Sew Wot Tuesday again

I’ve spent another morning with the Sew Wot ladies – we meet every 2nd Tuesday and it quickly rolls around.  This time we met at Moira’s home, so she qualified as “the hostess with the mostest” today.  Moira had completed her lovely hand appliqued  William Morris quilt and we were all so interested to see her beautiful work. 

Moira’s William Morris quilt

Both Helen and Mary had birthdays due so they received all sorts of interesting parcels and goodies, including a pair of cozy hand knitted socks each.  And here is the sock knitter herself, Heather B, busily knitting yet another pair!  I wonder if she will remember me when my birthday rolls around?  And that my favourite colour is blue?

Heather starting another pair of socks

As well as having birthdays close together, Helen and Mary have something else in common.  They are both stitching away on their Zenembroideries.  Don’t they look great!  It’s the same pattern but they stitching in different shades of thread which makes a difference.

Helen and Mary’s embroideries

Helen had something else for show and tell, a jelly roll quilt in batiks, set off with gold coloured squares.  Just lovely.

Helen’s jelly roll quilt top

Carol had been busy knitting cotton dish cloths lately, she told us.  I have knitted a few of these in the past, they are handy to do if you are between projects but still want to keep your hands busy.

Carol’s knitted dish cloth

I had taken my Christmas Smorgasbord around for show and tell, and then continued on stitching the extra blocks I need for the corners of my Christmas ABC quilt.  Of course, in-between the chatting, birthday wishes, morning tea, admiring the show and tell,  not a great deal of stitching really gets done.

Saturday Stitching Day

Saturday dawned wet and miserable – just the sort of day to join other quilt club members for a day of stitching and companionship.  We were meeting in “new to me” premises, the local Vintage Car Club, and what a lovely building it was.  Warm and cozy, with lovely carpet under our feet, and  good kitchen facilities for making our cuppas.  Some hardy souls braved the rather wet conditions for a day of sewing and companionship.  There was plenty of room, and we could have accommodated many more club members, but perhaps the wet weather put them off.

Several members had recently attended a workshop run by Anna Williams on Celtic Circles and had brought along these intricate looking projects to work on.  Very beautiful indeed, and I’m sure I have Celtic blood running in my veins, but not for me and my fat fingers, I feel.  Lynne demonstrated how to make bias tape pulling the fabric underneath a pin and pressing the strip with a tiny iron.  Ooh, I could almost feel the iron burning my fingers, if I tried to do that!

So that’s how you do it!

Others worked on their own projects.  Susan is still making blocks for her daughter’s bookcase quilt, and had hand stitched a spider web on one of them.

Two of Susan’s bookcase blocks

And Madalyn was working on her Daily Dot blocks.  With one for every day of the year, 365 is an awful lot of tiny applique blocks to stitch, but she is coming along quite well with this project.

Madalyn’s Daily Dots

As for me – I took along my Christmas Smorgasbord quilt and sat quietly hand stitching the hanging sleeve and label.  All done now.

Christmas Smorgasbord all finished

With friends due the next day for lunch I needed to get back home and get busy in the kitchen, so  I could only manage half a day stitching time    But I was pleased with my morning’s work, and it’s always so nice to stitch with others.

New Zealand Birds

My New Zealand Birds quilt top is finished, so that’s a big smile from me.  Mind you, it’s quite small, but even so, a small finish is still rather pleasing.  I’ve been carefully machine blanket stitching around each of these little birds during the week.  Then today I assembled the rows using a leafy green fabric.

The top row is the fantail (piwakawaka), followed by the tui, known as the parson bird by the early settlers because of the white feathers at the throat.  Row number three features the stitchbird (hihi), a rare honeyeater now only found in bird sanctuaries.  Followed by the intelligent and inquisitive kea, the world’s only alpine parrot.

In true “use it up” style, I’ve pieced the backing, and stitched two pieces of batting together to give me the correct size.  My little quilt is now layered and pinned, all ready to quilt.  It’s been a busy week socially with a coffee morning, and a ladies lunch later in the week, so I’m really pleased with what I have achieved so far.

Pinned up ready to quilt

Chirpy chirpy, cheep, cheep

This week it’s all about birds.  New Zealand native birds, to be precise, as I’m starting work on my bird wall-hanging.  There has been a bit of fusing and stitching going on, and this is what I’ve got to show for it.   New Zealand has some very special birds, such as the kea,  the world's only alpine parrot, living amongst the tussock grasses on the mountain-side.  The kea is a large, strong-flying, olive-green parrot with scarlet underwings and a slender grey-black bill.

 

The kea

I’ve also stitched around some pretty little fantails.  Fantails use their broad tails to change direction quickly while hunting for insects, flitting from here to there at speed. They sometimes hop around upside-down amongst tree ferns and foliage to pick insects from the underside of leaves.

