WIA Wednesday: the one with missing pieces

I have continued making the blocks for the 2nd Teal Stars quilt, it's about half done. It's mostly just having the cutting board clear and laying it out, cutting the block, arranging it, and sewing it together. Four blocks down, five blocks to go.

I can do it by next week if I do one a day.

One a day. It's not difficult. Just one.

I finished another row of stars for the Restless Hands quilt:

If I was going to do this quilt again (ahahahahahaha no) then I'd do lots of neutrals for the background and most of the stars, and then some swathes of stars with a little bit of colour before sweeping in to more vivid hues, so there are all the stars in the sky...but not all of them are visible at once.

I think two of the stars are switched around. One has a piece where there doesn't need to be a piece, and the other has a gap - a piece is missing. So do I swap the piece around, or do I move the stars entirely?

Otherwise, it's a really busy week for me on several fronts so not much is going to happen.

WIP Wednesday: the one with new quilts

Once a month; that's as often as I have to update this. Just once a month!

I don't have many pics for this one because I've been making videos, trying to put together something for social media in the midst of everything being a little bit crazy.

I'm going with the Moroccan quilt by the Questioning Quilter

Well, it's three weeks later, and I've done absolutely nothing on the video front.

I did end up making the quilt top though:

First the layout:

Then starting to set up the blocks:

The finished blocks:

I've sewn the blocks together into a single top, but haven't taken a photo. It's not very large: 1.6m x 1.6m or thereabouts. It doesn't need to be huge; I don't really do huge quilts anymore. Also: I ran out of the fabric for the background.

This is one quilt of two for cousins 1 and 2, my oldest cousins. Cousin 2 got married last year, and I was going to make her a quilt but couldn't find a pattern I liked. I'm not convinced this one is great, but it's good enough and it uses up fabrics I wasn't otherwise going to use.

I have the blocks all ready for the next one, but haven't yet gotten around to squaring them up and laying them out. That'll be in the next couple of weeks, I guess...

Finally, the background fabric is the same fabric as I used for a quilt I made for Cousin 1's daughter in the 'Walkabout' quilt. So that's a nice match for her, C1 and C2.

WIP Wednesday: the one with a not-so-laid-back plaidish

It's been a while since I posted here. Sorry about that; life got busy, and although I was sewing, I didn't have time to update.

The only real WIP I have right now is a laid-back Plaidish in not-so-laid-back Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society.

Slowly sewing it together!

WIP Wednesday: the one with dresses

Probably more suited to teenagers than to me...

But it looks pretty good!

I feel like it's designed for a younger woman, or maybe that's just because the models on the packet look younger? But the style suits me, even though I don't have the skinny arms or bony back that my vanity would like. (I don't think about it too much; my back is my back, it does the job it needs to, and it has my (very pretty) tattoo.

The only thing that needs doing is the hemming of the dress. Which...will probably not happen at all. It requires me switching sewing machines.

--

Anyway, other thoughts about quilting and stuff.

1. Summer Vibes Geometric Quilt Pattern:
- could make the "quick HST" sets, then just square them up
- how many HSTs required for a queen size?
- note the pattern, it's not just all same-size diamonds. Going to need to do a blockcount.

2. Simple Harmonics
- jelly roll strips, one background colour, anything that contrasts with the background?

3. Gift box. Zippered bags and pincushions and all kinds of odds and sods for giving away come Christmas.
- make a few more of these in the coming months
- could I do one bag a week?

WIP Wednesday: the one with autumn colours

GENERAL THINGS

The Sydney Quilt Show is looking for more entries. They don't have enough this year, so they're encouraging more entries.

I'm tempted. Very tempted. But it needs to be fast and easy. Something not too complicated. Squares, perhaps.

Okay, maybe something with a touch of contrast to it:

What about some sashing?

If I'm going to do this, I have until Sunday night to submit it. I think they're kind of desperate for quilts; I asked if it had to be done by the deadline and they asked me, "how much longer do you need?"

