Red and White String Hearts.

I love scraps! I just can't help it - often the leftovers from a project excite me more than the original project.

Recently I have been playing with red and white scraps left over from one of my classes.

I started by making rectangular string blocks or 'bricks' as they are sometimes known. I then made these into hearts by adding white triangles.

 This produced lots of 'bonus triangles' which were just asking to be made into scrappy flying geese. These are 1.5 x 3 inches and will make great borders.

 Anthea has asked me to do a workshop on these string hearts at Quilting Antics in Settle. She has given me scraps to work with - here are some of the string bricks I have made.

Don't they look lovely when they are all trimmed and ready to turn into rainbow hearts!

Hexagon Pincushions

My mini workshop at International Quilting Day was a hexagon pincushion.

Hexagons, made by the English paper piecing method, often have a bad reputation in P&Q circles as they are the point at which most of us started patchwork, many people abandoning it at this point.

To illustrate this point, most of us have an unfinished hexagon quilt in our UFOs (go on, admit it!)

However, here in blogland, hexagons have been undergoing something of a revival and many internet groups have been making hexie quilts.

So, I decided that we should include hexagons in our IQD activities and came up with this little hexagon pincushion design made with only 8 hexagons.

Everyone seemed to really enjoy making it on the day and I know that some of you have secretly been making more!

I confess to having more than one hexie project in my UFOs and I love making them! The red ones are for a block in a red and white quilt I am making - more on that soon!

It is now officially the Easter holidays and I have two weeks with no teaching. I am going to try to catch up on gardening, tidying the sewing room and working on some of my UFOs. I am also going to try to blog about some of these because sometimes I am just too busy to keep you up to date with my quilting activities!

Trapunto Workshop with Philippa Naylor

On Saturday I was lucky to attend a workshop with Philippa Naylor. Actually I organised it for my embroidery/patchwork group! We have a lovely big venue at the church where we meet so Philippa is able to teach 20 ladies in one class. This is the fourth year that Philippa has taught for our group and this years technique was trapunto. 

Before you ask, last year it was curved piecing, and that is still a UFO so I am hoping to do better this year.

I have decided to share my progress and hopefully this workshop sample will turn into a small quilt.

 The first photo shows my progress of as last night. This is the first stage completed but I will guide you through the process in a series of photos.

 First we drew our design (Philippa's design actually!) onto fabric.

 Then we added a double layer of 80/20 wadding behind the design and stitched just inside the motifs using water soluble thread. This was done using Free Motion Quilting so the line is a bit wobbly - the stitches are supposed to be as long as possible so they are easier to remove, mine vary quite a lot!

 Then you start to cut away the wadding just leaving the areas that you want to have the trapunto effect.
This is a fiddly process but actually quite enjoyable in a theraputic sort of way!

 This then leaves this pattern of wadding shapes on the back that remind me so much of flock wallpaper!

The next stage should be to layer it up with some more 100% cotton wadding and start quilting but I have a little problem! My motifs are quite near the edge so I am going to have at add a border before I do this.

It is half term this week and I have no classes so I hope it is not too long before I can report on the next stage of this small quilt. However I do have my two class samples, my Little Log Cabin Trees and another UFO to work on this week!

Robert returned from New York on Saturday having had a fantastic time - he has taken 800 photos and has bought himself loads of trendy clothes! He would love to go back but not until he is 21!

Log Cabin Cushion Workshop

One of the things I have been working on recently are these Log Cabin cushions which are workshop samples for Running With Scissors in Sheffield. The workshop will be on Saturday 12th November, details on their website.

This one was made using a Moda scrap bag that I bought last year, lovely bright Christmas fabric.

This black version was made using scraps - of which I have many! In fact I am in the process of sorting them all out for my Strings and Crumbs workshop that I am doing in October.

Today is an exciting day because in a couple of hours I am heading down to Birmingham to the Festival of Quilts! This is our biggest quilt show here in the UK and is one of the highlights of my quilting year! I will be there on Thursday and Friday. Hoping to meet up with friend Sue who I haven't seen since she moved back to Dorset and this year I am staying in the hotel with three of my quilting buddies, Lynne, Sheila and Kath. Bring it on!

Tuesday Patchwork Class

Trying to get into the habit of taking my camera to class to get photos of my students progress. Today we started a new topic - scrap quilting and/or the use of recycled fabric.
The first photos show two different placements of Daphne's blocks. They are based on buckeye beauty blocks and are made with fabric from her son's shirts.

