BQL February Bag

After spending most of last night working on my Feb bag I thought I would share my progress. Most of what I did last night was unpicking - although I did get some inspiration this morning. Which of course we all know - if things are not working out when you are sewing late at night, leave it, go to bed and you will probably have it figured out by the morning.
Anyway I had already decided I wanted to use this orange and black cat fabric for my bag. I also decided to adapt the hearts and make them into mice, this I managed without much problem. Last night it was the tails that I was working on. I tried the bobbin method as suggested with a thick gold thread and then a thick black thread - both were not heavy enough for the mouse tails - hence all the unpicking.
When I woke this morning the solution came to me - and it seems to have worked very well. I took the thick gold thread and crocheted a tail by combining it with black cotton knitting yarn. I am really pleased with this result. I am going to use gold sequins for eyes and then I am going to stitch the mice onto the bag with either orange or black top stitching. Can't decide which looks best so if anyone is reading this out in blogland - what do you think? - outline mice in black or orange?

Well I'm off now to crochet more tails!!

Patches and Misty

I have already introduced you to Patches, my tabby tortoiseshell cat. Here she is with her sister, Misty enjoying some sisterly love in their favourite spot on the back of the sofa. They were 2 years old in October. I also have their brother, Gizmo and their Mum, Maisy.

Sampler Quilts

The lack of recent posts can be explained in two ways - another City and Guilds deadline and half term! After a particularly harrowing day shopping for clothes with my two teenage sons I am looking forward to an evening of sewing. I should be working on the next batch of City and Guilds samples but it will be my February BQL bag challenge.

Last night we had our AGM for the embroidery group which I am chairperson of. Our main topic for the year has been pulled thread embroidery and here are some of the pieces finished by our members.

Some of our members are also patchworkers and here are three of their sampler quilts. We have worked on these over the last couple of years - and yes mine isn't finished yet!

Module 2 Colour - Sample 6 Clamshell

For this sample I used analogous colours - colours which are next to each other on the colour wheel. This parrot that I found was ideal.

The shape of the parrot's feathers look very much like the clamshell pattern.

The clamshell sample is not as big as it was going to be - it wasn't just that I ran out of time but I did find it rather tedious. The yellow and pale green fabrics are my own hand dyed fabrics.

The sample was made using rectangles with a curved top. The rectangles were machined pieced partially up the sides and then the tops were tacked onto a curved paper piece. Each row was then appliqued on to the row above. The whole thing was started with a row of rectangles.

Module 2 Colour - Sample 5 Curved Piecing

I have never done curved piecing before and it has always looked so difficult that I always gave it a miss. We learned how to do pinless curved piecing which involves freezer paper and glue and does not involve any curved seams. It is an excellent technique which I am sure I will use again and again.

This first photo shows my artwork. My painting is a bit childish or should we say naive(?) but I was working to a very tight deadline at the time. I chose the mallard as the block is called flying duck ( although I suppose it should have been swimming duck!) I worked to a complementary colour scheme and although green and brown are not direct complementary colours it does work if you check it on the colour wheel.
The block is actually made up of 4 mini blocks which are surrounded by a black border. I will probably bind it when we 'do binding' later in the course. The blue/green fabric is actually a feather print which I thought would be fun to represent the birds. I made 4 circle blocks, two with a small brown circle in the centre, one with a small green circle and one with a larger green circle. Each circle was cut into 4 and then reassembled to make the finished block.
This photo shows a close up so you can see the quilting. It is machine quilted about quarter of an inch from the seam - I quilted around each of the 4 ducks to give them more definition.

I know that not everyone approves of cats but 'Patches' always likes to help with the samples. She is my constant companion and was named because of her markings and my love of patchwork. It is a coincidence that she finds patchwork and quilting so enjoyable. I will introduce my other cats another time - Gizmo my tom cat prefers crocheting!

Quilts for Belarus

The group which I belong to which is actually an embroidery group makes quilts for children in Belarus. They live in the area of Belarus which was directly affected by the Chernobyl disaster. They live in very poor conditions and we hope to brighten the lives of some of them with these colourful quilts made by some of the members of my group.
They are to be taken to Belarus at Easter by a charity which is based in Leicestershire.
The photo below is a fantastic example of a scrap quilt - one of our members saves all the little pieces as long as they are one and a half inches wide and creates these really colourful quilts.

This next scrap quilt is done as a crazy patchwork which I also think works really well.

This jungle quilt uses a placemat as a centrepiece.

These are just 5 of the 30 quilts that we have packed up and ready to go to Belarus.

Module 2 Colour - Sample 4 Flying Geese

Flying geese are a very popular pattern used in the quilting world and I am sorry that I did not have the time to do them justice at this point in my course. However I am sure that I will return to them again.
Artwork was a difficult choice for this one. I wanted to show the triangular pattern in both the birds themselves and in their flying formation so I chose the photo shown below.
The triangular formation of the wings in flight is shown by the picture of the weather vane. The other picture shows the Wild Goose Chase block which is seen on many vintage quilts.


This first block shown in the photo below, is sometimes called Wild Goose chase but it can also be called Dutchman's puzzle. It is done by the Lynne Edwards method of using two sizes of squares to make the triangular unit. It is one of the blocks that I made last year as part of a sampler quilt. This quilt is of course a UFO needing one more block before I can embark on Lynne's fabulous 'quilt as you go' method.

The second sample block, shown below is the one I did to match my design source and artwork using the black for the geese and the blue for the sky. This is a foundation pieced sample.