Baltimore Album Block 2 - Oak Reel

Very appropriate as it's Autumn and suddenly the leaves are changing colour and falling from the trees.  There have been some spectacular sights of the colour changing trees, but all too quickly the leaves will be gone.

So here's my second block, the Oak Reel from Mimi Dietrich's book Baltimore Basics.  

It wasn't easy to do the little curves in the leaves, but with some clipping of the curves and using temporary glue pen to shape the appliqués they managed to keep their shape.  More little berries, 16 of them this time, which were easy to lose until attached.

The batik fabric I bought from Doughty's some time ago, seems to give the impression of a wet Autumn day, makes a nice backdrop to this block

Next block will be Pineapples, which will involve applique from the reverse of the background fabric. See how that goes.

Farmer's Wife 1930's Sampler 3

I've still not tackled more foundation piecing so these two blocks are worked out by measuring, rotary cutting and machine piecing.  I will have to get a handle on the more complicated blocks, but given my time constraints at present to get two more blocks completed is an achievement.

So here they are

The top (pink) one is (no. 79) Patience, I have to admit a bit of cheating with the patterned pieces, cut 2 squares and 2 rectangles instead of of 6 squares, but don't tell anyone ;o).

The bottom block is (no. 94) Susannah, a block which I am very familiar with, having made this a few times, seeing as the name of it is as close to Suzan as I'm going to get!  I like purple too, so this had to be a block with purples in (or shades thereof). Again rotary cut and machine pieced.

Do you like the board that I've displayed these on?  I found on You Tube a tutorial on making a mini design board by Lori Holt on the Fat Quarter Shop here

I didn't have the foam core board that she uses, but I did have the middle of a fabric bolt which was made of corrugated card.  As it was a long rectangle I cut in half and joined the two halves side by side and taped together well, although it does bend slightly in the middle because of the join.  I used a glue gun to attach the wadding (batting) to the board.

I used 2 strips of fabric to make the binding and had some of the strip left over so that made a hanging look to put neatly away when not in use (that's the theory, anyway). The binding strip was glued again using the glue gun around the side, top and bottom of the board, the loop was also glued on.  Using this to keep the pieces together will be handy in putting more of the Farmer's Wife blocks together. especially when the pieces become very small.

Here is another picture of the board with another block, Sarah, which I shared on another post.

Being as the days are shorter, there probably be more shadowy pictures, I try not to get too much of i-Phone, i-Pad or camera in the pics, but sometimes it's just impossible.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

I've decided to enter my small quilt, made at a recent workshop, into the ROYGBIV category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival

 This the the front

 The back is pretty rainbow-y too

And here's a close up detail of the stitching applique circles, and a few sequins.

I love it so much that it is hanging in the bedroom, just love the colours.

Read more about it in this post here.

See the post about the ROYGBIV category of the Quilt Festival here.

In Other News This Week…..

Last Saturday saw the Dorset Quilters' Day at the Hamworthy Club in Canford Magna near Wimborne with two speakers Gwyneth Rose and Claire Passmore, both art quilters with different routes to their craft.  Gwyneth grew up in Hertfordshire who didn't achieve high enough grades to enable her to become a teacher and later became a mature student to realise that career later in life. She found English Paper Pieced hexagons in the 1970's when a teenager, then learnt more about quilting which lead her to being an unqualified teacher and the university courses to get to her goal of being qualified.  She started experimenting with rust on fabric and her work is influenced by industrial scenery.  She doesn't have a website but has a page with gallery pictures on the Quilters' Guild website here.

Claire Passmore, the second speaker, learned how to quilt when she relocated from the UK to South Africa for a number of years.  She now spends her time between the UK and New Zealand and teaches in both countries.  Again she learned traditional quilt making before exploring art quilting.  She taught a workshop last Sunday, which I didn't attend (unusual for me) but her quilts were really varied. I took a photo of a couple of them here and she has also has a website.  She has a blog, where she has written about the Sunday workshop.

Sunday was busy washing out fabrics from the past few weeks (from Pauline's Patchworks where a did a workshop 3 weeks ago, last Monday evening's speaker evening and Saturday's quilting day).

I also won one of the raffle prizes. an Advent calendar panel, which I made up last Sunday afternoon

And on Wednesday I looked for a large piece of Christmas fabric to go on the back.  I didn't have any, so I made the back from several pieces of fabric

I'll finish off this afternoon.  It may go to one set of grandchildren, depending who'd like it.

Progress this week on the Baltimore Album block

Seven berries stitched, nine more to go. Coming along well.

We had a delivery from Ikea yesterday of some shelf units to go in my room.  One had been made up but now debating whether the Billy bookcase we ordered will fit in too.  Might mean a bit of juggling around. More about that later.

Farmers Wife 1930's Sampler, no. 2

It should be 'An Addie Disaster'!  When I first got the book I wanted to try the first block, Addie.  The pieces looked simple enough so I machine pieced this and although careful with my piecing it puckered when put together. That was disaster no. 1, which is the top yellow,green and red block.

Disaster no. 2, the bottom block. The flying geese in this are heading in the wrong direction. Although the blocks look good and I foundation pieced the block it is totally wrong and I only noticed that when ironing the block this morning. Oh well, may be third time lucky.....

However I made this block on Wednesday called Becky (no. 12), which could be rotary cut and pieced.  Nice and simple, small progress has been made.

Yesterday morning I came across a YouTube video by Fat Quarter Shop of a mini design board demonstrated by Lori Holt, of Farmhouse Vintage fame.  I think one of these could be really useful in keeping small pieces together while constructing so I may make one of these.  Another handy thing I've found which I hope will help with making the Farmers Wife blocks was an A4 pad of 50gsm Layout paper, which is considerably thinner than normal computer paper but goes through our printer quite well and will reduce the bulk in paper foundation pieced blocks.

Which just goes to show, no matter how experienced you are, there is always something new to learn!

Two Finishes

I've now finished my rainbow wallhanging, from last Saturday's workshop tutored by k3n having worked on it during the week, yesterday morning and this morning.  So here it is

 It's not wonky at the top, it's just my photography!

And here's the back with hanging sleeve and label (I've impressed myself here!)

And a close up, where I've stitched some "bubbles" and added small circles (I traced around a couple of cotton reels onto Bondaweb for those). I also added a sequin arc for a bit of bling.

Here's what the rainbow was like before I added the backing and trimmed down.

Lastly for this piece, I bonded the backing fabric onto the wadding so it covered up all that lovely stitching.  For those who like to see what the back was like before the addition of fabric, here it is

I really enjoyed the freedom of making this piece and the workshop was good too.  

The second finish is the first of my Baltimore Album blocks.  The book I've used, Baltimore Basics, by Mimi Dietrich, has very comprehensive instructions and, stitching when I can, was this

My first Baltimore Album block. It's not perfect, but it doesn't look too bad either.

Fired on by this I started on a second block tracing the outline of the pattern onto background fabric and the appliqué pieces onto freezer paper.

All cut out and glued with a Sewfine glue pen onto the back of the freezer paper and ready to sew on. You will notice that I haven't yet cut out the red berries just yet.  I think that may be another evening to cut out, gather and press all 16 of them!  Ironing the oak leaves have proved quite challenging this afternoon.

Nice to say that I've finished something!