Quilt Cave, part 2

In this part 2 bit I put a few Quilt Cave shots, they are very interresting to me so I will share them....
Amalia is making her second sandwich....


Ursula and Sally laying out the blocks for a charity top.....

amongst others.... Rita sewing her rail fence blocks together...

Anita working on the window quilt blocks...

general business and chatter....

Lunchtime... 13 of us stayed for lunch!
Amalia and I had our birthdays this week so we had two birthday cakes too!
Happy Birthday sung in English, Portugese, Romanian, Spanish, Jordanian (?) & Malasian... very cool.

Quilt Class

It was a very busy morning again.I didn't get chance to take many pictures as I was being called from all angles...In this picture, from back to front we have Antonia, she was making a log cabin block, Lisete, in another lovely fluffy jumper, she was putting the borders on the Rail Fence that she started in the Saturday class, next is Noemia, she was making binding and Therese was hand piecing block number 2, Judy's Star.
Spot the mistake?
This is Antonia's Ohio Star, started by hand... finished by sewing machine... another convert!
This is Noemia's quilt, also started last week. She decided it needeed to be bigger so she set the blocks on point and added a pretty square between each posy.
These are some of the "4 patch posies"

Quilt Cave

A few of us gathered in the Quilt Cave this morning to work on the quilts we are making to donate. We made a lot of progress thanks to Ursula, Arabela, Garen and myself.

This is one quilt top that Ursula put together at home. We are using a very simple design for these projects....

This is the one we made today.
We still have lots to do and pleanty of fabrics left so we will continue on Thursday.

Sofia's Rubbish Singer!

This is Sofia's sewing machine. It is a Singer and it’s one from the top of their range, a "Professional XL 1000"

Sofia's mother gifted this machine to her, especially for her to learn patchwork and quilting.

Sofia has been coming to quilt classes for a long time now. The problem is, that not once has Sofia been able to do any class or an All Day Sewing Day in the Quilt Cave, without screaming at this machine.

It makes very messy stitches.... all loopy on the back, bobbin side. We had tried many times to get it sewing evenly, changing needles, threads, rewinding bobbins, cleaning.... nothing worked. So Sofia took the machine for a full service with a much trusted sewing machine shop. On return, it sewed well... for approximately 2 metres. So Sofia took the machine to the authorised dealer for Singer.
They looked at it, sent it back, charged their fee etc..... but it still would not sew without looping the bobbin thread. So she took it back to the Singer dealer. They said the machine would have to be sent away to the main technician for Singer, this was in Porto, so, as Sofia lives in Lisbon, she was to expect to be without a machine for two weeks.

6 weeks later, no machine.

Sofia went back to the shop several times to enquire about the Singer. No luck!

Eventually, 2 months later, the machine came back. Sofia emailed me to tell me she had to pay €93 to get the repaired machine back. She was very happy to get it back.... Until she came to use it and discovered it was no different than when she sent it, but her purse was lighter!

Sofia returned the machine to the shop, who, in turn, returned the machine to Porto. 4 weeks later the machine was returned with a message for Sofia not to send it back again because the technician there, in the main Singer technical place, did not know what was wrong with the machine and they cannot mend it!!!

Well how is that for customer service!!!!

Sofia's sewing machine, Singer, top of the range, computerised, professional sewing machine is useless and Singer can't do anything to help her!!!

What is a girl to do in this situation???
I really don't know.
Does anyone have a good plan? An idea of how we can help Sofia resolve this. The machine is out of it's guarantee, only just though.

It has hardly been used, looks like new, been very carefully looked after... and yet Singer say, “Don't bring it back, we don't know how to mend it!” Well, if they don't... phew….. who does!!!

Quilt Class

This was the first Saturday Class of 2009 at Arco Iris A Metro and we had a full house!
Alexandra has finally finished her play mat. She is very pleased with it and will now make the Rail Fence project because she wants to learn everything, from the beginning.....
she decided to use four strips instead of three, she got them all stitched together and ironed.

