Here's One I Prepared Earlier

Another inspiration imitation of Ringle and Kerr's (-this time Chorus Line), my younger son loves this predominantly primary coloured quilt I made for him a couple of years ago.

I don't copy so slavishly these days, but I can attribute becoming more daring recently, to what I've learned by looking at others I admire and practising the skills.

Alfred decided it would be fun to climb a tree and hang the quilt down for the photo shoot since the tree's a bit short of leaves at the moment!

The design consists of increasing bands of colour on a background of batik blue with a tiny green dot.

Most of the colored strips were scraps left over from other quilts I'd made, but I bought the batik specially. I had some beautiful soft flannels in my stash , which I'd bought ages ago with Alfred's quilt back in mind, at that stage I knew he wanted a primary colored quilt but that was as far as I'd got. So I bought enough of the blue and red in a sale for a quilt back for him, but it had sat for several years, through one international and one local move! Eventually though, I do get around to things, even if I'm not speedy about it! Lucky he didn't change his mind about colour preference!

I wanted to include some yellow (not a flannel) to finish off the primary plan. And pieced it to suggest the bars of colour on the front and add a bit of interest, rather than having a plain back. The quilt is twin size. One struggle I had was that the check design is not actually printed exactly straight with the grain of the fabric and I thought it would really make a difference if it looked straight, so that was a bit of a challenge to line up. Same issue with the binding, although I didn't fuss as much about that.

For the quilting I decided to leave the bars plain, so they would stand out in relief and quilt the background from top to bottom in a zigzag pattern; dense alternating with less dense across the quilt. I used a variegated blue thread.

It's a success and last year I made him a square pillow cover with a few more leftovers, for sitting up and reading in bed, or wherever... He seems happy enough about it!

Improv in Pajamas

 Saturday morning still in pajamas-(or I was on Saturday morning when I wrote this and didn't publish it); pondering the improv top I made yesterday, apologies for the poor low light photos

thinking about the back and looking at the pile of fabrics I didn't include and instead starting on another top! I dared to cut into possibly the favourite fabric I've ever bought.

still improvising squares... More and better photos soon...

Magic Mushrooms

I'm no mycologist but I do know a photo opportunity when I see one!

It was a bit of a glowering day,

but we ventured up to Fox Creek for a bit of a walk/ ride. The riders did well,

but the walkers got distracted by the local colour and form to be found at every turn:

Love the colour gradations and the texture and wrinkles at the edge

 and those amazing gills!

Walkers and riders reunited for a coffee/hot chocolate/wine tasting at the new local cellar door with a view and inspirational organic contoured quilting lines!

A great Sunday excursion!

Been anywhere yourself lately?

~ Camilla

Mum's Quilt

It's strange writing about several quilts all in a row, it kind of telescopes the time taken making them in an odd way. Actually it was a bit of a hive of industry at that time: I was making Sophie's and my sister's quilts sort of at the same time, and Mum's 70th Birthday quilt was also in the planning stages, but wasn't needed until a few months later. I've said before that I work best to a deadline and I'm not very speedy. I tend to only manage to sew about three or four hours on a good week, sometimes less and more if I've got a deadline! I get together with my dear friend Liz to sew most weeks and we do enjoy making sense of the world as we sew; so generally due to work and other priorities and one thing and another, it takes me ages to plan, cut, piece, baste, quilt and bind (not to mention getting everything out and putting it all away from the dining room table-mostly!), but I do enjoy the process (except the getting out and putting away part).

I've been a bit unsure about posting this quilt because I was inspired by shamelessly copied it from a quilt called Passage to India in a book by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr called Color Harmony for Quilts but I think that's OK if I acknowledge it and it's not for sale? Yes? Also they've just put out a new pattern very similar to this, if not the same which they released for Quilt Market. It's called Split Decision and if you like Modern Quilt Studio on Facebook you can see it on one of Weeks' 16th May postings. I love their work, they've written several inspirational books, (I also have their Quilts Made Modern) with great design insights and they've also recently brought out a new magazine called Modern Quilts Illustrated, which I have been intending to ring up about, to see if it's prohibitive for me to get shipped to me here in Australia... Have a look at their website. Weeks also writes a blog called Craft Nectar.  They have done a few fabric lines in the past which I've ordered from both NZ and Australia. Most of the fabrics in my sister's quilt were scraps from another quilt which I've yet to blog about, which I made using their fabrics and another of their patterns. So all in all I'm a fan!

