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Saturday 28 April 2018

Happy Easter - been and gone (ooppss!)

Term 1 was bound to be a busy term workwise, and with the convenience and ease of posting to IG there is nothing to show for on my blog :( I actually got quite a bit done, here is my progress against my New Year's resolutions:

  • Quilt and finish Vintage Quilt Revival - nope, done nothing with it yet.
  • Quilt and finish Metro Rings: I'm toying with the idea of calling this Learning from Mistakes because by all means it is certainly not perfect. However, it is starting to take shape with custom quilting (who would have guessed lol):
I have since changed the design for the green squares, but that needs some further work still. I still need inspiration to strike for the large white background spaces.
  • Ruler quilting on my Pfaff: This has continued to frustrate me, despite buying the Pfaff extension table; somehow I thought this would help. However, at the end of March I was offered a Sweet Sixteen demo machine with very low stitch count. More to this below...
  • Use left-over blocks for a new project: I don't know what it is, but at the moment plus blocks keep on calling me. Here is one I finished earlier; again I used the piped binding to finish this quilt. I cut it much narrower this time, 1 1/2" for the green piping, and just 1 1/4" for the grey binding. While I still want to practise to get it perfect, I'm much happier with this result.
  • Arty quilt for DH: Well, he still hasn't made up his mind on that one, but after I kept on complaining about the very ugly interesting armchair he bought second-hand, he suggested I could make a quilt to cover it. He liked the combination of fabrics in Shades of Grey, so I pulled out my considerable collection of grey, black, white and reds and joined the #berninazenchicqal:
Inspired by the Throwing pattern I wanted my colours to move from dark to light. With the help of Ombre and Hatch both by Timeless Treasures as backgrounds I might even manage to tie in the odd stray cream that snuck into the mix. 
What else have I been doing?

I had a small collection of mini-charms, started with a pack I won at retreat with the Brisbane MQG. They had been pulled out, drooled over, sorted, put away again multiple times (no mini-charms were hurt during this process lol). In January I finally jumped in and turned them into a runner for the bottom of my bed - or alternatively the (extended) dining table. To my mind it looks like a cityscape, with different height houses and towers next to each other - quite different to how we live. The colours are more subdued than what I normally use, the whole process of 'put it together and see what happens' is so different to what I normally do (just ask Suz, I'm sure I must drive her nuts with my planning sizes etc. all out beforehand), and I use Madeira Polyneon to quilt (organic straight lines) - hence the working title Unlike me or maybe even Not at all like me! I still like it, and eventually it will get finished and used :)
On this photo it almost looks like a traffic light, or a flower?

Criss Cross Applesauce is a pattern by Melissa Corry from Happy Quilting. It immediately appealed to me, and with two babies due at work before the end of the year, a few of these blocks should work nicely and tame the stash. Originally I hoped for 6 blocks (per quilt), but I don't have enough of the background for one of them, so 4 blocks and some extra rows top and / or bottom should work. I'm left with a whole lot of cut off triangles, so I'm incorporating them into a row of zig zag as well. Looks much better in real life than on the photo:)

And then there is the Sweet Sixteen!!! When oldest DS moved to university in February, youngest DS was moved out of the Sewing Room into oldest DS' room. The uni student now has the smallest bedroom in the house, but then he is only here for a few months a year now. Therefore the Sewing Room (and hubby's office) got rearranged:
Unnamed as yet... The table is a little higher than both the bookshelf on the left and the table on the right, but I will eventually rectify this.  Obviously also used as dumping ground when needed lol

My current setup: S16 on the left, Pfaff QE 4.0 on the right, with the butcher block in the middle acting as cutting station and/or holding the small ironing board. The Singer 201K is currently at the other end of the house in the hallway for 'decoration'.
The Sweet Sixteen works very well for me. It had only 66000 stitches, so was barely used. As per the recommendation from the shop, I got practising with a real quilt (Always has my back - further up). While it feels a little counter-intuitive when you come from fmq on a DSM, fast stitches and slowing moving of the quilt result in very nice stitches. However, the machine itself doesn't make one a good quilter; years of practise on my DSM have helped immensely, otherwise I doubt I could just sit down and complete a single quilt in a couple of hours like I did (admittedly it was a simple, generous stipple). There are a few things I have to get used to, the wheel is hard to reach, so where normally I would have reversed the needle back onto the line manually, it took me a couple of week to realise there was a wheel, where it was and how to reach it (a struggle even with my long arms). I absolutely love that the machine will go in any direction and not skip stitches!

