The Farmer's Wife 1930's Sew Along

I've started a new quilt-along and it's the Farmer's Wife 1930's Sew Along hosted by Gnome Angel & The Fat Quarter Shop.  It's so exciting!  I've always wanted to do the Farmer's Wife quilt blocks but the last quilt-along was so far ahead when I found out about it.  Mum and I recently purchased the new Farmer's Wife 1930's Sampler Quilt book by Laurie Aaron Hird from the quilt two weeks ago. I've always wanted the book but never seriously thought about buying it online.  I'm glad I didn't have to.  We didn't know the quilt-along was happening.  We only knew because the store we bought it off mentioned it.  Mum was suppose to give me the book for Christmas, but we were so excited about the quilt-along, we decided to be part of it.

When we got home all our quilt show goodies, we immediately started pulling out fabrics.  Mum chose her collection of Victoria and Albert prints from Art Gallery fabrics and I chose my Rhapsodia collection, also from Art Gallery Fabrics.  However, mum and I have decided to also do a scrappy each.  Yes, we will end up with four Farmer's Wife Quilts in the house.  I wanted to start scrappy because some of the pieces need to be foundation pieced, which I've never done before, and also because everything is in inches and I have definitely never made anything using inches.  So, I've currently only made my scrappy pieces, and will start with my Rhapsodia fabric later in the week once I've finished some uni work. I'm excited for this quilt along.  It will run for a year, two blocks per week, 99 blocks, plus putting everything together.  We're definitely in for the long haul.  I thought I would show you my blocks so far.

 I loved the first block, Aunt.  It was simple and I really liked the fabrics I chose for it.

 Such a pretty name for a block and she turned out to be quite difficult.  This was the last block we did and it was my first time foundation piecing.  It was all going OK until the end. You can see where one of my corner squares doesn't quite meet up with the diamond.  Oh well, you live & learn.

 This is the second block we made, Betty. I enjoyed making this one.  Just lots of hst which I love.  I've just never made them that small before.

 Bonnie. Very simple and I enjoyed making it.  I purposely chose Aboriginal colours and prints for this.

 Caroline was fun but I had to fiddle with it a bit.  So many points!

 

Carol was fun.  I'm not sure if I like my fabric choice yet.

 

And finally, Becky.   Really enjoyed making this block.  I like the browns.  When I'm down in the sewing room the block looks very dark but when I took it outside to photograph I fell in love with the colours again.

Above is a picture of the book and my Rhapsodia fabric.  I can't wait to begin making blocks out of them!

If you would like to know more about the quilt-along, you can visit the website below.

http://gnomeangel.com/farmers-wife-1930s-sampler-quilt-sew-along/

Another New Quilt

I shouldn't be starting a new quilt.  But, I am.  I am making a quilt for a very dear friend of mine, Kelly.  She is from Canada and we became good friends while I lived in Alice Springs.  Now that I live in Brisbane it is so hard being away from her.  I miss her so much! I'm considering this quilt to be my holiday quilt.  A project just for these holidays.  Here are some photos to give a sneak peak of what I am doing.

 

This quilt will only be a lap quilt measuring 144cm x 144cm.  The fabric is a combination of batiks, neutral cottons and some Hoffmans.  Of course there are half-square triangles, but most of the quilt will be squares.  I'm so excited about this quilt.  I really can't wait for her reaction when she receives it!  The backing has been ordered so this quilt will be finished before I start next semester at the end of the month.

Tomorrow I am going to post about two quilts I did finish over the summer.  At the moment, I don't have anywhere to hang them.  If I only I had more walls in my room!

Well... that was some break!

So, I have been away from this blog for quite some time.  Life got away with me.  As it does.  Since I've been gone I have successfully completed two years of uni and will be begin my third and final year in just under a month.  I bet you're wondering if I had done any quilting during this time.  The simple answer is no.  I have bought fabric, done a little bit of old projects, even completed two projects.  Nothing new though.  However for the last semester of uni I did make a roll-up pen case with matching pencil case.  So, I thought I would share some photos.

 

You may be wondering also, why I decided to start blogging again. Well at the moment I feel a little unbalanced. I am quite sure, in a past post, I mentioned I was in a car accident.  Well, these memories have haunted me recently, and I found quilting really helped bring me back to earth before.  I suppose now, I have to make time to add quilting to my daily routine.  In saying this, I will leave you with a quote that perfectly sums up how I feel about quilting...

"Why did she make things? 

Well, she enjoyed it of course; but it also somehow helped to remember who she was 

and where she came from."

- Anonymous

iPad Sleeve and Other Things

So preparing for uni has preoccupied my time.  However I did make something while I was away.  An iPad Sleeve :-)  I decided to use just one fabric for the sleeve.  Something fun and colourful!

I love it!  I went shopping for a new cover for my iPad as the black leather cover I had was getting so dull and boring and it made the iPad appear bigger than it was, and made it heavier than it is.  I found the silicon pink cover at JB-Hifi and it was 50% off.  Because my iPad screen is cracked and it starts from the corner I needed a cover that would come over the edges.  I was going to go back the its original orange Apple cover (the covers that Apple make for them, the magnetic one that folds) but it didn't protect the corners.  Keeping the colour of my new cover in mind I pulled out this beautiful fat-eighth and new it was the right fabric to use.

