One Monthly Goal in May

 

 

Last week I showed the finished top of the Comfort Circle's March quilt for DO. good stitches. 

My goal for May is to quilt it. 

I'm linking this to 

 

Click on the button to see more handwork aspirations.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Kawandi Finish

 

 My goal for this month was to finish the Kawandi quilt I started at the end of February. And I did! Here it is: 

It is just 38 x 38 cm, and made from a bag of scraps from other members of the Dutch Modern Quilt Guild. The rules of the challenge were to use scraps from the bag to make something and to only use two fabrics from your own stash. Apart from the backing and wadding I only used one fabric - the purple frame and the corners to the centrepiece; all the rest was from the bag.

I used Aurifil no. 12 cotton throughout, except for the French knots in the centrepiece which are two strands of DMC stranded cotton. 

Centrepiece quilted with embroidery: stem stitch, running stitch and French knots.

I posted earlier about this project: here and here . In the second of these posts I described the process. 

Although the process is not difficult I found this slow going at the beginning. Not surprising as I had to find a way to anchor the side edges of the pieces as I added them, and the lines of stitching are obviously longer on the outside of the piece. This was intended as a sampler, a practice piece; I knew it wouldn't be perfect and yet I'm satisfied with the result. I learnt a lot in the making!

I am linking up to: 

• One Monthly Goal Finish:  https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2022/03/OMGMarch22finish.html
• Peacock Party at Wendy's Quilts and More: https://wendysquiltsandmore.blogspot.com/2022/03/my-very-first-prairie-schooler-santa.html
  

 Click on the link to see what others have been up to.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Kawandi update.

 Two weeks ago I posted this photo of my mini Kawandi project:

Kawandi is the name for quilt in the dialect of the Siddi people in India. I've never been to India, but saw a few videos about these quilts while wandering around YouTube. As I'd never made a quilt using this technique I thought the Dutch MQG challenge to make something from other members' scraps would be the perfect opportunity to start.

Now it looks like this. The sewing together is finished. It measures 29 cm square and I just have to decorate the centre and make the "tassels" on the corners. Finishing this is my one monthly goal.

 

Characteristic of kawandi is the construction from the outside inwards using only two tools: a pair of scissors and a needle.

• Starting with a foundation (I used a layer of backing and of wadding) the quilter folds the edges of the foundation in by about a quarter of an inch. 
• The bottom of each piece to be added is first folded under, along with one of the ends - I'm right-handed, sew from right to left so I folded the right hand edge under. 
• The piece is joined to the foundation by a line of running stitches close to the edge, enclosing the raw edges. 
• Pieces are added, overlapping the previous one, until the edge of the foundation is completely covered. 
• More rows are added in the same way until the whole foundation is completely covered.
  

Not using an iron or a rotary cutter gives a wonky effect. I think the puckering has come from hand sewing through three layers, compressing the wadding in the process. While I moved on to the next few stitches the wadding sprung back into place. But this is just my idea, if anyone has another explanation, other than that I'm rubbish at hand quilting, please let me know. 

The women in India who use this technique simply sew the pieces to a single foundation layer. When they have finished they add the backing, leaving a small opening on the fourth side through which they fill the kawandi with cotton waste. I'll try something like that next time (!) but substitute wadding for the cotton waste, and sew it onto the top together with the backing. Unfortunately that will also require quilting, and to be honest I've done enough hand quilting over the last three weeks to last me for the rest of the year!

Happy sewing

Marly.

Kawandi mini project

 

The Dutch Modern Quilt Guild issued a challenge for last year to make something from a collection of scraps. Not any old scraps, but a bag that would be coming in the post. There was just one bag that circulated each month and the idea was that everyone would take what she needed during a month, make something, and send the bag on to the next on the list after making up the weight from her own scraps. Mine was due in December but arrived some two months late.

I had just been watching some interviews with Margaret Fabrizio on YouTube, talking about kawandi (an Indian word for "quilt") so the scraps came at just the right moment. My project became "making a kawandi sampler".

This was my progress at the beginning of February but I've done very little since so I have to get a move on! I don't know how I could have avoided the wadding puckering, short of gluing it down; something I dislike doing indoors and the weather over the last two months has been very gloomy and windy. It wasn't gluing weather at all. That wadding will need to be trimmed, but I'm leaving trimming until it's impossible to go further. 

