Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Bloggers' Quilt Festival: Swarm by Sel

Welcome, most of you presumably from the Bloggers' Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side.

This is the story of a bunch of buzzy bees bumbling around in my brain, and how sometimes ideas come together in unexpected id-tugging ways...

Swarm (by Sel) took me two full years to actually complete from piecing to binding, but I think it was kind of worth it.

"Swarm" - photographed square! Such a labour of love and inspiration. And yes, @2bees, I'm filling out the competition forms now! #swarmbysel

Name: Swarm
Size: 75" x 88"
Design: original by Sel

The fault lies entirely in hexagons. I rather love hexagons, but they're kind of a pain in quilting - all those y-seams! However, I have designed multiple quilts based off hexagons (including a rather fun and complicated 'colourwash' kind of quilt) and am always on the lookout for cool hexy patterns. But I really liked Elizabeth Hartman's "Honey" quilt, featured on the cover of her book 'Modern Patchwork'. A friend of mine, Penny Poppleton made a spectacular version of it back in 2012, and while I liked the design, I didn't want just the honeycomb, but also the bees...

There were designs. Triangular grid paper, pencils, and design after design after...hey, I like that idea...

And then RJR fabrics announced the Cotton + Steel collection, with the 'blenders' and the 'low-vols' and I went "OOOOOH!" Bought most of the basics range and started cutting and sewing.

Most of the long story is at this post I made in December last year, however the addendum is...that it got accepted into QuiltCon!! I blame my friend, Bec, from SydModSQuad for encouraging me to submit it.

And it got photographed by the C+S official Instaccount! *boggles* *wibbles* *squees*

Then I sent it to Houston.

Uh. But not the Quilt Show. If I'd thought about it, I'd have submitted it to the 2016 Houston Quilt Show first, but instead, I opted to gift it to some friends in Houston who've let me stay in their spare 'oom nearly every time I've visited the US. Ah well. I did get to see it in use when I went to visit them in July, though!

Hey that quilt looks familiar... Glad to see #swarmbysel in its new home! #Houston #SelAndTheWorld2016

It's one of my favourite quilts, to be honest, and I do regret giving it away just a little. Guess I'll just have to make another one... Streamline the process... Write that pattern...

Swarm #swarmbysel

Submitted in the Original Design section of the Blogger's Quilt Festival!


Monday, September 19, 2016

Bloggers Quilt Festival: The Promises Of Spring

For the BLoggers Quilt Festival - 2016 Fall Edition, I'm submitting The Promises Of Spring - a quilt with a relatively long tale in my quilting history.

The original block was developed by Madame Parfait (whose site has since lapsed) in 2011, and was brought to my attention by a friend who wanted a pattern for it. So I developed one using strip-piecing, and called it 'The Snowflake Block'.


I did them in the rainbow colouring as per the original, and then didn't know what to do with them. So I made cushion covers, as you do.

SeaBreezeMQAL

The pattern was pretty popular, but I also found it bloody inconvenient and didn't think it was a particularly fantastic way to do it, as I discovered while trying to piece together another six of them!

DSC_1358

And now it's time for layouts! And working out how to sew the thing together. Y-seams, eek! #snowflakeblock

Don't look too closely at those seams...

Snowflakes

So what do you do with a handful of blocks that you don't want to make more of, but which you don't otherwise have any purpose for? Why, make a quilt with a lot of whitespace in it!

WIP Wednesday: sprint for the show

Um, yeah, that's a lot of whitespace. A LOT OF WHITESPACE. But I did quilt it all! ALL OF IT.

It just turned out to be a year late for the quilt show I'd intended it to be entered in, largely because I did my calf muscle in a week before I planned to book the longarm at the local quilt shop. So it got delayed a year - Sydney Quilt Show 2016! I called it 'The Promises Of Spring' and entered it with the blurb: "Every winter's flake carries the promise of summer within it."

Promises of Spring

The 'regions' of the quilting are ocean deeps, rippling beaches, forest and fern, winter winds, and the sun/flower, and it took me two days to complete.

Quilt Show 2016

In the aftermath of the show, though, a friend expressed an interest in purchasing the quilt for what it was worth, but when I named the price, she wasn't able to pay that much. Note: I valued the quilt at somewhat less what it had cost me in time and materials to make, plus 10% profit. Frankly, the hours I put in were probably two or three times that, given that I was piecing the snowflakes diamond by diamond. But that was the cost I named, although I admitted I was willing to accept a lower price.

While the friend was thinking it over, another friend was browsing through my feed and decided she liked it and would pay the price in question - and actually asked if it wasn't a bit low. She does costumes herself, so she knows both the cost of crafting something like this, and tendency of makers to undervalue themselves. I was more than happy to sell at the named price, and she received it a couple of weeks ago and is delighted.

Promises of Spring
Quilt Measurements: 180cm x 200cm
Special Techniques used: Y-seams, negative space quilting.
Quilted By: Sel @ Mad Quilter's Disease (a.k.a. me!)

Have you gone to check out the link-up at Amy's Creative Side?

Monday, September 12, 2016

2016 Q3 Finish-Along: #5 - Curtains!

This post is for the 2016 Finish-along Q3.

My original post is here and the Curtains are Item #5 on the list.

So, it's been a while since I actually posted anything here. Sorry about that - I went on holiday and then work came back with a vengeance and... So many things going on! It's been a busy winter for me...and we're heading into spring.

However, let's talk domestic for a moment.

We moved into the house in late 2014, and one of the things I wished to do was make curtains for my room and the lounge/dining rooms. It is now 2016, and I've done most of the curtains in most of the rooms. Emphasis on 'most of':

My bedroom curtains:
One set of curtains down... Four to go!

The workroom curtains (technically it's *my* workroom since all my sister has is a filing cabinet in the corner, and she uses the dining room as her workspace):
Workroom curtains 1

Sewing room curtains all done!

The dining room curtains, which I finished just before I left to go on my 2016 Round-the-World trip:

Curtains!
And a shot by night from the inside:
Curtain call! Alas only one half of it - have the other half yet to do!

And just this week I completed the living room side curtains with the Concerto quilt pattern by Alyssa of Pile O'Fabric:

Curtains

And laying out on the floor before finishing with the cat.
Curtains

When I get the rings for hanging in the windows, I'll take another photo and put it up here: stay tuned!

Now there's just the front window curtains to do - and those are the BIGGIES...