Lightning Strike

Each year in January I like to start a new Kaffe Fassett quilt.  This year I chose Lightning Strike from Quilts on an English Farm.  

When I made Kaffe quilts I like to take inspiration from the books, and use fabrics that I already have in my stash.  I love mixing up older prints with the new ones.  

This pattern is just giant half square triangles but the placement gives the quilt real movement.  

I love a soft, hand quilted quilt with wool batting and that's what I've done here.  I quilted the whole quilt with a variegated Aurifil 12wt thread and I love the result.  

Name: Lightning Strike    

size: 90" x 72"

backing: Tree Fungi by Kaffe Fassett Collective

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"

Scrappy Bear Paw

Can you believe this is my most viewed blog post ever? Click here to read about my Scrappy Bear Paw quilt.  

Yes, people just love my Scrappy Bear Paw quilt.  I suspect it's because of the bright colours that I chose, and the simple hand quilting with Perle 8. 

Maybe I shouldn't have allowed my son to take it to his university hostel.  Actually, I don't mind.  I can always make another one when our guild turns 50 years old which is now only 12 years away.  

The display at Capital Quilters when the guild turned 30 years old.

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

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Shuttles quilt (and the Peacock Party)

Another finish!!! They're coming thick and fast at the moment.  

Yes, I've finished my Shuttles quilt from Kaffe Fassett's Quilts in Morocco book. 

It is square - it was just a bit breezy when I took the photo

I love all the crazy colour in this quilt.

I really went to town when I decided to use Brandon Mably's Jumble in yellow for the borders:

And Philip Jacobs' Feathers in gold on the back:

Never mind the decision to hand quilt it with bright yellow Aurifil thread!

 And the final touch was using Jupiter in red for the binding.  I cut it length-ways so the binding would appear striped.

This quilt has wool batting so it's nice and light.  I could use it as a lap quilt in the evenings, or put it on a single bed.

Here's the Shuttles quilt on the cover of Quilts in Morocco.  I chose this pattern because it has large blocks that would show off some of my many Kaffe Fassett fat quarters.  I could easily make another quilt from this pattern tomorrow in an entirely different Kaffe colourway.

My finished quilt is:
61" x 68.5"
155cm x 174cm

I cut my blocks at 7.5" x 4".

So now it's your time to share what you've been working on.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

"How long did it take you to hand quilt that?"

Yes, I frequently get asked, "How long did it take you to hand quilt that?".

Well, this week. as I put the final stitches into my Shuttles quilt, I tried to quantify how long it had taken me to hand quilt it.

 

But before I came up with a number, I started to wonder if there is some magic number that people are looking for!

If I say two months, will that scare people off even trying hand quilting?

If I say two weeks will they still think that's too long when they could just send it out to a long armer who could quilt a pantograph (edge to edge design) all over it and return it to the maker within a week?

What number would be acceptable I wondered.

I hand quilt because I enjoy doing it, and I love the unique finish it gives to my quilts.  My hand quilted quilts are personal - they are a part of me.  I can remember what was going on in my life at the time I hand quilted most of my quilts.   Some have stretched over six months or more, but I can usually pinpoint something significant that happened during the course of the quilting. I also think it's important to keep traditional arts and crafts alive, even if my style is a modern interpretation of hand quilting. 

Of course there's a place for long arm quilting too.  I've had pantographs quilted onto two of my quilts.

quilted on a long arm with a pantograph

I chose to have a pantograph on Tussie Mussie because I bought the fancy Kaffe Fassett wide back before I realised it would be too thick to hand quilt through.  I didn't know it was sateen before I bought it, but I do love the design and really wanted it on the back of this quilt.

The second time I chose to have a pantograph is when I got Spotty quilted.  I don't especially love this quilt, and I will probably give it away soon, so I didn't want to spend hours hand quilting it.

I've also had long armers do free motion quilting on two of my quilts. I'll talk about those ones next time, but again, there were special reasons.

So back to the initial question - how long did it take me to hand quilt my Shuttles quilt?

I started in late June 2019 with a few blocks to get a feel for the plan I had in my head.
I did a bit at our retreat in July.
I did some more during August.
Most of the quilting occurred during the two weeks of the US Open tennis championship, and the following week.
So all up I think I would have spent about 75 hours on this quilt, spread over 3 months.

