2019 Week 21 Crafty Church

May's Crafty Church was possibly best described as ambitious!

One of the crochet ladies had two necklaces that she reckoned had been done by crochet - could they please work out how they were made so she could make some to sell on the WI stall

I am know we are only 8 and 10, but w saw this pattern in a magazine and have decided to make a dress and a skirt!

Um - OK!  I did the explaining-the-pattern bits and we got everything cut out but poor mum and granny had to take over as we'd run out of time

EDIT: The dress now looks like this!!

Others were working on crochet blankets, patchwork sampler quilt and all sorts of other things!

We also had some girls teaching themselves string art

And I was working on my paper foundation pieced blocks

2017 Wk 9 - Mostly Chertsey

I had a lovely Friday afternoon at Chertsey museum. The show and tell creations were amazing - especially Rhona's which combined spring blocks and kantha stitching!

The finished blocks are looking fab together!

Tone finished her kantha too

But Friday's topic was fabric flowers, and although they all started from the same sample, they have all taken the idea and made very individual flowers.  Click HERE for a PDF with the class' instruction sheet

As for me, I spent all Thursday at work with no computers - and we are virtually a paper free office, so there was *nothing* to do . . . Luckily I keep an emergency sewing kit in the car, so I sewed strips and rectangles together by hand to make this - I could have done with an ironing board too!

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The one where I worked on the Rainy Day Rainbow

Today saw all the rainy day strips being stitched together and pressed

I'm really pleased with the effect of the rainbow, but the tops and bottoms need a bit of attention

 

Do I hack off to even it up, or do I try and add surplus strips to even up the edges? All suggestions welcomed!

 

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The one where I started sewing Rainy Day Rainbow Quilt

My quilts usually get names after they've been finished, but this one has its name much earlier!

I used the grey fabrics from FOQ that were cut into 10 x 2½ strips about ten days ago and started stitching them in strips with the rainbow sections.  The grey reminded me of a rainy day - hence the name Rainy Day Rainbow!

In case anyone is interested (including Future Benta), I actually have the initial 'recipe' for this quilt, and thought it worth making notes here!

I cut 10 20" x 2½" strips - one each from a variety of rainbow fabrics: I felt these worked well together (although the order changed a bit in the final version, and the pale blue got ditched)

I used 11 grey FQs, cutting each one into 14 bricks 10" x 2½": (Actually I cut up 13 FQs, but so far have only needed 11, but there wil be borders and binding needed, so I cant see there being any waste)

I took pairs of different grey bricks and joined them at 45O: when opened they make a straight line.

I made 11 strips that were 8 grey bricks long (using the 45Omethod) 

I made another 10 strips that were each made of 6 grey bricks and one rainbow strip long. (These I actually made as a circle as I didn't know where the top and bottom would be)

And then I started laying them out on my 'design bed' - splitting the rainbow strips as appropriate (it's left a jagged top and bottom but that will be sorted later)

I decided to stagger the all grey strips as my seams aren't 100% even, so this way any dodgy seams aren't as glaringly obvious

(OK, not fab, but they are just being auditioned in this pic, - it gives you an idea)

I then started pinning.  From seam to seam the grey bricks now measure 7½"

The seam on the staggered strip then needs to be joined to the middle of the adjoining brick  It needs to be pinned at the 4" point, so that a ¼" seam hits the diagonal seam ¼" earlier, ie at half of 7½"

I've pinned about half the strips to their neighbours, but now I'm done for today, (and I've run out of pins) so the next part of the instructions will be sometime in the future

The one where I did *more* machine embroidery and some quilting

You really don't expect *more* photos of preschool uniforms I hope?  I'm getting a little fed up with them - 44 down, 31 to go!!!

However the HST and Strings / £7 quilt has moved along and now looks like this

I've done some liberated (free range) quilting in the solids . . .

using a lovely variegated thread . . .

However, my drawer of fabric strings doesn't seem to have gone down AT ALL!!!

Hadley's HSTs (copied)

A while ago I got the ladies at my church group sewing: we were making paper pieced string blocks and got this far 

We discussed who we were making it for, and unanimously agreed it had to be one of two ladies - Vikki or Sheila - lovely ladies from church - both of whom were fighting cancer.

