Tiny "It's a Hoot" Scrap Quilt

This is the first time I've used Blogger for Mobile App and I'm not sure how it will turn out.
I put together all these little 2 1/2 inch squares left over from a lovely quilt I made from an "It's a Hoot" layer cake and jelly roll ages ago. They've been gathering dust on my sewing bench for a while. I think they'll look really cute as a cushion cover, don't you?

I've been slowly working on a Cat in the Hat Raggy quilt and just got the appliqués on this morning. For such a simple little thing it's taken a really long time!

All the squares are in a bag ready to take into the shop today and hopefully sew together.

I feel quite inspired, but as usual time poor, after my recent trip to Canberra where I visited lots of arty crafty places. One of them was "Shop Handmade". Gorgeous things in there!
I bought a hand printed cushion cover by FormosaDesign, some Denise Schmidt Flea Market Fancy fat q's from Fresh Fabrics Aust (they have an etsy store and wonderful service too), a gingerbread biscuit and of course, some handmade Belgian chocolate hearts. Highly recommended!

Denise Schmidt Flea Market Fancy

I'm hoping this post all looks ok, but I've got to dash now and get ready to open the shop.

Have a great weekend,

♥ Ann.

Green Tea Sundae

I've been gathering together fabrics for a Green Tea Sundae

quilt.

It's inspired by green tea sundaes I got a bit obsessed with in Japan... top left was the yummiest! Bottom left was most intense in colour and taste (and made me feel a bit sick). The ice cream trio was large plastic food models in a charming Kyoto tea house. I really want to make a quilt with these greens to remember our holiday.

I ate this sundae at the Lipton Tea house, Kyoto Railway Station, on our last day and succeeded in making myself queasy for the flight back to Australia later that night. It had rich green tea flavoured ice cream, sweet red beans, some sort of gluggy, gelatinous white tapioca balls, green tea flavoured cake squares, glace chestnuts and green tea-ish whipped cream...mmmmm... like when you've eaten too much party food when you were a kid!

xo xo Ann.

My Diamonds Quilt

Time to write a blog post. I went down to Melbourne last week to attend the best Australian trade event, Australian Quilt Market. There were lots of Familiar designers and fabric companies there with a wealth of fabulous goods for me to stock in the shop... but more about that in another post.

I feel it's time to revisit my blog....

These are photos of the process of my Diamonds Quilt - now finished and hanging in Quiltopia! if you're in Maleny and able to come in and see it.

Up above is the book with the pattern and my selected fabrics - only a few actual Kaffe Fassett's, but lots of other gorgeous stuff. Then, to the right is the design wall progress.

All the diamonds are in place below. I used the same hydrangea fabric twice - once for the top row with predominantly creamy blooms, then later I used the blue/purple ones. This was the fabric I started the quilt with.

You can see the blue hydrangeas here. I like the idea of the directional fabric and stripes going every which way, and I've seen a Kathy Doughty (of Material Obsession) diamond quilt made using all stripes - incredible!

Here's the whole thing on the design wall, ready to sew. If you've ever made a diamonds quilt, did you find a formula for sewing that ensures perfect matching of seams? I'd be interested to know because

every time I thought I'd found a way, it changed in the next row. A bit frustrating. I quilted the whole quilt in the ditch by machine then used a huge variety of variegated Perle 8s to hand quilt about 1cm in from the seams. Each fabric row used a different colour.

The back looks stunning (even if I do say so myself) with it's hand quilting and sublime Prints Charming paisley - it's in the top too and as no one was buying it I decided to use it. It has a very luxurious feel (or "hand" as they say in rag trade).

The quilt could easily be used either side and I look forward to having it on my bed. See those border triangles? They're a Bali Batik and, being a child of the 60's,  orange and pink has long been a favourite colour combination for me. I think I feel a workshop coming on in 2012 for this one. On from quilting - my daughter has just finished grade 10 and started her first real part time job. It gives me a funny feeling.... I started this blog when she was still in Primary School. In fact it would probably be about  a blog anniversary time !
I'll look it up and maybe we could do a give away :) I'll post details here and also on Quiltopia!Design facebook page, so if you haven't already, join us there for daily updates and special offers.
Thanks for reading and following over the years

xo xo Ann.

My Australasian Quilt and Travel

It's not the best photo, but here is my quilt, Australasian, hanging in the Quilts Across Queensland exhibition curated at the Brisbane Ekka (for those of you not familiar with that term, its the Brisbane RNA Show). It was entered in the professional pieced quilt category and won third prize. You can see me standing with it below, and I do apologise for the quality of these photos taken with my iPhone. This was a quilt inspired by Leesa Chandler's Under the Australian Sun fabrics, which I mentioned in early blog posts.

It was really quite a thrill to win the prize as it's been a few years since I've won anything, or even entered a quilt in a show. Starting the business and keeping up with all the admin and online activity, not to mention being in the shop 6 days a week, packing eBay items to send, marketing, teaching, sewing and trying to design and follow through projects, as well as housework and parenting doesn't leave much time to produce show quality quilts - let alone shop sample quilts. However, I'm pleased the quilt has had it's moment in the sun... in fact it was sold at the show so I'm not sure how I'm going to teach it/publish it now. Is that an excuse, do you think? I'm planning another one, not quite so complicated in terms of quilting, perhaps in modern fabrics....

This is another quilt I'm working on now, in progress. I have actually finished the top now and am planning the quilting. I made it with a Hoffman Rainbows pack, Rainforest.

The most exciting thing that's happened since I last blogged, is our Japanese trip. It was truly a dream come true for me. I've included a few photos, not in any particular order, of our holiday.

