Sunflowers and WIP's

Although I have had the Dresden plate for my next Rainbow cushion pieced for ages, it has been gathering dust in the cupboard whilst other projects muscled their way to the top of the pile. Well, it finally got to the top of the pile, nudged a little by the fact that this month's Craftsy BOM blocks are Dresden plates! I haven't started my Craftsy blocks for July yet, but I have watched the video and I was taken with the way that Amy Gibson finishes the centres of her Dresden plates. She cuts out two circles of fabric and sews them all the way around with a 1/4" seam then makes a cut in the back of the circle and turns the circle fabrics outside in. Seemed a lot less work than needleturn applique, which is what I had intended to do, so I gave it a go :)

And here it is, I found it hard to get the circle shape exactly right, but it is not far off and it was a lot quicker than trying to get an even circle with needleturn applique that is for sure! As I am trying to use new techniques with these cushions, I decided to have a go at using one of the embroidery stitches on the sewing machine to frame the sunflower.

All was going surprisingly well until I got distracted! Then what had been a nice, even spacing of vine tendrils became a rather dense vine. Unpicking dense machine embroidery is no joke, and I definitely learned my lesson to pay attention all the time!

Still another new technique tried and, if not mastered, at least completed, and another project moved from waiting to finished!

So this is how my WIP list looks now

Completed projects

• Shades of Green, Fleur Bleu, Checkered Heart, Orange, Sunflower and Reindeer cushions
• Orphan Block needle roll, Pieced Arc Tea towel, Purse and Padded Hangers Tutorial
• Sunflower and Sew Happy QAL quilt
• Play mini-quilt challenge quilt 
• Patchwork Block, Dragon and Fashionista Bags

Ongoing

• 6 blocks of In Color Order HST BOM 
• (Almost) Irish Chain quilt basted
• 8 Zakka-style SAL projects completed
• Teatime quilt pieced 
• Let's get Acquainted Blog Hop project 
• 5 blocks of NY Beauty QAL completed and fabric cut for remaining 5 blocks
• 12 blocks of Craftsy BOM completed (on schedule)  
• In the Bag Ugly Fabric challenge fabrics arrived still waiting for inspiration!
• 4 Summer Quilt Bee blocks completed and sent
• 1 Star of Africa Bee block completed and sent

Waiting

• Indigo and violet rainbow cushions
• Last block of Sampler quilt
• Amy Butler bag
• Christmas mini quilts
• Practically Paper Piecing Blog Hop project 

The waiting list is looking pretty healthy, now I need to get to grips with some of the projects that have been loitering on that ongoing list before they get lost under all that dust!

If, like me, you have several orphan paper-pieced blocks lying around waiting to be made into something wonderful, their wait may soon be over. Kristy at Quiet Play has just announced the Practically Paper Piecing Blog Hop, which kicks off on August 1st and runs for the whole month, except Sundays. Naturally there will be giveaways and prizes involved with a linky party at the end for showing off all the wonderful creations. I can't wait, but will have to as my day on the Blog Hop is not until August 27th!  

If you haven't already check out this week's Blogs on the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop, you are missing out on

July 17

    Katie from Kati's Quilting

    Claire from Sewing over Pins
    Caroline from Quilting in the Cold 

July 19

    Jamie from Sweet Baby Jamie

    Janine from Rainbow Hare Quilts 

Looking forward to seeing all your progress this week.
Linking up to WIP Wednesday , Quilt Story and We Did it Wednesday

Monthly Mosaic

We are just back from a trip to Warsaw and I haven't even had time to sort out the photos or write up a post, but I realised that it was still the first of the month and I had time to link up to the Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts, so rustled up a mosaic!

Apart from my Sunflower Quilt it has been a bit of a slow month I think. With a trip to Ireland for a family wedding and friends visiting from the UK in May, I fear that this month is not going to be much better. What was I thinking of signing up to Jenna's Play mini-quilt challenge, when I am already behind on the Zakka-style SAL and the NYB blocks! I am already resigned to the tardiness of my NYB blocks, but was hoping to be more organised on the Zakka-style! A forlorn hope I feel.

Hope you have more progress to show for the last month than I have!

Cushions, scraps and zig-zags

Taking part in the Littlest Thistle's Foundation Paper Piecing for the Terrified (FPPFTT)has been great fun and a steep learning curve, but has also meant that I now have several paper-pieced orphan blocks. So, in a bid to find at least one of them a home I had backed and quilted the Circle of Geese block that we made in Week 4 with the intent that it would become a cushion to go with the quilt made for my son and daughter-in-law. So with no time like the present I set to this morning to add the back and finish at least one project this week!

Initially I had intended to bind the cushion with some of the leftover binding from the Sew Happy Sampler Quilt that all of the fabrics in the cushion came from, but I decided that it was "over-egging the pudding" and left it as is. I am going to use another of the FPPFTT orphan blocks that was also made from leftover fabric from the Sew Happy QAL for another cushion for my son and daughter-in-law, so might use the leftover binding on that instead.

Talking of cushions I discovered when I was working on the sunflower quilt in the previous post that I had had a Dresden plate sunflower left over from piecing the quilt top. As I have yet to make the yellow cushion for my set of rainbow cushions, there are no prizes for guessing where this sunflower will end up :)

I have even more cushion plans in the coming weeks as I have now received the wonderful Indigo fabrics that I ordered recently from the African Fabric shop The fabrics were even lovelier than I had expected.

Originally I was planning to cut and piece the fabrics but having seen them I am now not so sure that I want to cut them up. I have (somewhere!) a pattern and instructions for a machined Trapunto cushion and I am now thinking that that might be better, as you will get the benefit of the full design. Having never attempted Trapunto before, I might be biting off more than I can chew though! As ever, all advice gratefully received!

