A little bit of rain, a little bit of sun...

Back when the kids were little I used to take them to Mainly Music, and one of the songs was "It's a Rainbow" - perfect for this weekend (and last...). Officially spring has sprung, and while there's blossoms outside, it's still rather grey, cold and generally more miserable than I would like. Or maybe that has more to do with the cold I picked up?

"A little bit of rain, a little bit of sun, when they come together they make rainbow fun, it's a rainbow!":

Start with 5" and 6" 'solid' batik squares from my scrapthereapy-ed scraps...

... turn them into HSTs...

...group the HSTs into colours and randomly spread them across a 61 1/2" long column...

...then piece the columns with 1 1/2" wide sashing

The result is a bit larger than I had expected, 47 1/2" by 61 1/2" is more a throw than I baby quilt, but that's just the way it ended up - I definitely won't add anything else to it :) Now to decide on a quilting design - somehow I'm not keen on my usual 'all-over'; any suggestions? At the moment I'm thinking about making the coloured triangles standout more against the background. Given baby is due late spring, I'll back it with cotton rather than flannel or minky.

My Pfaff machine is still in sewing machine hospital (but due to come back soon), so the lovely Diane at our local sewing shop All you Needle lent me a little Janome which coped very well with the batiks - win!

I had spent a bit of time online, looking for the more fabrics to go with the Me+You Indah Batik Fabric Challenge. It was quite a challenge in itself to source the extra fabrics to go with what was supplied, but my selection of FQs finally arrived yesterday:

The four supplied F8s on top, my five solid FQs below

Not quite more normal colour palette, we'll see what happens... Nothing in the T&Cs indicates you can't blog about your challenge entry, but I might keep it a secret just in case :)

As for my goals from the last post:

• Bind, label & add hanging sleeve on Aotearoa: Nope, no progress yet (Mstr 14 asked me about it today actually...)
• Quilt VQR on S16: Working on it
• Continue quilting Metro Rings on S16: Trialled my new Surefoot with this, seems to work as the regular foot but at much less risk of the ruler slipping under the foot, exactly what I wanted yay :)
• Prepare the next set of Rainbow at Sea blocks: Papers are all prepared, now I have to cut the fabrics
• Continue on #Patchworkcity2018 blocks when my Pfaff has recovered: All pieces for the next block are prepared just need piecing.

Now to brave the weather and head into work to pack up the equipment I need for next week...

Happy Sewing!

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!!!

Happy Easter!

We had the most amazing summer up here in the Far North of New Zealand, and it's only been turning autumn over the two or three few weeks now. We had the remnants of two cyclones passing us (Debbie and Cook), but thankful apart from a lot of rain we personally have been fine. Work had been so busy that while I have been sewing, I didn't seem to find the time to blog about it. With a few days off over Easter there is no excuse now:)

Back in last Jan / early Feb I came across Karin's blog and her posts about using rulers with fmq on the Pfaff Quilt Expression. I have always had problems with my Westalee ruler foot, and her advice encouraged me to try again. Karin had found that the Accents in Design  ruler foot worked better for her. I ended up ordering their foot, too, and after some delays the lovely Carol ended up sending me my foot free of postage - thank you again!

Eventually I got around to trying the foot out. Following Karin's example, I played with tension.  All samples used the same cotton/polyester batting and same homespun fabric front and back, thread is a 50w Aurifil top and bobbin. I started top right, forwards and backwards without ruler, than with ruler, followed by anti-clockwise and then clockwise loops.
Unfortunately I encountered the same skipped stitches issues I have with the Westalee foot. :

Default spring fmq settings, tension 5.2

Default spring fmq setting, tension 5.2, stitch length set to 0

Default spring fmq setting, tension 4.6 - foot sitting too high

As above, but I lowered the foot more

Default fmq setting, tension 4.2

As comparison, this is stitched using my regular Pfaff fmq foot, using the default spring fmq setting but tension down to 4.0 (a bit too loose from the back)

Just out of interest I tried the sensormatic setting but that was even worse.

I am not sure what the problem is, but while I can sort of make it work stitching forward (with and without the ruler), going backwards or stitching curves is out of the question. I think I will give it a rest for a while and see if I can pick it up again in the future.

So what else have I been up to?

• Finish Press Start (binding, bury threads)
• Finish Giant Chevron (quilting, binding, bury threads): Still quilting the background arrggghhh about a third to go I think?
• Finish Opal Essence (quilting, binding, bury threads): 24/40 cubes are quilted, that's the larger part of them done...
• Complete remaining Vintage Quilt Revival blocks: Just finished block 19 of 20 and made it in two colour ways so I get an extra (I decided to set it as 6 x 7 so I need to extra blocks):

Night time shot, sorry!

An extra block for my 6x7 layout - reminds me of #summer #watermelon #vintagequiltrevival @brisbanemqg

A post shared by Monika Kern (@himmelgartenquilts) on Apr 16, 2017 at 3:02pm PDT

• Piece Metro Rings top (anything else is a bonus)
• New little project - just four colour ways to go now (that will be about another 45 blocks)
• Something 'arty': I had been toying with the idea of creating a NZ inspired landscape, to go with my Whakapapa #1, and I decided that inprov. piecing a flowering Pohutukawa tree would fit the bill. I looked at various images for inspiration (here is my Pinterest board) and sketched the outline of my tree. I divided it up into squares (1" on the drawing, 4" in fabric) and started improv-piecing it:

After spending a bit of money earlier in the year I have been much more frugal for the last few weeks, but this little gadget has come in very handy:
  
I found it at a craft sale in the Russell town hall when a cruise ship was visiting the Bay of Islands: Beautifully made from Rimu wood, it has a stiletto and a quick unpick, and both hide nicely inside the handle when not in use.

Lastly, I have been lucky to win a FB draw by Sew Armadillo and won this gorgeous little bundle by the very talented Jodi Carlton from Ric-Rac:

I'll have to find just the right pattern for this :)

Well, the sun is shining, I better go and hang out my freshly washed Tokyo Subway quilt to dry! After that I might just have to sneak back into my sewing room???