Of course that doesn't mean that my next quilt will be done that quickly.  This quilt isn't huge, and the quilting is quite straight forward.  I've only used one colour throughout which also makes it a bit quicker.

The fact is that I enjoyed hand quilting this quilt, and I'm happy with how it looks. I just love that yellow Aurifil 12wt that I chose to use, and the big stitches. 

Is 75 hours acceptable? Would you hand quilt something if you knew it might take 75 hours?

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

PS - I'm going to stop mentioning the Peacock Party in the title of my Friday posts, however you can be sure that there will be a Peacock Party every Friday, even when I'm away from home.  I know how disappointing it is when you've got something special to share, but your favourite link party host is on holiday.  I won't do that to you!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Some hand quilting (and the Peacock Party)

This week I've been watching the US Open tennis on TV.  The timing works really well for me, because the 7pm evening session starts at 11am NZ time.  I do some work in the morning, and then I keep the afternoons free to watch tennis.  I've even moved my sewing table closer to the TV so I don't miss any sneaky shots down the line.  

I've been hand quilting my Shuttles quilt from Kaffe Fassett's book, Quilts in Morocco.  I love this quilt - it's going to be so bright and happy.

I'm using bright yellow Aurifil 12wt to quilt it, and just sticking to straight lines.  Here's a full photo because I know some of you will ask to see it.

And here it is on the cover of the book, done in mainly solids with a zig zag border.

This just shows how you can take a pattern and make it your own.

I've been invited to be the guest speaker at Kapiti Quilters next week.  I've decided I'll make it a Kaffe themed talk, and will take quilts I've made mainly from Kaffe's fabrics.  I hope they've got their sunglasses ready!!!

Welcome to the Peacock Party.  I really do appreciate everyone who links up - we reached 30 links last week for the first time ever.  I managed to visit about half of the links, and it's really interesting to see what other people are up to with their quilting.  Link ups are how I made friends when I first started blogging.

So feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Aurifil's Whole Cloth challenge with Paintbrush Studio Fabrics

A few weeks ago Aurifil sent some of their Artisans a spool of thread and some fabric from Paintbrush Studio Fabrics Paintbox Palette.  The challenge was to use these two items to create a mini whole cloth quilt. About 20 of us took part in the challenge, and Aurifil will  blog about all of the results at the end of August.

Here's what I made:

It's a bright orange cushion / pillow that I hand quilted freehand.

The colour is actually "Goldenrod" which is one of Paintbrush Studio's Trend Palette colours for 2019. I have to admit that I didn't know what Goldenrod is, but a quick Google told me it's a plant with bright yellow flowers. Thank you Wikipedia.

The Artisans could specify which weight thread we wanted to receive, but we had no idea which colour fabric we would receive.

I requested 12wt thread because I knew I'd be hand quilting my whole cloth.  I received thread 4150 which is variegated and matches the fabric very well.

I decided I would try to quilt free hand - which is harder than it looks.  I took inspiration from this piece of Alison Glass fabric, and drew some outlines with my blue wash away pen.

Then I proceeded to fill in the gaps.  I kept drawing more lines to get the quilting denser.

I always use a hoop when I hand quilt, and my favourite needles are John James Chenille size 24.  They have a large eye for the thicker threads, but a very sharp point.  I also wear an open clover thimble on the third finger of my right hand (I'm right handed).  I use it to swivel the needle and push it through.  You can read more about hand quilting on the tab at the top of the page or by clicking here.  

As the idea to make a cushion / pillow started forming, I decided that I needed to border my whole cloth centre piece with something with pattern.  I dived into my Kaffe Fassett stash, and found Kite Tails which was just right.  I machine quilted strips onto my centre piece with Aurifil 2145 as shown above and below.

So there we are! A fun challenge successfully completed.  Thank you Aurifil and Paintbrush Studio Fabrics.  I've tried something new and I enjoyed it.

Aurifil will be putting up links to all the Artisan's whole cloths at the end of August.  You can follow their blog Auribuzz, or wait for their posts on Facebook or Instagram.