Tongariro Crossing (and the Peacock Party)

I've finished my Sue Spargo quilt and I love it.

Sue Spargo has called this pattern "Nature Trail", but my quilt doesn't look anything like a walk in the woods.  The colours in my quilt make me think of a volcano, so I'm calling my version "Tongariro Crossing".

The Tongariro Crossing is 20km (12 mile) hike across an active volcano in the middle of New Zealand's North Island.  Click here for details.  There are trees and birds at the start and end of the track, but up at the summit it's very barren and you can see into the crater lake of the volcano.  The website recommends that people check the level of volcanic activity before they set out!!!  https://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/tongariro  Don't worry, the track will be closed if there's any danger.

I haven't done the Tongariro Crossing hike, and I don't intend to, but I've seen plenty of photos and it does look amazing.

I made this quilt during a mystery stitch along with Sue Spargo in 2016.  My inspiration fabric was this beautiful Anna Maria Horner fabric pictured above, called Folk Song Minor Chords. I also wanted to include some of this fabric below in this quilt:

Each month Sue released another pattern and most of them included some hand embroidery.  I loved doing the hand stitching, and I learnt some new stitches with the help of my Sue Spargo Creative Stitching book.

I used Sue Spargo's Wonderfil variegated threads for most of the hand stitching. These threads are Perle 8 thickness and made by Wonderfil. Lots of shops stock them because they are great for embellishing quilts. I love using them for wool felt applique. 

Yes, those Wonderfil threads are addictive.  I won't tell you how many I have in my cupboard.

I put stabiliser on the back of my blocks to support the hand embroidery, but then I realised that I wouldn't be able to hand quilt it.  So I did a bit of machine quilting myself, but it wasn't enough and I was too timid to try free motion quilting on this quilt.  Although it's not a big quilt, it is quite heavy due to the extra stabiliser, and I couldn't move it freely on my domestic Bernina.

So a few months ago I took it into my local long arm quilter, Sue Burnett at Busy Bee Quilt Shop, and she kindly finished it for me.  I suspect finishing someone else's quilting is like doing sewing repairs, so I do appreciate Sue helping me out.

I'd had the binding cut and waiting in the cupboard for more than a year, so it only took a day or two to put it on.  Now my quilt is finished!!!

Size: 49' x 64" (124cam x 162cam)
Pattern: Nature Trail by Sue Spargo

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.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

#instastitchwithsue - Sue Spargo mystery quilt

For the past 12 months Sue Spargo has been running a free mystery quilt along on Instagram. She called it #instastitchwithsue and released a pattern each month.  Here's my version:

I love Sue Spargo's designs - I have her calendar on my office wall and gaze at it often when I should be doing work.

I couldn't pass up the idea of a mystery quilt along with hand stitching thrown in!  So I started watching for the patterns each month and tried to keep up through out the year.  Here's a link to ALL 12 blocks. Just click on the photos to download the patterns.

I thought I'd use different fabrics from my usual selections, so I went with orange and purple!! Quite radical, but I found a few fabrics that contained both colours, and built up a collection from there.

Here's how some of my blocks turned out.  I didn't do quite as much decorative stitching as Sue did, but some of my fabrics were very patterned and I knew the stitching wouldn't show up which ever colour thread I used.  The variegated threads are Sue Spargo's Eleganza perle 8 threads for Wonderfil thread.  The colour variations are beautiful!!

And all together before I started to join them:

 I decided to make a pieced backing from some of my purple fabrics so I did a bit of quilt maths,

and here it is.

I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt this yet.  I need some time to think about that.  I might even machine quilt it myself because I'm, feeling inspired after reading Jacquie Gering's new book - Walk.  

EPP progress

Thank you everyone for all the offers to come and teach English Paper Piecing (EPP) where you live.  Maybe I'll plan a world tour for about 5 years time when I've got more than just EPP to teach! ha ha. Some of you are no reply bloggers, so I can't reply to you personally, but I do read all the comments.

My classes got underway and we had a lot of fun at the first lesson.  I retrieved the other section of my Inner City quilt from the shop window, and now it looks like this:

I'm going to square it off now by adding some filler pieces, and then add these borders I found in my stash.  This small quilt will have been made entirely from my stash (and my mum's). No shopping required.

