Waverley Patchworkers Raffle Quilt

The Waverley Patchworkers Raffle Quilt is quilted, bound and ready for our quilt show.  The quilt is named A William Morris Garden and was made by members of Waverley Patchworkers and quilted by Desley Maisano of Addicted to Quilts.

We were very lucky that Desley agreed to quilt this for us because she is much in demand and very busy. You can see why when you look at her wonderful quilting.

We used a pattern by MicheleHill who generously gave us permission to make the quilt for our raffle. The pattern is not available for sale at the moment, so we are very lucky. Michele specialises in William Morris designs.

The Waverley Patchworkers Quilt Show will be held at the Mount Waverley Community Centre in Mount Waverley, Victoria on 26^th and 27^th May 2012.

Tickets for the raffle quilt will be sold for $2 each.

I am sure that we will sell plenty of tickets for this beautiful quilt.

Bye for now,

Linda

CQJP 2012 January Block

The Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2012 (CQJP) is up and running.

The rules were that you had to register before December 2011. You must make a block every month during 2012 that must measure at least 6". You are supposed to try and improve your skills by trying something new as well.

I have chosen a theme of Christmas and my colour scheme will be red, green and blue.

I have decided to use mainly silk fabrics because of their shine that lends itself to the Christmas theme. To stretch myself I am going to try a stitch that I don’t regularly use and I will have to look up my Crazy Quilt books to check on how to do them.

Here is my January block.

The blocks in my quilt are going to be three different sizes. This first one is a 6" block. As you can see I put three candles in the middle and embroidered the seams with cotton and silk embroidery threads. I embroidered the candles using stem stitch.

This is what the block looked like before I had added the embroidery. I drew up the pattern on some calico and then foundation pieced it.

It looks so plain doesn’t it?

The floral fabric in the top and just under the centre is a new fabric that I had purchased at the Quilt Convention last year. To my horror it started to shred just like the silk on those antique Crazy Quilts.

I had to remove it and I lined it with a product called Dream Weave Fusible by Floriani. This product is made to protect delicate fabrics from shredding and distortion. It doesn’t change the hand of the fabric and is supposed to be good for lining silk before applique. I haven’t tried it for that yet though.

It seems to be working well and I have had no more shredding.

The stitch that I used to stretch myself was the Half Chevron.

One block down, eleven to go!

Bye for now,

Linda

Thank You Present

I was lucky enough to win the Victorian Quilters Showcase, Best of Show 2010 with my quilt Eastern Elements. The award is sponsored by Bernina and my quilt along with the Best of Show from the other Australian states was touring around to all the state shows including New Zealand and the Northern Territory most of last year.

I was so glad when it finally arrived home safe and sound. It is my favourite quilt and it was good to see it again.
Bernina sent me a thank you present of a beautiful blank sketch book and a jar of lollies. The little lollies have I love Bernina written on the sides of them. The sketch book will be handy for using this year keeping in mind that my word for the year is Design.

Bye for now,
Linda

Christmas Present

Can you see what I got for Christmas? It's an Accuquilt Go cutting machine. I admit that it's a bit of a luxury item and I wasn't sure that I wanted one at first. They had a big stand at Houston when I was there in 2010 and the show price was so good that I was tempted to buy one but I had already bought too much and I knew my luggage would be too heavy.

I have bought a few of the cutting dies that I think I might use. Mostly the applique dies because I don't do many pieced quilts at the moment.

On New Years Eve when everyone was out partying, I was at home sewing. I had to cut 16 circles for some flower centres.

I opened my accuquilt box and found a half inch circle template. I was going to sew a blanket stitch around the edge of the circle so I fused some fusible web to the back of some yellow fabric and bravely tried out the cutter.

I think that it took 30 seconds and I had 16 perfectly formed circles.

I couldn't believe how easy it was. It would have usually taken me at least a couple of hours tracing the circles and then carefully cutting them out. Not to mention the ones I couldn't use because I had missed the curve as I cut.

If the price eventually goes down on the dies, I can imagine it taking over from the rotary cutter.

Bye for now,
Linda

Happy New Year

It's hard to believe that we are already into the second week of the New Year. I have enjoyed my Christmas- New year break and am ready to start afresh.

I haven't been away on holidays or anything but just having a relaxed time with no commitments is like having a holiday. I have managed to get a lot of sewing done, so that always puts a smile on my face.

I don't usually make a New Years Resolution but last year the Quiltart internet group that I belong to encouraged us to make a word to use for the year. Last year my word was Balance and that worked well for me. I didn't get upset if I missed a deadline and it helped  to keep things in perspective.

I have decided that this years word will be Design. I even made a Wordle with the word that I have printed out and will paste it in the front of my new sketch book.

My word is design but it could have easily been sketch. Like most people I am always lurching between deadlines and commitments and ideas for quilts are constantly entering my head and often leave just as quickly because I have too many other things to think about.
This year I am going to take the time to jot down the ideas for a quilt or stitching pattern in one of my design books. I have a few and will have them dotted about the house so they are easy to grab if I need them.
This idea also works well for the Waverley Art Quilters because we are going to have a sketch book component this year.

