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Preparing for our Weekend Away

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Our quilting retreat weekend at The Mount Hotel in Wolverhampton is at the end of this week, and we’ve been preparing the projects we want to work on.  Tracy has cut out all of her pieces ready for sewing (so organised) while I’ve been pulling together a collection of fabrics to make a start on a sampler quilt.  I have Barbara Brackman’s ‘Civil War Sampler’ on Kindle, but I decided there’s nothing like a hard copy for ease of use, so I bought the book as well.

Angie has taken a laid back approach to it all and had decided to wait until the weekend arrives to be inspired.  At our last sewing group she did narrow her choices down to just a few, but In the meantime she’s been having a big push to finish all her UFO’s.  She bought a fabulous ladder display unit to hang her quilts from, and I think that’s been part of her motivation to get going.

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Angie
Angie
Angie

I’ve taken out the Medallion quilt, President’s Pride, which I began while on our last retreat in November, to try to get that up and running again.  All it needs is the last border of 4½” shoo fly blocks sewn on all the way around and then it’s ready for batting and backing. I seem to have the attention span of a firefly at the moment with so many UFO’s at all stages of development it’s time I set my shoulder to the wheel too.

We’ve been having a bit of fun making some bags to hold our equipment.  One of them is from a pattern I found on Craftsy called the Bionic Gear Bag.  It’s as eccentric as it sounds, but it really is a clever thing with loads of zip pockets, a fold down ‘tray’ at the front and some nifty little accessories to go with it.  One of them is called a Dumpling Dish but it reminds me more of a Cornish pasty when it’s zipped up.

Tracy
Angie
Sandra
Sandra
Sandra
Button – posing again!
Sandra

Not long to go now….  I can’t wait.  (Tracy’s had her suitcase packed and ready for days!)

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Angie’s Album Quilt

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I’ve been waiting for this little beauty to be finished so I could photograph it. The blocks were done, but Angie was waiting to find just the right shade of fabric for the large outer border. I think the deep mauve she eventually decided upon is perfect. It really brings out the soft muted colours of the centre pieced blocks.

The quilt is the Album Quilt, and is a lap quilt taken from a pattern in Kathleen Tracy’s book, The Civil War Sewing Circle. Quilts evoking this period of American history are Angie’s absolute favourite to do.

Since the blocks are the stars of the show, she’s sewed a minimal amount of echo quilting so as not to detract from them. I have to say I simply love it, and it’s definitely a pattern I must get around to trying for myself.

Angie – Album Quilt
Angie – Album Quilt
Angie – Album Quilt
Angie – Album Quilt
Angie – Album Quilt (and Button)

Westering Women BoM 2016 II

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I think it’s fair to say that Barbara Brackman’s Westering Women BoM Block 3 has been the cause of major headaches for our little sewing group! The block is called Sweet Gum Leaf and, oh joy, it calls for a whole lot of inset, or ‘Y’ seams.

I tried and tried to get good matching points, but I guess this is where my inexperience shows as I couldn’t come up with a block that really satisfied me. Practice is supposed to make perfect I know, but my best effort remained my first try, the others were all downhill from there.

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Sandra – WW Block 3

At our Friday night get-together I was relieved to find it wasn’t just me that was having problems. So, we put our heads together and came up with an alternate design using only HSTs. It’s not quite as elegant as the original but it’s manageable, achievable and it gets the job done.

Angie – WW Block 3
Tracy – WW Block 3
Sandra – WW Block 3 Version 2
Button – our supervisor!

Button was being her adorable self and insisted on getting in on the act too – she’s a stern supervisor. (You might notice that Angie and Tracy haven’t quite got round to appliquéing the stems onto their blocks yet, so I had to use a piece of stand-in fabric for the photos!)

A few days later I felt in a more relaxed frame of mind to tackle those dreaded inset seams, so I chose a whole new colour scheme and spent an afternoon carefully cutting, marking and sewing pieces to make the original Sweet Gum Leaf block. I was so pleased with the outcome, until…..

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Sandra – WW Block 3 Version 3

…..I compared it with my previous blocks and discovered that I’d cut my six leaf pieces without the addition of the quarter inch seam allowance. So although the block worked, it was a miniature version of what it should be. Talk about frustration!

It was another week before I could bring myself to have yet another crack at it. Thankfully, this time everything went well and I have a passable block, but it’s going to be a long time before I approach inset seams without thinking about sweet gum leaves.

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Sandra – WW Block 3 Version 4

In the meantime, Blocks 4 and 5 in the Westering Women series have been published so there’s quite a bit of catching up to do.

…link to previous Westering Women BoM 2016 post.

 

Button Loves to See us Sew..

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After a fortnight’s break I was itching to get back to our Friday night sewing circle.  From just the two of us it’s grown to include a few like minded friends – all of us sewing, and sharing, and learning from each other, and of course, having a good old natter.

I show my progress with the projects I have on the go, and I get to see what everyone else has been up to.  With so many of us around the table it can get a little hectic at times.  Even Button wants her turn at the sewing machine….

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