so normal! Side tracking there... anyway, in the summer of 2019 Norma finished her Batik Beauty. Each block quilted separately and joined together 'apartment-ly' she loved the quilt so much. It was gifted to her daughter, who also loved it. These aren't the best pictures of Norma's beautiful quilt but you will get the idea...

Double sided and just fabulous. Colourful and happy...

Oh Dear... you have probably guessed the rest....

Look at this...

To say Norma and her daughter were upset is an understatement.

They are presuming the blooming dog was the culprit, ha!

This is one part of the Batik Beauty. 

It was so damaged that Norma cut it out. 

Hoping to easily patch it up. 

Norma made a mini quilt to sew into the hole, but how??

We tried a few ideas but they weren't really working...

"This event is part of the quilt's life story, so let's not try to hide it..." I suggested... and luckily, Norma agreed...

 I cut the hole a little bit bigger, but more rectangular, easier to cope with. Norma's Mini Quilt was then trimmed to the same size and was tacked in place by hand, with the intention of holding it in place for bordering with strips of Batik fabric. But we played with a few fancy stitches on Norma's Juki. This framed the "Story" beautifully... it wasn't too tricky to stitch...

The back looked great too. The sashing had been damaged so it was also replaced, obviously replaced... and I don't know whether you can quite see... We unanimously decided that it would be a great idea to mark the date it happened...

There you go, I cropped it so you can see.

Signed and sealed...

Blooming Bleep Bleeping Dog, Guilty as charged!

Stitching News

How did you get on with that blooming challenging weather?
For me, it was a very busy weekend only hampered by the snow, the ice and the damage done by the very strong winds. Things will have to be repaired, I don't quite know where to start on the list!! hey ho. A very tricky weekend, not much better on the Monday either.

Most of us got to Checkley for the Sunday Funday Sewday, I only slid over the once helping folk inside with all of their sewing paraphernalia. Our day was cut a little short as heavy snow started again around 2pm so we played safe and packed up a bit early, and it was a good job we did!
My poor trades guys worked through it all, they were absolutely frozen to the bones, but they managed to do a lot. I'll have to wait now, till they can come back.

Let's start with a Toot toot toot fanfare for Suzie's fabulous and finished snuggle up on the sofa quilt. She's very pleased to have it finished in time for this cold snap too. It's bright and warm looking isn't it. Suzie says she didn't realise how large the quilt was until she tried it on her lap! How funny.

Jan spent the afternoon getting all the side setting triangles in the right place, and the right way round. On-Point settings are always a bit tricky to get right... worth it though, this is coming along fabulously.

I've accommodated quite a few sandwich making sessions in my classroom, all part of my great customer service! This Tomte Quilt is one of a few Farmer Lynda is trying to complete before the big day... she's given up cleaning and sleeping!! they will be done!

This sandwich belongs to Josie. She's been working on the top, with Tilda fabrics and a Tilda pattern, for a very long time but now has 'Bitten The Bullet' and made her sandwich... so it can finally be quilted. It's the largest project Josie has ever worked on so she's feeling quite challenged.

And even larger, is this top... recently completed by Our Pam, It's huuuuge!

She had lots of two and a half inch strips left over and in the book they have a great way of using them up for the backing, this impressed Our Pam, so she followed the advice. More on that very soon.