WIDRN Wednesday: Teal Stars, Green Stars

I've been so busy with Australian election stuff, I haven't had much time to do sewing. That said, I've had a couple of quilt tops hanging up for a while and hadn't had the time or energy to do anything about them. Finished them just this week, so that's a nice fillip! I called them "Teal Stars" but given our recent elections, that may not have a very good association with the recipients. They're going to my two oldest cousins, one of whom got married last year, the other who's been married for...oh, about 25 years. Not sure what I'm going to work on yet - I'd really like to have at my scrap box, but there are so many other quilts that need completing right now! And I still have two quilts to bind, and six to give away! The 'cousin quilts' in particular...this feels like it could be their year... Three tops down, six to go! Tricky question about giveaway quilts: do I offer them to a bunch of guy friends from church? Or do I go looking for old friends who might like a quilt? I think I'll make another postage stamp quilt. I have a couple of blocks and strips all ready for that. Then I'd like to make a 'simple rectangle' scrap quilt - the 'lava flow' pattern from "Successful Scrap Quilts (from simple rectangles)", which has lots of excellent ideas and designs. ...maybe it isn't the cousin quilt year after all...

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.

WIA Wednesday - 'Where I'm At' Wednesday

WIA Wednesday: a general update, because so often I haven't done anything much at all, so the WIPs just sit there unmoved.  

This week, I made a cushion envelope for a cushion whose envelope had disintegrated, and I sewed a quilt block for the Teal/Blue Stars, and finished a couple of stars for the Restless Hands of Sel.

It's not much, but it's some progress. Progress on my creative stuff is difficult when I'm prepping for the winter garden, when the world is on fire, and when I'm trying to help out with a local electoral candidate. All worthy causes, but hoo boy, I kind of miss the days when I didn't have to think about anything else.

Quiltfest 2025

I'm actually participating in QuiltFest 2025, run by Amy's Creative Side. Trying to keep on top of all the entries, to talk about new things, to describe the changes going on in my quilting process and life. But a lot of it is looking back at stuff I've done in the past, trying to retrace the thoughts I started with back in the day.

Also, realising just how messy and disorganised my quilting 'studio' is compared to all the Pinterest-perfect studios that are in the hashtag!

There's nothing quite as humbling as the realisation that you aren't working in a light-filled attic that's cleaned to within an inch of its life, with the fabrics colour-coded, or maybe designer-coded, neatly arrayed on comic book boards.

But also, this is real life, real quilting. I'm not even trying to be Stepford - metaphorically speaking - just trying to get stuff done. Which means...mess. And disorganisation. And different styles of fabric. Sorting that makes sense for a brief period of time and then doesn't make sense at all. Unfinished objects that sit around for AGES in various boxes and bags and states of unfinishedness. Fabric that I fully intend to sell but can't get anyone to buy...

It's a lot.

I haven't really done much more on the 2nd of the two quilt tops I'm making. Sewn some of the blocks together, but that's about it.

Oh well, it's still progress, however slow.

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 no WIPs (well, not quite)

In fact this week I have no WIPs. (Well, that's not entirely true. I have no WIPs that are active right now. The ones that I do have are long boxed up, or long since tucked into a corner of 'yeah, not gonna happen for yonks'.

I did finish a few things over the January long weekend:

I sewed together two quilt tops. The Plaidish quilt pattern, again with the Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society fabrics. The blocks were originally going to be just one quilt top, but I looked at the size, realised it was too large, and turned it into two tops with only the addition of a single block!

(1x 49 block quilt: 7x7 + one added block = 2x 25 block quilts: 5x5)

So that worked out really well!

One quilt top:

becomes two quilt tops:

Over the weekend I also finished a shift-dress that I started about 2 months ago. I made the dress with some linen that I won at a Frocktails a couple of years ago, and...finally...came to the conclusion that the style of the dress I was making didn't suit me. Shift dresses - that is, dresses that don't have a fitted waist at the very least - don't suit me. My shoulders are broad, and my hip-waist ratio nearly non-existent. I look great in things that have a clear waistline demarcation, which are clearly two pieces - a top and a bottom, or which show off my top half: shouders and breasts in particular. I have no butt, I have no waist - those things need to be 'faked' if I'm going for a classic hourglass shape.