I mean, I could have a top pretty much done by Saturday night. I don't have that much on right now. But then there's the whole business of getting it backed and quilted and bound and sleeved...

Oh well, I guess I'll try...

 

QUILTING:

Show Quilt 1 to quilt - by me.

Friends' Quilt to get quilted by quilter

 

BINDING:

Still four quilts to bind.

WIP Wednesday, the one with garden parties

GENERAL THINGSTechnically it's Thursday, but I only got back yesterday and promptly had to log in to work to get some stuff done. Anyway, it's been a week of much things done (although not necessarily things I wanted progressed) and today is a public holiday (ANZAC Day) so I have time to type this up as I didn't yesterday. It might still be Wednesday in Hawaii or West of it.

 

DRESSMAKING

BEHOLD the dress I made for the Bridgerton Garden Party (hosted by Netflix at an exclusive resort in country NSW):

It's pattern Simplicity S9434, but I extended  the bodice all around the waistline because my bust is bigger than the model size, adjusted the back so it fit me personally, and made it with tulip-sleeves instead of the puff sleeves that were the chief option.

I also ended up making it in quiting cotton (Joel Dewberry's Notting Hill range) and the skirts are cotton voile.

 

It worked really well, I think. A good style, very 'Bridgerton'.

I also had a second dress: this one I 'made' from secondhand clothing: one '1970s style hippie' dress, all loose and flowy, and one mandarin-collar jacket from HK brand 'Wanko'. I sewed the 'belt loops' for the tie higher - right under the bust, and shortened the jacket so that it's more like a Regency-style spencer.

All in all, I and my real-life peeps like what I've done. But pretty much everyone in Bowral was indifferent. Ah well. Now I have a regency dress if anyone I know happens to have another garden party!

Or, you know, I could wear it to the next frocktails event!

 

SEWING:

Today (Thursday) I sewed up a couple of zippered bags which have been lying around for at least a couple of months - since the Blue Mountains Frocktails. Well, one of them has been around for at least a year, I think - I've had it since one of the Sydney Frocktails, I'm sure - while the other one I got in the BM Frocktails goodybag.

I lined one with patchworked scraps of linen - also from the BM Frocktails goodybag, and the other with some more Joel Dewberry Notting Hill print, although I think this one I had saved for handkerchiefs.

 

BINDING:

I have finally - FINALLY - made a teeny tiny squidge of progress on binding. I've cut up some more strips for binding, and was fully intending to sew them together today and make the binding and...I got distracted. It's 8:30pm and I'm out of energy, so no binding.

 

PIECING:

And while I was in Bowral, on Sunday afternoon I finished sewing another column of stars to the Restless Hands of Sel quilt.

Quite cutely, a little girl and her family wandered by and wanted to know what I was doing. Her mother encouraged her to ask, and so we had a little talk about making quilts and what I was doing and how it was made.

 

THOUGHTS I HAD

Finally picked up the four quilts that my quilting group made in the years before COVID and delivered them to my mother, who is going to raffle them off for her charity organisation to donate the money. My quilting group always intended to raffle them off, we just haven't had the time to get it all organised and happening. Mum's charity does this every year, they offer a bevy of prizes, and people love winning the quilts that I or my group have made.

I'll post pics of them another time.

WIP Wednesday: the one with Regency

GENERAL THINGS

I have decided to sew one seam a day. At least. If I do more, then great. But otherwise, one seam a day. One thing a day, whether that's hemming handkerchiefs or stitching binding together.

Hemmed hankies, made from spare squares of fabric around the place

Also: an overflowing scrap box. Need to cut those up and stuff them into the pouffle.

DRESSMAKING

I have applied to go to a Bridgerton garden party in Bowral (which is right in the middle of the holidays, I think) and I don't have any Regency clothes at all.