It's an interesting technique, starting on the outside and working inwards. The Indian Sidi women usually start with a border strip going right around the edge, but my scrap bag from the guild didn't include such long pieces. This has been improvisation from the word go.

My one monthly goal for this month is to finish making this little quilt. At least, with this technique, finished is well and truly finished!

I'm linking with

Click on the button to see what other contributors are planning to do this month.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Purple table scraps

The Joyful Quilter has a challenge, linked to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, to use scraps to make something for a table in the colour of the month. This month's colour is purple. I'm pairing purple with yellow, its complementary colour.

Not much purple in the purple scrap bowl. I planned on making a placemat, but maybe I'll have to settle for a mug rug.

I had more purple pieces than I thought. I started with the scrap bag, where most of the pieces were crumbs, and not nearly enough. My drawers of strips, sorted by width, proved to contain enough purple.

Following a tutorial on fine line piecing published last month by Debbie Jeske I set out to join the crumbs and other scraps. I cut the yellow strips at 0.5", although I had started with wider. I found that half an inch was wide enough if I sewed a scant quarter inch seam

Adding  a yellow strip with a scant quarter inch seam 

 

chain piecing the yellow strip

and the seam to join the second fabric one eighth of an inch from the first. This felt strange at first, like working back to front. The second fabric is hidden under the first, whereas I would normally position it on top.

Which all resulted in this:

 

fine line pieced, quilted, labelled and bound: one placemat.

I'm linking this to:

                 

   Click on the buttons to see more scrappy progress.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

"Good Fortune" bag

My one monthly goal for May was to look out my pieces of "Good Fortune", Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt of a few years ago. I looked them out and decided to make a bag using eight of the blocks. I wrote about that process here. Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish it in May.

Now, however, I've finished sewing it together and adding the carrying straps.

The aim was to make it large enough to carry a project and tools to a bee or workshop.

It's even big enough for a 12"x17" cutting mat:

Measurements: 18"x18"x 5"

Materials: 

• left over scrap blocks
• recycled jeans
• wadding scraps
• canvas: NEW!
• thread: all new
• piecing Mettler 50 wt
• quilting Aurifil 40 wt

I'm so happy to have made something new almost completely from scraps! It's going to be useful too, once we get back to normal group activities. 

I'm linking this to:

 

Click on the button to see more of this week's finishes.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

My Own Path

For the last month or so I've been working on "My Own Path", in the Quilt Along, "Follow Your Own Path", designed and organised by Sandra Walker of  @mmmquilts.

photo indoors with overcast skies and drizzle

Adding the binding, with a glimpse of the backing fabric: a purchased remnant of  unknown origin:

My version is smaller than the original, as I halved all the measurements of the baby quilt. This has resulted in a quilt of 20" by 18" with the same number of blocks as the original. 

Background fabric: Contempo's "color weave" in light grey.

arrows: from scraps

shadow arrows: Contempo's "color weave" in medium grey.

Two days ago, outside, in bright sunlight

Making this during the sixth month of our second Covid lockdown, inspired the layout: it could only get better: the only way from here was up! [That turned out to be true; most of the restrictions have now been lifted, and more will be from next weekend.]

The ghost arrows in the quilting represent my moments of indecision, and ideas not followed through; the points of potential deviation from my path.

I really enjoyed this deviation from my plan for this year. Thank you Sandra!

I'm linking this to:

           

                

  Click on the buttons to see more fun quilts.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Follow your own path

I've been following along with Sandra Walker's QAL: "Follow your own Path". 

This is the top of "My path up", ...

... I hope, all our paths up out of the pandemic.

The last set of instructions for the piecing was given yesterday and I chose my layout and finished the piecing this morning. Well, I say finished, but I may add borders, I haven't yet decided. I'm not really a borders person, but this could become an exception.

The coloured fabric all came from my scrap baskets, the two greys from yardage. Initially I bought the Color Weave medium grey (the shadows) to use as background, but when I saw it in reality I found it rather dismal - the problem with ordering fabric online. I had just 0.5metre of the Color Weave light grey, and hoping this would be enough started using that as the background fabric. All that's left from that half metre is 2.5" x WOF.

