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?