Fantails

One thing I have learnt from stitching these birds down is that if you are not happy with how it is going – stop immediately.  Instead of plodding on to the end, as I did on some other birds.  I had used an older, thicker thread, which looked fine colourwise, but stitched up much too thick and looks ugly.  So I'll be spending some time with my unpicker, trying to gently remove the offending stitches without stretching the fabric.  Wish me luck on that job.

Roll the Dice – Pink or Blue?

In the weekend I did an unscientific experiment with my dice.  As you know, I like to give my pink dice a shake, rattle and roll on the carpet to determine which UFO I will be working on for the current week.  But I’ve long suspected that not all numbers are coming up regularly – in fact, I don’t remember number 6 being selected for many months.  So with Robin’s help as scribe, I rolled my pink dice, just as I usually do, ten times.  Interesting enough, two numbers did not get selected at all.  Perhaps that is what “the dice is loaded” means.  Mr Google tells me, that when  the dice are loaded, weight has been added  to one side or another of dice so that they will always come up with certain numbers facing upward.

 

Luckily the bag of dice I purchased from the $2 shop contained several more of different colours.  So I repeated the experiment with the blue dice, and this time all numbers came up.  Strange but true.  Robin doesn’t think this proves anything and tells I would be better off using a random number generator each week instead.  But I feel that’s a bit too new fangled for me and would take all the fun out of choosing a number.

My pink dice has been pensioned off, and it’s blue cousin had a turn.  It’s a new project, first time called up, and this week I’ll be working on my New Zealand native bird wall-hanging.  What's in the bag?  Let’s see how much of this I had actually started.  Lots of birds cut out with fusible attached, all ready to be appliqued.

Birds cut out ready to applique

I've had a busy morning out and about, doing a few quilty things, such as buying more batting, and some cord for a future project.  Did a little shopping, and went to the library – I just can’t live without a book or two to read.  And just look at this lovely sight I saw while I was driving around, the first sprinkle of snow on the Tararua Ranges.  In our part of New Zealand the snow seldom falls on the ground.

First snowfall of the season

So I didn’t really feel like sitting at the machine in the afternoon.  But at least I know where I’m up to,  and I’ve also prepared some “leader and ender” sewing as well, and hopefully can make a good start tomorrow.

Christmas Smorgasbord

Finished at last – and now officially called “Christmas Smorgasbord”.  And what a smorgasbord of colours and fabrics it is.  Red and green, of course, with white, cream, tan, yellow and a little blue.  Stars of all shapes, mostly pieced, with a few appliqued as well.  The prints feature Father Christmas in many variations,  reindeer and holly, angels, wrapped gifts, bells, and baubles, Christmas trees, stars and teddies, in fact, everything Christmassy.

It started out like this, Christmas stars and nine patch blocks received from a couple of internet block swaps I took part in ages ago.  One swap for the stars, and the other for the nine patches in Christmas colours.  Thinking they would go well together, I combined the blocks into one quilt top.  And of course I didn’t have quite enough so stitched up a few more blocks to make it even.  I made the quilt top square, with seven blocks across and seven blocks down.

Most of these blocks were received through internet block swaps

Once the top was assembled, I machine quilted through the nine patch blocks, and individually quilted through each star block.  Then I quilted gentle curves around the borders, and lastly, applied and then hand stitched down the binding.  Some quilters don’t like stitching the binding down, but I quite enjoy this step - with just the label to go,  it means I’m almost at the finish line.

Almost finished

Like most of my UFOs, this quilt has been hanging about for much too long.  But it’s finished now, in plenty of time for next Christmas.  Which is only 7 months away, for those who are counting.

Christmas Smorgasbord

Not all dyes are created equal

I’m rather fond of my New Zealand themed tablecloth.  After making several similar quilt tops to take to quilting friends on our trip to UK in 2008, on our return I sat down and stitched myself one as well.  The pattern is done “postcard style”  bordered in strips of black fabric.  This morning after I gave it a good press and laid it over the table I noticed that some of the black fabric strips had definitely faded much more than others.  Looks like I used up all my black scraps, purchased at different times from different shops.  On the table is with my still surviving Poinsettia plant, a Christmas gift and still going strong – I must be doing something right.

New Zealand Postcard tablecloth – some of the black is decidedly grey

New Zealand print in the blue Pacific

I’m still working away on UFO number 5, my Christmas Stars and Nine Patch quilt.  Now I’ve finished quilting the stars, the next step in this project is to machine quilt the border, and attach the binding.  With any luck I’ll get it finished tomorrow.

Christmas Stars and Nine Patches