Ruby Star

My Ruby Star quilt is finished! 

I used the Raindrops are Falling on My Head pattern by Willyne Hammerstein from Millefiori Quilts 4. 

I've called it Ruby Star because the fabrics are all from Ruby Star Society.  I had a lot of fun fussy cutting ice creams, rainbows and birds.

I chose to hand piece my quilt, but there are English Paper Piecing papers available. 

Last year I used the same Raindrops pattern to make my Bollywood quilt. 

I had a bundle of Ruby Star Society fabrics that I wanted to fussy cut, so I decided to make the pattern a second time and change the direction of the stars.  Here's the two quilts together:

Ruby Star is 42" wide x 50" high, so not huge, but once again the size was dictated by the fabrics and the number of repeats in each fat quarter.  

I had both of these quilts custom quilted by Rayna Clinton.

I'll be taking this quilt along to my Millefiori Quilts class at Quilt Symposium on Friday 7 October.  It's not too late to join us if you live in NZ.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been working on this week? 

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Bollywood

I'm pleased to present "Bollywood" - another finished quilt from Millefiori Quilts 4 by Willyne Hammerstein. 

I love the vibrant colours in this quilt.  I started with a piece of the Legendary fabric by Pat Bravo as my inspiration fabric, and chose the other fabrics from that.  The hot pinks, the rich golds, and the sparkling teals.  I love them all together in this fabric.  

Bollywood is made from the Raindrops Are Falling on my Head pattern that is in Millefiori Quilts 4 by Willyne Hammerstein.  I chose to hand piece my quilt, but it can also be paper pieced.  I used templates made by Paper Pieces in USA, and fussy cut as many rosettes as I could. 

You can read my earlier posts about my Bollywood quilt here:

Just starting out - March 2021

Making progress - June 2021

I love hand quilting, but a quilt like this has a lot of seams, so I took it to my local long arm quilter - Rayna Clinton.  We developed a plan, and she quilted it beautifully on her long arm machine.  

I decided to use up all my scraps from this quilt on the back.  I now have a permanent record of what the Legendary fabric looked like before I fussy cut it to death.  

Bollywood isn't huge, but it was fun to make and allowed me to experiment with pattern and colour.  I'm making another version of this pattern with minor changes this time.  You can read about my Ruby Star quilt here, and I'll point out the differences in a future post.  

Finished size: 40" x 55"

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Ruby Star

My Ruby Star quilt is coming along nicely.  I like hand piecing because it's very portable.  I keep a few of the joining star pieces in a little bag and I take them with me when I know I'm going to be sitting still for an hour or so.  

This pattern is Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head by Willyne Hammerstein from Millefiori Quilts 4.  I almost wish some raindrops were falling on my head right now - it's been so hot in Wellington and Auckland this summer.  

Here's one of my favourite blocks in this quilt - although I like all of them.  There are so many fussy cutting possibilities with the Ruby Star Society fabrics. 

I made some videos about Hand Piecing and you can find them here if you'd like to give it a go. 

I've got all my pieces made now, so I'm hoping to get another row added this weekend.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.   Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

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Labour Weekend

It's a long weekend in New Zealand, and I'm hoping to get quite a bit of quilting done.  

First I need to put away all the new fabric sitting on my kitchen bench! 

The Kaffe Fassett ones on the left were a birthday gift from my mum and dad.  I chose them, and ordered them, but they insisted on paying.  I also received Kaffe's latest book for my birthday, so I'm enjoying that at the moment.

The spots and stripes were from a quick trip to Palmerston North on Monday. I was invited to judge the Rose City Quilters exhibition, and I couldn't resist popping in to 3 quilts shops on the way back. 

And the Tula Pink pastels turned up this week, quite unexpectedly.  With USPS no longer accepting parcels to NZ and Australia, I wondered when they might ever arrive.  But a courier dropped them off last night, so that was a very pleasant surprise.  

This afternoon I'm going to pick up one of my quilts from my long arm quilter, and I'm delivering Raindrops are Falling on my Head.  In the end I went with a suggestion from my mum, and just sewed a patterned section of the fabric over the corners to hide the pink, and make the zig zag continue around the quilt.  Thank you for all your suggestions, but this is the one I thought worked the best.  

I'll be sure to show you once it's all quilted.  There's a lot of seam allowances on the back of this one, so I couldn't face hand quilting it.  And, I really want it finished before Christmas.    

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Mitered corners

Mitered corners - they look so good, but they're not always easy.  

My first mitered corners were on my la Passacaglia quilt above, and they worked out well. 

My second attempt was on my Fireworks quilt (Ballet with Kaffe), and although the pattern didn't match perfectly, it wasn't too noticeable because the border is mainly black.

I also used mitered corners on my Trans-Tasman Bubble quilt (Aussies and Kiwis - remember the Trans-Tasman Bubble??). 

The navy and white striped border needed to be mitered in the corners to allow the pattern to flow. 

Now I'm ready to attach the borders to the Raindrops are Falling on my Head quilt, but the fabric isn't meeting nicely in the corners. 

The length of the sides doesn't match the pattern repeat on the fabric.  So I can either leave it as it is (top left corner), or insert cornerstones to avoid the issue.  

The three fabrics in the corners above are just me narrowing down my options.  I think if I do go for cornerstones, it will be the Kaffe spot in the bottom right corner above.  Of course I didn't have enough of it, so I went and bought more this morning, just in case I do decide to use it.  

I think I'll just walk around this quilt all weekend while I decide what I want to do.  Feel free to leave a comment below if you have a suggestion. 

(Gayle from Hamilton asked the other week where I got a grey spotted fabric from.  I'm sorry to say I bought the last piece of it, but send me an email because I might be able to spare some.  I bought a whole metre.  I can't reply to your comment because you're a No Reply Blogger.)

