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.

RSC15: The first of the Purple

April's colour at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is purple and the first sampler block went up early this morning.

This morning's work:

Carrie Nation

The sawtooth star surround will be added later.

Linking up to:

So pop over there to see what other scrappy delights have been made this week.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Work in Progress: Quilt as you go

This is my Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014 quilt.

It's now in two pieces, so the end is in sight. Last time I quilted a full size bed quilt on my domestic machine I had the devil of a job steering the fabric under the needle. The result was curves, meanders and circles with hooks and spikes! Every now and again the quilt would slip over the edge of the table and pull the whole thing sideways, or bump into the wall behind the machine and push everything back towards me.

Since then I've quilted a few smaller pieces and the result was much better. The weight was more manageable.

Result: quilt the RSC14 quilt in four quarters and join them afterwards. Quilt As You Go. Brilliant!

I have a magazine article on the subject where you are advised not to quilt right up to the edge of the pieces to be joined, peel the wadding and the backing aside and join the two edges of the top with the standard quarter inch seam. That done, cut off the excess wadding so that the wadding butts together, hand slip-stitch that together, and then slip-stitch the pieces of backing together. Hmm! That's what I planned to do, but towards the end of the quilting I was having serious doubts.

The idea of CUTTING into an almost finished quilt filled me with horror! What if...? Don't go there! I remembered that in a quilting workshop a few years ago, I had made a sample of a QAYG join. Fished out the sample and the instructions and hey presto!

So this is what I have been doing since the middle of last week:

1.  With 0.25" seam allowance sew a seam through both quilt sandwiches, right sides together, ie through four layers of fabric and two layers of wadding. Iron the seam open.

First attach the walking foot and put the needle as far to the right as possible.

At this stage I discovered it's difficult to hold four layers of cotton and two layers of cotton wadding in position, even when clipped together, with this as the result:

Only one thing for it:

(this happened in several places)

2.   Hand stitch the seam allowance to the backing: be careful not to stitch through into the top. 

This is where I discovered that a quarter inch seam is not enough when you have to fold two layers of fabric and a layer of wadding back over itself. There is not much seam allowance left to stitch down. It doesn't matter too much because this is only tacking to hold the layers in place.

3.   Cut a strip of fabric 1.5" wide, fold it lengthwise edge-to-centre and press.

4.   Slip stitch to the backing on each side of the seam. I think perhaps the flaps on the strip are meant to fold under the seam allowance, but that's too fiddly for my arthritic fingers.

5.   Repeat stages 1 to 4 until everything is joined. 

Conclusion: The hand stitching went perfectly, if slowly. The problem was keeping a consistent 1/4" (or 3/8") seam on the machine. On the whole quilting in parts of 42" square and joining afterwards is a more comfortable option than joining first and quilting in one go.

Since starting this I've read a tutorial on a much quicker method at Little Island Quilting, but I was too far into this method to make a switch.

I'm linking this up to
  

So pop over there and see what else has been going on this week.

Happy sewing

Marly.

RSC 15 week13: The final yellow

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 yellow. On Saturdays we link up to show one another what we've been making in the last week

I sewed some 1.5 inch squares into nine patches; I don't know what for, but just because they were there. I was going to use nine patches in the border of the 2014 RSC quilt, changed my mind, but kept on making nine patches.

Last week I posted about this:

and asked you what the smallest size is you think worth saving. The answers ranged from:

• 0.5" square to 2" square, or
• 0.75"wide by 2.75" long, or "anything with a seam allowance"!

I'm amazed! I hadn't expected anything less than 1" wide.

I also asked what you do with really tiny scraps. Here is a summary of the answers I received:

• spread out on the garden as mulch
• donate to junior school / child care institution for craft projects
• save for appliqué
• use the tiniest pieces under tulle in appliqué

I don't have a garden any more, and I'm not sure if (excess) dye in fabric is good for plants, nor how quickly it rots away. If I still had some land I would try mulching the neighbour's hedge! Just testing, of course!

The other three ideas I found very encouraging. 

I've just put a bag of scraps (mostly from dressmaking) together for my granddaughter who, according to my daughter, is always cutting and gluing. 

The other small pieces I'm saving for appliqué.

Last week a no-reply blogger asked how I sewed the crumbs together. Now I don't know about everyone else, but I start with an irregular pentagon and just keep adding pieces round it. Just like a log cabin, a wonky log cabin that is. When I need a longer piece than I have in the bin, I just sew two or three together until I have a long enough piece. I don't use any foundation fabric or paper. I try to straighten up the sides by cutting off as little as possible, but if I need to cut off a large piece I make it really large and it can be the start of the next crumby block. So far it seems a lot like crazy quilting, except the pieces are much smaller, and there are no embellishments.

The other sewing this week was quilting my 2014 Rainbow quilt which came to a stop on Monday. Can you see what's missing?

