Getting the paints out - Monday Group

Well my Quilty Friends as this hot weather continues here in Wales my stitching has almost ground to a halt.

It's just too hot to be indoors sewing. So it's hand stitching in the garden for me.

Mind you even that's not easy with Daisy (my new puppy) wanting to help all the time.

Once the weather cools down the and normal sewing resumes, the next part on my log cabin is the binding.

Meanwhile,
 I'm going to show you a little piece I'm currently working on.

As a backdrop to this story. Me and a few of my quilty friends have recently joined the Contemporary Section of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles.

I've been a 'Guild' member for years, but this May decided to join the Contemporary Section.

Well, we all went to a Guild Area Day last month and the speaker was Gillian Travis. She is also a member of the Contemporary section. And she was showing amongst other things, some of the pieces she had made for the Contemporary challenge this year, Journal Quilts.

We would have like to join in, with the Journal Quilts challenge, but as we joined in May we were too late to join in this challenge.

 So between us we devised a quilty plan.

We would have our own little contemporary challenge. We choose memories of each month, so our first month would be Memories of June which we would each have to bring along and show at our monthly Swansea Quilters meeting.

Sew, this is mine, a work in progress at the moment. But it has to be finished for Saturday so I'd better get a move on.  

 I have chosen a picture of Daisy take just a few days after we had her.

I took lots of photos that day and as she raced around the house and garden,

most of my pictures were of a blur of black, a black tail or even some with no Daisy in at all.

This was one of my better ones - she's almost all in it - it's just her head disappeared as I took the photo.

Anyways, I had the photo printed out. Then I took a piece of thinish calico, laid it on the top of the photo

the simply traced the outlines of the photo onto the calico.

Next - very brave of me

I got out some of the fabric paints I'd bought over the last few years.

You know,

The kind of quilty thing you buy intending to try straight away

Which then sits in a draw for the foreseeable future

mainly due to your being too scared/not having the confidence to try whatever it is out.

Sew

Feeling enthused and fearless after Gillian Travis talk - 'just do it' she said.

'Use these little quilts to try out different ideas', she said

'Don't procrastinate', she said  

SEW

I got out my paints, sat out the garden and painted the photo  

And you can see the result in the picture above, above the actual picture.

And I'm very pleased with it for a first attempt.

Now even I can see that the wall is a bit wonky

That's where I didn't follow the lines and added some of my own

Leason learnt there.

This picture has some machine stitching on it.

You can probably make out the stands of cotton that need to be cut off

These are from where I've 'jumped' from one section of stitching to another.

Next I plan to start hand stitching Daisy in.

It's no masterpiece - but I'm quite thrilled with my first attempt

I particularly like the cartoon feel to it - it wasn't something I was aiming for but I like it.

Well that's me done for today,

remember you can click on the 'pink links' to find out more. 

Speak to you all again soon,

Yours in Stitches, Joy 

Win's 100 year old Welsh Quilt

Win's 100 Year Old Welsh Quilt

In actual class today our most Senior Member, Win, brought in one of her mothers quilts. Obviously being in Wales this is a Welsh Quilt.  It is about 100 years old.

Above, Win with her mum's Welsh Quilt

Below showing both sides of the quilt.

The plain side shows off the quilting beautifully

While the patterned side has some wonderfully colourful flowers on it.

 Above and below are close-ups of the lovely quilting patterns.

I was tempted to record her telling the story behind the quilt. But she was half way through when I thought of it and I didn’t like to ask her to start again.

Anyways. As I said this quilt belonged to Win’s mother. And in typical Welsh fashion, the quilt was made by the village quilter/sewing lady.
Win was brought up on a farm. And sadly her mother died when Win was very young.  But she knows the story of her mums quilts very well.

I’ll try and tell you the story as best I can.
This story is set in Pontrhydyfen in South Wales in the U.K.  One thing they had plenty of on the farm was sheep – no surprise there – if you come to Wales – your gonna see sheep.

And after sheering, their wool was taken to a wollen mill in Neath Abbey where Win’s mum would insist that   A, the wool she took in was used for her blankets (she insisted that her wool was of the best quality and very clean going in and she didn’t want anyone elses wool in her blankets) and B, that only the best, most skillful girls worked on her wool to make her blankets. 

Win has previously brought in one of her mothers blankets which had a beautiful woven design.
However, they also got plain white blankets and these were used as the ‘wadding’ in their quilts.

I have been teasing Win, that her family must have been well off to afford a Wholeclothquilt – and when I heard the wadding was a brand new blanket – they must have been very rich indeed! As the more lowly people would have used old bankets, wornout clothes, an old worn out quilt, or even paper,  as their quilt wadding. But Win assures me that they were not rich – they just had lots of wool.

We then had a discussion about how the quiltmaker may have been paid. I thought maybe a barter system – with woolen blankets as payment  - but who knows.
Anyway this quilt was kept for best (Doctors visits etc).  Which is why it has survived all this time in such a good condition.

We marveled at the quilting designs used and sat and stroked the quilt for ages. I just love, love, love the texture that quilting makes on fabric.
We noticed that the valance had been stitched on by machine. And thought most probably at the time the quiltmaker would have been the only person in the village to own such a modern invention.

 Above the central Medallion pattern 

such a tradition feature in a Welsh Quilt

 Above is a laughing Win

and below is

a concentrating Win.

So, can I say thank you, thank you, thank you Win for bringing your quilt in to share with us all today.

And of course I must mention that Win herself has made many a beautiful quilt over the years.

Monday Group - Marbling

Today we had a complete change in class and played with the Marbling Kit we bought in the Quilt Show in Malvern last month.