Two new ladies, Antonia & Josefina, will hand piece their projects, here they have made their templates and are drawing round them.
A good tip is to put some fine sandpaper under the fabric to keep it steady while you draw.
These are Antonia's fabrics, the block will be an Ohio Star.....
These are Josefina's, she says she can feel her stress leaving her already! ha ha ha, patchwork is the best remedy for the blues!

Cristina, after finding her average strip width, is cutting her Rail Fence blocks. She already owned a mat and a rotary cutter but she normally used a regular ruler...
today she treated herself to a new ruler and was surprised how much easier it is to cut precisely...
Licinia started a new project using old jeans, she spent the class cutting lots of squares from the jeans and some coloured fabrics. Tough work cutting denim!
Lisete (she had a lovely, hand knit, fluffy jumper on, I kept finding myself stroking it,,,, he he he) she was using my favourite sunflower fabric with a green and deep red to complement it.

Last year (a few weeks ago) Suzete was hand piecing a table runner... she has now come over to the other side and decided to try her hand with machine piecing, she did really well....
here are her blocks, they will make a pillow for a special friend.
Ana Maria's Rail Fence, she was worried about the amount of stuff to remember, it seems a lot in the beginning but she was confidently cutting and stitching 1/4" seams in no time at all, this will also be a pillow.

Quilt Cave, part 1

We got a lot of blocks made with the box of donated fabrics. Here are a few photographs of the work in progress.
Therese and Sally choosing which fabrics they wanted to work with. Eventually they got the idea that it wasn't necessary, for these quilts... anything goes!
This is the cutting table at the beginning, Ursula and Garen made a start cutting the 6" squares and 2" strips....
soon most of us had jobs to do, like on a production line.....
Once Garen heard the buzz of Arabela's BSR, she treated herself to a tea break!
more action now... eventually we all understood what we were to do ....
Therese worked like a machine herself racing through the stitching with chain piecing, she was really enjoying herself!
time to decide how the pattern would work and....
all the blocks in place for charity quilt number 1.....
and .... Ta daaaaaa,
not too bad for a group effort.
Many many more blocks were made and next week we will continue to make more.

Quilt Cave, part 2

We started the morning looking at beautiful quilt tops....
Therese's Pineapple Blossom. The border blocks are bonus blocks that are left after making the triangles of the pineapples. These bonus blocks can be used in many ways.

Ursula certainly got our attention with this Bargello beauty. The pattern, she says, is from a magazine. I love how the bargello runs into the border. That is Anneliese on the right.

Amalia made this quilt. She was very proud of herself for doing the whole thing without any help. It is doubly difficult when the pattern is written in english and you only speak portuguese!
This Quilt Cave picture shows everyone busy, Sally is pinning, Anita is trimming her bargello strip set. the pink quilt draped is Ana's Square Dance quilt base. She was marking and cutting it all up ...
Anita was very curious how the Bargello works, here she is trimming the edges ready to sew the whole thing into a tube before she starts to cut the strips....

all done....this was one big tube, now tiny tubes cut in varying widths, from 3" to 3/4" and Anita then had to break, them in order....
to get this rising and falling effect, it is such a clever method, one of my favourites!
Arabela was working on a gift for a friend, here she is quilting using her BSR...
This is her project before it was quilted.... Later Arabela also embellished it with fancy stitches.
I forgot to tell Ana to keep her square dance blocks in order when she had cut them out..... so she didn't...... To be able to piece them as pinwheels we had to jigsaw all the pieces back together, it took ages....
Thank goodness Sofia was able to help me, she could be a proffesional "puzzler"......
Once Sofia came over to help we were able to get it sorted and the pinwheels finally worked... this is going to be fabulous. Ana has all the border pieces still to cut up.
Sofia was working on her "Scrappy Bargello" from Quiltville.com with lovely batiks and Fassett fabrics from two Jelly Rolls.

one strip set complete, 7 to go!
It is for a double bed size quilt


Amalia worked on a few different projects, this is one of them, a continuation from quilt class on Wednesday.