I would really like to make:

1. a Regency corset
2. a day dress
3. an evening dress
4. a spencer/jacket

I mean, this is wishful thinking: I have a little over ONE WEEK in which to do any of it. I have no patterns, I have made no muslins, I have no time.

Frankly, even just getting the evening dress done would probably be nearly impossible.

But I do have fabric. Lots of it. A lovely two-tone cotton weave (not quite the colour for a day dress, but possibly a riding habit). A gorgeous emerald green-black dupion silk (I found it at a Pitt Fabric store one year during the Sydney Craft And Quilt Show and bought the bolt). And a green lace so dark it's almost black.

The light doesn't show the colour very well. But they look really good in sunlight!

There's the blue-black chiffon (probably poly) and the mustard-and-violet chiffon (actual silk!) and a maroon crepe de chine (actualy, that could work for a day dress, although, again, not quite the right colour), and assorted cotton voiles and lawns that would probably work quite well (although they're prints, not solids, obviously).

One of the things I find absolutely mind-boggling today is how casually I have more fabric than a modiste of the Regency could have ever afforded. It's less susceptible to mould and decay and wearing and fray, and with some care, it might last for another fifty years.

Anyway.

BINDING:

Done: Cut strips for red bindings.

To do: cut morestrips for red bindings.

PIECING: 

I went to the Saturday morning sewing group meeting for the first time in a couple of months. There were a decent number of people there, and it was a lovely sunny day after having had an exceedingly wet and rainy Friday ("rain bomb"). I dragged along all the components of my Restless Hands Of Sel quilt and did some more work on it. 

I sorted out which stars were next on the list, and sewed some of the columns together, which was quite satisfying.

One problem I'm having, though: I can't find where I put the fabric pieces I was using. When I went on holidays last year, I took with me one of the bags that I'd been using to house them and...stuffed the rest into a ziplock bag. Which I then mailed home with a bunch of heavy winter clothing I wasn't going to need while in Hawaii--

Okay, so now I have an idea of what happened to them, but I still can't remember where they are... Wait. Found them!

LOL. Thank you so much for helping me jog my memory as to where everything is.

THOUGHTS I HAD

What if I got you guys reading this to vote on what I should do next?

WIP Wednesday: the one with half a dozen quilts to bind!

GENERAL THINGS

The DX7 needs to go in for service. I think the last time it was in might be 5 years ago, so it probably needs retuning and everything. Now I need to find someone who can do electronic JUKIs. I have my TL-98 straight-stitcher for the binding that's needed right now, although I find I prefer to do the zigzag stitching for binding these days.

DRESSMAKING

'So Simplicity' top has gotten stuck. I've been trying to edge the hem with a twin needle, but the twin needle is causing the fabric to 'hump' between the two sewn lines on the top. I don't know how to get it to stop this. It might be that the fabric is just too delicate to actually lie flat. Or maybe it needs a stabiliser of some kind? Otherwise, I'll probably need to edge the hem, and then do the hem-stitch along the bottom. 

BINDING:

I have 6 quilts back from the quilter, need to start binding them. Borrowed the 'binder-making machine from a friend to speed up the binding-making process. We'll see how sped up it gets.
1. cut the strips for the various quilt bindings
2. sew together with straight-stitch
3. make binding tapes
4. sew binding tape to each quilt

PIECING: 

Cousin M's Quilt is going nowhere. I got stuck on the colour scheme, and it doesn't feel right. Maybe I should just stick with the white background instead of the gold one?

Also, I need to do better quilt calculations. The current ones are kicking my ass.

WIP Wednesday: the one with nephlets

Am working on bindings lately: all the quilts I have which are quilted but not bound.

Gave the nephlet quilts to my stepbrothers. Old quilts, made years back.

SB1's son got this one:

I'll see if I can find a pic of the quilt I gave to SB2's son, but it's very old and has been sitting around for far too long.

Next up are M and C's quilts, who I asked if they wanted a quilt back in 2020, and...just didn't quite manage to deliver. Oy.

