Quilting a Crazy Quilt

 I had an email from someone wanting to know how I quilt my crazy quilts because she wasn't a fan of a quilt being tied. The photo below is of the last Crazy Quilt I made called A Time for all Seasons.

I was a traditional quilter for 7 years before I made my first crazy quilt and so I naturally quilted it as I would quilt any quilt. I was/am a self-taught crazy quilter, I didn't know that crazy quilts are usually tied! To be fair, my crazy quilts are not the usual crazy quilt either. Someone once said that my quilts are crazy and sane and that is probably a good description.

In the past, the Victorian style crazy quilt was very over-the-top busy with not much spare space between the embroideries. They didn't have wadding or batting in them and were made to be draped over a chair or piano. The quilts were tied or knots of thread inserted between the embroideries to keep the top and backing from sagging away from each other.

I didn't want to make that sort of crazy quilt and so made crazy blocks and had space for quilting around them. I used batting and treated them as a wall quilt that could hang straight and square.

I had over 12 years of making these quilts and loved every minute of it.

Here is a detail photo of a donation quilt I made for the International Quilt Festival in Houston that shows the quilting.

I always finished the quilt completely including adding beads and I just quilted carefully around them all. I very rarely hit a bead.

Below is a photo of one of my quilts before all the embroidery is finished.

Now here is a photo of the same block after it has been quilted. I just love the quilted look.

Here's one more block that I did for my quilt naturally Crazy.

These quilts are very time consuming to make and in 2016, I decided to stop making them and start exploring art quilts. I had been making art quilts on the side, but I wanted to take it more seriously.

If you are interested in seeing my Crazy Quilts there are photos of them on my website under Crazy Quilts

I still belong to an online group of crazy quilters and they have decided to run a crazy quilted Christmas Ornament swap. I agreed to participate and said that I would make three. What was I thinking??

Anyhow, here is the first base that I have made. Now to start adding the embroidery.

Bye for now,

Linda

Quilting Time

It has been a very busy April and May for me, I am glad that June is here and I can have a bit of a rest.....maybe!!

During April and May I have had AQC, my birthday, my son's graduation, a quilting retreat with friends, Mother's Day, a guest speaker engagement, making a project for Quilter's Companion Magazine, the Waverley Patchworkers Quilt Show and my duties as President of Waverley Patchworkers and the coordinator of the Waverley Art Quilters. While all this has been going on I have been trying to get my quilt finished for the end of May deadline for Victorian Quilters Showcase and Houston Quilt Show.

It has been a very busy couple of months and there were times that I thought I would not finish my quilt in time. Here is a photo of me in the middle of quilting. There was still a long way to go when I took this photo.

It's tricky to quilt a crazy quilt and while I am doing it I realise why crazy quilts were always tied and not quilted. I am always dodging embroidery stitches and beads.

In this photo I was quilting some snow flakes.At first I just quilted around the snowflake (Bottom snowflake) but it stood up too much and I ended up quilting further into the embroidery to flatten it a bit more like you can see in the top snowflake.

It was a hard slog and the quilt ended up taking 110 hours to quilt. I felt absolutely exhausted but I got it photographed and entered into the Houston Quilt Show in time. I won't find out for a couple of months whether it will be accepted or not. The entries come from all over the world and it is a privilege to be accepted.

There were always welcome distractions. Savannah dropped into see me one morning and had a little feast in Poppy's chair. She's 18 months old now.

My quilts that were travelling around America for the 500 Traditional Quilts book exhibition finally arrived home.

I haven't seen Scottish Dance, Naturally Crazy and Crazy about Ballet since 2014. They arrived home beautifully packed with rolls of paper in each fold. The Houston Quilt Show people certainly know how to look after and care for quilts.

I'll post a photo of my latest quilt as soon as I am able. Some shows don't like photos of the quilts shown until after judging.

Bye for now,
Linda

Waverley Patchworkers Raffle Quilt

The Waverley Patchworkers Quilt Show is on this year. We have the quilt show every two years and it is a very well regarded show because we have many very talented quilters in our group.

We had our meeting on Monday night and this year's raffle quilt was unveiled to all. We have named the quilt Waverley Stars.



Waverley Stars 2014

The Quilt was made by members of Waverley Patchworkers and it is beautifully quilted by Desley Maisano of Addicted to Quilts. Desley is a professional long arm machine quilter and we are very lucky that she has agreed to machine quilt our last three raffle quilts. I trust her work so much that I don't even suggest any particular quilting pattern; I just leave it up to her.

Here is a close up photo of the quilting.



