Over the Hills and Far Away - an optical illusion finish.

  This is my second finish for the 2015 Q2 Finish Along. For my second quarter list click here.

Finally it's finished. My Optical Illusion wall hanging has been named "Over the Hills and Far Away" because when I was quilting it that line from a traditional English song kept going through my head. I see hills and valleys in the design.

When quilting I left the square of the 25 smallest pieces as it was. but quilted through the other purple blocks diagonally in both directions. The yellow and green pieces I left alone, except for the largest (and darkest) green pieces which are also quilted diagonally in both directions, and the adjacent greens which are quilted diagonally in one direction.  Originally they were unquilted but the space between quilting lines was much too large.

Here's a close up which shows my very sparse quilting; I was afraid that dense quilting would detract from the optical effect so quilting is practical rather than aesthetic.

For the backing I used a Halloween fabric from the LQS's special offer shelf. We don't really do Halloween here, so it's not surprising it didn't sell. The colour is just right for this though, isn't it.

Quilt statistics:

Size 41 x 28.5"  (104 x 71 cm)
fabric: Bella solids in nine shades of yellow and green and one purple
Thread; Aurifil 40 in matching purple and green
Wadding: cotton (standard as supplied locally)
Backing: Happy H"owl-o-ween by Deb Strain for Moda

If you're interested in the process of designing and making this wall hanging you can read about it here, here and here.

Having bound it yesterday evening and washed it this morning I'm going to share it this week with:

   

 

so click on the buttons for the link (as they become available) to see what others have been working on this week.

At the end of June I'll be linking up with

 

Happy sewing

Marly.

RSC15 week 17: The Last Full Purple Week.

Each month Angela at Soscrappy gives a colour and some sampler patterns and lots of people round the world use that colour: some to make the sampler blocks, others to work on other projects. This month the colour has been purple. On Saturdays we link up to show one another what we've been making in the last week. As this is the last post his month, here's a round-up of the whole month.


Firstly the two sampler blocks given by Angela:

Carrie Nation

Broken Sugar Bowl

In addition to the sampler blocks, I made:

Four nine-patches

Four hexagon flowers

and two scissors cases

pattern by Dawn Cornell

for the Moda Bakeshop (19 May 2014)

of which this is one; the other  I gave away without photographing it first! I was so glad I'd met the deadline, I wrapped it, packed it, took it to England, and it wasn't until I was on my way back to the Netherlands that I thought that I had maybe forgotten to take a photo!

I have also been quilting my Optical Illusion Quilt, which is 50% purple, and has 95% purple quilting thread! In my book, that counts as purple! All that's left to do is sew down the binding; at last I can pull the purple thread out of my machine!

I'm linking up to Angela at Soscrappy for

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Finish Along 2015 Second Quarter

This year the finish along is being hosted by Adrianne at The Windy Side

Last quarter I only finished one project from my list. So now the other four head the new list. Click on the photo caption by each picture to read a post about the project.

1. Toadstool House
heads the list. This is it's fourth appearance on my list, but I have worked on it each quarter.

Toadstool House

Originally it was going to be a wall hanging. Changed my mind. Then my daughter wanted a cushion. Changed my mind. Now It's going to be a book cover, but I need to make it bigger.

2 Optical illusion

was a project for a course running from November to January at QuiltersPalet in The Hague. 

Optical Illusion

I started quilting this in January, then hit a problem. 

3 Rainbow Scrap quilt

From the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014,

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014

is nearly finished as I write. It just needs to have the joins and borders quilted, labelled and bound. Doesn't sound like much work does it?

4 Sew Together bag

Sew Together bag (photo from Craftsy site)

This is a pattern (by Sew Demented and available through Craftsy) that I bought on New Years Eve. 

Essential supplies for the Sew Essential bag.

This is as far as I've got, but the fabric will be from stash.

5. Batik table runner

Batik table runner

I optimistically started in February, using a roll of 2½" batik strips but hit a problem after about 4 days when the local shop didn't have any white/off-white batik with a green or brown or even purple vein. I should have some next weekend.

6. Secret sewing

The deadline for this is in April, so I  should must get this done!

I hope that's realistic and even though it's longer than my last list I'll be doing my best to get them ALL finished by the end of June!

I'm linking up to

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Grow your blog 2015

Every night's a party night!