Half a metre is nothing like the 1.5 yards specified in the pattern, so I reduced the block size to 5" x 3", half that of the pattern size. This has resulted in a wall hanging of 18" x 21". Making the quilt smaller was not my original intention, but a question of "Needs must!"; the alternative would have been waiting even longer for more fabric to be delivered.

I'm linking to:

Click on the buttons to see others' current handwork progress .

Stay safe and healthy,

Happy sewing

Marly.

Some progress on several projects

For the last six or seven years (I haven't counted!) I've taken part in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, organised by Angela at SoScrappy. Speaking of rainbows, heading for my "Rainbow" box on Sunday I saw this:

 It was brighter when I saw it first, but I needed to grab my I-Pad.

The reason I was going for my rainbow box was to make an overview of my bead blocks:

  

I wanted to see how many more I need to make into a lap quilt.  I'm almost there! I have three red, two pink, two purple, one yellow and one orange that didn't fit on the wall, but I still need more for an on point layout with an odd number of blocks in each direction. Three more of both light and dark blue will make two blue columns, and one turquoise, and one green block will make the number of rows right too. I won't be making brown or black beads - this is dark enough as it is!

My other RSC project still doesn't look like much.

 

Clockwise from top right: AA units, B units, AAB units waiting, AB units ready to sew.

 

but the Scrap snap blocks have been serving as leaders and enders this week too.

I finally made a start yesterday on row 11 of the Sugaridoo Bernina QAL:

A year ago I avoided foundation paper piecing like the plague! Even though I had had a personal demonstration from Irene (Sugaridoo), herself! In this quilt along she has included several foundation piecing rows, and demonstrated two methods which don't involve tearing out the paper at the end. That's one headache less, but the process still makes me nervous.

 

Neither EPP nor FPP in the Hemisphere QAL organised by Sheila Christensen, but straightforward machine piecing. This is my block 13:

 

And these are all my blocks so far:

This is definitely not the final layout! The blocks are all too pretty to be stealing one another's thunder.

  

I completed three of the four embroidered panels for the FaLaLa QAL organised by Jaquelynne Steves.

 I don't like the fourth panel, so I will probably make a second star.

Finally this week, a trip yesterday to Aphen aan den Rijn (about 80 km round trip) to buy yarn for a shawl I intend making from the pattern of the Queen CAL by Tinna Thorudottir Designs on Ravelry (#tinnahekl).

The pattern uses seven colours in a small blanket, but I'm just using these two. I want it to be finished this winter, and it will be approximately one third of the size of the original blanket which would keep me hooking for years. Anyway with so many quilts, who needs a crochet blanket? Not me, at the moment anyway.

starting chain is a start!

Until I came to write them down I had no idea I had so many projects actively on the go. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to have so much on the go, and also know there are more waiting for attention.

I'm linking to: 

Click on the buttons to see what others are making.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

Yellow's the colour!

Yes this gloomy month is brighter in the sewing room because of Angela's decision to make this the yellow month in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Here are my bead blocks:

 

 

My Scrap Snap blocks as yet look like this: 

 

There are 3 joined pairs of squares on the right; they are the only leaders and enders I've made this week because I've been doing reverse appliqué in row 10 of the Sugaridoo Bernina QAL (the link is to row 12, but there are links there to all the rows):

No yellow!

The blocks are all finished, but still have to be trimmed before joining in the row.

 

I made block 12 of the Hemisphere QAL at Quilting with Sheila

 

Not much yellow here I'm afraid!

 

I also spent some evenings embroidering motifs for the Christmas table runner SAL, run by Jacquelynne Steves.

Ah, more yellow!

The motifs all measure 4x4", too small for my embroidery ring, but the star puckered. I scoured the Internet for a 10cm (4") ring, and "scoured" is the word as most handwork suppliers had nothing smaller than 15cm (6"). I'm pleased the chosen supplier could deliver only 48 hours later. The wreath isn't puckered, just creased from the ring. I shan't be making any of the blocks until I've finished the 4 embroidered panels.

I shall link this round-up of this week's sewing to:

Wendysquiltsandmore

RSC 20

Oh scrap!

Keep safe and healthy 

Happy sewing

Marly.