The shop also gave me the HandiVersa tool as I told them I wanted to get into ruler quilting. Interestingly, this is harder than I had expected. For some reason, some machines (incl. mine) don't sit flush in their table. According to other quilters on FB, HandiQuilter supplies alternative rubber feet for under the machine free of charge. I have contacted the shop owner and she will find out how to get these for me.
About 3/16" between the top of the table and the top of the stitchplate.
You can clearly see the large gap between the ruler and the table.
Lastly, here is a very different artwork, on display at my work, the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. In New Zealand, the 25th April is Anzac Day, commemorating soldiers and veterans on the anniversary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli. It is very common to wear poppies for this occasion, and as many school classes do, we wanted children in our Holiday Programme to create their own poppies. During our discussions, the idea was born to incorporate a korowai, a particular Māori cloak worn by rangatira (chiefs or persons of high rank), to incorporate a reference to the 28th Māori Battalion which fought in WWII and has a special connection to the Treaty Grounds. One of our staff, known as Ocean Pearl, created the korowai from harakeke (flax, belonging to the corduline family), dyed it and mounted it on decorated canvas. The children (and their families) crafted and attached poppies to the canvas on the side. You can see Under the cloak to Tūmatauenga in Te Kōngahu Museum of Waitangi at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds.


Staying with the Anzac Day them, middle DS just performed in his first public play "Billy goes to War". Here he is with a group of his co-actors behind the scenes:
The tall young man in the last row on the left... Image Source
Happy Sewing!

Monday 1 January 2018

Happy New Year!



2017 was a busy year, but overall much more productive and successful than 2016 - onwards and upwards worked a treat.

On the (quilt) blogging front I almost managed to double my meagre 4 posts in 2016 to 7 posts in 2017 (my e-learning blog only had 5 posts oops). I have made some use of Instagram (18 posts) which is very convenient when you just quickly want to get some feedback / want to show off progress or a finished project without needing to write much.

Work was a blast, I really love the mahi (work) and what our team have been able to achieve in 2017 - from no one with any experience in Museum Education whatsoever to 3 teachers who continue to rework and refine programmes and have worked with more than 6500 young people this year - and 2018 is looking even more exciting...

Our boys are growing up so fast; the 'bonus child' has returned home to his family and woke up to this on his first morning:


The oldest DS has finished school (!!!) and is off to university next year. He managed to score himself two scholarships which in combination with the new government's first-year-fees-free policy seriously cut down the amount of money he has to borrow from StudyLink. Middle DS is now starting to pursue his interest in film and television more seriously, it's so cool to see when they realise what approximate direction they want to take in life. The youngest DS is doing well also, still a little off from making any of these serious life decisions but he is proving to us that he can be responsible and think before he acts (a big thing for a 13y old boy!). DH has been in a permanent position since mid year and spent his free time gardening and building / doing repairs around the house. As per usual we celebrated German Christmas on 24 December, this year with 11 people and on the new extension to the deck: 


While we have a had nice summer weather since the beginning of December, it was grey a drizzly over the Christmas holidays and right now it's raining outside! In contrast, this is how we spent Saturday:


On the quilting front I have managed to achieve most of my resolutions from 2017 (which has really surprised me, I'm not one for making and sticking to resolutions lol):
  • Finish Press Start (binding, bury threads)
  • Finish Giant Chevron (quilting, binding, bury threads)
  • Finish Opal Essence (quilting, binding, bury threads): This had been finished with faux piped binding (inspired by Suz) for a little while and but there were still heaps of threads to bury. I finally got my act together and finished it yesterday:
  • Airing out on the line; going over it with the lint roller helped me find a few more threads to bury...
This is what it's meant to look like on the bed.
Close up of the quilting: Straight lines (walking foot) to support the 3D look on the cubes, and fmq pebbles of varying sizes in the dark background. The pebbles helped sort out any excess bulk, too.
And here the back; I tend to quilt with the same thread in the bobbin as on top to avoid tension issues.
I like the finished look of the fauz piped binding though my execution on the back needs some more practise. I prefer narrower binding in general, so I will experiment with this technique more in the future.
  • Complete remaining Vintage Quilt Revival blocks (anything else is a bonus)
  • Piece Metro Rings top (anything else is a bonus) 
  • New litte Plus Block project
  • Something 'arty': I have just picked up my Pohutukawa improv project again.

So here are my resolutions for 2018:
  • Quilt and finish Vintage Quilt Revival.
  • Quilt and finish Metro Rings.
  • Complete, quilt and finish Improv Pohutukawa.
  • Learn how to use rulers for quilting on my Pfaff machine. 
  • Use the remaining blocks from Aniwaniwa - Rainbow in some new project, and / or create something with my charm squares.
  • I have also asked DH to come up with an idea + technique for an arty quilt he has been nagging asking me about for a few years.
Given two of these projects are for my California King sized bed, this should keep me busy, shouldn't it?

Happy Sewing!!!