I also worked on my Sue Spargo instastitch blocks this week.  I learnt to do Trellis stitch, which was interesting.  This is my third attempt below.  I ripped out the first one, kept the second one, and feel happy with the third one.  This is 1.25" diameter and took 3 hours!!  I used Sue Spargo's eleganza thread once I knew I could do the stitch.  It does take a lot of thread.

The best news of the week is that I am very nearly finished my la passacaglia quilt.  I finished the hand quilting yesterday, and started putting on the binding.  It was hard to sew black binding onto a black border on an overcast day, so I'm going to try again today now that the sun is out.

Finally, I've just been for a walk and saw that our banksia tree is flowering. The council planted these trees on the berm / verge  (nature strip if you're in Australia) and this is the first time it's flowered.  The birds and bees will love these big flowers.  You can read about this Australian native here.  It's named after the explorer Sir Joseph Banks who also came to New Zealand on his journeys.

More WIPs - when will it end?

I finished the hand stitching on the first Sue Spargo Instastitch block.  I'm happy with it, but next time I'm not going to use Perle 5 on cotton fabrics.  It's just too thick to pull through easily.

After saying I was making it all from my stash, I did just purchase another 2 reels of Sue's variegated Perle 8 for future blocks.


I've dug out my second Spinning Stripes quilt which has remained untouched since my class with Shirley Mooney back in June 2015.

I started to assemble it as we had laid it out in the class, but I was really struggling to make sense of the pattern - see next photo below:

So I decided to ditch that idea, and instead make it similar to Shirley's original design - see below:

It meant I had to cut more triangles, but I still had enough fabric left, and I don't have any other special plans for that fabric.  I'm feeling better about it now.

Below is my first Spinning Stripes which I completed last year. You can read about it over here. 

Spinning Stripes v1.0 - finished in 2015

I've also finally started on my peacock tapestry cushion.  I've had this pack for over a year now, but I kept trying to finish other things first.

I used the excuse of going to Rotorua for starting this tapestry.  Hotel rooms always have bad lighting, so I need something with big holes so I can see what I am doing.  I don't know if I'll get any of it done, but I'm taking it with me when we go to Rotorua tomorrow.

Just a small start to test it out

I'm using tent stitch (continental) for those who are interested.

I'll be back next week with some tourist snaps from geyser land.  Yes, there is a quilt shop in Rotorua, and I have looked it up on google maps, but I am going to Rotorua for work, so I may not have time for fabric shopping.

March update

Here's a little bit of what I've been working on lately:

Gingerbread Quilt Shop

As some of you know, I have a little Gingerbread Village I bring out at Christmas time. Last year I was rushing to finish an ornament in December.  That won't happen this year.  I'm aiming to assemble my first ornament of 2016 at Easter, and still get the Needlework Shop completed in October too.  Don't panic about these photos - they are all the same piece of linen, it's just hard to get consistent brightness to photograph.

finished

finished with room for the vestibule to be attached

not finished yet

I'm working on the final side now

my roof will be red

This is what I work on the evenings in front of TV. You can see the rest of my village here - All patterns are by the super talented Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler.


Oh! Christmas Tree

Pattern by Wendy Williams and available in Simply Moderne issue 3 (by QuiltMania), or directly from Wendy's website here.

I still haven't finished the centre panel for my Christmas Tree quilt yet, but I was missing my sewing machine, so I jumped ahead and made 26 wonky stars for the final border.  Of course they took much longer than I expected, but they were fun because I got to play with pretty fabrics.

If you interested in making this quilt, take a look at Elizabeth's blog Occasional Piece.  She's running a quilt along and even giving away some prizes this week. Elizabeth has spent lots of time writing step by step guides for how to do wool felt applique.  I sent her some of my photos to include in her post.


Sue Spargo Instastitch

Sue Spargo is a super talented lady, and she very generously decided to release a FREE pattern for a mystery block of the month.  I only saw this pattern yesterday morning, but by dinner time I had already chosen fabrics from my stash and sewn the first block.  Now I just need to add the recommended hand stitching embellishments (which is what Sue is world famous for).

the options - all from my stash

my finished block - 16" x 16"

If you'd like to read more you can find the patterns on Sue's blog here.

So that's what I've been up to.  The weather is still beautiful in Wellington. As they say, you can't beat Wellington on a good day.