Final Festival Entry

I posted a new finish for my large quilt entry to Amy's Bloggers Quilt Festival, but my second entry is a bit older.

Last year husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with a once in a lifetime trip to see the northern lights

They were, needless to say, amazing!  I made this wall hanging as a reminder of the trip.  The fabrics are an assortment of Kona solids in a design that is related to Bargello, but a fairly distant relation!

To get the people (husband and I?) I designed them both for machine embroidery using PEDesign.  they are both stitched black on black, but the stitches are slanted in opposite directions so they catch the light differently.

I'm entering this as an Art Quilt

Random Roundup, and a Reminder

Just a few random thoughts, and pictures.

First a reminder that the voting for Fiona's Holiday Memories Mini Quilt Competition is now open.  Just click here and you can vote for your favourite mini quilt in each category - just click on the heart above the one you like best
 
As well as celebrating my birthday over several days, pressies carried on arriving too - I was so spoilt!  Jackie sent me this fab notebook, and a hexi necklace,

and I got a voucher to visit the Shard, and to have afternoon tea at Tower Bridge, lucky me

And as our church harvest festival is today it seems appropriate that the field behind my house was being harvested yesterday:  I heard the combine harvester and took a pic before it got into sight, it was taking a while, so I went and put the kettle on

Before coffee

After coffee!

Making Memories

A very long time ago, (it seems like a hundred years or so ago,) I got married, and this year we found ourselves celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary.  As a treat for putting up with each other for so long we booked a holiday we had talked of for many years.

We flew to the very north of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle and took a rather luxurious ferry for a six day trip south to Bergen.  We had the most amazing time, and saw some of the most beautiful parts of the world during the six days (see here for just a few of the thousand or so photos we took) but one of the highlights was seeing the Northern Lights

I knew that one day this image would be made into a quilt, and even bought the Kona solids from Cindy at Fluffy Sheep quilting (Cindy was amazing, I emailed her this photo and she sorted the colours for me).  And the fabrics sat on my desk waiting for me to start.

The push came when Fiona at Celtic Thistle opened up a Holiday Memories virtual quilt competition.

So I cut and stitched and pressed and cut and stitched and pressed, and unstitched and stitched, and unstitched and stitched, and then pressed and embroidered and finally finished.  It finished about 26.5 x 18 inches - as with most of my patchworks it chose the size it wanted to be - nothing to do with me!

And here is my version

 I decided to use mostly black as the nights were really dark.  The couple watching the lights were machine embroidered black on black, but I tilted the stitches at different angles so they would show as two people rather than as one. 

 

It is difficult to photograph as there is so much black.  Below is a screen shot of the embroidery of the couple.  It's not really based on Brian and I as obviously we are not in our own photos,  but I think with artistic licence it could be us, we were there after all!

The ship's railing were created by black satin stitch.

I used Bargello to create the staggered effect, and also to echo the vertical lines that were suggested by the lights themselves.   I then FMQed more almost vertical lines in three shades of green and in black to sort of drag each band of colour up into it's neighbour's band

 
The inspiration for using Bargello for this was this quilt made by Eldrid Røyset Førde who blogs at Kameleon Quilts.    If I was to make mine again I think I would use more shades of green rather than just the three

Eldrid made my all time favourite quilt, Blue Night, and she emailed me some much appreciated suggestions of things to see while we were on our trip, so it seemed very fitting that the style should be inspired by her too

** Pictures 'borrowed' from Eldrid's site, permission has been requested **

Tidy Up Tuesday

I actually left work on time today, and that gave me an afternoon of empty house, and therefore sewing.