A trip to the LQS on Wednesday remedied the situation and the last quarter is quilted and the quilt is being assembled. I'm putting it together by QAYG, I don't know yet how successful that will be, but quilting the smaller pieces (approximately 42" square) was much easier than holding a full-sized quilt under the needle of my machine,

I saw this afternoon that Angela has changed the background colour on her blog, so it looks like April's colour is purple. While I was pulling fabric for my granddaughter I kept all purple crumbs for myself and even found some purple blocks in there already made.

On Saturday I shall be linking to

so hop over there to look at more scrappy sunshine.

Happy sewing

Marly.

PS What's missing? I ran out of wadding! But you all saw that!!!

Camera Challenge 2

Katy, at the Littlest Thistle, is holding a Camera Challenge.

The second assignment was about understanding aperture.



This was an assignment and a half!

I took hundreds of photos of  objects all lined up:

But rejected them all!

Until this morning, when I hit on the idea of lining them up with the focus points on the camera, and then manually changing the focus point from one to the other as I moved through the series. That way I didn't have to move the camera, just the settings.

The only setting I changed in each photo was the aperture priority.
I labelled each photo with its colour (for identification) and f number. Violet is on the left and purple on the right. I won't bore you with red and green; they don't add anything.

Here are nine photos, plus a bonus!

What are those mysterious light spots on the purple spool?
Reflections from my watch, necklace, wedding ring ...?

The other settings, constant in all photos:

Camera: Canon EOS 450D
Lens: EFS 18-55mm
ISO: 200
Exposure adjustment: +1 (a mistake, but I'm not doing them all again!)
Light balance: auto

focal length: 18mm 

Interesting is that the exposure times increase as the aperture value increases. (Good job I have a tripod!)

There are the mystery spots again.

To be honest, I know there's a difference, but find it hard to see in this format. Probably because  of the lens but maybe because the purple spool is only 14 cm/ 4.5" further from the camera than the violet. Maybe it's .jpg format that's the problem.


And finally, by way of contrast, this photo I took after a heavy shower last September with my zoom lens:

Canon EOS 450D
Lens: EF 75- 300mm
ISO: 800 (set on auto)
Evaluative metering
Aperture value: f 5.6

Focal length 210mm

The leaves are close together but the lens is different and the camera was much further away.

I'm linking up to 

so go and visit Katy and see what others have done this month.

Happy snapping everyone

Marly.

RSC week 12: crumby yellow

Each month Angela at Soscrappy, who is hosting the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, gives a colour to use, and a lot of people world-wide use their scraps in that colour to make Angela's sampler, or anything else that takes their fancy. This month's colour is yellow, and having made my sampler blocks a few weeks ago, I've turned to sewing crumbs.

Crumbs no more!

Many of these pieces were only an inch wide, some strange shapes left from cutting hexagons. This whole piece is now about 9"wide; I can get one 4" square or two 3" squares out of it and use the leftovers to start the next piece of made fabric. I shan't though, yet. I don't have any more crumbs, except a few solids, and anything larger than 2.5" square I'm saving for the alternate blocks in the sampler. I wonder how small a cut-off has to be to be too small to reuse. I'd love to hear your ideas.

I also made my first sewing machine a very pale yellow, for the Quilt Doodle quilt along. The machine wasn't really yellow, more beige, but there's no beige in my stash, so yellow it has become.

My first sewing machine:
a Helvetia my mother bought in the mid 1950's

I need to embellish it more using buttons for the controls, but I'll only add those when I quilt it, and I think there should be some thread coming off the reel, don't you?

So that's all my yellow for this week.

I'm linking up to Soscrappy for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Hop over there for more of this week's yellow happiness.

Happy sewing

Marly.

RSC 15 week 11: sunshine

It was a really sunny week here with temperatures shooting up to 15°C on Wednesday. Of course that was because I made not one, but two yellow stars!

When I'd made the pink blocks, I found the dark background in the lady of the lake block disturbing, probably because the placement is asymmetrical, and the dark blue gave too much contrast. I'm not going to unpick it: it is as it is. But when I made the air castle I chose a light yellow for the background within the small block, and then thought later this could well have had a dark blue background (which is when the symmetrical/ asymmetrical issue hit me!)

Air Castle in Sawtooth Star

So I returned to the dark blue background in the Monkey Wrench, which I like.

Monkey Wrench in Sawtooth Star

 And so we learn!

I also made two pieces of alternate blocks, at least sewed the 4-patches and the twosies. I'm still not sure how many of these part blocks I need to make to go with each star block - one, or two, or maybe even four. I've read Angela's posts and understand how the alternative blocks are built up, but I'd be grateful for your thoughts on how many four patches there should be to match the colour in every star block.

part of an alternate block:
one large unit
two 4-patches
and a twosie

part of another alternate block

For both January and February I made two such part blocks but forgot to show them.

I'm linking up to SoScrappy for

so pop over there for a viewing of lots more beautiful sunshine yellow.

Happy sewing

Marly.