M asked for the Dead Simple Classic:

C asked for the Valley of Kings:

TBH, Valley of Kings was originally made for someone else, but I haven't really spoken with her in about 10 years and we don't really keep in touch, so...sorry!

I'm starting to look at scraps again, though, for scrap quilts... I think I'll do one of those scrap quilts made up of 2.5" x 3.5" rectangles. I mean, I always say this, but actually finishing a scrap quilt...

WIP Wednesday: The One After A Really Long Break

Whew! How long has it been since I posted here? I haven't had any WIPs in ages, haven't done any quilting work or binding or anything in IDEK how long. Anyway, I finally have some updates to post about.

The loooooong WIP of my show quilt was completed on Wednesday, sleeved on Thursday, and labelled and handed off to the pickup lady on Friday. She lives 45 minutes away, in an outer suburb of Sydney. I'm not sure if it's just that they didn't think that the person 20 minutes away was actually closer, or if I was blackballed by 20-mins-away lady after we had trouble matching up schedules last year. She seemed very terse and not very pleased when I dropped my quilt off last year.

Anyway, it's done. Show is in a couple of weeks. On to the next projects!

1. BIND ALL THE THINGS

I have this pile of quilts to bind!

I have these two kinds of bindings to bind them with!

Almost certainly, I'm going to need more binding. I'm also going to need more types of bindings, because those two aren't going to match with all of the different types of quilts I have.

Just gotta get it done. Also: it's not difficult, just finicky over time.

2. Restless Hands of Sel

Restless Hands of Sel:

I'm starting to think that the stars are just going to get lost in the colours, you know? Although it will be very pretty, it won't be very distinct! Oh well, I'm going to be a bit less stringent about the colours of the stars now, spotting in a couple of randos to give the quilt some unexpected pop. That's the theory anyway; it may end up looking awful!

3. Cousin Quilts

Cousin M got married in late July, then had a wedding lunch in Sydney mid-August. We gave him and his wife money as a gift, but I was planning a quilt for them.

It was also a chance to chat with all the cousins, and one of them mentioned to her new partner that I made "the most gorgeous quilts ever!" And that both she and her sister still use the zipper bags that I gave them for Christmas maybe a decade ago!

So nice to know!

Anyawy, I have Cousin M's quilt pattern picked out, the fabrics for his quilt chosen, and it's just a matter of putting it all together. If I can get it done by the time I go to the UK, then it can be a belated wedding-gift-slash-Christmas-present.

That's the plan at any rate.

WIP Wednesday: the one with binding

Still haven't put everything back together in the house or the study. I keep saying I'll get my sewing things out, but I never quite manage it.

But I did put my quilt into the NSW Guild Quilt Show.

I have a bag of two quilts with binding ready to be sewn on. Then I have a airless/compression bag of quilts that still need binding.

Cousin M4 is going to be in town in August with his wife for their in-Australia wedding celebration, so I have until then to work out a quilt for them.

In the meantime, I have sewn two more stars for the Restless Hands quilt.

WIP: the one with Pouffles

Windows are likely going to be in the next three-ish weeks.

Therefore, in a rush to clear my sewing room, I finished up the Scrap-Filled Pouffle.

And then discovered I didn't have enough scraps for it...

I mean, who'd have ever thought that I didn't have enough scraps to fill it! Anyway, I added a cushion and a bunch of larger scraps and paddings to fill it out, and it's looking a little better:

Still not great, though!

With the windows due for replacement, pretty much all quilting is going on hold for the next month. I might have to do a really swift quilt of Surplus To Requirement in May, just to get it sufficiently done for the Quilt Show, and I would really like to edge the quilts that I have still waiting so it can all go out in the next few weeks.

One of the things the sorting/tidying/boxing thing is doing is getting me to go through stuff and sort it out - eg. the pouffle, which I've been intending to make for a couple of years now, but have only just done through necessity. But I have two boxes of fabric to be rid of and the struggle is going to be finding anyone to take it. Apparently people aren't buying right now.

