Ocean Waves

A few years ago my friend Terri started a class using a wedge ruler. After she finished making all of the wedges the project sat in her 'to be finished' pile long enough for her to buy a new table. This one was long rather than circular and so the planned circular table cover was not going to suit.

 So off she went and played with her finished blocks...... the result was a gorgeous runner which Patchwork and Stitching thought others would like and so published the instructions for it. 

I recently received these photos from Susan of the results of a sewing day she had with a few of her friends. Funny isn't it how Susan has completed the cycle, joining her wedges into a full circle as per the original class.

The circular table centre is by Susan Flynn, while the red and green runner belongs to Judy Smith and the purple one in the same photo is by Linda Allen.  These three women all belong to Clermont Patchwork and Quilters Group. The single runner was made by Sandra Galvin from Walcha who visits the Clermont annually whilst her husband is gold prospecting.

One Man's Trash .....

Well I have been given a friend's unwanted scraps and boy what a monumental task it has been to organise them. I have been cutting for over two weeks and now have managed to clean up most of it but I was wondering this morning could I have done it better and after a bit of surfing have discovered that yes...... I could have completed it a lot more efficiently.

One site that I found is this one by Cindi Souder who gives some good suggestions on how to organise yourself for both better/cleaner cutting and more organised time management in the task of cutting fabric. Hopefully I remember it for next time but for now I have cut the following queen sized quilts from my friend's 'rubbish'

• Storm at Sea
• Kaleidoscope
• Penrose Tiles
• Three strippy quilts
• Two hexagon scrooge quilts

What makes it even more amazing is those were cut from her small scraps. There still remain larger pieces to be cut ... another day!

Judi Lawson

 One of the quilt groups that I am a member of is the Red Berries. They meet twice a month in Berry and at one of those meetings they usually have a guest speaker. Last month's speaker was a good friend of mine who as you can see from these gorgeous quilts is into reproduction, or reproduction style quilt. Don't you just love them. 

The blue star quilt is one that I hope to make at some time in the future while the hexagon with orange inserts is one that I have already made TWICE. Must take a photo of those quilts soon. Say when I finish quilting them... well that means it won't be soon.

Judi was interesting to hear. In her first few quilts, in an endeavour to more closely reproduce old style quilts she had used flannelette sheets rather than wadding. She said that this had been very difficult to hand quilt and actually resulted in damage being done to her thumb. I would have thought it would have been easy to hand quilt through the sheet. Live and learn.

Margaret Foster's Fantastic Fabrics

 Just over a year ago I taught a class to women from Bateman's Bay and Margaret decided to make two of the classes that were offered. 

It was one of my Scrooge Quilt workshops where people can use any strips they have lying around. Any width, any length, any colour... just use up what you have is the idea..... that's where the name Scrooge Quilts came from. In the class I offered four different quilts that all start the same but then deviate quite dramatically depending on what you want. 

Margaret dyes her own fabrics and wanted to use those and didn't they come up beautifully. Oh btw if you want to do a dyeing workshop with her you can find out the details here.

A Touch of Magic

I'm still not certain that this will be the name of the quilt but for the time being it will do.  This quilt was started last year in my cleaning up phase where I decided that come what may I was going to clear out all of my scraps, well at least those smaller than a sheet of A4 paper.  

At this stage I have made five quilts but unfortunately the scraps seem to grow overnight or at least whenever I turn around.  I have in my basket enough scraps to make a decent size portion of yet another quilt.  Oh well that is for another day.

Three different blocks make the quilt; log cabin for the stars, pineapple for the background and fiddlesticks for the 'odd' blocks.  I am quilting it as QAYG and have so far finished one out of four sections.  Hope to finish by xmas.

Bubble Too

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Finally finished Laura's quilt top.  Will need to see if I can get it quilted while I'm overseas ... hopefully the wedding isn't too soon!

This is another in my scrooge series... really should think of another name for the series as I can see some people taking offense. Funny I was at a course a few weeks ago and some of the questions which we had to ask ourselves were - what was irritating us in our lives, had there ever been a time when this didn't irritate us and what was different about that time and now.

Well the only things that are irritating me are the number of quilt projects which I have in various stages;
When wasn't I distracted by so many projects - when I first began quilting;
What was different - financial situation... as I said at that stage we were too poor for me to buy something and not use it....
So solution to my UFOs and WIPs is POVERTY! 

Not the expected response but definitely true.

These scrooge quilts are great fun!