Join the party at:

Click on the picture for an direct link to the party.

Hello! I'm Marly. Welcome to my blog which is about my quilting projects. I live in The Netherlands, which is also known, not entirely correctly, as Holland, just across the North Sea from England, where I was born.

From Rijswijk looking north towards Leiden.
Densely populated, but with spectacular skies;
no wonder Rembrandt was the master of light.

Since, officially, I retired nearly three years ago I have taken up quilting and am passionate about it. I say officially retired because I was asked to continue working and so still teach Business English but fewer hours than before. I spend all the time I can at my Bernina 440 QE, experimenting  with colour and shape, trying my hand at FMQ and generally amazing myself!

At the moment I am working on an Optical Illusion Quilt I sort of designed myself.

Optical illusion
Study in green, yellow and purple
completed top

Sort of, because I attended a course at "Quilters Palet" in The Hague in which various grids were handed out and then we drew lines and coloured the spaces with crayons. In the end I rejected all my grids with drawn in lines and chose the simple grid but with ten different colours. I wanted to experiment with various shades of adjacent colours and a complimentary colour. Every one of the participants is creating a totally different and unique quilt. (you can read more about the process here and here)

I have discovered over the last year that I find it hard to resist BOMs (blocks of the month) and QALs (Quilt Alongs). Click on the pictures for more information

Quilt Alongs (or should that be Quilts Along?)

Quiltville Mystery: Celtic Solstice

It started with Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Celtic Solstice which I seriously underestimated. I thought it would take about a year, with a clue each couple of months, but of course, as everyone knows, Bonnie gives a clue each week, and expects it to be made within three days! I very proudly got mine finished in June!

Triangle quilt finished just before sunset, around 9:00 pm

 That was not bad going as in the meantime I had made and finished The Sassy Quilter's triangle quilt within the deadline. The last day, the day of the link up of finished quilts, I was literally sewing down the binding within hours of midnight. I was pleased, and still am, with the result which belongs now to my nine-year-old granddaughter.



From both these projects I learnt an enormous amount about piecing and FMQ (free motion quilting) Both Bonnie and Paula gave lots of hints on cutting fabric and putting blocks together which made for greater accuracy which was invaluable to a novice like me.

The Little Letters Project at the Temecula Quilt Company was my last QAL of 2014, and is now an almost finished top.

Little Letters QAL

This will  be my first quilting project in February. As I will be quilting  myself on my Bernina 440, I like to have a couple of projects lined up so I'm not forever changing needles, feet and machine settings - I invariably forget to change something.

For this year I have just signed up to the Elephant Parade at Sew Fresh Quilts, which starts on Monday 1 February. Can't wait!

Blocks Of the Month

Last year I took part in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I was so obsessed with the idea of a rainbow that I missed the word SCRAP! I didn't have any to speak of, so was rapidly augmenting my stash by buying FQs (fat quarters) and half metres from Quilters Palet my LQS (local quilt shop) and from "Birdblocks" Quilt shop in Amsterdam.

RSC 14 a month or so ago

Last year's RSC Sampler was several, like about eight, blocks each month to be made in one colour. I enjoyed this immensely, and the funny thing is that when I was putting it all together I discovered that several of January's blocks wouldn't fit, in fact one was almost an inch too small, and had to be remade. Trouble with ¼" seams? You bet! For the other blocks from the beginning of the year I was able to compensate with the seam allowance in the sashing! Gradually during the year I got more accurate which just goes to show:

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!

well, not perfect exactly but better! At the moment the four sections of the top are together (this is going to be quilt as you go technique) waiting for borders and will be my second quilting project for February.

This year I have signed up for several BOMs:

• Sew Sweet Simplicity
• Quilt Doodle: I've traced January's figures onto wonder-under, but no sewing yet.
• Galaxy of Stars
• and of course RSC 15: two blocks made

whirling geese

card trick

 Isn't it funny: it always takes more time to make a block than to read the instructions!

Improv quilting

is something I want to do more of, my efforts to date having been just three cushions

Three cushions

first cushion

second cushion

(improv quilting, not patchwork), and and a few practice pieces that never made it to my blog. For this I need to be brave! I need to summon my courage and START! The trouble is I'm a perfectionist and a control freak (hmm, I wonder why I became a teacher!) and want a PLAN. Working without a detailed plan is my goal for 2015. So what are all those BOMs doing on my list? Avoidance? We will have to see if I manage to improvise round the given theme.