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Raindrops are Falling on my Head

 I'm so close to finishing the main body of this quilt.

Pattern = Raindrops are Falling on my Head from Millefiori Quilts 4 by Willyne Hammerstein.

There's just two long seams to hand stitch now, but they will be slow going because there's a lot of places where the points meeting along these seams. 

Once the body of the quilt is done, I can think about the borders.  I want to use more of the feature fabric in the borders, but I'm not sure how I'll do it yet.  

And then I need to think about the quilting! I'll be machine quilting this one because there are so many seams allowances on the back.  I've adopted Jinny Beyer's method of just pressing from the top.  It would be impossible to get all of these seam allowances sitting flat.  Maybe I'll post a photo of the back another day. It's not pretty!

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It's Winter

Yes, it's winter here, and the raindrops certainly are falling on my head.  

A lot of people marvel at how green New Zealand is.  That's because it rains a lot here. So it seems appropriate that I'm back working on my "Raindrops are Falling on my Head" quilt by Willyne Hammerstein.  

Strangely enough though, my quilt is full of hot colours, so I might have to think of a new name for it before I finish it.  

I'm hand piecing this quilt.  I used to do a lot of English Paper Piecing, but I found it hard on my hands, so I set myself a goal of learning hand piecing.  You can read my previous post about Raindrops are Falling on my Head here.

I've made quite a few hand pieced quilts now and I really enjoy the technique.  Here's a couple of them:

Lady Wigram using Bella Ruby pattern by Treehouse Textiles

Glitter in Green using Glitter pattern by Jen Kingwell

Lots of people asked me how I do my hand piecing, so I made some YouTube videos and put a tab for them at the top of my page (or you can click here).  I've received a number of messages with people telling me that they have found them useful, so that's very nice.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to this week? Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

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Trans-Tasman Bubbles

Here's my latest finish, Trans-Tasman Bubbles.  

This quilt is all hand pieced and hand quilted by me.  The pattern is by Willyne Hammerstein from her book Millefiori Quilts 4.  In the book it's called "Dancing Cheek to Cheek", but I called my quilt trans-Tasman Bubbles, because the circles keep disappearing and re-emerging as you look at it.  

The trans-Tasman bubble is an agreement between the New Zealand and Australian governments that lets citizens of those countries travel between the two countries without having to stay 14 days in managed isolation/hotel quarantine on arrival.  

However, as soon as there are community cases in either Australia or New Zealand, the trans-Tasman bubble is suspended and people can no longer leave that city and go back to their home.  

That's why I won't be going to the Quilt NSW Sydney Quilt Show this year.  I'd love to go, but I don't want to risk being stuck in Sydney for extra days or weeks.  

But back to the quilt - I started this quilt for three reasons:

1. I'd always wanted to make a Winding Ways type quilt with optical illusions

2. I wanted to try out more of the patterns in Millefiori Quilts 4 because they fascinate me. 

3. Quilt NSW were going to have a special blue and white challenge at the 2021 Sydney Quilt Show and I wanted to enter (it's now deferred until 2022, but I'm ready!).  

I've experimented with the Quick Curve Ruler and sewing curves on my sewing machine, but I decided that it might just be easier for me to hand piece a version of the Winding Ways quilt.

So I bought the hand piecing templates from Paper Pieces in USA.  I always opt for the 1/4" seam allowance because I think 3/8" is too bulky. 

I won't say it was easy to hand piece curves, because it wasn't, but I did get quicker as I went along. My main piece of advice is to mark extra registration points on your templates, and copy them onto the back of the fabric.  I know some of you would like me to make a video of how I hand piece curves, so I'll try and do that soon. 

I entered this quilt into the Great New Zealand Quilt Show in Rotorua in May 2021. It didn't win any prizes, but a number of people told me they loved it, so that was nice.  I love it, and that's what's most important.  And I learnt a new skill making it.  

Size: 43" x 49"

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Not Your Grandmother's Garden

The Great New Zealand Quilt Show opened today in Rotorua, and I can finally show you my entries in the Aotearoa Quilters Lime Challenge.  

First up is "Not Your Grandmother's Garden".  

12" wide x 16" high

At first glance you might think these are hexagons, but they're not! Hence the name, and the fact I'd just bought some new jeans from Not Your Daughter's Jeans. 

I love experimenting with geometric shapes, and I wanted to try the Fiesta Gitana pattern in Millefiori Quilts 4 by Willyne Hammerstein. 

I hand pieced this mini quilt, and then I machine quilted it because the joins are quite bulky, even with 1/4" seam allowances.  And of course, time was running out!

I love lime, and I'm happy with my mini quilt.  I did learn that it's hard to draw the stitching lines for pieces with long, sharp points like the stars at the centre of these blocks.  My pencil wouldn't go right to the tip, so I fudged it a bit when I did the hand piecing.  

My second Lime quilt is "The Tea is Delicious". 

This quilt was an after thought because I'd bought this quirky Japanese fabric for the Lime challenge, and I didn't end up using it in my first entry above.  

So, I just cut a piece to the required size, and added a combination of hand and machine quilting.  The name was already there in the fabric - The tea is delicious. 

So that's my two entries in the Lime challenge.  I always love seeing all the colour challenge quilts together, and this time I can say that I've got two in the display.  I'll take lots of photos and report back soon.  

I've also got 3 quilts in the main display, and I'll talk about them in future blog posts.  

I'm looking forward to seeing lots of friends at the Great New Zealand Quilt Show in Rotorua. If you see me around, do say hello.  It is lovely to meet quilters who read my blog and like my posts on Facebook or Instagram.  I'm off to pack some warm clothes!

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