Compulsive Quilts

I have had this triangle ruler for a while,  but have only used it to make a cot quilt for a friend. I sewed it in strips and then it came together pretty quickly. It was for a little boy, but I didn't want to make it in the traditional blues, so went for teal, browns and neutrals. I pulled out the triangle ruler again this week and used it to trace around on a piece of A4 paper. Then I glued a 1 1/4" strip of black down the centre and sewed up scraps of orange down either side, using the paper as a foundation.  I did the same with lime greens and greys. The centre black line seems to tie it it all together. If I make more The black lines will form an asterix *****  Oh no, I have started another project!

I'm trying to use up my stash before I start a new project.  As I have so many bright colours, this is where I will start. So my plan starts with the idea below. The shaded rails will be solids, the middle rail will be the same shades with a pattern or white, and the white rails will be well... white. I don't think it matters if my middle rail matches the others exactly, as long as they are a similar shade.  In fact, the solids don't have to match exactly either, as long as they tone in. To make a cot quilt, I will need 20 blocks, 5 long and 4 wide, so the finished size will be 5 foot x 4 foot. My stash has been organised into drawers, the middle drawer contains strips of 2 1/2 inches. I'm diving into that drawer.  Wish me luck.

Do you want to while away the hours at home, but don't have any fancy gear? You can't go out to the fabric store as it is not an essential activity, so can we just make do with what we have? I thought a hexagon quilt might be easy to make from what you have around home. If you have some old shirts that you can upcycle, that is all you need. It doesn't have to be shirts, but any fine weave cotton will be fine. A few hexagons to start with, all these are cut from my husband's old shirts, my favourite is the splotchy liberty print on the bottom right. At least 2 of the others were from shirts we had made while we were in Vietnam You don't need a sewing machine as we  will use English paper piecing and then the hexagons together by hand. The trickiest part is making the templates, but I found a video online to assist with that. This is what you will need: old cotton shirts, men's work shirts are ideal  a drawing compass, a ruler or tape measure,  som...

In Australia, we are not in total lockdown, except if you have just arrived in the country or have landed from a cruise ship. However, everyone is being as careful as they can and not go out. So.…. What do we do? WE QUILT!!!! I really wanted to finish a rainbow pinwheel quilt, but since the move I haven't been able to find it, so I had to start something new (to tell the truth I have started 3 new things, but we will get to that later. Bright colours with little houses one patch modern quilt Although I have loads of fabrics, I wanted to start with my scraps as they were overflowing out of the tidy scrap drawers that I had stored them in. I try to cut any scraps into 2 1/2" strips, so that I can easily make things from them. I pinned a quilt using Pinterest with little houses on it, and thought it was cute.It was a one patch quilt with the houses interlocking, upside down and right side up. The ones that I saw were in low volume fabrics, but I think...

A lovely parcel arrived from the courier today. My stash builder pack from Pink Castle Fabrics. It is lucky that I get the parcels at all as the courier driver is terrified of the dog. As he rings the doorbell, our fat old golden labrador takes on a much younger and meaner persona, by barking in a deep angry bark and frightens the life out of Manu the Pakistani driver. He hurls the parcel at the front porch and then takes off back to his van as fast as he can. We have tried to tell him that the dog is 90 in dog years, and a complete pussy, but it makes no difference. Anyway I got my parcel, it was full of lovely aqua fabrics. I only just joined this group, and seem to have an obsession with this blue green colour as my stash collection is at least 1/4 of this colour. I have a queen quilt on the go for my bed, but I keep thinking of other things to make as well.  That is the affliction of a compulsive quilter.

I completed the OLL quilt over the weekend, but have been too busy in the garden to show you pictures. This quilt was great to make as it came together quickly, as the drunkard's path piece was easy to piece, then combined to make nice large blocks. As I did the quilting as you go method too, the quilting was simple and was not bulky under the arm of the machine. This was enjoyable. My Bento Box quilt is pieced but I can't seem to get around to quilting that one, as the thought of moving the queen quilt under the machine is enough to put me off.

The orange, lemon and lime quilt is almost done, but first it has to be road tested.....by the cat. She doesn't look happy here. I don't have a design wall, I have a design bed, which is why Zali the cat loves it so much.  I tried to make it so that the bright orange quarter circles were distributed evenly, and the greys, where they meet are all different pattern. I nearly succeeded. There is one spot where there are the same pattern, but I'm not going to tell you where. This quilt is even too big to lie flat on this bed. That is why I have used a QAYG method and  quilted the spirals separately. See my QAYG tutorial here.  I think it is a good trade off, as the back is not as perfect as I would like.

Today we had our first swim of the season. It is early spring here, but the weather is warm, it is 28 degrees and sunny. Perfect beach weather. We only live 500m from the beach, 100m above it. With the ocean only at the bottom of the hill, there is really no excuse not to swim. We were pretty warm by the time we got to the beach, we stripped off and stood with our waves lapping our toes. My husband, went in first, he called me from beyond the breakers, "Come on in, it's fine", so trusting him, I waded out, it was cold, but I thought it was the temperature differential. I dived under, my breath was taken away, it was cold! I came out of the water with a shocked look on my face. "I lied", he laughed. I laughed too, it was wonderful, it makes me feel alive. We should all count our blessings every day.

