Last Christmas

I finished my Trip Around the World quilt just in time to enter it into Capital Quilters recent exhibition.  

I've called it Last Christmas because I've always loved Wham, and each December I pump this song out  regularly.

I used Edyta Sitar's pattern and method and I found it very good.  If I decide to make another Trip Around the World quilt I would certainly follow her method again.   

You can read my first blog post about this quilt here. I made this quilt over the Christmas break and found all these fabrics in my stash. I hand quilted it using a range of colours and types of threads.  I don't think they show up all that well, but I had fun mixing it up.  

I did find that quilting on the diagonal skewed the quilt slightly.  I was tempted to add some straight lines to straighten it out, but that would have ruined the diagonal effect that I was after.  When it was finished I gave it a wash and blocked it and I think it's back to being square now.  

I do love the colours which are Christmassy, but not in a traditional way.  I was inspired by this Christmas gift bag.

Oh! And on the back I used a piece of Noel by Cotton + Steel - so cute. 

Finished size is 54" x 62"

Tea Party part 6

Wow! It's been two and a half years since I worked on this quilt! But I'm going on holiday soon and I need some hand stitching to take with me. 

My quilt.

The full finished quilt designed by Wendy Williams

I have 4 tea cup blocks and 4 coffee cup blocks all prepped and just waiting for me to applique the flowers on.

So this week I've been cutting circle motifs out of fabrics and appliquing them to the wool felt in the evenings. I'm just building up a collection at the moment and will decide which flowers to put on each block when I have a good range to choose from. 

This pattern includes some reverse applique wool felt stars and they are fun to make.  I'm tacking the underlying fabric into place before I attach them to the background. 

Hopefully I can get at least 3 blocks ready to take with me to sunny Noosa. 

You can read my previous blog post about the Tea Party quilt here. 

You can find the pattern here at Material Obsession.  Or the full kit here. 

Exhibition shopping

After promising you I'd always do my blog posts on Friday nights NZ time, I slipped one in on Sunday, so if you missed seeing my Purple Zone quilt you can click back and read about it here. 

I've got more quilts from the exhibition to blog about, but first on to my shopping from Capital Quilters' exhibition last weekend. 

We had five retailers at the exhibition and I think I bought something from nearly every one of them.  

my haul from the exhibition

First up was this very interesting fabric from e bond for Free Spirit Fabrics.  It's unlike anything I've purchased before, but I want my quilting to continue growing so I'm going to challenge myself to use it.  

I also bought a bundle of Peppered Cottons from Studio E which will work well with another project I've been collecting fabrics for. 

These purchases were both from Jenny Hunter at Plume Art + Stitch

Catherine McDonald from Mallee Textiles brought a great range of her hand treated fabrics and there was a tempting discount if you purchased five.  Here's my five fabrics. 

I feel like I haven't been to a quilt shop in ages, and my lovely friend Lyndy from Stitchbird at Kilbirne had lots of pre cuts on her stall, so I bought a layer cake of Backyard by Ruby Star Society and I will enjoy thinking about what to do with that.  I do like the Ruby Star Society fabrics.  

I haven't unwrapped it yet because I know that when I do I'll want to start making something with it immediately and I have lots of other things I need to do first - including housework!

And finally, I bought some Sue Spargo wools from Fox's Cottage from Foxton. I've mainly used wool felt to date, but I'm participating in some Sue Spargo BOM programmes and I'm really enjoying seeing the different results felted wool produces.  Wool felt vs felted wool.  They are different - trust me. 

So, in between looking at all the wonderful quilts and talking to friends from around New Zealand, I managed to do a fair bit of shopping too. 

Purple Zone

There's nothing like an exhibition to make you hurry up and finish a quilt. 

This recent finish is a combination of two Jen Kingwell designs. 

Back in 2019 I started Jen's Marshal Mystery Quilt published through QuiltMania.  I was very proud of my central motif when I finally got it to sit flat, but as time went on and more and more of the quilt got released, I didn't feel inspired to finish it according to the pattern.  

But I've always hung onto this centre piece and I knew I'd find a way to use it one day.  

Last year another Australian quilt designer, Chris Jurd came and spoke to our guild and taught some classes.  I loved Chris' show and tell and the stories behind many of of quilts.  I decided that my vision was too small and I needed to think BIG. 

So I dug out the centre of my Marshal Mystery Quilt and decided to applique it onto a back ground.  And because I'd been seeing a lot of lovely Daylesford quilts from Jen Kingwell's Quilt Recipe book, I decided to add some borders using Jen's method and mixing them up with a few blocks.

It was so liberating to just make a few blocks for the borders rather than thinking that I needed to carry the same design right around the quilt.  To top it all off I used Kaffe Fasset's Shiraz in Grey from my stash on the final border.  

Finally, because the hand quilting pile was growing bigger and bigger, and I wasn't even sure hand quilting would show up on this quilt, I took it to Sue B at Busy Bee Quilt Shop in Wellington and she worked her magic on it.  Thank you Sue!

As for the name? I'm continuing my theme of naming quilts after songs, and Purple Zone by The Pet Shop Boys and Soft Cell gets a good thrashing in my car. It seemed an appropriate name for this guilt given how much purple is in it.    

I hadn't even seen the video until I went searching for this YouTube link, and it is a bit weird, but I love the chord progressions in this song so I'm sticking with it for the name of this quilt.  

Finished size 68" x 68"

PS - you may remember that I used some of the blocks I made for the Marshal Mystery Quilt in "We Built this City" which you can read about here. 

And, I still have 4 of these little hand pieced circle blocks from the Marshal Mystery Quilts that I may well use in the future. They were meant to be semi circles but I joined mine up to make circles. 

Watch this space. 

Capital Quilters Exhibition 11-12 May 2024

It's only one week until our exhibition!!!

It's going to be great because we have some very talented members at Capital Quilters.  I've entered seven quilts.  Yes, SEVEN. 

One is a 12" x 16" challenge, so that hardly counts.

Two you've possibly seen finished here on my blog or in person.

Two others you would have seen progress photos of, but not seen them finished.

And the final two are total surprises!! These are quilts that I've completed without showing them on social media at all.  Not even my friends know about them.  And I'm not going to give any clues now.

Centre - My Vibrant Curiosities. Best in Show at our 2018 Exhibition.

Right - my La Passacaglia 

I love walking around our exhibition and trying to guess who made the quilts before I read the tags.  People do have individual styles and I enjoy matching people to their quilts.  

If you live close to Wellington, please do consider coming.  Bring your mum for Mother's Day.  Or ask your kids to take you as a treat.  

The Lower Hutt Events Centre is a lovely modern facility with an on site cafe and we're going to have five merchants too.  

I can't wait!