This quilt idea caught my eye with it's simple graphic quality and I really wanted to make it for my Mum

I chose two contrasting fabrics, enjoying the opportunity to make the most of a large scale fabric of home dec weight and contrasting it with one of a smaller scale in the colour of the pollen heads on the flowers

I quilted it in a free motion loopy pattern which echoed the loops of the flowers on the mustardy fabric

I had to be careful not to get too big, because it's hard to quilt a smooth curve if it's too large, good practice though! I can't remember how big it is but it was at the limit of my machine's harp space (I think it's called).

Sophie's Vintage Quilt

I'd like to slowly create a record here of quilts I've finished over the years, so I'll take you slowly back in time over the next few posts.

Today's entry is a quilt I made for a friend's 50th birthday. Sophie loves vintage stuff and fabrics are some of her favourite vintage things, so when I came across Retro Age Fabrics online, but based in Melbourne (where she lives), I knew I'd find something that Sophie would like.  Because I was short of time and nervous about cutting up lovely old fabric and making a mess of it, not showing it off to its full potential, I decided to make a whole cloth quilt.

Sophie prefers blues and reds to browns and greys,  so the blue and black leaf floral 1940s dress cotton was perfect. I do like browns and greys and I thought the kona charcoal border set off the leaf print well.

If you look carefully in this picture you can see the tiny waffle texture of the leaf print.

I had some problems with the tension with the quilting- always seems to happen when it really matters for a gift and when there are time constraints... I tried fiddling with the tension, but that always seems to be a slippery slope to worse problems, luckily I'd noted where it was to start with, so I could unpick and get back to square one.  I'd decided to outline quilt around some (not all) of the leaves and I wanted to use a cream on the front, so it wouldn't show against the background and a grey on the back, since my quilting still needs more practice and wasn't going to be perfect, but there was no way I could get the threads to intersect in the middle of the quilt and I had to settle for pinpricks of white showing on the back. :-(  It was fine on the border where I used the same thread front and back to do some straight-line quilting.

I'd love to know if you've ever had this problem and how can I improve it? Perhaps the threads were different brands and that was the problem? Whenever I use the same colour thread front and back it never seems to be a problem, but maybe it just doesn't show as much??

I left the back plain except for an X paper pieced with the tiny remnants of the print and printed a label on to that fabric you can buy to print on.  I can't even remember properly what I did now, but I think I photocopied a piece of the kona charcoal to get the colour and then put the writing in a text box on top of that image and then printed it onto the natural colour cotton fabric. Something like that anyway!

I bound it in a tiny 1950s small circle and dot quilting weight cotton also bought from Retro Age. The dots are truly tiny, but the little touch of red gives a little lift to the edge.

Linking up with a new Link up Something Old Something New!

Bloggers Quilt Festival

I'm going to join the throng at the Bloggers' Quilt Festival. It's all new to me and hopefully I can figure out the linky thing, but it looks like a great  chance to make the most of sharing quilts.

This is the quilt that I made my sister for her 40th birthday last year. I wanted to make her a quilt to relax with, lie on the grass with a book, take on a picnic and such like, but wasn't at all sure what she'd really like. We live in different countries so don't get to spend loads of time together, plus (and probably consequently), we're really not good at picking each other's taste, so I was a bit nervous she wouldn't like it. But I think it worked out OK! It's got a really springlike/summery feel; so it's kind of strange to be posting as we come into autumn/winter here in the Southern Hemisphere.






It's a string quilt inspired by this one and made with the help of this tutorial all found at Ashley's wonderful blog Film in the Fridge ; which I think may have been the very first blog I started following,  a year or two ago when I was just beginning to discover the extent of this internet sewing world!

I'd forgotten that when I took these photos I hadn't finished sewing the binding! Always one of those last minute jobs...

On the back I put four decades (or kisses!) pieced from scraps and you can just make out the quilting from this photo. I decided on a square spiral (yay for the walking foot) working out from the centre of each diamond. I also stitched in the ditch either side of the turquoise central band. It was a bit tricky lining up the Xs nice and straight with the blocks on the front when all the edges were raw and the batting was sticking out. I thought the quilting would end up highlighting the fact if they were out of alignment.

Thanks to Amy for organizing the Quilt Festival. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you've all made.

Linking up to New Blog Meet now I'm doing quilty posts again!

The fabulous Lynne from Lily's Quilts hosts a small blog meet each month and I've been eagerly waiting until I do one of what will be my more usual posts to join. I only did one post before I went off to Cambodia and blogged about that last month; but now it's back to "Normal Life" and I'd love to get some followers who aren't 3 members of my family (much as I love them and REALLY appreciate their loyalty in following my blog)! So I'm looking forward to seeing some other newish blogs and sharing more inspiration.

I've just posted earlier today about a quilt I've recently finished, so let me know what you think?