I have now pieced all the drunkards path squares for the quilt. Each drunkard path square is 8 1/2. inches, then 4 of these are sewn together to form a big circle, 17 inches square. The quilt is 5 x 5 big circles, making it big enough for a queen bed. Because it is this big, I. Have chosen to quilt the squares as I go. This means I cut a piece of backing, a bit bigger say 1/2 inch larger than the 17 inch square. I cut some batting the same size. Then I pin the sandwich together. This size piece is really easy to quilt on the machine, as you don't have to manipulate the whole quilt around the machine.  I have chosen a simple spiral, starting in the centre. I use the darning foot, with the stitch length turned to 0. I have to change the tension to make the stitches correct. It isn't perfect, but I am getting better. After this is done, I get two squares, trim the wadding, pin them together, and stitch just through the top layer and the wadding. On the back I hand stitch t...

I know I shouldn't have started another quilt with so many on the go, but I had some beautiful orange and grey fabric and had a Drunkard's Path template that needed to be used. So I thought it wouldn't hurt to make just one square. I ordered a Curvemaster foot to try make the process easier, and it arrived today. I put the Curvemaster foot together, along with the special shank to attach to my Bernina 440. What a mess, it puckered everywhere, and did not work at all like the video showed. Then I looked carefully a the pack. It was for a 5/8" seam, not a 1/4 of an inch. What was I to do, I had already cut out a whole lot of pieces. Never mind, I found a video link of sewing a curve with my 1/4" foot. I did it just like the video, the trick is to hold the top piece up and line the edges up with the edge of the foot. I didn't need the Curvemaster at all. Check out how it looks. The finished block is 18 and1/2 inches wide. I'm planning on making a...

Thought I would just show you my cat in the hat pram cover that is nearly finished. Do you like it? I only had a single fat quarter of the cat in the hat fabric, so I had to stretch it. The small hexagons are quilted by machine then stitched together later. I will make a tutorial when I get time, it would be easy to do this as a hand stitched project while you travel to work.

Modern Courthouse Steps Block I have just finished the Modern Courthouse Steps Baby quilt. It was really fun and easy to make and it used up lots of scraps. I have hung it over my balcony, in the background you may be lucky enough  to see whales blowing! Check out the tutorials page for how to make this! I think the orange block is my favourite. The green is pretty funky too. I like the spotty binding, I think the black sets the colours off. The quilting was just straight lines about 2 1/2" apart. I added some scrappy bits at the back to make the backing fabric wider.

I'm off to a baby shower today, and forgot to buy a card. Well to be truthful, I object to paying $5 for a card that is massed produced. I will show you the card that I have made. It took 5 minutes to make and complements the quilt that I have made for the baby nicely. You could even match the fabrics from the quilts on the card. The original cut out butterflies card blanks I bought at Spotlight. They were about $4 for a pack. It was so simple to make. I think the stripy fabric works well.      You can see how I have put the fabric on the back, just with a piece of sticky tape. I lined up the stripes with the butterflies.   Finished card! Now off to the shower! I will save giving Baby X the quilt until it is born.  

It is now Monday and I still haven't finished the Bento Box quilt, it is starting to wear me down. Why do quilts do this to you, at the start you are full of ideas and energy and can't wait to get started. Near the end, you can see it all coming together and you work hard to see the final quilt complete. But the middle, this is the hardest part, it seems just endless. I find that I start to calculate how long each block takes, and then I work out how many extra blocks I need, it starts to get depressing then. The other problem is that I get ideas for the next quilt coming into my mind, so I want to get started on that....I have to be strong, I have to finish this one first. Actually it is not too hard, only 6 more bento box blocks, and then a double border. Yay! ***Update, this quilt is now ready to be quilted. I am going to find someone to do this for me.

My Bento Box quilt just keeps growing! Every time I go to the shop I find some more yellow and black to add to it. It may end up the biggest quilt ever. My cat Zali, is glad I don't have a design wall, she just loves helping me to rearrange the blocks on my design bed. It is not ideal, but I don't really have a spot big enough to fit a design wall in.

I am going to make a triangle quilt in reds, blacks, greys and whites. I haven't really seen one like it, and it has been in my head for a while. They will be equilateral triangles, that is equal size on all sides. I also want to be very efficient with my fabric, and as I have fat quarters I will adjust my sizes so that I can get the maximum number of triangles per fat quarter (FQ). The fat quarters are 18 inches by 21 inches. Each triangle must be cut 3/4" longer than the size triangle you want, for example if you want 3" triangles, you must cut a triangle 3 and 3/4". This is going to be tricky to be efficient with the fabric. After doing some calculations, the best use of the FQ for a triangle quilt is to have finished triangles of 2 and 3/4", after adding the allowances, the triangles are cut at 3 and 1/2". This means that every fat quarter can have 6 triangles across by 5 rows down, but you actually get 11 triangles from every s...