At any rate, I gave up on the shift dress being a 'comfy dress to wear' - it's now my 'summer beach caftan' suitable for wearing over a swimming costume.

In order to make it comfy, I shortened the sleeves (they were hanging down to my elbow), unpicked the side seams up to the pockets on both sides so I had better leg movement, and re-stitched the edges around the seams and the hem. (Which was a bit of a mess, too. I have no idea what they intended, but whatever it was, it didn't work for me.)  

Then I overlocked just about every seam in the dress - and cursed that I hadn't done it sooner! Overlocking is a wonderful thing.

(I borrowed a friend's overlocker about six months ago; she hasn't asked for it back yet.)

Anyway, out of this fiasco, I have decided: no more shift-dresses. I don't like how I look in them and I need to stop imagining I'll look good in them. I need to go back to finding dresses that work for my figure and play to those strengths.

That said, I have the Elysia Bow and Flower Dress patterns printed out, and while they're not 'shift-dresses', they are looser-figured dresses, although they do have distinct skirtage. I was hoping to make them out of cotton quilting scraps, but that could get a little bit oddball. Hm.

I haven't taken a photo of it yet. Not sure if I will or when.

Clothing thoughts 2025

I have way too much 'unfinished' clothing lying around: shirts, shirts, shirts, tops, tops, tops. And a pair of pants that no longer fit me and which I can't modify so they do - I'd need to go several sizes up. Ugh.

Some thoughts I've had on dressmaking over the last year: 

I need to find the shirt patterns, upsize them for my adult form, and cut out a couple.  I don't like the loose tops so much. Need something a little more structured. The Esme top probaby looks pretty if you've got a figure, but it's either too long, or too sacklike to suit me very well. I could maybe put an elastic waist on it? Dresses also need to be better structure - fitted bodice, tied waistline, at least an a-line skirt. No sack or loose-waisted dresses!

McCall's Misses M7969 - https://sewing.patternreview.com/Patterns/96754

I got four patterns printed:
Billie Woven Pant - Style Arc
Thea Paperbag Pant - Style Arc
Elysia Bow Patchwork Dress - Roberts Wood
Flower Patchword Dress - Roberts Wood

I wonder if I could make the Elysia Bow dress out of patchwork scraps? I mean, that's the idea, isn't it?

what a lot of updates I've got! FINISHES 2024

FINISH FRIDAY time! Feels like it's been a while.

These are the quilts I (finally) completed in 2024 (well, some of them kind of just in 2025).

Rainbow Curves 1A and 1B, and (Break Free or) Build Upon?

Woodland Dead Simple and Spare Squares

A Green Block Oddity and Break Free (or Build Upon)?

Surplus To Requirement (a.k.a. "Harry/The Spare") and Random Penny Patch

Rainbow Around The World and French General 1A

French General 1B and Scarlet Split Square

These are being given away:
- to my 2023 church group, who I was with for five years.
- a couple of gardening friends
- a couple of other church friends
- more gardening friends
- the husband friends
- dad? niecelet? nephlet?

I do have a whole lot more quilts to make...

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 surgery

Right. So, quite a lot has happened since I last posted here.

I submitted my quilts to the Sydney Quilt Show (run by the NSW Quilt Guid), both were accepted. 

I changed work clients, and am now full-time in the office, which means less time for 'puttering'.

I had a hysterectomy and am in recovery. (3rd week of technically 6, although in practicality, most likely 4 weeks.) Have a picture of my Plain Jane Passacaglia on my hospital bed:

My quilt 'Shades of Autumn' won the President's Award at the Sydney Quilt Show!