Cherry has completed a quilt top made with applique blocks made in a workshop I taught last August. All the participants donated their blocks and Cherry has put them together to make a charity quilt.

A lot of class members are working on a scrappy Irish Chain, Cherry has got a head start on this too!

Patchwork and Quilting Course - Week 1.

On March 2nd I started teaching my first Patchwork and Quilting course and of course I want to share my progress and the progress of my students.
I have 20 students, 10 in the morning and 10 in the afternoon, all lovely ladies keen to learn about patchwork and quilting.
The students range from absolute beginners to very talented quilters and it is great to have such a mix of abilities in the class.

Week 1 was all about string blocks as I wanted to get everyone stitching without worrying about a perfect quarter inch seam or exact cutting.
I made three sample blocks each made up of four subunits which were joined together. The strings were all sewn onto thin fabric foundations.

The first block was for the experienced quilters - the four units were joined using sashings .

The other two blocks, for the beginners, show the alternative ways that the units can be joined to give two different blocks.

The strips were pieced onto 7 inch foundation squares which were trimmed to 6.5 inches and then joined together to form a 12.5 inch block.

More workshop samples.

Here are the other workshop samples I promised to show earlier.

This is a coaster to stand your mug with cozy on.

This is a heart made with felted wool blanket from a charity shop. The stitching is done with tapestry wool which was lovely to work with although you can use ordinary knitting wool.

These last two samples are from a workshop I did in January when we did hand piecing and needleturn applique.

I started my new 10 week course yesterday and it went very well. It was wonderful to have so many enthusiastic ladies, many of them complete beginners so keen to learn patchwork. Over the two classes I will have 20 students which is brilliant. I will post their progress on the blog and keep you up to date with how we are doing. Hope I can manage to get them addicted to P&Q!

Workshop - Mug Cozy!

As I have mentioned previously 2010 is the year that I am starting my Patchwork and Quilting teaching career. I have taught 3 workshops since January 1st and today I taught a day workshop at a local church here in Barnsley. We made mug cozies using applique and stitchery techniques. I have posted some photos of my workshop samples below.

I will share more workshop photos soon.
Starting next Tuesday, 2nd March I am teaching a 10 week, 2 hour patchwork and quilting class. Tuition is FREE just provide your own fabric etc. Location is just off Junction 36 of the M1. Anyone like to join me?

Also on April 10th I am teaching in Sheffield for Running With Scissors - details on their website.

Philippa Naylor Workshop - Precision Piecing

Last Saturday I attended a workshop with Philippa Naylor who visited our embroidery/quilting group here in Barnsley.
I finished the sample last night so here it is....
Not quite as precise as it could be but better than I have acheived in the past. I used hand dyed fabric which I really enjoy working with.

I have picked up quite a few tips which I will use in the future. For example - pressing seams open can help to improve accuracy in complicated designs, try to use finer cotton fabrics for intricate piecing and never underestimate the importance of correct pressing!
I also learned how to make mitred borders which is something I had never tried before.

We had a lovely day, Philippa is an excellent teacher - try to get to one of her workshops if you can!

This is a photo of the room we use - loads of space, we are very lucky!

On Wednesday Philippa returned to talk to our group - four ladies had finished their samples.

Philippa is on the left with her pile of magnificent quilts. She gave a very inspirational and interesting lecture about her life in Saudi Arabia and her quilts.

Applique Workshop

My ultimate goal is to be a patchwork and quilting teacher. I was hoping this would happen this month as I was supposed to be teaching a class at the college I usually teach at. However not enough people signed up to do the course so it is not going to happen yet.

I did do some teaching in August though - even though it was for my own patchwork / embroidery group. I did a workshop on applique using the 'freezer paper on top' method which I learned while doing my Dear Jane blocks.
I had a really great turnout for the class and everyone seemed to enjoy it.
Here are some photos of the little block they made.

Works in progress.

Ladies busy stitching.

One of the best ways you can tell if a class is a success is if anyone continues and does their own version of the blocks. I was really pleased to see that the next month Dorothy had made all these blocks for a charity quilt.

Don't you think they are lovely - so bright and cheerful!

Also Margaret had started a butterfly applique quilt for her daughter using the same method.

It went down so well I will probably do another next August and I also have a little sewing workshop planned for the Christmas meeting.

I also have two tentative teaching jobs offered for the new year but they will also be subject to signing up enough students - so fingers crossed!