I put this collection of scrap blocks up on the board, though, just to get something up there, because it was looking really blank when I did my TikTok videos.

WIP Wednesday: the one with battings and backings

The auctioned-off Rainbow Interconnected (which I apparently called Retro Rainbow on the label) went to a friend who I thought I might give a quilt to, but now don't have to. She did pay $150 for it, which is more than the last 'auctioned-off' quilt went for ($30!) - although that one also went to a friend, so I'm not wholly unhappy about that.

The thing that I'm miffed about is that they didn't ask me for a description, so it just appeared as "homey quilt" instead of anything about the design and what I think of it. If I'd known they'd be printing something like that, I'd have put together a blurb:

We are not islands, nor wholly discrete individuals; we influence others and are influenced by them in turn, in ways both subtle and unsubtle. None of us knows the full dimensions of our influence upon others and the world around us, we can only be what we are and what we choose to be.

Anyway. Auction done, one more quilt off my hands, and - moreover - gone to a friend.

I did a lot of backings in the last week:

Oh so many backings! And then I cut a lot of batting - enough batting that I ran out of the half-roll I bought a couple of years ago! I bought it with another quilting friend, and we divided it into two. I think it was about 15m worth? Or thereabouts? But anyway, I used up my portion of it. I still have two quilts to find batting for, and am contemplating just going down to Spotlight and buying the polyester batting there. Not my first choice (cotton/bamboo batting, from a small Aussie-owned quilt show) but might be necessary for getting things done.

Tomorrow (Thursday), I'll go visit the quilter, pick up the quilts she's already done, hand over the ones that are yet undone. I'll also hand over a bunch of quilts that are finished to some friends who I promised them to a while ago. Except I look at them and think "they're not very pretty quilts", so I'm not entirely pleased about giving them to my friends. IDK. Do I offer them nicer-but-not-yet-finished ones? What do I do with these ones, then?

I think I'm going to offer them the nicer-but-not-yet-finished ones.

At some point, I'll need to sort and store the stuff in the sewing room so the windows guys can come and do their work. It's a neverending job, though, honestly; endless scraps upon scraps upon abandoned projects, upon heaven only knows what...

--

Thing to definitely make before the windows change: the denim pouffle for scrap-stuffing.

WIP Wednesday: I like big backs and I cannot lie...

WIP Wednesday (okay, so it's Thursday here)

I finished a quilt top: Surplus To Requirement:

It's made up of a bunch of leftover quilt blocks from the last ten years, with a fat quarter of 'filler fabric' and a bunch of random jelly roll strips. 

I had so much trouble working out the layout, particularly because this is v2.0, and v1.0 was about half the size - the middle section. Then I found a whole lot more quilt blocks that could be used and then the issue of balancing the business, the design, the values, and the redistribution of the 'filler fabric' so it was all across the quilt and not just in the middle.

All things considered, I'm pretty happy with it. Going to put a backing on it, quilt it, and enter it into the Sydney Quilt Show.

--

I made a bunch of backings for quilt tops, ready to go to my quilter, who hasn't heard from me since January. (Time just slips away.)

I still have backings to make for at least four quilt tops to get done this year, two quilts to quilt myself (can't hand them off to a quilter, they were one quilt that got sliced in half because I made the shift from GINORMOUS LARGE QUILTS to medium sized ones, and this one was too much of a monster to quilt myself, so I just kinda cut it in half and added a strip to the backing.

Do I quilt these two before or after I quilt the show quilt? Choices choices.

--

I finally got a good pic of the Interconnected quilt I submitted for the quilt show in 2021:

It's going to an auction at the church trivia night on Sunday.