I started looking at fabric again. This was a BAD IDEA. Fabric lines like Eclectica by Dan Miller, Forest Chatter by Maywood Studio, Hibernation by Tilda... Softer colours, a less brassy palette than I used to do. I still love modern, but softer modern designs. Ugh. I shouldn't look at fabric and this is why!

Sydney Frocktails is coming up and I have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR dress patterns that could work!

However, I still cannot for the life of me find the Sew House Seven "Tea Dress" pattern that is an absolutely fantastic casual summer dress! I'm slightly annoyed! And the instant I buy it, I'm going to end up finding it again, aren't I? Because that's the way this works. *grumble*

Still want to enter the "low-value" modern quilt challenge with something provocative: "a new definition: taking up the lowest volume is peak white feminine". Which could really be done in any quilt pattern.

Hm...

I wonder if I could do my "Interconnected" quilt in low-volume? It's a thought!

But I don't have the time, unless I'm going to do the entirety of the thing THIS WEEK before I go back to work...?

No. Not going to manage that. Not even close!

Okay, going to do some more sewing of blocks for the Plaid-ish quilt that I was halfway through last year (the year before) before I got completely sidetracked in sewing/crafting!

 

more thoughts on a low-volume quilt

Quiltcon Member Challenge 2024 - due October

Be thin! Be quiet! Efface yourself into the background! Support the efforts of others in your life! "We Are White Lady Genteel (a.k.a. 'low volume')"

And then a counter sub: "I Know My Own Worth" Brassy! Bold! Forward! Confident! Perhaps with a dark background and bright colours?

I'd never get it finished before October.

Pictured: the Gothic Summer Sampler, which took a very standard pattern and simply did it in black and scarlet.

WIP Wednesday: the one with thinky thoughts about low-volume

Other than completing the 2nd quilt for the NSW Quilt Guild show (different to the Craft and Quilt Fair), I don't really have much this week.

GENERAL THINGS

I submitted a 2nd quilt. It was not complete at the time of submission.

I have some more fabric for the rest of the borders, but it's still going to be a rather small quilt - only 100x120cm. Lap-quilt at best, not even a single bed.

 

DRESSMAKING

 

QUILTING:

Friends' Quilt to get quilted by quilter - I texted her but haven't taken the quilt and batting and everything over yet. I need to check the size, and also that the batting is actually large enough for the quilt.

 

BINDING:

Still - still! - four quilts to bind. If I start by making the binding, that will kick-start the act of actually binding the things.BACKING:

Show Quilt 1 to quilt - by me. I made a backing, but then I decided I didn't like the fabric (I think it's a polycotton blend) and will replace with what I know is cotton.

 

PIECING:

The border of the abovementioned Show Quilt 2.

 

THOUGHTS I HAD

I was looking through the submissions for the ACQ (Australian Craft and Quilts?  not sure, tbh) show which is at the Sydney International Conference Centre and the 'Craft And Quilt Fair' in early July, and looked at possibly submitting for the Modern Quilt Guild next year. Submission to be done by October, to the theme: low-volume.

There's a part of me that wants to do low-volume in darks.

"But darks aren't low-volume!"

Look, American quilting is very...American. Which means there's a big emphasis on whites and lights and neutrals and 'feminine'  - a very distinct genderisation and also a very particular colourism. (To deny that America - and more broadly Western culture - has colourism embedded in their perceptions of colour is naive at best and stubbornly obstructive at worst.)

"Low volume" is presumed to mean 'reads as white' but I don't see why it can't mean 'reads as a solid'.

(You could also read 'low volume' in a very gender- and race-oriented way in the manner in which women are taught not to take up space. Be thin! Be quiet! Efface yourself into the background! Support the efforts of others in your life! Don't be proud or up-front or bossy or brassy! Which is also why many white American traditions of genteel self-effacement are affronted by the boldness of traditional black culture. That's a whole other conversation to be had. But it's certainly something to think about since quilting shows tend to be a very "white lady genteel" thing when run at the scale of current major quilt shows.)

