A Years' Work

This week has seen the beginning of Autumn, and what a relief that is going to be after such a hot summer!   I know I definitely will be welcoming cooler days which will make spending time in the sewing room more comfortable.  

Here is my latest Barbara Brackman BOW!

I used fabrics from Judy Rothermel's Nottingham Village range.   They contain some gorgeous blues and browns!

In the last while a few people have commented on the quilt I have featured in my header.   This is how it came to be!

This quilt was made in 2007.   It took all of that year to do!   The blocks are 6"x 6" and come from a book by Rosemary Youngs called "The Amish Circle Quilt" (2004). 

A class I had signed up for doing miniature blocks was cancelled due to lack of numbers, so I decided to see what I had on my shelf,  Rosemary's book had been sitting quietly waiting for me to discover its' secrets!!!

I didn't want to make all 121 blocks, so I chose 49 pieced blocks - there are a mixture of pieced and applique blocks in the book - to make a quilt that would fit neatly on a queen-size bed.

Some of the blocks are quite intricate and were best made using foundation paper piecing.  

This little 'school-house' block was not in the book, but I really wanted to include this block, so I drafted one to the size I needed and foundation pieced it.

The 'buggy' block was actually an applique block, so again I drafted a block onto graph paper and foundation pieced this as well.

This block was quite a challenge as the pieces are very small, and foundation pieced.

This nine-patch is hand-quilted, but I used a mix of hand and machine quilting throughout the quilt, and since these early photos were taken have added more quilting to some of the blocks that only had very sparse quilting on the blocks at the time.   I treated each block as a miniature quilt in its own right.

The quilt was made entirely from scraps left over from other projects except for the sashing, border and backing, so it has a very scrappy look, some of these pieces I have had for a very long time.   I treat fabric like gold and throw nothing away if it can be used no matter how small!!!   So it was natural to call the quilt "Tiny Treasures".

This was my draft drawing using graph paper, I traced the foundations from this onto very fine tear-away which I used for all the foundationed blocks, it was a bit of a nightmare cutting away all the pieces from the back of the blocks, but you do what you have to, to get the result you want.

These are some of the projects that are featured Rosemary's book.

This little item was not available when I made my quilt!   In fact I didn't even have a computer or EQ at that time, I traced each block directly from the book and did it all the old-fashioned way!!! that's probably why it took a year to complete!!!   Nowadays quilters have the luxury of being able to print all the patterns they want directly from their PC, how good is that!!!

Today we had our Quiltbee group gathering, and the girls have really been busy doing their homework.
We thought we'd start the year by making small sewing keeps, pincushions etc.   On one of the Yahoo groups I belong to one of the ladies gave us a link to an amazing pincushion pattern.

It's called the "Eight Pointed Civil War 'Buckshot' Pincushion, there is a free pattern on the Marcus Fabrics website:
http://www.marcusfabrics.com/makeit/projects/eight-pointed_civil_war_buckshot_pincushion/civil_war_buckshot_pincushion.pdf

It is quite an incredible looking item:

This is Lorraine and Rita with their creations:

Deb and Ethal look happy with themselves!

And Margaret really excelled herself, she made 2 pincushions plus three sewing keeps!!! (You know who the over achiever is in our group LOL)!!!   Needless to say I didn't get round to making one of these interesting pincushions at all, pitiful really!, I really will have to lift my game!!!

I have been sewing, every minute I get a chance to, and have been putting together some QAYG blocks for the Quilts for Christchurch project.   Another member Sharon is putting some together as well and a few of the other members will try and get some made to send away to get made into quilts for those who have lost everything in the earthquake.

Thanks for dropping by, I wish you all a very relaxed and sewful weekend,

Take care,

Merilyn