--

WIP Wednesday: the one with dressmaking

So many thing to do, so little time:

The 100 Days Project (started 22nd Feb), IG Quilt Fest (March), Me Made March (instead of May, possibly warmer for us in the southern hemisphere)

100 Days Project: quilting every day? Sow at least one seam, if not several?

What if I committed to do one quilting thing a day, even if it's only sow a single seam? Obviously, some things need a little more than one seam to be finished. But I can do those things when I have time.

I kind of wish I'd started up the 100 Days Project on my Restless Hands quilt, which is going nowhere very rapidly.

--

So I completed a dress during the week - the Tea House Dress by Sew House Seven - it took me two and a half years, if not more, but it's finally done. I think I won that pattern at a previous Frocktails (2018? 2019?) and I finished it in time for the Blue Mountains Frocktails 2023 event!

I think I'll make a few more of these, they're pretty comfortable and nice and light and casual. I wonder how good it would be in something a little softer and thicker, not quite a nightdress fleece.

I ended up wearing another Sicily Slip because  it looked really good with my back tattoo.

The Blue Mountains Frocktails event was heaps of fun - great to meet fellow sewists, to sit and talk with a few people that I knew and got to know better, and also to better link names to faces...

Didn't win anything, but bought some fabric at Minerva's Bower on the way home.

--

There's also this dress still to make – the pattern I won at the last Frocktails:

--

Today, this afternoon, I'm going to sew together the striped binding for the last (couple of) quilt(s) that need binding for this collection. This year, I just really want to finish these quilts and get them out the door.

--

I think I've worked out the balance of blocks for The Spare - a.k.a.”Harry of Windsor” which is entirely made up of the 'spare' blocks of various quilts that I've made through the years.

If I actually manage to finish it in time, it could go for the Sydney Quilt Show, perhaps?

wip wednesday: the one with the spares

So this quilt - if quilt it is - is either going to be called The Harry or The Backing.

It's made up of leftover blocks from a dozen quilts and more over the last ten years. If you go back through my quilts of 2012-2014, you'l more than likely see a few designs that match the blocks in the quilt.

The thing that I don't know: Is it a backing? Or is it a quilt?

What are your thoughts, both on the name, and on whether or not it's a quilt?

WIP Wednesday

It's a new year, full of WIPs to be completed!

This year, my cousin M gets married, and I'd like to actually give him a quilt for a gift. This year, the friends from my bible studies who've been promised quilts for YEARS are finally going to get them. This year, I'm going to enter something in the Sydney Quilt Show (somehow). And I'm going to get quilts finished and bound right, left, and centre!

I am! I am! I am!

*sigh*

So, what we have right now on our plate:

Planned List:
- M's quilt
- Sydney Quilt Show Quilt (whatever that turns out to be)
- ALL THE COUSIN QUILTS

(Oh cripes that's a lot of quilts to make in addition to all the WIPs that I've got listed below. SSSSSHEEEEEESSSSSHHHHHHH)

WIP - in pieces
- scrappy trip around the world
- scrappy leftover block quilt
- plaid-ish quilt 2
- another cousin-quilt (finished top)
- Restless Hands Of Sel

WIP - to be backed
- scrappy postage stamp 2
- plaid-ish quilt
- birthday grandmother's puzzle quilt
- 2x rainbow curves

WIP - to be quilted
- two green quilts

WIP - to be bound
- scrappy postage stamp 1
- 2x penny patches
- 1x red & black diagonals

FINISHED: to be given away!
- rainbow interconnection
- 2x purple squares quilt

I gave away Universe Of Wonk to my hosts for New Year's Eve. So that's one less quilt that I need to deal with.

Look, I know I could give away quilts right left and centre and there would be plenty of friends who'd be lining up for them. But, whew, the difficulty of trying to be fair about it is REALLY TRICKSY.

Dear heavens, I have a lot of quilts. In progress, in pieces, planned, being quilted, being bound... I guess at least having the list means I have a good idea of what needs to be done, and possibly an inkling of how long it will take me. But ARGH.

2023, here we come!