My Tussie Mussie

Tussie Mussie is finished and I'm using it on my knees on these cold winter's nights in New Zealand. The pattern is from Kaffe Fassett's Quilts in Italy book. I took the quilt to Auckland a few weeks ago and photographed it in mum's garden.

I love seeing all those gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabrics together in one place.

Although I do love hand quilting, some time there just isn't enough hours in the day to do everything, so I got this quilt quilted by Sue Burnett of Busy Bee Quilt Shop in Lyall Bay, New Zealand.  I chose an overall swirly design which I felt suited the fabrics well.  It certainly looks great on the back with the Kaffe Fassett wide back fabric.

I asked Sue to use Aurifil 40wt on the top, and 50wt on the back.  I chose one of my favourite colours - Aurifil 1243 - Dusty Lavender.

 

You can see earlier WIP photos here if you wish.

My quilt is 60" x 60" because my half square triangle blocks are smaller than the ones in the pattern.  It makes for a perfect lap quilt because I chose wool batting.

EPP classes in Wellington - Octagons and Squares

Many of you know I'm addicted to English Paper Piecing. I just love all the great patterns that can be created with shapes and colours.  Would you think these two pieces below are made from the same two shapes?

Well, they are.  They are both made from just ocatgons and squares. If you live in Wellington you can come to my class at Nancy's Stitch Studio and have fun experimenting with shapes and colours.

Yes, I'm teaching English Paper Piecing classes at Nancy's on Wednesday 9 and 30 August in the mornings and evenings. Click here for more information. Come along and learn all my tricks and tips for making great English Paper Pieced quilts and table runners. We'll be using glue basting and precut paper pieces, so there won't be any fiddling about with paper and scissors and wonky lines.

I hope to see some of you there.

Good news from Quilt Symposium

I received some good news this week.  One of my quilts was accepted for our national Quilt Symposium in October.  It's the one I made with Symposium in mind, so I'm really pleased it was accepted.  There were 340 entries and only 170 quilts accepted, so my 50% acceptance rate feels just right.

Some people had more than one quilt accepted, but others had none, so I'm grateful that one of mine will be hanging in the exhibition.  The judging was conducted by three experienced judges, and they had no idea who made the quilts, so it was all fair and quilts got in on their merits.

I'm looking forward to Symposium because it should be warm by October.  We're currently experiencing a very cold spell with wind, rain and snow affecting all of the country.

I'll be taking classes with Jen Kingwell - Green Tea and Sweet Tea (hand applique) for two days, and Glitter (hand piecing) for one day.

I'm also taking Pickle Dish with Chris Jurd. And some free motion quilting with Deborah Louie.

So that's five days of classes!! Plus a few lectures, dinners, and drinks parties to attend.  I'm feeling tired already!

I don't know if I'll get out of the classroom much, but Christchurch is a lovely city and I always like to visit the Botanic Gardens when I'm there.  Here's a photo I took of punting on the Avon River some years ago.

30 June check in

Every six months I set goals for my quilting and embroidery.  I find this helps me to keep on task, and get things finished.

It's 30 June so it's time to check progress.  The list I wrote for 2017 is here if you would like to check back, but I promise to work through it without omitting anything.

1. Symposium quilt 1.  This one is finished, photographed, and submitted.  I'm just waiting to hear if it got accepted or not.

2. Symposium quilt 2.  This one didn't get finished in time, so will be held over until a future show.  I've continued to work on it, but I just knew I couldn't finish everything.

3. Symposium quilt 3 - Possum Magic.  I finished this one, photographed it and submitted it to Symposium.  Again, I'm waiting to find out if it was accepted or not. (I'll post full photos in another post soon.)

4. Tussie Mussie.  I made the top entirely from my stash and I love it.  The pattern calls for nice big half square triangles and enjoyed mixing up my favourite Kaffe Fassett prints.  This pattern is from Kaffe's book, Quilts in Italy.  I've decided to get this one quilted at Busy Bee, Wellington, because I just haven't got time to quilt everything myself and I really want to start using it.

5.  Sue Spargo Instastitch - I finished the blocks and joined them all up, but haven't thought about how it quilt it yet.  There's stabiliser behind most of the blocks so it will be too thick for hand quilting.

6. Wendy Williams Tea Party BOM.  I'm going to start this at our retreat, this weekend. Now that my Symposium quilts are finished I intend to dive right in and enjoy making this.

7. Tropical Hexagons - another Kaffe Fassett pattern.  Now that I know that Kaffe and Brandon are coming back to New Zealand in January, I really need to get this one quilted so I can take it along for show and tell.  I have started the hand quilting, and will try to do a few hexagons each week.  There are 99 in the quilt!  This pattern is Mediterranean Hexagons from Quilts in Morocco.

So that was all the things I listed at the start of the year.   I've finished two of them, and made progress on four.  The Wendy Williams Tea Party BOM is the only one that I haven't worked on yet.

Of course I've started some extras along the way too:

8. Ballet with Kaffe Fassett - I'm loving how this is looking and I'm enjoying English Paper Piecing again.

9.  12 x 12 quilts.  I've made three 12 x 12 quilts for our guilds exhibition.  I can't show you them yet, but I will once the exhibition opens on 1 August.

10. BOM HST  - I've joined up some of the Half Square Triangles (HSTs) that I won at our guild Block of the Month (BOM) earlier in the year. I need to add more yet, but I like where this is going.

11. Cob Web quilt.  I started this in a class with Chris Kenna at Nancy's Stitch Studio.  We only made a couple of blocks at the class but I love how they are turning out.  They are foundation paper pieced so are quite slow to make, and making the blocks into circles taxes my brain - which I like. That's not my quilt hanging up - that's Chris' sample for classes.

So that's ample to keep me busy until the end of the year.  But added to that I will starting three new quilts at Symposium in October! Help!!