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):

Things are starting to fall into place thanks to @suzjob1 who saw a post by @myquiltdiet #metrorings #fmq #sweet16 #quiltyfriendsarethebest

A post shared by Monika Kern (@himmelgartenquilts) on Apr 6, 2018 at 8:17pm PDT

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.

• Complete, quilt and finish Improv Pohutukawa - just in the last stages of quilting this piece. I am waiting for more variegated green for the Kikuyu grass at the bottom, and I'm a bit stuck on how to quilt the Pohutukawa blossoms. Any suggestions?

How to quilt the #pohutukawa flowers? Different ‘patterns’ so far in the rest of the piece to support the overall look but I’m yet to come up with the right look for the flowers. Suggestions??? #KiwiChristmas @brisbanemqg

A post shared by Monika Kern (@himmelgartenquilts) on Apr 24, 2018 at 9:58pm PDT

• 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.

#Finished #AlwaysHasMyBack for a lovely friend whose birthday I miss every year:) #fmq #sweet16

A post shared by Monika Kern (@himmelgartenquilts) on Apr 6, 2018 at 9:01pm PDT

• 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 :)

And then there was a #cityscape flimsy; a mixture of @jenkingwell and @zenchicmoda mini charms with Sparkle @rjrfabrics and When Skies are grey @rileyblakedesigns for the background. 81 1/2” by 28 1/2”. So unlike me I’m not quite sure what this is for (runner at the bottom of my bed??) lol - and I might even straight line quilt it with a variegated polyester 😲Combine this with us living in a small town, maybe I should name it “Unlike Me” 😇 @suzjob1 @brisbanemqg @the_apple_basket

A post shared by Monika Kern (@himmelgartenquilts) on Jan 12, 2018 at 12:11am PST

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!