Waverley Stars 2014 detail

Our quilt show is being held on Saturday 31st May and Sunday 1st June and we will have the raffle quilt on display. Tickets for the raffle will be $2 each.

I hope to see you there; the quilt show is a few months away now, so I will remind you closer to the time.

Bye for now,
Linda

Goldfield Quilters Quilt In

Next Saturday the 19th October, the Goldfield Quilters are having their Quilt In. The Goldfield Quilters are based in Castlemaine which is a  lovely country town north of Melbourne, Victoria.

I was honoured to be asked to be the guest speaker this year and I am looking forward to bringing many of my quilts to show and speak about my journey as a quilter. Quilting is such a huge part of my life now and yet it was only about 16 years ago that I saw my first quilt. I had no idea that such a thing existed.

The Quilt In will be held at the Campbell's Creek Community Centre from 10am until 4pm and entry is $6.00.

Bring your lunch, a mug and your sewing. Morning and afternoon tea will be provided and soup will be available for $2.00.

It sounds like a lovely day being surrounded by quilts, quilters and food.

Hope to see you there.

Bye for now,
Linda

Beginners Machine Quilting Class

Have you always wanted to learn how to machine quilt your own quilts? I can help you get started and also give you the hint to be kind to yourself as you are learning. I am teaching another series of Beginner Machine Quilting classes at a shop in Blackburn, Victoria called Sewn and Quilted.

Scottish Reel© Linda Steele

The class will cover all the basics such as basting, thread, wadding, tension and marking your quilting designs and then we will move onto free motion quilting designs as well as covering how to manage a quilt using a domestic machine.

Beginners Machine Quilting

I will be teaching the class over 3 Wednesday mornings from 10am to 12.30pm. The good thing about spreading the class over three mornings is that you get a break in between because we all know that there is only so much that you can take in at a time and I find that my students are quite exhausted quilting for an entire day.

The dates for the classes are Wednesday 30th October, 6th November and 27th November, 10-12.30pm

The shop is at 92 Whitehorse Road, Blackburn. Victoria and you enter at the rear of the house.
Please ring Carol on 9877 1664 if you are interested in doing the class.

Beginners Machine Quilting

 Hope to see you there.

Bye for now,
Linda

Charmed-Heart Block

Every two months I receive a little charm for my charm bracelet and a matching block pattern and fabric from the ladies at Quilted Crow.

The latest charm was a little heart. It's hard to believe that the charm is actually made using real fabric; I wouldn't want to sew one that small.

Heart Charm

It didn't take long to sew up the matching block this time especially using foundation piecing which I love doing.

Heart Block

The fabrics that they sent me this time were exactly the same fabrics that were in the charm.
I don't do a lot of traditional patchwork these days. I am mainly sewing crazy quilts or art quilts and so I am really enjoying participating in this charmed mail out.


Bye for now,
Linda

AQC 2013

I spent a lovely three and a half days at the Australasian Quilt Convention last week.   AQC is on every year in Melbourne and once again it was situated in the beautiful Royal Exhibition Building. Apart from the classes, quilts and shops, I love being able to catch up with so many other quilters from around Australia. Everyone who participated in classes got a lovely roomy tote bag full of goodies from the many sponsors and shops at the show.

For the first time in years I decided to do a couple of classes with some visiting American tutors, Judy Coates- Perez and Susan Brubaker Knapp. I know them both from their numerous articles in Quilting Arts magazine and they were both running classes about painting on fabric. I have dabbled in painting on fabric myself but it was fun to spend two days painting and getting a few hints on how to improve. Here are a couple of their quilts that they had on show to show you their beautiful work. They were both lovely teachers and many of my friends were in the classes with me so we had a very enjoyable time.

Judy Coates Perez Quilt

Susan Brubaker Knapp Quilt

Another of my friends was doing a four day pictorial applique class with David Taylor.  David was also guest speaker on Thursday night and he was very amusing. David's quilts have won many awards and we were lucky that he had two of them on display.

David Taylor- Cock of the Walk

David Taylor-Maynard

David Taylor-Maynard detail

Every year AQC have a quilt challenge and this year's topic was Free. Helen Godden won this year with her beautiful quilt of horses.

Helen Godden Quilt

The quilting was quite amazing and here is a close-up of it.

Helen Godden's beautiful quilting

The second prize went to another amazing quilt by Gillian Shearer.

Gillian Shearer

Every year the Best of Australia quilt is announced at the Saturday night dinner. The Best of Show from each state is eligible to win and this year it was won by South Australian quilter Rachelle Denneny. Her quilt is a beautiful cream whole-cloth quilt and here is a detail shot of the quilting.

