Friday 30 January 2015

Stitching in Public

Sunday Feb 1st is Stitching in Public day. It started in the USA and this year New Zealand is going to take part too. Small groups of women are going to the stitching around the county and as it is the summer here lots will be outside. Its all to do with showing the public that stitching is still happening and its not just your granny that does it! well sometimes its your granny and that's OK!
A couple of friends and myself are going to be stitching is various places in Auckland city, I have designed a piece of work just for the day, so I am all ready to go. I will long and short the figure and work the words in trailing. I wonder how many people will stop and talk to us? lots I hope, I am certain the more people in the world that stitch the better the world would be!

Saturday 24 January 2015

Vodka Cruiser

Now that I am back from a wonderful quilt symposium I can post a picture of the quilt I made for the exhibitions, Its called Vodka Cruiser and is based on the Drunkards path block and comments on the problem New Zealand has with teenage girls drinking the Vodka based drinks that are pretty colours and taste just like juice.


Thursday 15 January 2015

Packed and ready to go

The car is all packed and ready to go to the Quilt Symposium. I have a car full of Dress a Girl dresses ready to pass on to the lady who is sending the container to Mozambique and a few bags of teaching samples and a tiny space for my clothes! Really looking forward to spending a week in a town full of creative people all with a passion for fabric.

 
 


I am taking Kits car as it is smaller and cheaper to run and the bonus is it has a CD player so I can take some cool tunes for the journey, Lots of Country music as Kit hates it and I love it! And of course my collection includes the Dixie Chicks!
 

Sunday 11 January 2015

Almost finished

 
I have almost finished my colour quarterly challenge. I have decided to just back it without batting and use it as a small table cover for our outside table. Its not quite lying flat due to all the small squares being cut on the bias so they all stretch a remarkable amount when you sew them together. I am sure there is a way to deal with that but for a table cover for us it will be just fine, and the colours are just great so what does it matter if it is a bumpy!



Saturday 10 January 2015

woollen bling

I am just sorting out the classes I will be teaching this year. One of the classes I teach at my local patchwork shop All Things Patchwork is called Woollen Bling, its really just embroidery stitches added to wool applique to add Bling! I hold a group once a month and this year we are going to have a Saturday class as well for those that can't come during the week.
This image is of my sample piece that I do during the group, I just stitch something down and show how to bling it, some of the birds got a bit over the top, maybe you can never have too much Bling!!

Monday 5 January 2015

Pattern from nature

Its amazing how patterns are everywhere. I have been doing a bit more on my hand piecing project so have been thinking about how shapes fit together and then when I was in the garden yesterday I saw the back of some of the flowers that are open now, Borage, tomatoes and potatoes, all very similar in shape, much like a star patchwork pattern.



 
Not sure how the stars would fit together but it will make a very cool pattern once I work that out!

Friday 2 January 2015

Challenge

I have been working on my Challenge for the quilt group I belong to. We were given a piece of green striped fabric with flowers on, a new Kaffe Fassett design. It comes in lots of colour ways so I decided to use different colours of the same fabric to create a quilt.
 
I cut the fabric into squares at 45 degrees to the stripe so when 4 are stitched together they form a square in the centre, well that's the plan. The stripes are all slightly different widths so you don't have to worry about matching them up too much as that would be impossible!



 
I now need to get some plain fabric to create the borders in between the 2 lots of patterns and then 2 borders around the edge, I will then bind it with the stripe again.