Finishes - Clocks to Cosmic colour!

So while I was in Cork, the Limerick Quilt Centre were down too with their pop up shop for the Southern branch's meeting.  And you would think that being a regular customer I would have no need of anything but I succumbed to impulse and bought a fabric clock making kit!

A few years ago I bought the lampshade kit in the same range (haven't used it yet!) but thought I'd get the clock kit out and up and running.  It was really easy to use and I love how it looks with this Karavan print from Valorie Wells.  Can I call this a Friday finish?  Is that cheating?

One thing I can definitely claim as milestone reached is my Rainbow Rose quilt top.  I finally made a decision on the applique and went all Orla Kiely inspired on the corners.  It's now with being quilted by Tomomi@Slaney Handcraft.  I asked her to give it the Tomomi Treatment and you should have a look at the beautiful quilting that is being done here on instagram.  Awed as always by Tomomi's quilting!

Lastly, the deadline for Aurora, a co-exhibition between the Irish Patchwork Society and the Northern Ireland Patchwork Guild, is this Friday so I had to get a move on to get my quilt done.

Inspired by the colours that digital cameras can pick up that we don't see ourselves, I tried to pick a vibrant selection of yellow greens, mint blue, magenta, reds and berry colours to symbolise the Aurora Borealis against a starry or city at night sky. 

Circular quilting to depict our planets motion and wavy quilting in straight lines for the light that we see.

It's now all bound and labelled and just needs a hanging sleeve!  To see the amazing quilts Tomomi and Lena from Quilt Arts did check out these links here and here.  They are incredible and I hope my simple quilt is hung right at the other end of the gallery!  It's going to be a fun and very colourful exhibition and I am really looking forward to seeing their quilts up close in real life.  They will be on display in Dublin in May and in Lisburn after that.  Might have to visit twice!

Fun with scraps - ticker tape pictorial quilts

Just over 2 weeks ago, I had the privilege of teaching a ticker tape class in the Cork branch of the Irish Patchwork Society.  We looked at examples of Quilt-As-You-Go and joining blocks but spent the most of a beautiful sunny afternoon playing with scraps making pictorial ticker tape quilts from scraps.

In addition to redesigning Wilbur, I had prepared a class sample showing the technique of a guitar and brought with me templates of shapes I thought peoeple might like, as not everyone is lucky enough to have their joy of Basset Hound pups, taking up all the sofa space in the house!

As it is quilt as you go and involves basting and messing about with scraps of all colours, quite a few people took to the floor!  Some decided to make a Rose...

One musical lady tried out my guitar...

There was a dolphin...

And yes one or two Basset's!

Quite a bit of progress was made on the day.  I love this very Bohemian looking guitar.

And Joanna's original circles design for a baby quilt.

Lastly a new puppy!  Assumpta was so speedy in getting this little guy filled in.

Thank you ladies for a brilliant afternoon and I hope you had as much fun as I did!  I love visiting the Southern branch and hope to be back again sometime soon!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

This month in Modern Irish Bee, Erin asked us to make a tri-colour Washington star in the colours of the Irish Flag.  This is as far as I've gotten today!

I have to leave this for now and come back to it later as we spend the day with mum, watching the Limerick parade, quick visit to the pub and then home to mum's for dinner.   I thought it would make a nice photo to wish everyone a happy St. Patrick's.  Hope you enjoy the day!

WIP Wednesday - the colourful ones!

In between getting ready for our Modern Irish Quilters Sewing Day this past weekend, I have been preparing samples for a Quilt-As-You-Go class showing the ticker tape process and using scraps to make a wall hanging like Wilbur and QAYG panels like this version of a pattern by Stitched in Color called Bottled Rainbows. 

Rachel's pattern uses 16 rectangles to make up the quilt.  I'm using 9 bigger square blocks measuring 20" square.  I don't have as much variety in my scraps to get panels of both orange and tangerine so I've tried to come up with 9 colours I think work well together and pick scraps that live in that colour family that go well together.

Not having that many yellow scraps I've included some gold and browns.

I'm hoping this will be a handy quilt to use for teaching the colour wheel for the Rainbow Rose quilt in April too and I like it's bright and happy feel.   Hard to resist a rainbow!

The other project I'm working on is for Aurora, a co-exhibition between the Irish Patchwork Society and the Northern Ireland Patchwork Guild.  Inspired by these photos by Mike Taylor which shows how digital cameras are capturing intense colours when photographing the Aurora Borealis, I tried to pull fabrics from my stash that matched that intensity.

To give it a bit more impact I've made Dresden blades by resizing templates from Aneela Hooeys Bloom pattern. 

 I'm really liking this colour combo against the dark blue background fabric.


And while I've been so busy Maggie has been in chewing mode so I've had to keep the dogs far from my end of the kitchen where I sew.  She has quite a few toys but still manages to eat what she shouldn't.

I normally have Charly beside me while I work and Wilbur finds the comfiest spot to snooze on but if Charly is with me Maggie wants to be too and gets bored, poor pup. So in fairness I have them all barred from the sewing space and Charly is not one bit impressed. 

Can't blame her, Maggie destroyed her bed while I was out at our Modern Quilters Sewing Day and its G's fault as he had a nice lie in and left them to their own devices!  Just as well the daylight is getting longer as we need to walk the legs off the pup and do more training with her to get rid of some of that excess energy.  Busy, busy weeks ahead.

I was thinking of making Charly her own dog bed but I might just wait a while yet!

Friday Finishes - Modern Quilt Guild Swap!

The Modern Quilt Guild hosted its first swap and even though I have so many things to do and get finished I had to sign up,  I didn't want to miss the first swap and thought they are only little, mini quilts, of course I can spare the time.  And am I glad I did!

