Millefiori Quilts 5

Can you believe that Willyne Hammerstein has produced enough Millefiori Quilts to fill 5 different books now?

Yes, volume 5 of Millefiori Quilts has just been released by QuiltMania and I'm lucky enough to have my own copy here in front of me.

You might think, "How many different designs can you make out of hexagons, triangles, diamonds and squares?", but that's where Willyne has been thinking outside of the box and has started using irregular, non symmetrical shapes in these new quilts in Millefiori Quilts 5.

I've already bookmarked some favourites and I'm tossing up between making my own templates out of template plastic, and waiting for Paper Pieces in USA to make acrylic templates and paper pieces.  I got in touch with Paper Pieces and they have said that they're only going to make templates and paper pieces for what they think will be the 5 most popular quilts.  So what if the ones I like aren't on their list anyway?  

My acrylic templates for my favourite quilts in Millefiori Quilts 4

I suspect that I'm going to have to go old school and make my own templates.  At least I hand piece now and don't English Paper Piece (EPP) because I sure don't fancy printing and cutting hundreds of papers for EPP.

In the old days we would make a template from the back of a WeetBix box, and trace around it for the papers.  Wen the template got raggedy we would trace around it and make a new template.  And that's how our templates and paper pieces kept getting bigger and bigger!

I love acrylic templates and lazer cut paper pieces.  They're just so accurate. 

If you want to see how many of the acrylic templates for Millefiori Quilts 4 shown above I have used, just take a look at this page on my blog - it's a dedicated page for Millifiori Quilts 4.  

  

My Bollywood quilt

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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.

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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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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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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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Ballet with Kaffe = Fireworks

Everyone loves a good fireworks display, so I've decided to call my Ballet with Kaffe quilt, "Fireworks".

Fireworks by Wendy Welsh

I'm so pleased that this quilt is finished.  I love it, but it did take me a few years from start to finish. There were times when I thought I might never finish it. In the end I drew a line on my pattern and decided to stop piecing at that line.

I started this quilt in June 2017, and I finished it in February 2021.  That's almost four years!!!

The Cotton + Steel floral fabric on the left of the photo below was my inspiration fabric.  I didn't use it in the body of the quilt, but I based all of my fabric selections on it, because I love the way that those colours work together.  I used it in the borders of the quilt, and I managed to secure enough to use it on the back too. 

Sharon Burgess of Lilabelle Lane, Willyne Hammerstein and me - AQC in Melbourne 2018

Along the way I attended a class with Willyne Hammerstein at the Australian Quilt Convention (AQC) in Melbourne.  Willyne made hand piecing look so easy, but I'd already started English Paper Piecing (EPP) my Ballet quilt, and I didn't want to mix the methods, so I persevered with EPP. 

At the Great NZ Quilt Show in Rotorua May 2021

I finished the English Paper Piecing in January 2020, and then in April 2020 I added the fancy borders, inspired by the borders around Willyne's Moncarapacho quilt from Book 3, pictured below. 

Moncarapacho designed and made by Willyne Hammerstein

I do love hand quilting, and I wanted this quilt to be all my own work, so I hand quilted it with Aurifil 28wt in a range of different colours.  I enjoyed revisiting all the fabrics in my quilt as I hand quilted it.

 

You can read all of my previous posts about this quilt on the Ballet with Kaffe Fassett tab at the top of my blog, or by clicking here.  

I was going to say: IF you live in Wellington, and IF we're back at Level 1 by next Saturday 28 August, you can come and see it in person at Capital Quilters guild meeting.  But that's looking very unlikely now. I think we will have to reschedule my talk to Capital Quilters. 

Or maybe you could see it at Rose City Quilters on 25 October 2021. 

Finished size: 60"w x 66"h

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Hello from Queenstown

Hello there! 

Last weekend I went to Queenstown with my husband.  We had a lovely weekend away.  It was cold, but it was also very calm.  We're used to a bit of wind in Wellington, so it was amazing to see reflections on Lake Hayes every day that we were there. Here's just one of many photos I took of Lake Hayes. 

We also went to Glenorchy at the head of Lake Wakatipu.  When we were growing up in Otago and Southland, the road to Glenorchy was not much more than a dirt track, so our families didn't go there. Glenorchy is famous for their sandflies, but they're non-existent in winter.  

I took my hand piecing with me, but I didn't get much sewing done at all.  I was too busy watching jet boats on the lake and the planes coming in to the airport. 

Last weekend when we were there was the middle weekend of the July school holidays.  There were a lot more people in Queenstown than when we went last year in September.  It was good to see the restaurants busy and the town buzzing with skiiers and holiday makers.  

Unfortunately the trans-Tasman bubble is "paused" due to COVID outbreaks in Sydney and Melbourne, so there were hardly any Aussies in Queenstown, and our borders are firmly closed to non New Zealanders. At least those of us stuck in NZ can enjoy beautiful spots like this, even if we can't leave the country.  

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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.  

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