There's a couple of fabric ones,

taupes from Diamaru - I don't know why , but I spent ages selecting this small bundle when I should have just grabbed a piece of the whole selection! It's always like that in retrospect...

and rolls of kimono fabric

The amazing stone wall at Osaka Castle,

A couple of food ones - a green tea ice cream sundae, a Japanese MacDonald's meal,

and a very Japanese night time scene,

It was all so very beautiful, exciting and fun! It was also a great experience to share with my teenage daughter. Who knows if we will go again, but I definitely would like to explore the fabric in a little more depth, especially retro and vintage kimono, and we really only touched the tip of the iceberg as far as food was concerned!

Till next time,

♥ Ann

2010 Closure Quilt - Patched Work

The 2011 Closure Quilt is coming to a close!

I tried it out on Amelia's bed straight after I'd basted it. It looked good and felt good, she said, even with the safety pins still in it.

I decided to machine quilt it in the ditch following the squares, which was a little bit trickier than usual because I pressed the seams open on the back - so eliminating an actual ditch to stitch in.

I wanted to add an extra rustic, hand made-ish touch by doing some hand quilting also. I have a huge African basket full of multi coloured Perle 8 threads, and I'm picking them out at random and quilting cross hatch across all the squares.

It doesn't stand out as much as I thought it would, but I'm quite happy with it.

The problems are:

1. There are four layers to quilt through because I pieced the crazy log cabins over foundation fabric squares and,

2. When I basted the quilt I noticed that some of the fabrics' edges hadn't been caught in the seam with the sew and flip method, so I have to mend as I sew ;(

I'm calling the quilt Patched Work

I'll show you more when I finish,

Ann ♥

P.S. Clearly Dolly has made it her own already, while it was still under the sewing machine!

Sudoku Quilt

I've made a start on the cute little Sudoku Quilt from the Moda Sudoku boxes I got in last week. This one is Central Park by Kate Spain - love her designs!

I've got the plan to make a really nice Sudoku Quilt and I keep ordering fabrics I have visions of something like that in, but there's always one or two of the colours I want missing. Frustrating:(

Anyway, I've got enough to go on with just now, with the Stained Glass one and the 2010 Closure one still begging to be finished :) It's ready to be basted now and hanging over the back of a chair...I've got a few like that right now. Have fun stitching,

♥ Ann.

Finished the 2010 Quilt Top

I have finished the 2010 (do you say two-thousand and ten or twenty ten?) quilt top! It is 13, 4 3/4 inch blocks x 13, 4 3/4 inch blocks, so 169 little liberated log cabins. I kept being able to scrape together just enough fabric scraps from the shop to make row by row.
You can see the back here:
Each block was pieced on a foundation of calico, muslin or left over quilt backing. I pressed the seam allowances open in the hope that it will make quilting it easier. I didn't find that the seams matched up quite so accurately as when I push and press the seams to the sides.

These were finally the only scraps left.
Definitely not enough to make two more rows of 14 blocks each!
So I stopped here.

Dusty found the leftovers a nice comforting spot to nestle during all our wet weather!

I took the quilt top into the shop to choose a really nice fabric for the back...but I didn't end up using one of these two Prints Charming ones. I 'm using a greenish Art Gallery fabric instead. And I'm up to my least favourite step in the process - basting. So it's all sitting over the back of a chair at home waiting.

The scraps left in the bin after piecing the original scraps into log cabin blocks:

I was almost considering using them in another quilt...
I know some of you might have done that!
Now I've got some new scraps from the ends of strips I cut to make my I Spy Packs and I plan to make something out of them too.
I'm very thankful that we've been spared the devastation of the floods, and my thoughts go out to all of you who have been affected,
♥ Ann

Quiltopia!Design 2010 Closure Quilt

Here are the first blocks of my Quiltopia!Design 2010 Closure Quilt, stacked up like fabric pancakes! Each finished block measures 4 3/4 inches.

I made them out of this:

This is the mass of tangled fabric strips I cut off from the beginnings of bolts in my shop. Every fabric bolt that started with a ragged or uneven edge had a strip taken off to even it up, and the strips were collected over the cupboard door handle. There was quite a pile by the end of 2010!

This is the sewing machine I stitched the blocks on:

This is also the sewing machine I learnt to sew on in 1970's. It was second hand then and belonged to Mum. She recently downsized and I kept her sewing machine, not used now for many years. I had it serviced and it sews like a dream. This particular Singer model was apparently Australian made. It was/is a lot of fun to sew on!
You can see the blocks taking shape. I decided on a liberated Log Cabin style I constructed them in a liberated manner on a calico/muslin foundation so each block could later be cut down to a uniform size. After making quite a few blocks, I wished I'd chosen a larger size!
I tried out some different layouts and I decided on the very traditional Straight Furrows design - it seemed to show up the subtle lights and shadows best. Sometimes it was quite difficult to find enough darker fabrics.
I began to notice that the blocks tended to use certain colours in their light half and I organised them so the colours flowed diagonally up the quilt in stripes of yellow, pink, blue and mauve.

Then I stacked them into piles of their rows and took them home to continue over my Christmas break. It has been a fun exercise.The challenge I set myself was to:

use only fabrics I'd had in my shop
make small improvised blocks
finish by the end of the year 2010

I succeeded in the first two, but the third? I'm still going...although I have finished the quilt top!

I will post some more photos of the quilt's progress next time. In the meantime, you can follow its progress on Quiltopia!Design Facebook page if you'd like.

xo xo Ann.