This gorgeous mini arrived in the post to me this week!  Thanks you Shelly for such a perfectly happy, totally me mini!  I have the perfect spot for it near my sewing machine! 

This is the finished mini I made and it has safely arrived with its new owner.  Thanks Cecilia for the photo - I couldn't resist bringing it to our guild meeting just before popping it in the post!

Each of those little hourglasses are 2" square so it was a little bit fiddly but great fun to work with.

The quilting pattern was straight lines using Christa's fractured line design I saw on her class (The Quilters Path) on Craftsy and the label was made using the embroidery function on my Husqvarna from a pattern on Urban Threads.

For the first time ever I decided to make a biggie for myself as well as a mini to give away.  I thought I was going great guns yesterday evening finished the flimsy until I realised I'd made 2 piecing mistakes - that's what happen when you sew when tired, cranky and sporting a neck injury! 

Oh well, I can take my time rippity rip ripping this evening!  I really like the low volume background fabrics and was thinking about leaving it be but then decided no, get it right.  I might just write this up as a pattern and it needs to be perfect for that!

So that's my plan for the weekend sewing.  I do hope to follow along a bit with the not going to Quiltcon on Instagram too.  It will cheer me up while I rip and redo! 
Happy weekend everybody!

Workshops!

 Say hi to the new basset puppy that will be decorating my sewing space!  No we didn't get another real puppy (1 is enough - she is at the chewing stage eating shoes, laptop chargers, wires of any kind and poor Wilbur's ears!)

At the weekend, Karen at the Limerick Quilt Centre, had a needle felting workshop and I went along armed with an inspiration picture I found as a free colouring page. download here on ZileArt.com.

Dean the Basset Dog became a puppy and I had a brilliant day filling in the background with soft Merino wool and adding mad colour.  I think he is a very happy puppy and will look brilliant in a box frame on the wall.

We were given a kit, complete with coloured wool, needle and handle, big foam square and a wool background.  It was so lovely to rock up to a sewing workshop having to bring only myself and no machine, mat, cutter, extension lead, iron and board, scissors, thread, fabric and pins. You know how it goes!

Still it has to be done from time to time.  Our branch of the Irish Patchwork Society had Ailbhe O'Callaghan up from the Cork branch to teach us her technique on sewing really skinny lines.  We're talking less than 1/4" for most of them. 

Ailbhe gave us fabric to practice on and it took the whole morning to piece in these 3 lines!  We were all concentrating really hard to get them perfect!  Ailbhe is going to use all our practice pieces for a quilt which I thought was a great idea!

In the afternoon, we had a go at designing our own bigger project using lines of different colours.  I went for a grid as an underlay and they added some triangles on top.

To be honest I spent the rest of the class fiddling as I couldn't make my mind up which way to go. 

A giant A or maybe something that looks like a Star Trek communicator?

I was also distracted  by everyone else's progress and couldn't resist wandering around the room.  I just loved Claire's bright neon look.

Even her scraps were gorgeous!

That's as far as I got, 1 finished and 1 designed, kind of!  I'm happy with that, every little helps, right?

Design Wall Monday - the mini made large!

So the design wall looks like this!

I know, I was making great progress catching up on outstanding projects, ticking things done, crossing them off the to do list and feeling productive.  I was on a roll and with a a deadline on the 10th February, for a mini quilt swap - what do I do?  Yup, start another quilt!

In my defense this is the design I want to make in mini form for the swap.  Normally, the advice to test out a design is to make a mini - this time around I'm doing it the other way around!

You might remember this design I created from a tutorial I wrote on using  Touchdraw, for the Modern Quilters Ireland group?

That was nearly 2 years ago. About time I got around to making it really, right?  Some of the nicest things I've ever made have been for swaps and I've always been happy to send them on their way.  The drawback, is that when it comes to show and tell of your own work, you have nothing to show for it.  So I decided to make a big quilt for myself and a mini for the swap (swap is max 24").

For the bigger version, I had it in mind to make with low volume background fabrics and then use some of the same coloured fabrics for the mini version against a plain white background!

I had bought 2 boxes of Cotton and Steel fabric from Craftsy last year in their sale and it was sitting there just waiting to be used and I couldn't get the low volume version out of my head and really, really wanted to test it out so, I started pulling from the box and cutting up fabric and the next thing you know I motoring my way through 6" hourglass, snowball and flying geese chevron blocks!

I had joined Westwood Acre's Inside Voices fabric club two years ago and split the bundles with a friend.  We got 10 fat quarters each month and we'd take turns every other month keeping a bundle.  I thought I had lots and lots of low volume and now after this and my Lost in London quilt, I have made a huge dent, definitely don't have the makings of another quilt left!

I did sneak in some cotton and steel fun fabrics too, cats and coyotes, spiderwebs and flowers to just give it that special touch and this one is going to be for me and the dogs when we sit on the sofa in the evenings, watching TV (yes Charly does watch the telly - the Bassett's?  Not so much - it interferes with their snoring!)

And while I was rummaging amongst Cotton and Steel fabrics, I made a fabric pull for a guild quilt exhibition, due the end of February.  The theme is Aurora (goddess of the dawn) and I plan on making a wall hanging, using overlaying dresden plates in the colours of the Aurora Borealis.  Hoping it will look a bit like a sunrise just in mad colours!

I've resized templates from Aneela Hoey's Bloom Quilt pattern which gave me the inspiration for it in the first place!  Thinking this one should really be a big quilt too!   Aneela is on the crafty planners podcast today - go have a listen!

So that's me pro-crafter-nating on the to do list and indulging myself in fabric before the deadlines get a little bit closer!  Hope you enjoyed your weekend as much as I did!