Shall I call it an Autumn Quilt ?

It's not really necessary to name every quilt but it does make it easier to attach a name otherwise I'll end up referring to this latest effort as that dark floral thingy with the bits of orange.

So I have still been  trying to clean up some UFOs and use up some of the fabric I have while resisting the temptation to buy more. But at times I get easily distracted and concentrate on other interests so I haven't blogged for a while.

I still have to add a cream border then a noisy border made from the scraps. The bottom right corner is quite square but has been lifted by a breeze in the photo.

Often quilts never look quite like you envisioned them.  Most times when  I look at this quilt top  I see the strong-coloured blocks, but the next time the cream colour dominates.  The first time this happened to me I was amazed that my first thought was for the 21st Century Garden at the entrance of the Geelong Botanic Gardens, a modern arrangement I couldn't bear to live with.  It includes some metal sculptures which  represent trees.  Can you see the resemblance ?

The next time I looked at it I started seeing a collection of Eureka Flags (from Australian history at Ballarat).  My imagination is working overtime on what is a rather ordinary quilt top.

Earlier this year I had nearly finished a Starry Farmers quilt.  This is now finished..I hand quilted the centre then I did some random squiggly quilting with the machine on the outer border.  it was the first time I had tried this.

Winter officially starts the day after tomorrow so it's likely that I'll spend more time on P and Q over the next few months.

Starry Farmers

Lasr August I made some 6" Farmer's Wife blocks from Laurie Aaron Hird's book and they were looking good.

In the lull after Christmas I brought the basket out again and had a look at what I'd done.  Considering the quantity of UFOs I have I decided that perhaps it was time to convert these blocks into a quilt.

There weren't enough blocks to show them off with just a small sashing as in the picture so I cut a heap of triangles to put on on the corners of each on-point patchwork piece to turn it into a square. Once again I was just using up left-over pieces from other quilts.

I had  designed (scribbled ?) a layout on paper but when I put all the pieces in place on the carpet it looked a bit of a mess. So on and off for two days I crawled around the carpet rearranging the pieces and threatening to throw the whole lot in the bin.

In the end I took a photo to remind me of what went where - I really did need to pick up all the pieces so that I could get from one end of the room to the other without entering into a long jump competition.  The resulting quilt top is  -

Most of the time I call it Starry Farmers but at other times I call it HotchPotch as it really is a bit of a jumble. If I was doing it again I think I might try putting the small blocks together with a dark green sashing as in the first photo and use it on point as the centrepiece of the quilt, then build it up from there. It would probably have shown off the blocks to better advantage.  The one thing I am pleased with is that when adding the border I decided to extend the side stars into the border to make them complete. It is 54" square and the binding will be dark green.

I'll piece together some more of the bigger scraps to make the backing.

And just for fun, and because the more I play around on the computer the longer I can put off the things I should be doing -

Christmas Break-Up

We enjoy meeting at Lorraine's house every Friday afternoon and today was our last meeting for the year.  So here is what we were doing.

Lorraine has finisned her Christmas wall hanging 

 and now is working on an orange and green piece.  She still has to decided if it is going to be a wall hanging or perhaps a table runner.

 

Mary has finished the celtic pattern on her supper cloth and is now hand quilting it in a small square grid pattern.

Noelene is hand quilting her delicately coloured Kaleidoscope quilt.

Pam has finished the top for a Dinosaur cot quilt,

and I am still doing surface stitchery on quilt blocks.

Naturally with all our hard work we needed to have a rest with a refreshing cuppa.

We all wish you a very happy festive season with plenty of enjoyable quilting in the New Year.

Having some rest and relaxation

I'm amazed to see that my last post was well over two months ago.  But after the concentration of doing two quilts at once I think I needed a bit of rest and relaxation from embroidery and quilting though  I didn't expect it to last this long.  But now I'm starting to feel the stirring of a renewed interest and am planning what my post-Christmas activities will be.  Not that I've been completely idle.   I've started working again on some embroideries of vases of flowers which I hope will end up in a quilt one day.

BMX Quilt Top No 1

The first of my two BMX quilt tops is now finished.  Doing those mitred corners with matching patterns was almost too much for my sewing skill level. But I'm pleased with the overall effect and the personalization with J's racing number and photos. Now onto the second quilt - same layout but with different number and photos.

Making Progress

What with books to read, TV to watch, lunch dates, sickies to visit and many other things I don't seem to do so much sewing these days. But the centre square of the first of my two BMX quilts is now done and I'm reasonably happy with it.  So far it measures 29" square. Two different borders  come next.

New Projects - Two BMX Quilts

With the Fifties Dresses quilt now ready to have its binding sewn on I've started two quilts for two young boys who are enthusiastic BMX racers.  Here are the first few blocks waiting to be trimmed into 9" squares.  There also  is a narrow strip of bike chains which I will use as sashing and two photo prints showing their racing numbers on shields to be incorporated into the quilt somewhere.

I would also like to include photos of the boys - I've have had my first try at photo printing on fabric and am using purchased prepared fabric.  But I don't know that I'm completely satisfied with the quality of the prints. I used a HP C5280 printer and the normal colour ink cartridges.

I've been reading an article which mentions using Vivera ink and another that mentions Archival inks.

If anyone has any advice or useful links they would me most welcome.  Actually this photo fascinates me as at first glance it looks as though the front bike is about to ride right out of the picture.   So now I'm tempted to juggle that lower piece of fabric to match up the curve of the photo wheel with the fabric wheel to improve the illusion !