Stitch demo teddy

I made this little guy to demonstrate all of the decorative stitches on one of our sewing machines. I'm not one for this kind of thing but thought it was better than creating a bunch of samples on a plain piece of fabric.

We are gearing up for the Auckland Festival of Quilts next weekend. It's our first show and kind of launch for our Juki machines. There's so much to do still.

I am also making some logo banners to hang up. These are going well and just need binding. I am not fond of binding.

Now that I've done the fun jobs it's time to get working on some of the boring tasks. Thank goodness hubby is working on inventory and accounting stuff, I don't think I could cope with that too.

I'm trying out a new app to post this. If it looks odd, I'll tidy it up later.

A 100th birthday present

My mom and I finished the memory quilt in time for my grandmother's 100th birthday party. I did the machine applique and quilting and mom stayed up late to do the binding.

I decided to FMQ a meander in all of the white space - I did experiment with a few options, but this was the easiest and most effective. I had some grief with my mom's machine and fussed around with different thread options, but managed to get it done without having any tantrums. I mean no disrespect to all of you Pfaff-lovers out there, but my mom needs to get rid of hers. Maybe a new Juki for Christmas?

The quilt received a lot of attention at the party and it was fun for everyone to look through the photos and try to work out who was who. I especially love the old photos of my mother - she was very cute!

I'm back in NZ now and trying to get into the groove of work and daily life. I have lots of projects on the go - more about that later.

Progress on grandma's memory quilt

I've made some progress on the quilt for my grandmother. I manage to overcome my differences with my mom's Pfaff and machine applique the tree, leaves, and some flowers onto the background.

I'm all set to sandwich the quilt tonight. But, I have no idea how to quilt it. I am hesitant to try and FMQ with a strange machine, although I think a filler design on all of the white between the photos would highlight them. I am wondering if I want to quilt over the photos and make them more 'backgroundy' - some of them are very prominent.

It's Thursday night and the birthday party is on Saturday. Whatever I decide, it better be soon.

Memory quilt for Grandma

Has it really been almost a month since I posted? I have been very busy and productive, but somehow I have neglected to share.

Right now I'm in the USA visiting family. My grandmother turns 100 this week and my mother and I are working on a family tree/memory quilt for her. I admit that we should have planned ahead and I could have done some of the work while I was still at home, but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way.

I had a major argument with my mom's Mac and scanner, abandoned them and connected the scanner to my Windows laptop. That went fine until I tried to print. Somehow it did not work on my laptop and I needed to move the printer back to the Mac. Finally, I got all of the photos done and added white on white coping strips to make them all 4x4 or 4x8 or 8x8 so that we could easily sew them together into 8" blocks.

We are now embroidering names onto green fabrics. These will be appliqued onto the quilt as leaves on a tree. We decided just to include my grandparents and all of their direct decendents. Luckily our family is small and this only required 22 names.

I am not great at embroidery and those that know me will know that handwork is not my favourite. But, I've managed to do my half and the names are readable, if not slightly rustic.

We have until Saturday to get the whole thing done. I better hustle!

Another new project

Yes, I have started yet another project. This one is made from fabric supplied by Helen at our Monday Modern quilters group last Monday - I think I took home 13 fat quarters. Helen provided the fabric and a piece of pre-cut batting and challenged us to make a small quilt for a child. The batting basically dictated the size - it's about 46" x 52".

The fabrics I chose included three from a collection and others that blended in. I like the combination of blues, purples, and black, although it was looking a bit too cohesive when I laid out all of the fabrics when I got home from our meeting. My first instinct was to do something fast and simple - like 4" squares. But, where's the challenge in that?

Instead I decided I would make a medallion quilt with a round robin approach to the design (translation: no planning for each border until I get to it). I made the 16" centre block by ironing on two sizes of flowers and then using a machine buttonhole stitch to sew them down. I'm happy with the results, but the flowers are quite stiff - I may have to rethink the fusible product that I used.

From the centre block I worked my way out adding three sets of borders. So far so good. Now I'm a little stuck - the quilt measures 42" square which is a bit on the small side. I thought maybe a couple more plain borders to "contain" the random squares, but I really don't have enough fabric for that - all that is left are a few strips and one more fat quarter. Even a 2" border would take more than a fat quarter. Maybe I could dig into my stash (like I did for the solid seafoam 1" borders).

I have several projects in the pipeline that I need to start and finish by the first weekend of November. These will be used as demos for our merchant stand at the Festival of Quilts - a banner quilt with our logo on it and a machine embellished crazy quilt teddy bear. Meanwhile, I'm off the the States for three weeks between now and then. Did I mention that I started a new job last week...

So, I may just need to call this one done and move on to quilting it before the weekend. Any suggestions?

Monday Modern Quilters exhibit starts next week

For anyone in the Auckland area - a few of my pieces will be on exhibit at Highwic house in Epsom.

Bloglovin'

I've been playing around with a few replacements to the much-lamented disappearence of Google Reader. Many have done detailed research, I basically want something I can access from the office, my phone, and home. Bloglovin' is the only one that works for me, so that is that.

If you want to follow me on Bloglovin' please use this link: Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Getting organised

After completely trashing my sewing area looking for fabrics to finish the hot and cold string pieces, I powered through getting the strips cut and sewn together and even trimmed them down so that they are ready to cut into triangles. I am making 80 of them to make a single-sized quilt.

But, this exercise taught me something: I need to get organised. It's not really my nature to be too organised. I used to be but life is more complicated these days. But, when my lack of organisation influences my choices (especially my creative ones), it's time to act.

I was also inspired by some of the posts I read as part of the linky party on Sarah Quilts called you show me yours, I'll show you mine. Some of the stashes were impressive and tidy. I figured it was my turn.

I've divided my quilting fabrics into a few categories - the ones I'm putting into this drawer are less than 1 yard but all are at least 8 x 12 inches. I have another pile of bigger pieces more than a yard. And a pile of big scraps that I will throw into a box.

One thing that this exercise has shown me is that there are some colours I have a lot of and others that I don't. I'm surprised by all the browns and the lack of greens (I always use green) - who knew?

I have a few lingering projects to deal to and then I'm planning another stash-busting project. As you can see, there is no room for any more purchases - this is a bad thing!