Sadly Vikki died before we got much further, and while I know the quilt wasn't to blame, I kicked it into a corner in disgust, and couldn't bring myself to work on it while I was in mourning for such a lovely lady. I eventually got into the right frame of mind to finish the quilt for Sheila, and she died. Another lovely lady, such a loss to the village .  Another period of mourning :- (

Again I fell unable to complete the string quilt.  It has too many sad memories! At house group last Sunday Mandy made an observation - maybe its time to give up on this and start something else. I'm not sure it's a permanent surrender, but I think she's right that I need to move on at the moment.

The thought rattled around in my mind for a bit, and then I saw the Kona FQs I got from Ireland,

and was reminded of a project Hadley worked on last year -

(Pic stolen from Flying Blind - hope I'm forgiven)

 Hummmm?

• Can I cut rainbow FQs into 6" HSTs?
• Can non-sewing ladies stitch HSTs into squares?
• Can I easily restitch HSTs if needed?
• Will these units make a fab flimsy?

I reckon all these can be answered with a YES, so I'm leaving the string quilt to "mature" and we'll work on a copy of Hadley's quilt for a while!

Triangles cut - roll on next house group!

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Diamonds Done

You may remember a little poppet at my school who has been battling cancer.  It's looking good for her, but they are looking at weekly chemo until Christmas!  Friends have set up a fund raising page (do message me if you want the link) and I wanted to help.

It's taken me a bit of time to finish, but with the help of a lovely lovely friend: Quilter in the Closet (aka Jen) I have now finished my contribution - and hopefully this will raise some money towards their hoped-for trip to Euro Disney

If you want raffle tickets feel free to message me

Oldest UFO?

I think I have finished my oldest UFO! The earliest blog reference I can find was in January 2012. And even then I refer to it as being ancient!

A few days ago I found it in a box, and thought it just needed binding, so thought I could do that quickly and then call it a finish. Once I'd machine the binding to the front I realised that it hadn't been constructed in my usual method, and therefore hadn't been quilted AT ALL!!

So how to quilt after binding? It's not brilliantly made, so there are some chunky joints, so in the ditch or echoing wasn't going to be brilliant - then I looked at the embroidery machine and inspiration struck. There were three actions to make this quilt : cut, sew, quilt, - so I stitched these words over and over again

  

  

Not very legible in the photos, but I love it!  The letters are about 3" high, 1.5" wide.
I have now finished the binding, despite the 'help' of the hardest-to-photograph cat in the world!

So: a finish

Can I start something new?

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Sunday Strings

I'm meeting the ladies from our House Group tonight so I thought I'd better attach the latest finished string blocks to the others, so they can see what they've achieved - they just need to finish the last five blocks and this one will be ready for binding. 

 

I wonder if they are up for doing another one?  I can probably find enough fabric!!!

I have also dug out another strings project: Last (hangs head in shame) April Jen sent me some strings that she had, telling me that "it would be a LONG while before I use them" 

Well I think 13 months may be an even longer time than Jen anticipated, but after making another six blocks in November,this pile has sat waiting for a purpose.

My lovely little Miss M at school is being attacked by chemo, and infections, and hair loss and all the general horribleness of being in hospital rather than at home, so lots of mum's friends are fund raising for M, Mum and little sister L to go to Euro Disney when she's feeling up to it.

Jen has daughters herself of the same sort of ages, and has recently posted about going to Disney with them (California rather than Paris!) so I am sure she will be happy for me to finish this quilt, and donate it from the two of us as a fund raising item: it's so bright and cheerful - I'm sure it will help raise money for their trip!

All 20 stitched in pairs today: maybe I'll get a bit done tomorrow.

And a bit off topic:  My lovely bestie Jackie is a GRANDMA!!!!!  The long awaited grandson finally arrived today - mother and baby fine; grandmother exhausted after the longest day of her life!  Love you Jackie!

And the latest photos from Lisa's road trip

(Bless, Geography wasn't her strong point!)