We used a pipett to drop in our  paints, and a cocktail stick and a makeshift ‘afro’ comb made out of cocktail sticks and selotape to ‘marble’ the paints.

Here are some of the finished pieces.


I then took them home to line dry them.
Look – blue skies – summer has hit Port Talbot.

We had a wonderful morning with comments such as:

I wouldn't think of doing this at home. But I've enjoyed playing with the paints here. (All set up and ready for them).
Can we do this again please?
and
Can we paint on shells next time?

The swirling the paints with the cocktail stitcks was by far their favourite part - seeing what patterns emerged from the paints.

So it looks like we will have to go to the beach to find some shells then!

Above is a video of Chris 'having a go' this morning.

Spotlight Wednesday - Pulling up your bobbin thread

This weeks Spotlight Wednesday is about pulling up you bobbin thread to the top of your work.

It's not something we've need to use yet. But I thought I show it to you ready for when you do.

This is a little technique you can use whenever you want to start your machine stitching not at the edge of your work.

I learnt this when doing machine applique but it's just as useful for machine quilting.

Sew,
if I wanted to start my machine quilting on the beige strip of the logcabin below

This is what I would do
Click on this pink link to watch my video - pulling up your bobbin thread.

So now your work will 'always' be as tidy on the back as it is on the front.

I'm going to go and get my things ready for tomorrow now.

Goody list - money -  camera -  glasses -  sweets and drinks - painkillers - a bus full of quilty friends and a large dose of laughter at the ready.

My D.H. says that when us quilters get together we sound like a gaggle of geese!

We are going (a bus full so probably 50 of us) to the Quilt Show in Malvern - we'll be crossing the border into the English countryside and the land of free bags - you have to pay for grocery bags in Wales and we Welsh get a bit overexcited at the prospect of having our purchases put into free bags.

I'll be taking pictures, making notes, having more than my fair share of fun, and reporting back to you all on Kickback Friday.

Yours in Stitches, Joy

Monday Group – Machine Quilting

Good Monday morning quilty friends.
Today I’m going to talk about machine quilting using your Walking Foot.

Last week I put together my Half Logcabin quilt top, and now it’s time to quilt it.

Sew, let’s talk about quilting.

As I said, I’m machine quilting this quilt. I’ll be using straight line quilting, some what I call ‘three step zig-zag stitch quilting’ and just a little machine decorative stitch quilting.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

This first one is machine quilted in the ditch. You can’t really notice the quilting.

This second logcabin block is machine quilted using a zig zag stitch – so the quilting stands out.

   This flower is straight line quilted diagonally.

Below, I’ve used straight line quilting either side of the ‘free motion’ quilted leaves.
  And finally this block has been ‘crosshatch’ quilted with additional vertical lines.

Now don’t worry if I’ve used some quilting terms your not familiar with. I’ll be showing you each one in more detail over the next few weeks.

I just wanted to give you a taster of what you can do with ‘straight line’ machine quilting.

And now for something completely (well slightly) different.
In todays video I’ll show you how I get ready for straight line machine quilting.

Hope you enjoy,

That's all from me today folks,

But why not Check out 

My Social Media Links

Yours in Stitches, Joy

Monday Group

Good morning everyone, it's the start of a new week and I think winter is finally leaving the U.K. Spring hasn't quite fully arrived but it's edging it's way in. We still have the heating on all day but my jumpers are getting a bit thinner.
I have been busy stitching together my logcabin blocks into rows.
And in this weeks video I show you how to stitch the blocks into rows and then how to stitch the rows together. It's simple enough if you follow a few basic  tips which help ensure the seams meet.
So here it is,

Hope you enjoy and it gives you the confidence to have a go. It's not the end of the world if all your seams don't match - but if you can match some/most of them you'll feel you've achieved something.
With there being lots of seams to match in each log cabin block I've used more pins than I normally would. And although people in class tend to think my works is very accurate - I am no where near perfect. And the point is none of us needs to be 'perfect'.
We just need to do the best we can at the time.
And I stitch as a hobby, for fun. So, do your best, have fun and above all enjoy the journey.

Yours in Stitches, Joy

p.s. I love it some of you could post pics of your locabin quilts on my joyofquilting FaceBook Page 

   

Monday Group

Hope you are all enjoying your Easter Monday and have had your fill of chocolate.
My hubby took my hint and I got the egg I wanted plus a box of chocolates on the side because he didn't think the egg was big enough;) So I'm rather full of chocolate today.

Anyway, today I'm going to show you how to 'factory' or 'chain' piece your Logcabin blocks.
If you have been watching my previous videos numbers one to four showed you how to, (Rotary cut your Strips), make a (Basic Logcabin sample block), make a (Courthouse Steps Logcabin sample block), and finally a (Half Logcabin sample block). If you missed any of these or simply want to catch up. Just click on the relevant link inside the Red brackets above to see the videos again.

Now I showed you how to make a sample of each of the above Logcabin Blocks. But in real life you would most probably be making lots of these logcabin blocks in order to make a log cabin quilt.
And Factory or Chain piecing makes stitching together lots of logcabin blocks much quicker than making them up one at a time.
Instead of constantly stopping to cut and press each strip this method means you stop to cut and press only once for each set of strips you stitch on. Is that clear as mud to you, yes. Just watch the video below and hopefully all will become clear.
Now for todays video number five.

If you have any questions about any of the videos, or anything on my blog please ask and I'll try my best to help you. Sometimes it's only when someone asks a question that I realise I'm not making myself clear.
I just watched this again and I talk about one and a half inch strips and two and a half inch squares.
I was just a tad confused. I should have said one and a half inch strips and one and a half inch squares.
Next week I'll show you how to stitch your blocks together in rows and how to stitch rows together so the seams all match up.

Yours in Stitches, Joy