I quilted around the edges of the circles.  You can see the green circle in the bottom left of the photo where my quilting was quite wonky.  You don't notice it much but it was good practice.

Also, I put all the pinwheels blocks and sashing on the design wall to see how busy it is.  I didn't have a photo before but I do now.

Ignore the other things you can see in the photo.  Very busy isn't it?  I still haven't made the sashing yet but I will next week.  The new sashing won't need to be very wide... maybe 3cm?  Just enough the create a blank gap between the four patch sashing and the pinwheel blocks.  I did have a drawing but I can't find it right now.

This weekend we're heading up to the Sunshine Coast for a friends 21st birthday.  I will have lots of photos to show.... most definitely.  While we hope this weekend will be a lot of fun, it means both mum and I won't be able to spend it in the sewing room.

Mac & iPad Cover

I'm am trying to decide which fabrics to use to make a sleeve for both my iPad and new Mac.  Originally I immediately though of all my Egyptian fabric.  Even though I love the fabric, for me its just not bright enough.  I want something bright and colourful.  I do have the following three fat eights I bought at Sewco.

 I absolutely love the three together.  However I thought maybe a little too bold?  I also have the following three fat eights that I bought at the Craft Fair earlier this year.

I do really love these three together.  I was thinking that they would be perfect for the iPad sleeve.  Our local quilt shop has a little basket/tray in their store which has a collection of fat eights in it that change every time we visit.  This basket is usually 5 for $10.  Mum and I usually pick some up for practice blocks or quilting practice.  Last time we visited I found 10 fat eights that I couldn't leave behind.  It's the first time I've found things in it that I liked.

I was thinking of using the bottom three pastel colours, or the purple/pinks fabrics together, or just the brights together.

I haven't made up my mind yet.  I'd like to so I can get started.  I suppose I just have too many choices.  I was initially thinking of choosing three fabrics to feature and sew them together very simple so that the fabric will do all the work.  However I do love pinwheels, and I do love chevrons.  I'm trying to think of how I can use either of the two in my design.  I originally wanted to buy half a meter of Chevrons fabric by Riley Blake Designs but I really want to design something myself and I have quite a lot of beautiful fabric here already.

I'll keep you posted about what I choose to use.

Pinwheel Quilt Update

I have made some progress with the pinwheel quilt and I am eager to share it with you.  Firstly I have finished all my main pinwheel blocks and I am so happy with the outcome.

I absolutely love them!  What do you think?

The next stage I have completed is the cornerstone blocks.  I have made them half the width of the finished sized blocks.  I wanted the sashing to be quite wide but it hasn't worked out as well as I wanted but I will discuss that in a minute.  So that meant making 25 pinwheel cornerstone blocks!  Lots more cutting and piecing.

Since I needed 25 cornerstone pinwheels I decided to choose five colours - blue, green, yellow, pink, purple - and made five from each colour group.  It made it easy that way.  I then selected five random background fabrics and made sure I had one of each background colour appeared in each colour group.

Rainbow :-)

The cornerstone blocks where so much fun to put together.  Of course, so where the main blocks in the quilt.  It's turning out to be a very fun and colourful quilt which I am loving.  How do they look together on the design wall?

Beautiful!  I was a little worried because it still looks a little small but it should be okay to lay over my bed.  So, you can see how wide the sashing is?  I cut out a few pieces of the sashing to put up on the design wall to see how it would look.  Seriously, I thought with all the pinwheels off-white plain sashing was a good idea but as I started to put a few samples pieces up I realised how empty the quilt would look.  Sorry, I didn't take a photo.  So it was back to the design board for a sashing design.  It was a toss up between two ideas.

I actually wanted to do the four patch but it looked block-y.  You felt that patches of colour were lumped together in an unpleasing way.  So I was left with the tiles.  Unfortunately this has turned out way to much!  I have a picture of one block surrounded to show.

This looks okay with one block but as I put up more it was way too busy I couldn't stand it!  

So, what am I left with?

I will have to make very thin sashing (in purple) that will run along the inside of the pieced sashing so my eyes don't feel like their looking at a magic eye book!

So after piecing all those pinwheels, then making pieced sashing, I will need to cut out more sashing before piecing the quilt together.  A lot more work has gone into this quilt then previously arranged. Oh well.  It's a scrappy and absolutely random sampler quilt.  I can't wait to have it finished.  Once I have the very narrow purple sashing cut out and on the design wall I will take a photo to show you.

Happy Sewing :-)

Exciting News

I am very excited to let you all know that I have been accepted to Griffith University to study a Bachelor of Biomedical Science!

Study starts the 22 of July so a few more weeks of quilting to finish projects and get some more underway before the start of the semester.  I don't think that the magnitude of this has hit me yet.  It will probably, when I start buying text books.  Today I am going to pick up student card and enroll in my classes which include - Statistics, Chemistry, Structural Biochemistry, and Functional Molecular Genetics.  How boring right?  Well, only the statistics.  I am currently going through a long recruitment process with Apple and if I successfully get a place on one of their teams I will drop a subject or two so I can work and study.  

The program is three years and while this may limit the amount of quilting I will be able to do I am so excited.  I cannot wait to start this course.  It's such an exciting program and I'm getting closer to my dream of studying medicine.  I can't wait to share this journey with you.  Remembering that quilting will keep me sane during what will be a very busy and challenging program.