BOW # 22

This week's CW block took a bit of thinking through!   I generally try and work out the how's and why's of measurements myself.   My methods however are all to achieve accuracy without distortion, and when dealing with so many cross-grain cuts it can be tricky!!!

Not sure how happy I am with my colour choices this week!  I am trying to get a range of colours included in these blocks because my first tendency is to go for the beautiful rich reds and blues.  

I opted for mustard and blue, but looking at all my blocks together I really will have to try and include more greens!

I have also completed the setting triangle segments for my Vintage Hexie quilt.   I had a play on EQ and experimented with different simple blocks to include.   Here is an update!!!

These are Foundation Paper Pieced and are not too fussy as to distract from the Hexie blocks.   I intend to add a 4" border.   Hopefully this week I may get some time to do that.

The 30's prints are wonderful to work with, so different from the repros I usually play with.   They are such happy colours and prints, ummmmm.......they could get addictive!!!

I know this weekend is a long one for our American friends.   I hope you all have a safe and reflective Memorial Day!

Thankyou for dropping by,
take it easy!

Merilyn

A Little Hexie Progress

Barbara Brackmans's CW BOW's seem to be moving along at quite a pace, or is it just that time is going passed too quickly?  This latest block took nearly no time at all to put together, such a simple and effective
design.

The little hexies that I received recently from Lyn have really captured my heart and imagination.   I had a play around on EQ to create a setting for them.   I took out my genuine Feedsack bits, but they didn't seem to work, so I had a rummage around in my 30's prints stash and found they worked better for the setting I plan to use them for.

These poor little hexies had a pretty sorry look to them after having lived in a cupboard for so long (maybe 70 years?).   They really needed a bit of an uplift and rejuvenation.   I had some advice from various ladies who suggested giving them a soak and gentle wash. 

I had nothing to lose really, so I soaked them in Nappy San, for several hours, gently hand washed them in warm water using liquid soap and after rinsing them well, left them to dry on a towel overnight.

Most of the staining on the outer white hexies pieces had disappeared, the coloured print fabric looked cleaner too, in fact they look quite pleased with themselves!  

I gently removed the outer white hexie fabric by removing the stitching holding them to the main part of the flowerette.   I have to say, the woman who did the handpiecing really knew what she was doing.   Her stitches are tiny, even and very stable.  These blocks were meant to stay intact LOL!!!  I hope she would not be too offended that I had to pick these pieces off.  

I gently ironed them and hand appliqued them onto 'vanilla' coloured Cotton Supreme squares.

I thought I'd share a bit of a sneak peak at my progress with these treasures.  The centre of the quilt will be set on point, now I have to piece setting triangle sections to square it up and add a border.   I will probably do quite a bit of hand quilting on this little quilt and use just a bit of machine quilting as well.

I think they look quite happy sitting there, the botton hexie flower is just a little bigger than the others, not sure what was going on there!  They were definitely made by the same person as the style of stitching and piecing was exactly the same as the others.  Lyn told me they came from America and were made in the 1930's as far as she knew.

I have been experiencing some issues with BLOGGER again recently, haven't been able to post comments on some people's blogs but can on others?????   Rest assured I have tried, it's quite frustrating, and I know I'm not the only one.   Several bloggers have mentioned the same issues, sure hope they get things back on track again soon!!!

Hope everyone is safe, after all the tornadoes that have swept through some US states again this week.   Seeing the devastation on the evening news is hard to watch with so much destruction and loss of life, whole communities ripped to shreads.   It looks really terrifying.    My thoughts are with them!

Take care and thanks for dropping by!!!

Merilyn

New from Old

I'm a bit behind in posting again this week.   But better late than never!!!!
Last weekend's Barbara Brackman CW block was great to do, I really enjoyed putting this one together!

This week I received a very generous offering.   Lyn at Blue Bird Quilts  http://bluebirdquilts-lyn.blogspot.com/ send me four vintage Hexagon flower blocks.  

I had been reading her blog about the subject of vintage blocks and giving them a new lease of life.   I made the comment that I had never owned vintage blocks, and what do you know! she offered me four little hexie blocks!

Late last year Lyn had a bunch of these blocks and offered them to whomever would like to rebirth these little treasures, so she created the "Make Do Memories Miniature Quilt Challenge".