The Duct Tape Galaxy quilt used a lot of low-volume fabrics, although overall the colours are the thing that the eyes are drawn to, right?

Anyway, I'll have to think about it some. A dark quilt that showcases the delicate tones of colour in darker fabrics? Would they accept that? Maybe? Maybe not. But it would be a challenge that I'd love to undertake - both a challenge to myself and also a challenge to the establishment.

Thoughts. Thinky thoughts.

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 show quilts

Another 'shuffled together blocks' quilt. Planned for the quilt show. Need to finish the submission.

also: find a name. Current suggestions: 'hearts and kisses' or 'heirloom and spareloom' Your thoughts?

also: quilt and bind and label and sleeve

whew

Finish Friday: seven little quilts!

It's been a month since I posted. In that time, I have:
- had covid (ugh, do not recommend)
- bound 7 quilts
- started binding an 8th quilt
- prepped 2 more 'Restless' stars for sewing
- made plans to prep another 'Restless' star for sewing

BUT ALL THAT IS GOING ON HOLD (okay, maybe not the eighth quilt binding)

I'm going to attempt to make a quilt - two quilts, in fact - in two weeks.

The quilts are for two cousins – E1 and G2 – the two older cousins. G2 is, at the time I am posting this, about to be married. Making quilts for them (for all the cousins) is a project I've had on the books for YEARS (literal years) and I'm planning to turn it into a video project.

We'll see how it all goes!

The pattern I'm using is this one or something very like it. It's just so nice and simple, but effective, and hopefully bright. Plus, I have plenty of jelly roll strips.

Mind you, it might end up a bit scrappy.

OH CRAP. I also have to get the Show Quilt at least sewn together. It'll be another Scrappy Block Quilt, because that's what I have available right now.

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 more Regency

DRESSMAKING

Finished the stays and a cotton chemise. 

   

The pattern for the chemise was self-drafted thanks to a number of helpful YT vids, however, next time I would make the neckline smaller, although this might require a more triangular body shape rather than the rectangle I went for.

Also, a note to myself: always flat-fell the first set of seams before sewing the next set.

The stays presented a bit of a problem - I didn't make them very well ("flexible" seams and a tendency to wing it) so I don't feel like they do quite what they're supposed to do. Some of it is the shoulder straps, I think, and how they're set up, and also maybe the pattern was not as supportive as it needed to be - I need a tighter bodice and armscye (as a FB friend who I've known for nearly 40 years observed).

It looks okay-ish, I guess. Not quite as high a bust profile as I'd like - as a friend observed, it might work for an afternoon/day dress. Which I'll make and use the underpinnings for.

 

The stays also don't have a busk - the wooden prop down the centre of the bodice. The friend who I consulted said that most people use a paint stirrer and cut it down. That might be a plan.

Anyway, that's two things out of the way: chemise and basic stays. Might have to make some more solid stays, but that can wait until later.

 

And planning a regency dress for a garden party I may or may not get to go to!

Bridgerton in Bowral is apparently going ahead (after hearing it might be cancelled), and I'm going down from early Sunday morning (I hope to leave around 6:30am and arrive around 8am) and will stay until Wednesday. I can work while I'm away (may not be particularly comfortable, but it can be done) and I will also be seeing the first episode at the local cinema!

 

The thing about the garden party, though, is that you apply to participate, and chances are high they're going to look for influencers and other people with big followings who'll promote the event and the happenings. Which is a big d'oh, but I'm hoping to meet some other Aussie Bridgerton fans, so we'll see how that goes. I've already made arrangements with people I've met on FB.

That said, I still want to make a Bridgerton-style gown - if I don't like it, I can likely fob it off on someone else.

 

BINDING:

ahahahahaha, no.

 

PIECING:

More seams on the Restless Hands Of Sel, although still haven't finished sewing the column together!

So my current schedule is full of dressmaking for Regency balls, etc.