Fireburst – A quilt top

I’ve been friends with Tish of Tish’s Adventures in Wonderland ever since the 2016 New Quilt Bloggers hop when we were in a group that critiqued the look of each other’s blogs. This was a while back and I take no credit for the made over look it has now. So I was never not going to join her first ever Mystery Quilt Along and it turned out to be a great one.

I did several fabric pulls before deciding I should do a scrappy background so that I could use what I had on hand and still end up with the larger size of 64” square. It’s my first ever time at doing a fully scrappy quilt like this and while I think there’s room for improvement I’m really chuffed with the way it turned out.

It’s a stroke of genius to time the parade of finished quilts with New Year’s Eve when fireworks are everywhere so head over to have a look and also to wish Tish a happy 40th!

You can find the instructions to make one of your own in two sizes here

It was a great pattern, Tish! Thanks for hosting this quilt- along.

Happy sewing everyone and happy new year.

Linking up to Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter and UFO Busting at Tish's Adventures in Wonderland

Kiss-cross Quilt Top

I’m not sure why this quilt top has been hanging around finished, photographed and not blogged about for so long. I sometimes think I’ll hold a finish, or semi-finish for a slow news month and I must’ve forgotten completely about it.

Excepting for now when I’m making my goals for 2019 and it comes up on my (long) list of quilts to be finished.

This quilt is made from a pattern from an Australian Handmade magazine issue and is designed by MsMidge. Her version can be seen here.

The pattern is designed for charm squares which suited me down to the ground and I teamed them with an indigo chambray background that I found locally.

The quilt top finishes at around 42 x 48 inches.

Happy sewing

Sue

Linking up to Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

Making Progress #2

I feel like I’ve joined all the sew-alongs at the moment. I’m doing three, which is more than enough of a juggle for me! First one, and the one that has really got away from me is the Firefly Quilt. The pattern is by Pen and Paper Patterns and was the Patterndrop offering for July. I was immediately and irresistibly drawn to this pattern because of the glowing effect the firefly bodies have and the way they seem to swarm on the quilt. I’ve never seen a firefly, apparently they live in some forests on the east coast of Australia but not here in the west. I’ve made one test block and the rest are sitting in a pile at cutting stage while I try and keep up with..

The Happy Go Lucky Sew-along. This sampler quilt is designed by Sharon at Yellow Cat Quilt Designs. I’ve been running one or two weeks behind all the way along with this one. I’m going with a spring green background which I bought thinking it was mint (the quilt store was a little dark and it was a rainy day). I stalked the Instagram feed of Joanna Figueroa of Fig Tree Quilts for inspiration on colour schemes before I started since she seems to be a big fan of this shade of green. Other fabrics are from my stash including some charms from the Blush Metallic collection and Grandale by Australian designer, Keira Job and mini charms from the very lovely FrontPorch.

And last but not least is the far more relaxed pace of Tish’s Fireburst Mystery Quilt-along. I changed my mind about fabric selection several times before finally settling on a scrappy version. This gives me the added bonus of being able to make the larger size and I don’t need to go shopping for it.

Not that I haven’t been shopping! A local chain of fabric/craft supplies/window treatments stores decided to close its bricks and mortar stores and go on-line. This is most upsetting since they sell (a limited selection of) good quality quilting fabric at much reduced prices for Australia and they often discount beyond that. Anyway they announced they would be closing their stores back in March with the last store due to close at the end of July, and gradually their stores have been closing one at a time. Here we are in August and my local branch is still open with no closing date although the ‘for lease’ sign and the fact they’ve sold off a lot of fittings says they will. Anyway, with the idea in mind that I’ll no longer be able to just pop down there I’ve been attending every sale. They rotate stock through the remaining stores and bring in the stock from closed stores so there’s always new stuff coming in. What’s a girl to do? I’ve been buying and I need to use it! Scrappy is probably going to become my style for some time to come!

Anyway, I’m liking the way this is coming together. It’s a bit of a first for me, using a scrappy low volume background on anything bigger than a bee block. There’s still plenty of time to join this one, since the final parade is not till New Years Eve.

