UFO Emma

I started this three years ago, before I started blogging, when it was a BOM in the Dutch quilting magazine "Quilt & Zo". I posted about it several times at the beginning of  2014, but never showed a photo of the whole thing, as far as I'd got.

Well, to remedy that here it is after two years of solitary confinement in a cupboard.

Emma (the Queen Regent of The Netherlands one hundred years ago), crumpled straight out of the box.

It should be square. It looks square enough. But it isn't as I discovered when I sewed on the next border!

These four pieces (the star border)  have been on and off twice, and I don't know what's happened to the sashing pieces. They are probably still rolled in the box.
In desperation I tried to trim the completed section to square it up: BIG MISTAKE! They still don't fit, and what's more, they are no longer the same width.

The previous border (lozenges and triangles) didn't fit properly either, and had to be forced to meet in the corners:

the diagonal corner seam does not hit the outer corner!

So why after all that hard work English paper piecing and appliquéing is this a UFO in the first place?
Because

• I didn't pay attention to the quarter inch seam
• Something was wrong with the tension or the needle or the thread (but I still use that thread) because at the end of every long seam the top fabric stuck out beyond the bottom by a good three quarters of an inch. So what did I do? CUT IT OFF! I was too inexperienced to recognise and fix the real problem.

This was all so discouraging that I had to put it aside and move on. Either that or remain stuck with this problem and never touch patchwork again.

Now, as Val asked about UFOs, I dug it out and had another look. I still don't have an answer, but maybe one of you does!

Please Val and linky party guests, give me some ideas.

I'm linking up to 

Click on the button to see more UFOs, 

and give some encouraging suggestions for making UFOs into WIPs!

Happy sewing

Marly.

Work in Progress on the Design Wall

There are three projects on my wall this morning.

Emma stars, Jigsaw Quilt and teal blocks

Firstly, all those stars: here are thirty four of the required thirty six for the penultimate border of the Emma Quilt (last year's BO2M in the Dutch patchwork magazine "Quilt & Zo".



And here are the other two: the EPP finished yesterday evening, and now stuck onto their background squares ready to be appliquéd this evening.


I shall probably start arranging the blocks later, to give myself a break from the sewing machine, and I expect to be able to sew them all together and add the border this week, and also start on the EPP for the next border.




Secondly, on the wall (bottom left) are two teal blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014. Not much done on that last week I'm afraid.

Thirdly, there are six blocks for my Jigsaw Quilt from this book made in "Metropolitan Fair" by Barbara Brackman for Moda.
Two more blocks are partly pieced on the cutting mat, and the pieces for the rest are in plastic bags on the sewing table. I'm now going to get cutting all the remaining small HSTs - the large ones are all done - and get sewing.

I'm linking up to 

Stitch by Stitch for Anything Goes Mondays
and Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday

so hop over there and take a look 

at what is keeping some other quilters occupied this week.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Fresh Sewing Day - January Quilting Review

I've worked on 4 projects:

1. Celtic Solstice
2. Rainbow Scrap Challenge
3. Emma
4. Welterusten Tristan (Good-night Tristan)

Celtic Solstice, the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt has had the most hours put into it. Needless to say I haven't counted how many, but a lot. It's nowhere near finished and at present looks like this: 

48 of the 49 blocks. But still a long way to go.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge, hosted by Angela at Soscrappy, had blue as the theme in January, and this is my blue collection.

February's colour is pink.

Emma, is a appliqué medallion quilt-along designed by Evy Verbeek and published in the Dutch quilting magazine, Quilt en Zo. The quilt along is now finished, but the stages were presented every two months for a year. 

I have two more of these star patches to make for the last border but one, making a total of 36 stars for this border. I should get this border attached to the centre this month. The motifs of the last border involve less sewing than this one. I shall be quilting this by hand, so heaven knows when I'll finish. It doesn't matter, this is my slow project for evenings listening to the TV.

Welterusten Tristan (Good-night Tristan), for my 7-year-old grandson Tristan is from the book "Strip-Pieced Quilts" by Maaike Baker. No pictures yet; it's a surprise. In January I hand quilted the stars, but the night sky will be free motion quilted. I haven't made up my mind yet which design to use for the background, but there will be stars in the border.

I'm linking up now to Lily's quilts for the Fresh Sewing Day and Small Blog Meet, so hop over to Lily's blog to see what others have done in January.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Emma stars and knitting yarn

I said I was trying to make one star block each day during last week. Well, this is what I managed:

Eerder deze week zei ik dat ik probeerde één ster blok per dag te maken. Het is me gelukt, en nu zijn er nog maar 6 nodig om deze border af te maken.

8 stars, of which 6 are appliquéd

There are now only 6 more to be made and then this border is complete.

Last week I was staying in the east of The Netherlands. I didn't manage to get to any quilt shops; the only ones I had tracked down were too far of our route. However I did visit the weekly market in Assen on Wednesday and to my amazement saw this:

Deze week logeerde ik in Drenthe en hoewel ik geen enkel quilt winkel in kwam zag ik wél dit op de weekmarkt in Assen:

yards and yards of knitting and crochet yarn.

meters brei- en haakgaren. I was verbaasd; in de Haagse regio ken ik maar één wolwinkel, en heb nooit kwaliteitsgaren op de markt gezien. Hier was alles, echt fantastisch. Als ik daar dichter bij woonde ...

Why amazed? In the city of The Hague (MUCH bigger than Assen) there is only one wool shop that I know of and I've never seen quality wool in the market, only unmatched dye lots of synthetic yarn. Here was everything from quick-knit wool to fine cotton and sock wool to tapestry yarn. Wow. 

Happy sewing

Marly.

English paper piecing Emma

The last few weeks I've been working on Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, "Celtic Solstice, and my other main projects, including "Emma", were largely shelved. This week I'm without a sewing machine so I've returned to "Emma" and aim to complete one of these stars each day.

De laatste paar weken werkte ik aan de mysterie quilt van Bonnie Hunter "Celtic Solstice" maar nu ben ik weer bezig met de "Emma" uit Quilt en Zo van vorig jaar, ontworpen door Evy Verbeek van Quilters Palet  in Den Haag. Ik probeer ieder dag deze week minstens een ster block af te krijgen: dit is nummer 23 van 36. Naar deze rij komt er nog een. De hele quilt is Engelse paper-piecing stukjes geappliceerd op de achtergrond stof. Meer foto's post ik een ander keer. 

Volgende week als ik herenigd word met mijn naaimachine ga ik met Celtic Solstice verder.

When all 36 of these star units have been paper pieced and appliquéd onto the background square they will form a border of this medallion quilt and there will be just one more border to make. I'll post more photos another time.

The pattern was designed by Evy Verbeek of Quilters Palet in The Hague, and appeared in six instalments in the Dutch quilting magazine "Quilt and Zo" during the last year. Each edition of the magazine contained instructions for the next stage.