Not much sewing this week

Not much sewing done this week.

Here is my progress earlier in the week

101 nine patches made so far

This weekend, I had to clean the house as we had friends coming over and today, shop for bearers and install them on the low level deck I'm building down the back yard.

So the only quilty type of thing I did was to press the 101 nine patch blocks!

Push the seams in opposite directions, to reduce the bulk in the seams

The bottom one not yet done, the top one, seams twisted open

Square up the block

Trimmed block

101 blocks pressed and trimmed.   I got to piece a couple together to make a few double nine patch blocks.  It is starting to take shape - I'll be using white for the in-between blocks.  Five done, 44 to go.

Get the idea?

Double nine patch beginnings

My sister wants a quilt.  I've started a red and white double nine patch.  On point.

From this

cut into strips

sewn together strips

 

cut up again

sewn together again

sewn together more

and even more

This is nuts!  who on earth would want to cut up bits of fabric to sew them together again?

Early quilts

Here are some of the quilts I made earlier this year. I've been quite productive really. There is another one which I made from Australian flags in Jan/Feb, but I'll have to find a pic of that one.

For Maria's baby

For Jan's grand daughter

For Zoe, Rhiannon's baby

July FMQ Challenge 2012

This month's tutorial was by the talented Angela Walters.  The challenge was to quilt straight lines in the shape of overlapping tiles and use a quilting filler in the main area of the tile.

Here is my challenge piece.  Again, I seem to have dreadful problems with thread breakage using poly wadding and it made no difference when I changed the spool and needle.  I'm not game to show the back of this one - lucky it's destined to be a dog quilt. 

Captive bubbles

Here is my first practice piece.  I don't know what I was thinking when I did this one, although I did have less thread breaks.

The front

The back

Thanks Angela for the interesting tutorial.

April 2012 FMQ Challenge

Hubby's at a friend's place watching the football, so I finally got to catch up on the April challenge.  April's tutorial was by Don Linn and involved copying a motif onto tulle, stretched on a hoop, and then transferring it to the quilt top.

Here is my attempt.  Sewing on the lines was reasonably successful, but my backtracking is a bit obvious.  I decided to do small pebbles in the spaces of the motif and small stippling around the outside of the motif.  I started off small, but found my hands were cramping, so changed to a slightly larger stipple.  A very basic stipple - oops, I look like a beginner - that's ok, I am a beginner.

Some of the marking pen is still visible

Finished!

The quilt is done. It's a wet and cold day, so no good picture of the finished quilt. I started this quilt four months ago and have worked on it every day. I am glad it is done.

Here is a photo of the binding going on.  You can see my sewing machine is very basic and old.

Borders on botannica

The side borders are now on. I'm undecided if it's more problematic to quilt an entire queen size quilt in a machine with a six inch harp or to do it as qayg. I'm not convinced that qayg ends up with a flat quilt once you add the borders, as they get added first and then get quilted, ending up with the dreaded shrinkage. Still, I'm happy that there should only be a couple of weeks left in this quilt. I've been either planning, sewing or quilting it since February. I still love it.