Poor Man, Beggar Man

Well I have finally uploaded my two denim quilts. After seeing Doris' denim quilts I thought they looked good and so decided to give it a try. I have a series of three items made out of denim

Rich Man is a handbag made from a gorgeous pair of jeans. I will upload a photo some day soon. I used one of PJ's old satin pyjama bottoms for the lining and have a selection of old silk ties that I use instead of a belt and change over to add variety of colour to the bag.

Poor Man is the log cabin quilt which came second.  This one featured in Down Under Quilts recently.  It used mainly the long pieces from the legs and the large pocket sections.

Lastly is Beggar Man and this was made from what was left after the other two items had taken the 'cream' of the material.  To me it is by far the best and has so much character, by the time I started on this quilt I had worked out to incorporate all of the different shaped pockets, tabs and bits and pieces.... even have a couple of secret pocket sections which are perfect for a child to hide something in.

I was amazed at the weight of these quilts and when it came to quilting had to leave out the wadding or it would have taken a strongman to lift either of them:-)

Bubble and Squeak

Well another Scrooge quilt top finished... this one will be for my brother, Serge, for his wedding... here's hoping he doesn't get married too soon as I still need to finish the other one for Laura... and then get them quilted!

I don't know if they will like them but I definitely enjoy making them.  Very liberating and free as there are few decisions that need to be made and as it is so busy everything seems to go together.

If you look closely at the detail on the right you will see that there is no set rule for anything. Just cut the fabric and sew it in. All of this was made with leftover scraps from other quilts. Hopefully by the time I finish Laura's my scraps will be no more. It is hard to believe that this is the fourth quilt I have made like this since the beginning of the year.

Pirate's Paradox

The title of this quilt comes from the Gilbert and Sullivan musical Pirate's of Penzance. Within that you have one skit where a misunderstanding occurs because of the way people pronounce the words orphans and often. As I often have had orphans over the years I thought this was a reasonable connection.
I made this quilt in an attempt to use up ALL of my left over blocks from projects I have made throughout the 20 years I have been quilting. After this quilt was finished I was left with only one block in my orphan box. Richard upon seeing it thought it was grand as it reminded him of so many of my other quilts.
When he moved out to live on campus he wanted a quilt that didn't matter if it was damaged and was really happy when I offered this one

Through the Window

Personally I wanted to call this quilt Dusting Crumbs but Paul thought it detracted from the design.  I thought it was a most appropriate title since the first few blocks started out with crumbs but as I progressed the pieces I used were even smaller, rather than larger, and so to me suggested crumbs.  Not a bad result from using up leftover leftovers!

Will post picture when I get a chance

Here Comes the Sun

Well I suppose this isn't really a scrooge quilt since in reality it is made with new fabric... but it could be classed as such since Richard didn't have to buy any of the fabric... he simply scavaged it all from my stash...
Not a bad effort for first quilt.

Richard came up to ask for my help just a month before his girlfriend's birthday. He wanted to make her something personal and thought a teddy bear would be perfect. Small and therefore easy! You have to love that logic. After a bit of discussion he decided that perhaps I had more idea of what was easy and manageable in the sewing area than he did and so he embarked on a quilt.

Day 1 was selecting fabric and cutting .. after a few almost lethal swipes he managed this reasonable well.
Day 2 laying out ... several hours later he decided that perhaps I had a system which could help him get a good spread of colours
Day 3 ... now the adventure began... using the sewing machine.... an easy task ... his design was QAYG nine patches. Hey this was really easy and it only took two days to put together his 12 blocks .. only making a lap quilt.
Day 4 ... two weeks later .. started the quilting... figured he didn't need to rush as making the blocks had to be the hard part and that had taken only a few hours
Day 5 .. about a week later... have managed to ditch stitch the seperate blocks .. only need the diagonal quilting line, trimming blocks, joining blocks, hand sewing the covering seam on the back, binding.... yes we are only a few days away from the birthday and yes I have been nagging but Richard still hasn't hit onto the fact of how much more needs to be done

D Day minus two.. yes the birthday is in two days and most of what needed to be done on Day 5 still needs to be done. At this stage Richard figured that when I had been nagging him it was perhaps because he had a lot left to do. For the two days prior to Jess' birthday either Richard or I worked on the quilt for over ten hours per day.

Finished by the day and proud as punch Richard gave Jess the quilt. We had only made one error .. lap quilts in this house are almost bed size for normal sized people and Jess is tiny... but she loved it