March's goal ...

... is to make a dent in the pile of tops waiting to be quilted and bound.

There are quite a few:

Only the last one is just a top, the other three are partially quilted and need binding. I doubt if I will get them all finished because I have to tidy my sewing room first; at present I have no space on the table to lay out a quilt!

Wish me luck!

I'm linking up to

Click on the button to see more aspirations for March.

Happy sewing

Marly.

"Circles" is finished!

Circles is finished?

Well, it's labelled, quilted and bound, which usually means finished, right?

I made these blocks several years ago in the Quilty 365 project, hosted by Audrey at Quilty Folk: one circle each day,  appliquéd onto one square. I chose to do needle turn appliqué, which I'd never done before. Finally I've got 180 circles together in a quilt. I stopped making the blocks in the middle of August that year, and have got a box full of appliquéd circles waiting for another project.

But now, every time I look at this quilt I think it needs quilting inside the circles. I started quilting it that way last year, but it was impossible to get through the "made fabric" with all it's seams.

This circle, for instance, has twenty one different pieces of fabric in it. Twenty one in a 3" circle! What was I thinking?!

I've thought that tying those circles that are too thick to quilt might be a solution. I'll give it a try. If that works I'll quilt the flatter circles by hand.

The blocks might look rather strange: some tied, some quilted. Too bad!
Not just yet, however, I have to wait for the inflammation in my right shoulder to subside.

Meanwhile, it's a finish!

At the end of the week I'll be linking to

 Click on the button to see more finishes.

 Happy Sewing 

Marly

Circles quilt

  My goal for August was to make progress in hand quilting my circles quilt.

 I've made progress in quilting round about 160 of the 180 circles. 

Ready to quilt on the lavender coloured background yesterday evening.

Most of the circles left to quilt are along the edge, where there isn't enough fabric to use the frame.
I've discovered that I can quilt without the frame if I stabilise the the outside edge of the quilt with big machine stitches first. That's enough to ensure I don't pull the fabric sideways while sewing.

Still to do before this is finished:Add the label

1. Quilt the last approx. 20 circles
2. Bind.

I should manage that in the next week or so. Now to choose a WIP or UFO for next month's goal!

I'm linking to

 Click on the button to see more goals achieved.

Happy sewing

Marly.

One montly goal for August

This month I hope to make progress on quilting my Circles Quilt, made during the Quilty 365 QAL hosted by Audrey in 2016. I didn't make 365 ( i.e. one a day) circles, as I ran out of room on my design wall in the middle of August, and decided it was large enough. Up until then I had been adding circle to square using the needle turn appliqué technique every evening. The first, on 1 January 2016, took me 3 hours to complete; the last, on 17 August less than half an hour. Practice makes perfect! and quicker!

180 4" (finished) blocks joined in three sections ready for quilting.
Photo from August 2016.

As the circles are all appliquéd by hand I decided to hand-quilt it too. It's taking forever! That's not really surprising as I've only being working on it one evening every two months at the Bee meeting. So far I've only quilted a dozen or so blocks.

although I did stabilise the quilt by machine quilting in the ditch first.

So this month will see a blitz on this quilt. Let's hope practice makes perfect in the hand quilting department too. It's rather too warm at the moment to sit with so much fabric on my lap but I intend to persevere, if necessary sitting on the balcony with the weight of the quilt on the bench next to me. At least the light is good there.

I'm linking to

Click on the button to see more August goals.

Happy sewing

Marly.

One Monthly Goal in May

Last month's goal was to move my Mini Wonders table runner on, and I did. In fact it moved further than I had expected; I finished the top.

Mini Wonders: pattern by Sheila Christensen, published in Make Modern

This month my goal for the challenge with Patty at Elm Street Quilts is to finish it completely:

This is what it looked like four hours ago

and this is now:


I've quilted in all the ditches around the large triangles that make up the hexagons, and between the borders - doing the last one now.


















I plan to free motion quilt with light grey 50 wt thread on the white and light grey background, with dark grey 50 wt on the darker greys and hand quilt with big stitches on the colours. Unfortunately I don't have the right colours in my stock of 12 wt cotton. I do however have hundreds of colours of DMC stranded cotton. Has anyone experience of quilting with stranded cotton? I'm rather afraid that the strands will separate, or not be strong enough. I'd really be grateful for your advice on this.

Meanwhile it's back to the ditches!

I'm linking to :

 

Click on the button to see more goals.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Finish along 4th Quarter: Finish number 1

 

At the beginning of October I made my list of proposed finishes.


This is my first finish of the 4th quarter:

Drawn Together; a mini quilt designed by Sarah Fielke from her book "Little Quilts".

fabric: assorted from stash and Bella solid off-white
backing and binding: Bella solid off-white
quilting thread: Aurifil 12 weight in various colours with a crewel no 9 needle on the star and Yli thread on the background triangles.

The embroidery needle came from this packet:

Question for UK friends: "How long have I had this?" (Look what it cost!)

For those of you outside the UK the abbreviation "d" in the price stands for pence in the old British monetary system which went out of use in the early 1970s. Incredibly a pristine unused packet of needles more than forty years old! I found it when looking for embroidery thread - in a squishy old paper bag, between skeins of stranded cotton - voilà! Such a useful find, but I wonder why I never opened it before now!

I'm linking up to 

which this week is being held at Quilting among the Groves. 

To see which groves and some super finishes click on the badge. 

I shall be linking up to 

(click for link)

at the beginning of January.

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.