Bursts of progress

My Pfaff QE 4.0 has been plagued with problems this winter: For the second time in 7 years, the knee lift has worn out (still waiting for the replacement); after a service it intermittently turned off during sewing; the thread cutter was out of place. Luckily we have an amazing technician that services our local area, and my machine runs again as it should (touch wood). At the same time work resumed its usual craziness, so my sewing progress has been somewhat limited over the last few months. However, for once I have a few items that are finished (you might have some of these pictures before):

Rainbow - Arco Iris

A selection from my stash...

... rows of HSTs...

... pieced into rows...

...with sashing...

... and completed!

Some detail of the ruler quilting...

... and more...

... and improv straights lines in the background...

For the back I used the last of this Spotlight wide backing

All fabric came from my stash, thanks to ScrapTherapy I had plenty of solid batik squares to create a subtle Arco Iris or rainbow. Batting is cotton/polyester mix from Spotlight, I haven't used this type before, it is 'puffier' than my usual 100% cotton. Aurifil 50wt top (cream) and bottom (white), quilted on my HQ SweetSixteen using my various quilting rulers. It was great practice, I feel a lot more confident, definitely with straight lines, also some of the curves. If it wasn't so expensive, I would love to get some sets of arcs and circles.

Pohutukawa - Kiwi Christmas

This has come back from Brisbane months ago but I finally hung it up today: I will watch for a while if the wonkiness comes out in our high humidity climate, otherwise I will block it again:

Aotearoa

My ScrappyAppliqueQuiltAlong top is finally finished and ready to be put up. Youngest DS hasd been nagging gently encouraging me for a while to get it done, and as it will beis right next to his door, he must obviously like it ;)

Patchworkcity2018
With all the kerfuffle with my machine, my current block, by my count bonus block 10, is almost finished:

Bonus block 9

That leaves me with just two more blocks to go to reach my personal goal of 30 blocks - not long now!

Me & You Challenge

I have sadly still gotten nowhere with my piece for this MQG challenge which is a real shame, I was lucky enough to get some of the material from them. Unless a miracle happens and I get a suitable piece completed by then, what do I need to do with the material, do I return it? I feel rather bad, someone else might have missed out and could have made something amazing???



So where does this leave me in regards to my previous goals?

• Bind, label & add hanging sleeve on Aotearoa: DONE
• Quilt VQR on S16: Still working on it
• Continue quilting Metro Rings on S16: No further progress yet, but now that the baby quilt is out the way, this will be good to alternate with VQR
• Prepare the next set of Rainbow at Sea blocks: Papers are all prepared, but I still have to prepare the next fabrics
• Continue on #Patchworkcity2018 blocks: Just half a sub-block to piece to finish block 28 of 30, then two more to go.

New goals until the end of the year

• Quilt, label, bind VQR
• Finish all quilting of Metro Rings
• Piece one more set of Rainbow at Sea blocks (which will take me to half-way)
• Finish remaining Patchworkcity2018 blocks

Guess who has been visiting my place of work in general and our Raranga Matihiko classroom in specific?

Happy Sewing!

Ideas galore

Another month gone bye, another repair of my machine done and dusted arrgghh The technician found that the knee lift problem was due a shattered pin; he observed that obviously the machine was well used, I wore out that pin and he put in a more substantial one now:0 Makes you wonder about the amount of use these machines are expected to have, my machine is 2.5y old and I had to have the tension thingy-ma-bob and the knee lift pin replaced already (and I'm obviously not quilting daily). My husband is getting rather suspicious of the quality of this Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.0, and as I still end up with the odd jumped stitch during fmq and some tension issues I'm starting to wonder, too.

With the Tokyo Subway Map finished, it has been well loved especially by the cats including been barfed on - great! Two washes later I can still see some faint stains on the light blue fabric (typical, couldn't have hit the red or orange?!) but at least the amount of cat fur on the quilt has reduced to previous blog post state after the washes and time outside on the washing line (would you believe that I found two more unburied threads while it was hanging on the line?!)

