ANOTHER CUT-UP BLOCK

Nothing much going on on the quilting front this week. I have been busy knitting socks, sewing hanging sleeves for an exhibition and thinking very hard at the cushions I will sew (soon!)(this is for my impatient DS!).

Last time I showed a cut-up block and this week is another one which I designed. (By that I mean that I have never seen such a block, or rather half-block somewhere else but if someone has, please let me know!).
I call this block "Japanese basket" because it reminds me of a basket and I sewed it with taupe fabrics.


The quilt is machine-sewed and machine-quilted with an invisible thread and has a bit of machine-stitchery on the lower left side. I used a lot of different fabrics for the baskets: uphostery fabric, silk, shirts, satin,...
The fabric for the borders is a garment fabric.

And here is the way to sew a half-block. 2 squares cut diagonally in opposite directions and sewed together.

As you can see my students are very busy: Monika N. finished her sampler with the quilt-as-you-go method. I think it turned out really nice.

Well done Monika!

On Saturday I hope I can go to a fabric market and have a look at nice fabrics, buttons and stuff. Of course I will only LOOK!

I will tell you more next week.

FINISHED

My blue quilt-as-you-go sampler is finished at last! I hadn´t thought it would last so long though. I am happy with the result and with the improvements of my machine-quilting skills. Most of the quilting was done without marking and after all those feathers, I have finally understood how they are done especially in curves.

My new course starst on Wednesday, so that was a close shot! For my students, they will have this session to finish their quilt-as-you-go quilts and we will do a christmas mystery table runner as well.

As I thought I would, I received this week these nice australian magazines. A lot to drool over!

I started a small stitchery to put in the middle of the siggy blocks. I will put small buttons in the middle of the flowers and I still have to stitch small flowers at the bottom of the flower pot.

I hope to finish this quilt quickly, all the blocks are already there, right (!)so that I can enjoy all the siggy blocks from allover the world.
I wish you a nice week with a better weather than we have here. Have I allready told you that the weather is miserable here, wet, windy, cold,... and that apart from a snail invasion, we haven´t seen anything from summer?!

QUILT BACKS

As promised, here is a picture of the 4 seasons quilt´s back. The green is much more olive green in reality and I think it depicts well autumn in the south of France. I still haven´t done the label, I am waiting for inspiration!







Some of you had asked previously if I machine quilted on a long-arm. Nope! I quilt on my dear Bernina and without a stitch regulator either.

Here is where I am so far with this blue sampler. I will put some borders and then it will be done. I hope I will finish it this week as I want to start some stitchery.

I feel like doing a hand project after all this machine sewing and quilting.

On the back one can see some of the quilting and the quilt-as-you-go sashing.

You see from the lush green in the garden that we don´t really lack water this year! I am still waiting for the summer!

I wish you a happy start in the new week.

BLUE

Today, only blue things, well nearly! First a zucchini bread from a recipe from Connie. It was delicious. The mixture of zucchini, cinnamon and vanilla is a bit curious but it tasted great. Although I would not call it a bread but rather a cake and a rich one at that!

I received the lovely postcard from Britta after I had lent her a book. Thanks a lot again Britta. Maybe I shoud lend my books more often!

Then some pictures of my quilt-as-you-go sampler. I am coming along and the quilting is much easier with one block at a time. I am trying to improve my machine-quilting on that one and I am having fun trying a lot of different designs.

I hope to finish that quilt before september (the new course starts then) so that I can show it to the students who made the same blocks in the last course session.

It seems the weather is getting better at last so I am off to enjoy the last week-end before school starts!

Have a nice week-end too!

RED QUILT AND SAMPLER

Today I will show you my red quilt (the one for our TV-room). It is hand-sewed (apart from the borders) and hand-quilted. I got the model from an "Australian Patchwork and Quilting" magazine. It is a scrap quilt and my motto for scrap quilts being "if no ugly fabrics then no interesting", there are some very ugly fabrics in it. Some bed linen and some aprons from my MIL made their way into this quilt as well. The border is a home dyed damask table cloth a friend gave me.













The sampler blocks are for my actual patchwork course. They are 12" x 12"( which I think is huge !).Some are machine-appliquéed. They will each get a narrow frame of blue fabric and be quilted-as-you-go.


I wish you all a nice week-end. Here it seems that winter has come back so it will be a cosy time with some hand-quilting!