 This week I have also made a start on the first of the Zakka-style SAL projects, having missed the start I  am loath to fall too far behind. The first project is a tote bag with a zig-zag pattern made from quarter-square triangles on the front of the bag. One of the things that attracted me to Rashida Coleman-Hale's Zakka style books is her liberal use of linen as, unlike quilting cotton, linen is in plentiful supply in this part of the world. QST's are bad enough but QST's in linen that is a whole, different story! I have starched the linen squares and triangles to within an inch of their lives in an attempt to control them, but I am not sure that I am winning just yet.

It took me all afternoon yesterday to get this much done. Ripping out seams on small linen triangles is definitely no joke! The plan is to give the finished bag to my mum for her knitting when we are home next, but at this rate it will be Christmas before it is finished.

Hope you are all having a productive week.

Sunflowers and Sewing

Just back from our Easter holiday in France, hence the silence on the blogging front for the last couple of weeks. We hoped to be heading off south for sunshine and some welcome warmth but, alas, that wasn't quite what we got! Still, besides the rain we did get to see our sons and daughter-in-law over the Easter weekend, which more than made up for the wet, miserable weather.

As they were all flying in to (and in two cases out of) Bordeaux, we took the opportunity to wander around what is, undoubtedly, one of my favourite cities. In recent years, there has been a big "clean-up" operation in the city, so the beautiful golden stonework of the Old City has been re-instated and you can see some of the results below. The clean-up operation on the Cathedral is still ongoing so the contrast between the cleaned up tower and the still to be cleaned main building is striking.

On a sunny day the city glows!

In amongst the trips to airports I did manage to fit in some sewing, although not the first projects of the Zakka-style SAL that I had planned! Over the last few years I have been patiently piecing together Dresden plate blocks in shades of yellow and gold for a Sunflower quilt. In the summer the SW of France is a blaze of golden yellow from the sunflower fields and it is lovely to see the rows upon rows of sunflower heads lifted to the sun, so my Dresden plates were to remind me of these when the sun is in short supply. The quilt top was pieced last Autumn, so this was my first chance to get the top backed and bound.

I had what I thought was sufficient wadding for this top but, unfortunately, turned out to be some several inches short when I laid the quilt out, so a trip to the nearest fabric shop was called for. The shop mainly retails fabrics for curtains and dressmaking so the only wadding that I could find was very puffy (high loft??) but wide enough to be used in one piece so ideal, or so I thought.

My small sewing machine had other ideas! The machine (and I) really struggled to cope with the backed quilt. The stitch length shortened as the speed increased, very frustrating, so the initial plan to outline machine quilt each sunflower was abandoned in favour of hand quilting. Much less frustrating to manage, but hard on the fingertips!

When I quilted the Circle of Geese cushion top that was basted with ordinary low-loft wadding there were no problems with the stitch length, so I can only assume that the puffiness of the wadding was the problem.

(See Megan's blog for the inspiration for this quilting)

Encouraged by the problem-free quilting on the cushion top and determined, however, to have the borders and sashing machine quilted I braced myself for another tussle with the machine. This time the main problem was that the top thread kept snapping! I was using King Tut thread for the quilting, which I had bought a while ago specifically for this quilt. I have never used this thread before but thought it was a reliable make. I ended up going out and buying some Gutterman all-purpose thread as the King Tut thread snapped so often that it was impossible to use. Has anyone else had any problems with this thread? I have bought the same make of thread to quilt my Almost Irish Chain quilt and I really don't want to start using it if I am going to have the same problems all over again!

After much muttered (bad!) language and several inadvertent tucks the quilting was eventually finished. It certainly doesn't bear any close scrutiny but it will definitely keep us warm at night when the temperature drops, which is what it is for.

I think if I was starting this quilt now I would probably choose a solid for the squares as it looks a bit too busy for me now, but given the hassle involved in getting it finished I can happily overlook that :) When I look at the quilt pattern that inspired it in Quilt magazine in 2007 it too is too busy for my tastes now, but as they say you live and learn!

As it is a Wednesday I can take pleasure in moving this quilt into the completed part of my WIP list and it is also my finished WIP for 12 WIP's in 2012, so another bonus to its' completion.


Completed

• Reindeer Cushion
• Shades of Green, Fleur Bleu, Checkered Heart and Orange cushions 
• Orphan Block needle roll 
• Pieced arc tea towel  
• Yo-yo maker purse 
• Padded hangers and tutorial

• Sew Happy QAL quilt 
• Sunflower Quilt (My April WIP of 12 WIP's in 2012!)
• 6 blocks of FPPFTT completed 

Ongoing 

• 3 blocks of In Color Order HST BOM (up-to-date) 
• (Almost) Irish Chain quilt now basted 
• Zakka-style SAL (2 projects behind schedule)
• First border of teatime quilt completed, blocks calculated and fabric cut
• 4 blocks of NY Beauty QAL completed (2 blocks behind schedule)
• 6 blocks of Craftsy BOM completed (on schedule)

Waiting 

• Indigo, yellow and violet rainbow cushions
• Last block of Sampler quilt
• Amy Butler bag 
• Bag Making Bible Fashionista Bag 
• Dragon Bag
• Patchwork Block bag
• Christmas mini quilts 

I am off to reply to the comments all the lovely readers have left on my blog whilst I have been away, so if you haven't received a reply now you know why (unless of course you are a no-reply blogger!) and then catch up on all that has been happening in crafty blogland


Linking up to Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday and Esther's  WOW