I wanted to start a new quick project, so I made myself get a bit further along with two that needed a bit of tidying up:

I trimmed and machine stitched the binding to a basic I-Spy Quilt: a very good friend of Lisa's has just become an Auntie, so Lisa wanted to give the baby a quilt

And one of six Horrible Hexi tops has finally been hand quilted in front of the TV

And so was ready to be trimmed and have its binding stitched too

Having done those I gave myself permission to start something new.  There is an I Spy Brick top that I pieced by hand last summer.  The brick arrangement takes a bit more time and fabric than the one above, but is a lovely effect, so I decided to make one for a teacher at school who will be going on maternity leave soon: The bricks and the vertical 'mortar' have been pieced and pressed

I also had a go at blocking the Northern Lights Project, as the stitching had caused the bottom section to pull in and it was now about an inch narrower than the top.

I washed it and hung it out sideways to dry: I wanted to weight the bottom to stretch it:  It's a bit Heath Robinson, but with the aid of some curtain hooks, some mini bungee clips, a wooden stick and some mugs, I think it is being pulled!

Northern Lights Project

Thank you Plum and Nicky for the applique suggestion, the missing blocks have now been sorted and anchored with the FMQ that has been added to all the northern lights

I'm quite pleased with the result (left grey is original, right grey is appliqued)

I wanted to add the railings of the boat, as we saw the lights from the deck.  I tried piecing using the dark grey and black, but couldn't get the railings dark enough, after all we saw them late at night.  Brian suggested using black stitches, and I think it has worked

I also wanted to show a couple viewing the lights: my FMQ is certainly not up to creating this, but I am capable of creating a machine embroidery design to represent them, and although it took 39 minutes to stitch (probably my longest design) I'm really please with how this has come out

So it's not finished yet, but its starting to look as if it may actually be finished by the deadline of Fiona's Mini Quilt competition

So there is Bargello, FMQ, machine satin stitch, and embroidery machine features!

To unsew? Or not to unsew?

At the end of last month the Northern Lights Project was unpicked and sent to the Thinking Step in disgrace.  It was to sit there and think about what it had done and not to comeback until it was sorry.

Well it did come back and apologise, and so I pressed and stitched and pressed and stitched, and I was happier about it this time, its still not as curved as it should be, but with quilting I think it will be OK

This is the original photo, the finished wallhanging will be much wider, but at the moment I'm just working on that curve

 

I was wondering whether to FMQ around the swoop, to enhance that, and that maybe would blur the harsh angles, or should I FMQ vertically to enhance that effect instead?

I thought I'd zap a photo to Jackie to see what she thought, the flash was on auto, and THIS is what I see

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I'd been working on this in artificial light - you know, one of those light bulb that takes ages to glow bright, and it had looked fine, but under the flash see that I'd forgotten to continue with the very dark grey in the middle of the two sections of lights

Any suggestions appreciated

Posted with Blogsy

Unsewing :-(

I decided the northern lights design wasn't doing it for me, so this is the result of today's time in the sewing room

The expanse of sky is now strips of sky

Pah!  Good night 

Northern Nights

I'm starting to run low on sewing time as school starts up in less than a week and my to do list is a bit long, but I have been working on the holiday memories quilt

So far so good, I'm now trying to turn the corner, this is the work on progress photo of the next section, the bumps are where I need to resew as the angles were too steep

Holiday Memories

I have finally got round to planning my holiday memories wall hanging.

I am using the Bargello style of patchwork, (inspired by Eldrid's northern lights wall hanging) but needed to know how to get the curve, so I practised with paper.

I made the horizontal strips

Then cross cut and tried to arrange them.  I was doing OK until Quilt Inspector #2 came to help

Thanks Scratchy, just make yourself comfortable why don't you?

Finally she got bored and let me finish my paper quilt

Now to do the real thing!

Holiday Wallhanging

The lovely Fiona and I have become friends through the Star of Africa bee that we are both in, and she has given me a little bit of a much needed kick to get one with a particular project: She has invited people to join her Holiday Memories - Mini Quilt competition

She has arranged judges, prizes and even a button

And given that I had the holiday of a lifetime this year, and have already planned the quilt and bought the fabric . . . I think I need to sign up!

Oh, and I need to make the wall hanging too, I've ordered some more dark fabrics and once they arrive I'll get going