Rachelle Denneny Quilt

The Rajah Award is given to an Australian quilter who has given above and beyond in quilting and its promotion and this year the very worthy winner was Jenny Bowker. I was lucky enough to be Jenny's quilt angel (helper) in her Saturday class and she is a very knowledgeable and generous teacher.

Jenny Bowker's Quilt honouring Margaret Rolfe

I did do some shopping as well and bought a bit of this and that.

Stencils and paint

Lace, dye and beads

 

Batik Fabric

The quilt convention is over for another year and if you didn't make it this year, don't worry it will be on again next year, no doubt bigger and better than ever.

Bye for now,
Linda

Top 10 reasons to belong to a Group

Last week I had to give a talk at the Waverley Patchworkers meeting about the Waverley Art Quilters group that I belong to. I started to think of all the groups that I belong to and I belong to many more than I first thought.

Why do we choose to belong to certain groups when we are all time starved anyway?
At a quick count I realise that I belong to 9 different Guilds and organisations, 5 on-line groups and 1 friendship sewing group. Of course the most important group of all is the family group and our personal friend groups. Often we can see our quilting friends more often than some family and friends and those quilting friends become our personal friends as well.

Afternoon Tea © 2011 Linda Steele

Here is my list of the top 10 reasons to belong to a Group.

1. Inspiration.
Who cannot help but be inspired by other peoples quilts.

2. Information
In our busy world it is impossible to keep up with everything going on.

3. Camaraderie
Sewing and quilting can be a solitary activity. Of course we all need time alone to prepare, design and achieve but it's good to show others what we are doing as well.

4. Critique
Honest feedback is hard to find in the quilting world. Family and friends are too close and often don't have the expertise. This is where a  group with the skill to articulate and use the principles of Art and Design as their base is invaluable.

5. Insight
Everyone's work is different and it is very interesting to see how other people  approach a theme or idea.

6. Competition
Nothing spurs you on like a little bit of friendly competition.

7. Support
Designing your own quilts and entering competitions can be tough and  rejection is common. This is where groups can offer understanding, commiseration and encouragement.

8. Purpose
 Self - esteem is often built on achievement and finishing a quilt or helping organise an activity is very rewarding.

9. Confidence
Advising, listening, supporting and sharing with others have the advantage of boosting our own confidence.

10. Friendship
I have met so many wonderful people including online friends through my quilting groups.

I have tried to be succinct in my descriptions of each reason so this is a blog post and not an essay. I realise the benefits of belonging to a group and while groups often help the community they are also helping us.

Can you add any more reasons to my list?

Bye for now,
Linda

Quilting

I feel as if I have been quilting all year so far. I have already quilted my latest Crazy Quilt which I am calling Naturally Crazy. I was quite happy with it when it was finished but halfway through the quilting process I always feel a bit of a panic thinking that it is not going to work.

Here is a photo of one of the blocks called Canada.

I can’t show you the entire quilt because it has no binding yet and I haven’t sewn on any charms.

Now I am quilting my next quilt which is an appliqué quilt and unfortunately I am at the halfway point where I don’t think that it is going to work out. It is giving me a lot of trouble at the moment.

I spent a lot of time with the trapunto. I have been keeping a time sheet so I know how long everything takes. The trapunto took 30 hours.

Here is the back of the quilt showing the squares of wadding that I had sewn to the back of the appliqué.

Here are the offcuts after 3 hours of careful cutting out one part of the trapunto.

When the trapunto was finally finished, I basted the quilt which took 5 and a half hours but that was including preparing the backing fabric.

I finally got to start quilting around all the motifs and my top thread kept breaking every 2 inches of stitching. It was very frustrating. I checked all the usual things and couldn’t understand why it was happening.

I finally got out the book that comes with the machine to see what it said.

Reasons for top thread breaking:

Upper thread tension too tight

Incorrectly threaded

Poor quality or old thread

Stitch plate or hook damaged

Loose threads caught in the pre tension or the take up lever.

None of those things applied to me but I did find out how to get into a part of the machine to do some extra cleaning that I didn’t know existed.

I was sitting at the machine wondering what to do next when I looked at the reel of thread and saw that the thread was caught on the side of it. I had a careful look at it and sure enough there was a rough spot on the edge of the reel that was catching the thread and then it was breaking. I am using silk thread so it is probably a bit more prone to catch than a cotton thread. I changed to a new reel of thread and have had no more trouble since.

I have put that reel aside to use for hand work but I suppose I could file the rough edge if I was desperate to use it on the machine.

I had better get back to quilting.

Bye for now,

Linda