She featured some wonderful photos of small quilts that a few of the ladies who participated had created.
I will now have to let these little blocks talk to me and see if we can come to some arrangement to allow their cuteness to continue in another form.

I have some vintage Feedsack Fabric and some 30's prints, so will audition them to see if any of them will be happy to live beside these little vintage orphans.

I have heard one lady actually gently unpicked some of the hexies and resewed them, removing badly stained pieces.   I will probably do the same.   The existing hand stitching is quite lovely, so I don't want to undo all the history that surrounds them.

This past week also saw the arrival of a magazine I purchased at 1/2 price from Martingale.   I love small quilts so this was hard to pass up.

There is a lovely selection of small quilts to inspire.....

Thankyou for dropping by, I hope you all have a lovely weekend and hopefully get some sewing happening!!!

Take care,

Merilyn

It's Been a Long Week

It seems like forever since I last posted... 12 days actually.   Firstly I had a very busy week, long hours and too dog-tired to put a sentence together in the evenings.   Then when I finally did have the time to post mid-week BLOGGER decided to go AWOL!!!   At first I thought it was me and my computer, but my dear nerdy computer friend checked things out and all was fine my end, so that meant there was trouble at the other end LOL!!!

Anyway this morning all is back where it should be, whew!   you don't realise how much we have come to depend on this cyber thingy!   We have embraced this communication so well that when things go awry, boy! do we feel cheated!!!  I mean.....how dare they....LOL!!!

I did enjoy the latest Barbara Brackman BOW, and yes I used purple again, one of my favourite colours!!!

There is one tiny glitch in this block!  I must have taken my eye off the ball for a moment and now it sticks out like rabbits ears (to me anyway!), but I will leave it as it is, wasn't too happy with myself, but I will try and live with it!!

This week also saw Needle Cases arriving at their new homes.   Kathy Tracy's yahoo group SmallQuiltTalk hosted a Needle Case swap.   We could use Kathy's designs or any other design we liked, some people created their own!

We were assigned swap partners, we provided some clues as to the colours we liked and then we went for it.   My swap partner lives in North Carolina.   Donna and I agreed to post our Needle Cases on the same day so we would get them hopefully within a day of each other.   The postal services did their job and I got mine on Thursday.   Donna got hers on Friday (Australian time). 

I love the deep mustard print Donna used on the cover of the Needle Case.   This is one of the Needle Cases featured in Kathy's book "Remembering Adelia".  

Needle Cases were made for and by the Civil War soldiers to carry items needed to make quick repairs to their clothing.   Donna also included some beautiful Clover needles.   Always a handy extra!!

I decided to make my own design of Needle Case.  I had items I wanted to include in the N/C, so I worked around that to determine the style.

Donna stated she liked brick red or plum so that determined the covering fabric.

I had a bit of play around with a calico prototype to work out my measurements and where I wanted to place pockets and compartments for the items I had.

The bulgy compartment on the right in the picture contains a couple of spools of cotton thread.   The 100% wool flap for pins and needles was made and hand-dyed by a local lady.

I had such fun playing with ribbon, trim (hand-dyed) and buttons. It was a very satisfying project and really made me use my brain.   The days I made this was in a week of relentless pouring rain, it was so nice to be cosy'd up in my sewing room putting this together.

Donna likes it, so that makes it all worth it!!!!

Some of the girls on Kathy's group have asked for the pattern.   I didn't take photos of the construction process, silly me! so I will probably make another one and do a tutorial sometime and post it!

My Father had a small Needle Case I used to love to play with when I was a child.   I have no idea where he got it from or how old it is, but I was always fascinated with it.   It is made of plastic, in the shape of an egg and it was made by Singer.  My Mother never sewed (she was a knitter).  I've inherited my love of sewing from my Grandmother!

I am fortunate enough to have it.   I found it again when I last visited my parents home and was having a delve around in his box of  bits and pieces.   I found a little glass egg-cup to use as a holder, although the Sewing Egg is about the size of a Ducks egg.

It unscrews in the middle and contains several small spools you can put cotton thread on, some needles that fit into a small hollow tube in the middle (with a small lid) and 2 thimbles, one has 'Singer' printed on the bottom of it.  I used to love playing with this and am sure my small fingers wound some of the cotton thread that is still there today (it looks like the clumsy attempts of a child)! 