I have been working on the Giant Chevron; the inner of the white star in fmqed now, and I have begun the 'matchstick' quilting of the black and red parts on the next star. For the yellow and blue parts I plan to alternate dense quilting with parallel ribbons - I have been browsing Judi Madsen quilts and will try out if this fits with the overall quilt.

late yesterday afternoon on the washing line

and this afternoon on the dining table

close up

and another close up

It's already May and I'm still on the hunt for a suitable feature fabric for our trans-Tasman Vintage Quilt Revival sampler project! I have my heart set on Daydream by Moda (Kate Spain) and as my budget doesn't stretch to the cost at the local quilt shops, I might have to order from overseas...

From Pinterest

As an alternative, I bought this on special the other day, 

but Suz and I agree it's not quite going to work for what we have planned, so I have something else in mind for this material...

Image from Pinterest; I had bought the ruler last year and thanks to PDF patterns I got the Metro Rings pattern in an instant yesterday :)

What do you think about this combination?

Some homespun fqs, a white homespun and a green print from Spotlight as well as some solids from a  Jelly Roll (Moda?) I found in my stash

I have looked at the Double Wedding Ring patterns for a long time and this looks like a quicker and more simplified version of the traditional pattern. This afternoon I washed the fat quarters, the green print and the white homespun, and I was very disappointed to realise that I got 4m of the white while I paid for 5m! It was cheap (AUD7.99) but that's beyond the point. Not sure they will do anything about it after I took it home and washed it, but it's not really good enough - I had asked the sales assistant to measure what was left on the bolt and thought I had counted 4m but accepted her word for the 5m.

The closest local quilt shop Patches at Indooroopilly are putting on a number of classes, and I signed up for the Opal Essence workshop with Lorena Uriarte on 30 May! Really looking forward to learning some new techniques! I received my requirement list and started looking through my stash; this Melka Dubrowsky pile has been calling me for a while, and it's quite distinct so I'm not sure I can mix it with anything else I have got but I'm really not sure - what do you think?

I tried to split this pack of fqs up into light, medium and dark, and I have a few more fqs that could fit more than one category

I have lots of batiks I could use instead - would this be a better choice? Really value your advice! I pulled out some prints that could work for the applique circles (using my Seville city map prints amongst others), but I'm not often working out of one line of fabric, I'm really not sure what to do... I'm sure they will have lots of lovely fabrics at Patches I add to the project but realistically my stash should be large enough to make it work??

I'm happy to report that I spent more time in schools over the last few weeks, one trip led me to Roma, about 500km inland. I didn't take many photographs, but here is one of the bottle trees which lined most roads:

So I have lots of ideas - I just might need to find a few more hours in the day...

Happy Sewing!

My Happy Place!

I've definitely visited my Happy Place today... The technician called me on Wednesday and gave me a very thorough description of what had been wrong with my machine. It appears that (at least some) Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.0 machines have come with a fault to do with the tension, and he said in my case 'bits' (my term, can't remember the term he used) had actually fallen apart and were sitting inside the machine. He replaced those under warranty and gave the machine a thorough service, and I picked up my repaired machine on Thursday; now it's almost working perfectly! I tightened the bobbin tension a bit more,  it was a bit too loose for my liking, and unfortunately the knee lift does not engage. This has never happened to me before, does anyone have any suggestions, please? I will call them and ask to have it fixed, but  if there is anything I can do, I would love to have it working over the long weekend! (It's funny how used I am to it lol).

On Wednesday we also came across a nice second hand Ikea TV unit on Gumtree and so our lounge had a little reshuffle:

Very European looking lol, but we love it:)

DH put the grey cushion on the top for the cats who even have their own 'stairs' up via the scratching post to the right lol. Of course I could not resist the chance to bring my fabrics up into the house:

Needs some sorting out, especially after I squeezed a bit more in...

