A Busy Week (or two!)!!

This week has been very busy as I have been teaching 4 days at College. So I have been neglecting my patchwork and my blog!
However this lovely parcel arrived during the week from Anina as I had recently won the giveaway on her Dear Baby Jane Blog. Now I have a tiny cutting mat and ruler to use on the ironing board when I am making my DJ blocks and a lovely pack of Laura Ashley post-its. Also one of those great Moo cards of some of Anina's work. Thank you Anina! I am just in the process of enroling for year 2 of my Patchwork and Quilting City & Guilds. This book I ordered arrived yesterday - it looks really useful but I suspect it would have been much more use if I had had it at the beginning of my course!

The next 4 Dear Jane Blocks.

I have had these four blocks done for a while but never seemed to get round to posting them on the blog. As I have won Anina's giveaway (lucky me - my first blogland win!)and some of my photos have gone up on the Dear Baby Jane blog I thought some of you might pop over to see my blog so I better have some DJ stuff for you to look at! H1 Peek A Boo
Foundation pieced.

B11 Melissa's Cross.

Foundation pieced and hand applique.

B10 Jud's Trophy

Foundation pieced.

B9 Tinker Toy

Hand pieced.

Progress is slow but sure - I am hanging on in there!

Hungarian Dear Jane!

One of the showcases at the Festival of Quilts contained Hungarian blue and white quilts which were very striking and attracting lots of attention.

One of them was a Dear Jane with a difference. As you can see the blocks are the same but they have been converted into diamonds.

I love how the maker has added one red block in the top corner.It really was a lovely quilt!

I have edited this post so that you can click on the photos to make them larger!

The next 4 Dear Jane Blocks - Yes I am still in!

As some of you will know last month was very busy for me so progress on the DJ has been very slow. I am trying to now do 4 blocks per week rather than 2 and I have also decided not to do the triangles at the moment. I have been playing with my photo software and am not sure if these cropped photos are any better than usual but at least it gives you an idea of the blocks! B8 Waterlily
This is hand pieced which worked really well for me although I was not that pleased with the applique melons - I have had much better results with some of the previous blocks.

B5 Hot Cross Buns

Machine pieced with reverse applique - quite pleased with this one although it is difficult to get the points sharp on such small diamonds.

B7 World Series

Not that happy with this one especially the applique diamonds but have decided to live with it for now at least.

B6 Wild Goose Chase

My word - what an endurance test!! This took me hours! It was my first attempt at the freezer paper method of foundation piecing but I was really quite pleased with it.

4 MORE DEAR JANE BLOCKS

I am hideously behind with my Dear Jane challenge but I have not given up and I WILL catch up soon. I am just so busy with my C&G at the moment and that is taking up all my time.
The first block is B12 Starflower and this has been done using reverse applique - a technique I had never tried before joining the DJ challenge but one I really like. The second block is B2 Sweet Tater Pie. This is my second attempt at this block - the first was hand pieced - it came out too small and I could not get the center right. This second block is much better as I used the method of half square triangles - cut a circle and appliqued it.
The third block is K7 Rose of Sharing. Appliqued in four pieces which are then joined.
Finally C3 Rayelle's Fence - very time consuming but worthwhile. This was foundation pieced in strips and then strips joined in traditional manner.
The final photo shows the method I am using to keep track of my colour placement. It is a calico grid of one inch squares. Each time I make a block I attach a square of the fabric used with my tagging gun. I know that a lot of you have fancy computer grids to do this - but this method works well for me.
I am reusing some of the fabrics so this helps me to see how the finished quilt will look. It is going to be random - not TATW.

Dear Jane Update

I am pleased to report that I am now totally up to date with my Dear Baby Jane challenge! Phew! I have finished off all the blocks I did in Scotland and squared them up. I have also done some new ones.
Chris's soccer field - the first foundation pieced block.
Uncle Homer which was a left over from a couple of weeks ago Mirror image which I have redone using hand piecing.
Dad's plaids which I have now sewn together.
So 10 blocks completed! Anina had set us the challenge to catch up over the weekend - mission accomplished!

More DJ blocks completed.

As I said in my previous post we are currently in Scotland. I do not have my sewing machine with me so have been getting on with my applique blocks. This is the first time that I have done reverse applique and due to Anina's excellent instructions it has gone very well. I am really enjoying the DJ challenge so far and also I am learning so much as it is such a complicated quilt pattern. That is also my excuse as to why I am allowing myself to do it alongside my City and Guilds. Actually I think the two complement each other very well. Dad's plaids did give my a hard time. As usual the problem was that I did not read the tutorial carefully enough and I didn't realise that some of the diagrams in the book did not actually match the blocks exactly. So when I traced the design onto freezer paper the 'melons' were too large to do the reverse applique. Anyway I think I have figured it out ok - they need to be stitched together - I will do this when I get home on Thursday.

The other two applique blocks worked out fine - I also loved learning the 'freezer paper on top' method of applique.

That is 7 of the 8 blocks completed - I have left Uncle Homer to be done on the machine. I have also redone the Mirror Image by the hand piecing method and will join that by machine later. Of course I will not be doing todays foundation pieced block until I get home either.

Glad to have nearly caught up though as when I get home I must get up to date with my City and Guilds and shock horror I have to go to work next week as I have loads of teaching coming up.

My first Dear Jane blocks

We are now back home so it is time to catch up with the Dear Jane blocks I have missed. We were delayed 24 hours in Philadelphia due to bad weather and our bags were missing in action for 3 days but now everything is sorted. Only problem now is adjusting back to the time change - at first I couldn't stop falling asleep but now I can't go to sleep! Anyway we had a fantastic time so I'm not complaining.

Since the Dear Jane challenge started we have been given 7 blocks to complete. Here are the first three, the next 4 to follow asap.

The first two very straight forward. The third one much more complex - I decided to piece two circle within a square blocks and then chop them up. This worked well except for the fact that my maths was not quite right so my circular area is smaller than it should be. I don't think this matters though as my block is still the correct 5 inches.
Believe it or not I am getting ready to go on holiday again - this time it is our yearly visit to Scotland with my parents and two sons. We leave on Thursday - loads of washing and ironing to do before then!

Module 2 Colour - Resolved Piece - Accent Colours

The resolved piece comes at the end of each module. It is art work only which shows how you have used a design to produce your own artwork. I need to then extend this to show how the design can be used to make a quilt which is not necessary but I find that it helps me to justify the artwork. The theme for the resolved piece was accent colours and we had to continue the theme of looking at creatures in the natural world. We also had to look at complementary colours and this made me think of colourful tropical fish. I found this photo on the internet to use. The first piece of artwork is a painting of my interpretation of the photo. I then looked at sponging a blue / purple background, intentionally ignoring the green weed in the photo. I stylised the fish into two yellow triangles and made the fish smaller.
This then led to the quilt design based on triangles with the yellow fish scattered around. I think that it would be fun to piece even though it is all triangles! I would use lots of different patterned background fabrics to give the effect of the undersea landscape.
I am now working on Module 3 which is texture and hope to share some of those samples with you soon. I suppose the only frustrating thing at this stage of my course is that I don't have time to dwell on techniques that I have enjoyed and do more but there will be time for that next year.

In the meantime I have signed up for the Dear Baby Jane Challenge
which is something I have wanted to do for a while and I think that working out some of the more complicated blocks will be a good learning experience.