17 November, 2013

ShweShwe UWYH Patchwork of a House Quilt




Work in progress - quilt number two for the quilt group exhibition in 2014.

Instead of starting another "UFO" I went through my stash and "work in progress" stuff. I used red ShweShwe fabric for a quite a few sample blocks e.g. in the course with Edyta Sitar and also for a (unfinished) appliqué project. Now I will put everything together in one quilt adding the houses which are made with a bit of free motion machine embroidery (the house outlines) and machine appliqué (the windows, doors and chimneys) and work from there.... It is a WIP right now and I have to make my mind up how to add "size" to it. Right now it is too small to be used as a bed quilt, but I will get there.



03 September, 2013

Hatched Row House Quilt


The Layout
From carefully positioned via chaotic by accident to contained hatched & crooked. I wanted my House Quilt to have a little different block setting than the classical house quilts. Now it will be 5 lines of hatched row houses, 4 Redwork house blocks and 1 little red house block to complete the number of 25 30x30cm blocks I need for my Hatched Row House Quilt.

  2013-08-29-Transfer-IPOD 039 2013-08-29-Transfer-IPOD 041  2013-08-29-Transfer-IPOD 0442013-08-29-Transfer-IPOD 0432013-08-29-Transfer-IPOD 045DSC_0839
20 beautiful little (big) schoolhouse blocks are from my quilt group - a friendship quilt I have not finished for ages…Now this years group theme is houses so I will make my own house quilt version – a ShweShwe UWYH patchwork House Quilt – and this friendship quilt.

22 August, 2013

PhD* in Quilting – The Shirttail Quilt

*[projects half done…]
Shirt Tails Quilt Wendy Williams Pattern AP&A Vol15 No9
Quilt size ca. 190 x 190 cm / 75x75 inch
The original pattern for my Shirttail Quilt is from Wendy Williams, published in the Australian Patchwork & Quilting Magazine Vol. 15 No. 9. An old back issue even then when I started the quilt in April 2009.
I am a magazine (any magazine) junkie  and browsing/buying old quilt magazine at quilt festivals and markets is just too much fun  - and I always find an interesting article or pattern.
What was neat about this quilt pattern in the AP&Q magazine was a black & white graphic of the entire quilt. That helped me to “see” this quilt in my favorite color combination red & white.

Photo Source.: Mega Store / Express media Group   http://shop.magstore.com.au/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CP0324
The original pattern was made of blue recycled shirt fabric and a red accent fabric. I kept the entire block construction just the way Wendy Williams designed it only replacing all blue pieces by white fabric.
Shirttails Quilt Pattern by Wendy Williams - getting started
I cut and sewed the entire quilt top in just one very long night and a few early morning hours – back in 2009…
Shirttails Quilt Pattern by Wendy Williams - Early Morning WIP
2 more hours later it was finished…
It is made of Kona cotton red (not sure which one, I would assume it was the China Red which I really prefer, however, I also had and still have lots of Kona Rich Red, Red and Cardinal. It could have been one of those shades of red too – I whished I kept a quilt journal). The white fabric, top and back, is from vintage bed sheets, tightly woven cotton with a high thread count. That makes the quilt quite heavy. The batting is a thin all cotton batting. 
My original idea was to finish it with free motion machine quilting it on my good old Pfaff Hobby 317 . That just did not work out. I am not a machine (yet…). It looked so awful that I had to take all those wonky machine quilting stitches out again.
It took me almost another year to finally come up with an alternative quilting idea. In February 2010  started to hand quilt double squares in red quilting thread. I penciled the quilt pattern on 1/3 of the the quilt and stitched 8 of the double squares by now.
Shirttails Quilt Pattern by Wendy Williams - Quilting WIP
Still not finished – PhD for another while…