Houdini

I've called my Lollie Wheels quilt "Houdini" because it's magic.  There's an optical illusion that make you think that there's a square in the middle of each pinwheel block.  But it's all due to fussy cutting! The fabric has printed lines of stitching on it, and if you cut it right way you can make this effect. 

I made my quilt from some pieces of Lollies, Looking Forward and Remix that I had in my stash - along with contributions from 4 other sources.  Jen Kingwell has a whole new range of Lollies fabrics coming out right now and the Lollie Wheels pattern was released at Quilt Market to go with the new fabrics.  The pattern is available as a free download from the Amitie Textiles website. 

You can read more about the cutting process on my earlier blog post here. 

I asked my long arm quilter to keep the quilting simple and just do straight vertical lines with pink thread.  I'm really pleased with it.  I think it allows the viewer to focus on the blocks without getting distracted by the quilting.  

If I have left over fabrics I like to put them on the back because then I can show people how I did the fussy cutting. 

My quilt ended up bigger than I initially planned because I was able to source more fabric than I expected.  But I love the variety of fabrics in it.  There certainly won't be another one identical to this!

My finished quilt is 64" x 72".

Lollie Wheels

This week I decided to start something new.  I saw a cute quilt in the background of Jen Kingwell's booth at Quilt Market and I thought about some of her fabrics that I had in my stash.  

This clever version of a Pin Wheel quilt is made by cutting Jen Kingwell's Lollies fabric in a particular manner. Jen offers a free pattern to make in on her Amitie Textiles website - it's called Lollie Wheels. Fortunately I had a few pieces of the first run of Lollies in my stash so I decided to give it a try. 

 

width of fabric of Lollies

More of the colourways that I just happened to have

I was very pleased with my first blocks so I kept going and now I'm on a roll.  

Maybe I'll be able to report back next week with even more progress.  The blocks are 8" finished so I'm aiming for 49 of them to make the quilt 56" x 56" as per the pattern. 

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. 

My Small World

People say that New Zealand is a very small place.  They don't just mean the size of the land mass, but the fact that everyone seems to know everyone else.  We didn't all marry our cousins, but the "six degrees of separation" rule is more like three or four degrees of separation here.  We can usually find a connection in common with fellow New Zealanders.  

I'm off to teach some classes in Tauranga this weekend and I'll be interested to see how many connections are made over the weekend.  

I'm taking My Small World quilt along with me because it's a good illustration of both wool felt applique and hand quilting.  I did enjoy making his quilt.  There are so many different elements within it.  Maybe I should make a 2024 version next year. 

My Small World is designed by Jen Kingwell and is available from Amitie Textiles here.  

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

Dear John....

According to Wikipedia, a Dear John letter is a letter written to a man by his wife or romantic partner to inform him that their relationship is over.  

I've called this quilt Dear John because my relationship with the Dear Jen pattern is over.  Although the fully finished quilt looks beautiful, (see below) I just don't have the energy or dedication to make all the templates required and then hand piece all the blocks.    

link to the pattern at Amitie Textiles

So I've turned my blocks into a cute wall hanging, table mat, sampler quilt.  

Next weekend I'm going to Dunedin for a cross stitch retreat.  So I'm going to take this quilt with me and let my friends at Stitch Witches display it in their shop.  I always think it's nice to see finished quilts on the walls at quilt shops I visit, so I'll help them out and lend them one of mine. 

The finished quilt is 30" x 30". There's more photos here in my previous post. 

the back with cute Tula Pink fabric

The binding - it's gold, but works really well with the orange narrow border and floral border print

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

Dear Jen revisited

On Sunday I went digging in my quilting cupboard to find a WIP I wanted to work on.  But before I could find that WIP, I came across my Dear Jen blocks from the quilt along in 2019.  

Jen Kingwell ran the Dear Jen programme and she issued patterns for 6" hand pieced or hand appliqued blocks each week or month.  The blocks were very intricate and making my own templates for every block added to time each block took too.  

In a sign of how my thinking has changed, I went from, "I'll make some more of those one day", straight to, "Why don't I just sew these blocks together and call it quits". 

So I laid out my measly 11 hand pieced blocks and thought about what I could do with them.  Two of them needed a bit of fixing up, so I was a radical and just threw them in the bin!!!

Then I was left with 9 blocks which is a good number for a quilt, so I set to and hand sewed them together while I watched the tennis from Indian Wells.  

A few days later I went searching in my stash for some borders to make my mini quilt a bit bigger.  I must have tried about 20 fabrics before I settled on my final choices, but I'm very happy with them. The orange really works.  

The whole quilt is 30" x 30", so I looked for a yard/metre of fabric in my stash and found In a Finch by Tula Pink:

 

Then I pulled out my Jacqui Gering Walk books 1 and 2 and made a short list of possible machine quilting designs.  In the end I chose the above design which works really well because the quilt is square.  

I'll be sure to show you the finished quilt once I get the binding on.  

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

Glitter in Green

My Glitter quilt is finished! And it won a prize in our guild's exhibition. 

Yes, I won Best Hand Pieced and I was thrilled. Glitter is designed by Jen Kingwell from Australia.  I started my Glitter quilt in a hand piecing class with Jen Kingwell at the Christchurch Symposium in October 2017.  I did promise Jen that it would be finished by October 2019, and the top was finished by then, but I didn't start hand quilting it until January 2020.

Now it's finished, and it will look just right on our bed. I chose the greens and grey colours to match the gorgeous wallpaper in our bedroom. 

Here's photo taken outside in natural daylight. 

I used the acrylic templates from Amitie Textiles to hand piece my quilt.  If you haven't tried hand piecing yet, you might like to watch my videos on the Hand Piecing tab at the top of my blog.  I love the relaxing nature of hand piecing, and the accuracy that can be achieved with it.

I used Aurifil 50wt shade 2605 for all the hand piecing because it blends well with everything.

Turning the seams is easy with hand piecing.

The back view

I chose wool batting and quilted my Glitter quilt with Aurifil 12wt and 28wt shade 2615. I use 12wt for the visible stitches, and 28wt in the ditch.

So my Glitter quilt is finished! And I love it.   I'm so pleased it finally got to hang in an exhibition.  

Finished size:

167cm x 182 cm

66" x 72"

I won prizes!

I'm just writing this very brief blog post to let you know that won some awards at the Capital Quilters show this weekend.

First up is my "Glitter in Green" quilt - it won Best Hand Pieced quilt.  I was thrilled because I do love this quilt.  I'll do a proper blog post soon with ALL the details, but suffice to say it's a wonderful pattern by Jen Kingwell.

Next is my "We Built This City" quilt and it won a Merit in the Build It Up challenge, and also the Joanne Johnson Colour Award.  This quilt was made with some of the blocks from the Marshal Mystery Quilt designed by Jen Kingwell. 

I met so many lovely quilters in both Taupo and Wellington this weekend.  Thank you for supporting our quilt shows.  And for those in countries who still have restrictions - we certainly do appreciate how lucky we are.  

Strangely that reminds me of this famous NZ song 

How many famous faces can you spot in the video?  

I'll be back with more photos soon, but I'm off to Auckland tomorrow morning, so I have to go and pack again now.  

Thanks everyone.