I really treasure this small and unusual item, I know my Father loved it too, and looked after it.   I will be it's keeper until I pass it on to another family member who will treasure it also.

We are really experiencing the chills of Autumn and I know that Winter is waiting impatiently to breathe it's icy breathe upon us!  In some of the southern districts of Australia snow has been brazen enough to show itself......too early, way to early, we're not even half way through May yet!!!!  I think it will be a very cold winter this year.   The Liquid Amber tree in my backyard has already dropped a lot of its leafy coat!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and lots of sewing time!!!

Merilyn

The Plain Truth!

First cab off the rank today is the latest Barbara Brackman BOW.   The jury is out about my fabric choices this week,  you wouldn't believe the mess I make when I have all my fabric strewn about trying to put a pleasing selection together!   I don't usually have too many problems, maybe I have too many choices!!!  That's probably it LOL!!!

Except for the shirting, the fabric is from B.Brackman's Civil War Chronicles range.

Another UFO sees completion.  Whoo-hoo!  Fortunately it wasn't a UFO for too long, I started it in January and finished it on 30 April.

I haven't worked out if it is a 'Trip Around the World' (my first thought!) or a 'Sunshine & Shadow'.   I have asked the ladies on my SmallQuiltTalk (Kathy Tracy's) yahoo group and there seems to be some difference in interpretation, I also checked a website http://www.squidoo.com/amishquiltdesigns, and I am none the wiser!!!, much of a muchness it seems, so I will stick to my first description of TATW! 

I machine quilted the centre of the quilt as there were too many seams with such small pieces and handquilted the borders.   I just used scraps and small pieces that were left overs from other projects!  It measures 20"x 20".

I happen to love Amish quilts, love the solid colours and how they blend in so well together, you don't really have to try to hard to get a great look!!!   They really are timeless in their appeal and live comfortably in a modern or character/vintage home.

Another one I made earlier this year as one of Kathy's challenges also contains an assortment of scraps!

For this pinwheel quilt I did handquilting all over.   Finished size 17"x 23".

Several years ago I was inspired by an exhibition of Amish quilts to make this Double-nine patch.

I only machine quilted the double-nine-patch blocks, all the rest is hand quilted.   It was my first major handquilting project, I used a hoop and I managed to knock it over in one month, March 2003.  It measures around 42"x 42".  I tried to use traditional quilting motifs as much as possible.   It hangs in my lounge on a fairly rudimentary hanging device hooked onto the picture rail, the length of dowel purchased from the local hardware shop!!!  I'm ok with it LOL!!!

As I mentioned I visited a wonderful exhibition of 34 quilts several years ago of Amish quilts of Lancaster County (July 1997).   I still have the guide book from the exhibition and the newspaper cutting.   It was held at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. The exhibition was called 'Lit from Within'.

The booklet calls this quilt Sunshine & Shadow.  Here are some of quilts that were featured in the exhibition.

This one in particular really caught my imagination.   I had done no quilting at all prior to seeing this exhibition and had always been fascinated, but didn't like the flowery 70's looking quilts, which were the only ones I'd seen around, until I saw these magical pieces of practical art work.  I was completely mesmerised and spent the entire day at the gallery finding it difficult to drag myself away at closing time!!!  

I bought a couple of quilt books and sought out a shop in Brisbane where I bought fabric for this quilt.   The lady in the shop was a little dismayed that a beginner would want to start with this one, and no pattern either LOL! She was very gracious and helped me select the fabric and supplies I needed. She gave me the dimensions for the d-9-p block and I was off.  But sometimes being naive is a good thing, there are no limits and no holds barred.   To cut a long story short I did make the quilt top, but as yet it remains a UFO, it has lain in wait for years now, I had some weird idea I would handquilt the entire thing, but I think that is a bit 'pie in the sky' LOL!   Still it waits........

Late last week I received this first issue of a new magazine from the US.

It contains some lovely projects and quilts.  Here is a peek!

This is one seriously cute bear!!!!

My thoughts go to all the people who have been displaced recently in the horrendous tornadoes that have swept through some US States.  I couldn't believe my eyes at the destruction I saw on the news, and the number of lives lost is incomprehensible.   Our planet has experienced some devastating weather events this year, I hope it settles down soon.....

Have a great week everyone and stay safe,

Keep your sewing fingers busy

Merilyn