Bye for now,
Linda

Christmas Table Runner

We have put up our Christmas decorations and my daughter decided to change things around this year. For the past few years we have been decorating the lounge room only and had just one heavily decorated room. This year my daughter decided that we will put some decorations in the family room as well because that is where we spend most of our time.

She put Santa and his sleigh in the middle of the table and it looked too bare. I decided that he needed a table runner underneath him. I wanted something quick and easy, although it took longer than I expected. At first I thought I would piece some stars to go in the middle but realised that it would be too busy and I was supposed to be showing off the sleigh and not the table runner.

I found some white fabric with some gold stars printed on it to resemble snow and found a Christmas border print that I had bought years ago when on holidays.

I quilted the white centre with a large free form feather pattern. It was a good excuse to have some feather practice and to try out the YLI silk thread with the metallic gold added to it. I quilted around the leaves and pine cones on the border.

I have been looking more carefully at my decorations this year because I want to use them as my inspiration for CQJP 2012. That is the Crazy Quilt Journal Project for next year and there is still time to sign up for it, if anyone is still thinking about it.

I will definitely have a Nutcracker in my quilt somewhere, I'll have to pick which one I'll use as the model.

I'll have to take a lot of photos of the different ornaments because by the time I put everything up again next year, I will have finished all the blocks! How exciting. I hope that it works out.

Bye for now,
Linda

Batting Test

I teach a lot of machine quilting and often get asked about the best batting or wadding to use in a quilt. I always use Matilda's Own 60% wool and 40% poly, except when I make a baby quilt then I use 100% cotton.
I had a look at my different battings that I owned and found that I had 5 different types. I made up 9" square samples to sew and test them equally to see how they measured up.

The battings that I used were
Matilda's Own 60% Wool and 40% Poly
Matilda's Own 100% Cotton
Hobbs Tuscany Collection 100% Wool
Sew Easy Bamboo
Silk 100% ( I don't know the brand name of the silk, it was a sample piece given to me in a Silk class at Houston last year)

I changed the fabric colours so I could easily recognise the different battings but the fabrics were all Ricky Tims hand dyed fabric.

Test Results

Basting
The silk and cotton battings had a lovely strong grip on the backing fabric and the wool had a quite a good grip as well.

Loft
The wool batting came out on top for loft, the heart that I quilted looks as if I have trapuntoed it. The 60/40 Wool/ Poly had a good body and the cotton was surprisingly good as well. The bamboo and silk felt too thin with no body at all. They show no dimension in the quilting. I have seen that they are advertising a bamboo batting with a poly mix so that might fare better than the 100% bamboo.
Although the loft with the wool was wonderful, I had to be very careful that I didn't quilt in a tuck because of the thickness, the wool/poly mix was the easiest to quilt.

 Fold Test
I folded the the finished samples in half with the right sides together and left them for a couple of days. They all showed fold marks. When I washed and dryed them the fold marks disappeared on all of them.
I folded them again but this time I folded them with the wrong sides together and the fold marks were minor compared to when the right sides were together. I must remember to fold my quilts with the right side facing out.

Shrinkage
The wool, wool/poly did not shrink at all. The silk and the cotton both shrunk by an 1/8' and the bamboo shrunk by 1/4".  I was surprised at the amount of shrinkage on a 9" square. This would be more pronounced on a large quilt.

Tension
This is where I had the most unexpected result. I used a different colour in the top and the bobbin so I could see that the tension was correct.
I sewed the heart in the centre with cotton thread and the tension was good on all the samples, but I had to adjust it slightly for each sample.
I used a YLI 100% silk for the stippling around the heart. If you are going to have tension issues, the silk thread will show them up.
I quilted the wool/poly first and had no trouble.
I had a lot of trouble getting the tension right on the bamboo, in the end I changed the bobbin thread to match the top thread to mask the problem.
I had a lot of trouble with the silk thread shredding in the cotton and silk battings.
I was having so many tension and shredding issues that I started to think that it was the sewing machine but the last little sample I quilted was the 100% wool and I had no tension or shredding troubles at all.

Whenever people are having tension and thread problems it has never occured to me that it might be the batting that they have used that is causing the problem.
Because the silk and cotton batting had such a good grip with the backing fabric, I wonder if it was gripping the thread while I was quilting it.

Bearding

This was my final test. I had put a black fabric on the back of each sample to help show up the thread and tension problems and show any bearding that might occur. Bearding is when the little fibres of batting come through the fabric, no matter how many times you wash or brush it.It is only a problem with dark fabrics, but it is heartbreaking when it happens after all that work of quilting the quilt.

The only batting that didn't beard was the Hobbs Tuscany Collection 100% wool. Matilda's Own make their 60/40 Wool/Poly in a charcoal colour and I have used it many times on a dark coloured quilt and had no problems.
The bearding with the bamboo batting is particulary bad.

I will continue to use the Matilda's Own wool/poly mix but I am also going to quilt my next quilt with the Hobbs Tuscany Collection 100% wool. Matilda's Own is an Australian company and they also make a 100% wool batt but I haven't tried it yet.

Bye for now,
Linda