What’s your limit on sew-alongs?

Sue

Linking up to Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

Hold the Pickle Quilt Block Tutorial

As I promised last week here’s my quick and cheap tutorial for the Hold the Pickle block.

The block is effectively a  Pickle Dish Variation variation and once I modified it to remove the Drunkards Path units it lost its dish shape. I’ve named the quilt I’m making already as my Hold the Pickle Quilt, thus these are Hold the Pickle blocks.

I’ve given myself some parameters for fabric choices that you can ignore completely for your version. I’ve decided that I’m trying to achieve a sweet and pretty vintage effect so I’m using pastels for the backgrounds (B1 and B2) for the simple quarter log cabin units (not sure what to call these bits), low-volume prints as background for the star sections (B3) and checks, dots, and small scale florals for the focus prints in the centre (F). Star points are S. That’s what you’ll see in the photos.

I’m also using a tri-recs ruler these days to cut the fabric for the triangle in a square unit but I started out doing them as paper-pieced. You can find a pdf here from Generations Quilt Patterns for paper-piecing templates and paper-piecing cutting templates.

For this block we make 3 inch finished units.

So now that we’ve all got our templates ready we can start cutting.

CUTTING INSTRUCTIONS

For the triangle-in-a-square units, start with strips of your chosen fabric (S and B3) wide enough to fit your templates on and cut 8 star points and 4 background triangles. 

Cut two 3 ½” squares from the B3 fabric.

From the B1 and B2 backgrounds cut one each

          3 ½” square

          3 ½” x 6 ½” rectangle

From the F fabrics cut a total of four 3 ½” squares

SEWING IT TOGETHER

This part’s pretty easy.

(Notice how suddenly my fabrics have gone all wrinkly? That’s because a gust of wind blew them all over the garden and I had to chase them and grab them quickly in my sweaty little hand. Thoroughly annoyed I took the photo ANYWAY. Notice also that I have the far left star point section upside down - don't do that.)

Sew the B1 and B2 squares to two F squares, then attach the B1 and B2 rectangles to make the quarter log cabin units.

Lay out the star points S around the B3 triangles to make sure you’ve got everything lined up okay and then stitch together.

Arrange the different bits to make sure everything’s pointing in the right direction. Sew together two triangle-in-a-square units to the two B3 squares and two triangle-in-a-square units to two F squares (black arrows). Sew these two sections together (red arrows).

Sew the sections together like a four patch and *ta-da!* one block done! The block is 12" finished.

I hope this all makes sense to you. If you have any questions or need some clarification, please comment and I’ll endeavor to fix it.

I’ll be linking this up to Cheryl’s (Meadow Mist Designs) and Yvonne’s (Quilting Jetgirl) new quarterly tutorial link up.

In the meantime, I’m linking up to Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

Plus: A Pincushion

I noticed recently that my pins were getting blunt and you know what happens then – you put it back in the pin container and pick up a new sharper one. And then the next pin you pick up is that same pesky blunt one you picked up before. So blunt pins – is there a way to sharpen them? Off to ask Google.

There are pincushions about that are filled with metal filings that will sharpen your pins and I found a tutorial to make a pin sharpening pincushion using steel wool. Problem was I couldn’t find any steel wool without soap. The next best option seemed to be to use crushed walnut shells as a filling. Internet wisdom is that you can buy this at pet shops but no pet shop near here had any and seemed surprised to be asked. Back to Google and a search on-line settling on Aussie BBQ Smoke. I’m now the proud owner of a 1kg bag of crushed walnut shells!

Did you know that Perth is the third windiest capital city in the world? So says Life on Perth anyway. And wind means dust, especially in summer, so a pincushion needs to be washable. I decided to make a pincushion insert, just like a normal everyday cushion insert with a couple of interchangeable covers. I made two covers from the scraps of the Bravery Plus quilt, using an envelope back to keep it simple. And do they sharpen pins? So far so good. J

Linking with Scraptastic Tuesday