I can't resist the idea of sewing along with maybe hundreds, or even thousands of other quilters from around the globe. None of my immediate family or friends or neighbours quilts, so I need the companionship of the internet quilting community to keep me going, especially when facing a dilemma. Being able to consult the collective experience of the community is a lifeline.

I hope you've enjoyed reading about my quilting adventures since I started my blog at the end of 2013. While you're here look around at my past posts, and don't forget that clicking on the pictures opens a link to more about that project.

I hope to see you again here soon and to share this wonderful hobby with you. If you are visiting from Grow Your Blog 2015 please leave a message here and I'll be sure to head over to your blog too. Even if you're not "growing your blog" this year, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Happy sewing

Marly

Optical Illusion 2

A few weeks ago I posted about this project here. In the meantime I've been working pretty solidly on it. Ten days ago it looked like this:

progress to 2 January

Now we're here:

progress to 14 January

The ten strips on the left are stitched together, as are the four on the far right and the four very narrow strips in the middle. The other two are hot from the needle and they will be attached tomorrow morning before I start on the last three strips.

In my first Optical Illusion post I showed the sewing area. Not much has changed, except there are even more little pieces of fabric floating around. However I did have to make some changes in the fabric organisation in the form of eight pasta-sauce pots, labeled with the number of the colour on the swatch chart.

sewing set up

As I'm working with ten colours (four shades of yellow, five of green and one purple) some of which are very close together in value, I was constantly checking that I really did have the colour I wanted in my hand. All the fabric strips that I have cut are now kept sorted, and only once have I dipped into the wrong sauce-pot! Isn't unpicking paper piecing the devil of a job? This is a very time consuming process as I'm cutting each piece separately as I go, and thinking", "There must be an easier way!".

Some of the pieces are only about one third of an inch wide which makes sewing straight difficult, one side of the foot being higher than the other

Trying to sew a straight seam
when the seam allowance is almost as wide as the whole piece.

I hope I will have finished the top by the beginning of next week. Then quilting. How would you quilt this one?

I'm linking up to:

Let's be Social at Sew Fresh Quilts

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

The links are in my right-hand side bar so go and have a look at what others are sharing today.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Optical Illusion 1

Not much optical illusion here yet:

Optical Illusion.
On the left the middle three strips (the narrowest).

but I thought I'd share the process with you. I'll be posting again on this project over the next few weeks (and knowing me - months!)

I started sewing it yesterday, but I've been working on it since the beginning of November. This is a course at Quilters Palet in The Hague to make an optical illusion quilt, but without a standard pattern. Each participant was given about six grids that can serve as the base for the design and the first session (and a few more evenings) was spent in drawing more lines and colouring until a satisfactory result appeared. I tried using several grids before I arrived at this one.

Then choosing the fabric. I've since seen a black and white quilt on Pinterest (unfortunately the name of the maker is not given in the original post) using this grid as the basic design and that would have been easier, but I chose four shades of yellow and five of green and the dark purple as the contrast colour. It doesn't look like it but there really are four different yellow solids in the photo above, along with the lightest green and a lot of purple.

My original coloured design on A4 size paper

At the same time the A4 sheet with my original design had to be blown up to mammoth proportions,

Amazing, isn't it - you go to a professional printer and he manages to print it crooked!
(original at the bottom)

the strips traced onto dressmakers' pattern paper (all 23 of them), and then pieced paper piecing style.

paper piecing: the figures on the papers help me keep track of which fabric to use

the sewing set up: the fabric swatch chart in the foreground helps me identify the fabrics I'm using,
I'm working on two strips simultaneously so I can chain piece;  more than two  would be too confusing.

I started with the narrowest strips because I needed to check that the smallest blocks are more than ¼" square because of  the seam allowances. I'm going to sew these together next and see how they go, otherwise I 'll scrap them and just leave out these rows.

The next, and final, lesson is on 9 January so I hope to have something more than four rows to show. I have no idea how I'm going to quilt this, or whether I want borders or not. Still lots to think about and decisions to make.

I'm linking up to :

   

So head over there to see what else has been going on this week.

Happy sewing

Marly.