The drawers are just perfect for threads etc...

but I didn't want to be greedy and take over all of it (apart from that I would have needed to refold too much fabric to fit it into the drawers on the left of the unit; I would never keep my fabrics tidy enough to have them in the open shelves!) so I had to find another space:

With my large rulers on the top shelf and my cutting board underneath:)

The batting went back into the basement (there is only so far that I can push it lol) where it will remain with my other craft things until we get to move into a bigger place (probably September).

So for the rest of the day I just tutued. The quilting is all completed on the Subway Map quilt. I have cut a very skinny binding at only 2'' because I was short on the black and I hope this will suit the design. I still didn't quite have enough so I pieced some of the left-over coloured squares and added these pieces into the binding. Tomorrow I will try to get some Elmer's School Glue so I can glue baste and stitch it on. I have also done a bit of {cough} mending - some things just have to be done.

My furry supervisor;
it's not ideal to have the sewing area in the lounge, but maybe it gets my to tidy up better?

The weather has been grey and rainy over the last 2-3 days, for all I care it can stay like this for most of this weekend - gives me more time to play:) My boys are quite happy to just blob out, term 1 finished yesterday and they will have two weeks of holidays now. Tomorrow we are expecting our first proper visitors, friends from New Zealand, so really looking forward to this!

Suzanne and I have been talking for some time about our Vintage Quilt Revival Samplers, and this is a feature fabric we are considering:

Daydream Arcadia Scarlet by Kate Spain for Moda Fabrics - Image Source

I'm very keen to get back into some regular sewing - watch this space! In the meantime I will try to find / piece a suitable backing for the Giant Chevron and start marking out what will happen to the quilting on it - really excited about that!

I hope you visit your Happy Place this Easter, too - Happy Sewing!

Over swirling and a question

Today I finished the black swirls in the background of the Tokyo Subway Map Quit - YESSSSS! The last  of the quilting is in the 'stops', the white with black swirls. You might remember I was quilting frangipani blossoms into that in white. I was making really good progress, until all of a sudden:

A bit loose on top, and

A complete mess on the bottom. I experimented for a while: Rethread the machine, rethread the bobbin, wound another bobbin, changed tension bottom and top, went from fmq stitch back to straight stitch with the standard foot - no success. Any suggestions PLEASE? So close to the end...

Life is treating us well, lots of paper work and organising; finally got my tax number and my first proper payslip (now to find out why they deducted about $1000 more in tax than I expected), have met with a lovely Diabetes Educator (nurse) and are in the process of sorting out what paper work needs to be done around oldest DS' diabetes (as NZ citizen we are entitled to some but not other payments and support, and it's not always clear which ones they are). Work is still a bit slow, but I am starting to get time in schools which is good:) DH had a significant birthday last weekend, we had a quiet day, went for a drive in the afternoon and had a picnic. It was nice to see a bit of the country side! Tomorrow we hope to go to a concert, planning to take the younger boys with us.

Queensland residents were bracing themselves for a category 5 cyclone which caused a fair bit of devastation further up north, we only had a lot of rain which I hope will clear tomorrow. Mst14 doing well at school, Mst12 has settled so well that he has started not paying attention in class and as a result got moved to sit close to the teacher's desk (in my books actually a good sign, and no harm in him sitting close to the teacher in Maths in particular!!!), and Mstr10 is starting to play the trumpet this week - as his dad and I met playing music this is really special for us; let's hope he sticks with it!

Once I have my machine trouble sorted, a few new ideas are in the pipeline; Vintage Quilt Revival is loaded in my Kindle app, watch this space ;) and I have finally decided that I will give the Giant Chevron to 'custom quilting' treatment; I'm thinking of star shape(s) in the negative space, echoing the big chevron, quite possibly somehow offset. There will be marking and hopefully this will make it manageable. No idea what I will do with it when it's done, would be a good size for Mstr14‘s double bed but I doubt he will like it!

I better get on with dinner now, will return to this post on the laptop and give it a bit of a tidy up:) Please let me know if you have any suggestions for how I might be able to resolve my machine trouble:)

Happy Sewing!