Bloggers Quilt Festival Spring 2014

It is time for the Bloggers Quilt Festival superbly organised by Amy from Amy's Creative Side.

Like last year, this year we are allowed two entries and this is my second one.  This is for the Art quilts category.

It's called 'The Vikings Are Coming' and is my own design.  It was inspired by a pewter thimlbe my husband brought back from a business trip to Shetland.
I used Bondaweb to do the main applique then embroidered over it by hand.  Finally I free motion quilted it on my domestic machine.
Here are some photos of the process and some close up details.

 Before quilting.........

A big thank you to Amy and all the sponsors for their time and generosity for making this all happen.
Voting in the festival begins 24th May 2014.  Be sure to go and vote for your favourites and just enjoy all the entries.  Let the fun begin!

Blogger Quilt Festival - Spring 2014

It that time of year again when Amy from Amy's Creative Side organised the Bloggers Quilt Festival
                                               
I've decided my first entry is my Floating Hearts Baby Quilt.
This is my own design and I kept it simple with large areas for quilting.  I used Bondaweb to applique the hearts and I free motion quilted it on my domestic machine.  The feathers are all freehand, unmarked.

I used one layer of a thick 6oz polyester wadding/batting and this really made the hearts stand out once I'd 'flattened' the background with some stippling.

I decided to round off the corners and finished it with some pink binding.

From the back - loopy heart pastern in the border.

I am, entering this quilt into the Small Quilts category.
I'd like to finish this post by thanking Amy for organising the festival and to all the sponsors generously providing all the prizes.  Voting begins on 24th May.
Let the fun begin!!

Sapphire Stars Quilt - more quilting.

Since I last posted I feel as if I have achieved little but looking at these photos I realise I have actually done quite a lot.   This quilt has been very slow going and has had me pulling my hair out at times.

When you last saw it, I had worked the borders and was pretty happy with them.

 I completely changed my plan of how I was going to quilt this.

This was my original doodle but instead I used two dinner plates to draw around for the circles but because of my tiny machine I had to do everything in small sections.

 So far, so good.........

 This is the center of one of the nine patch blocks.

 Halfway through, for some reason, my quilt started to sag in the middle and I couldn't get a good tension on it.  I unpinned the quilt top from the bottom bar 3 times to try and fix it.  I have no idea why this happened and can only put it down to my (inaccurate (didn't think I was that bad lol ) piecing).
This frame quilting malarkey is certainly a steep learning curve but I was disappointed and annoyed at myself.  Halfway through I just wanted to give up but decided to keep going.

 Very messy - but  have unpicked this, fixed it and it looks better now.

I am almost at the bottom border and all going well it should be off the frame sometime this weekend..
The frustrating thing about frame quilting ( apart from not having a long arm) is you have to wait until the end to see the whole thing as its all wound up on the bar. Despite all the problems with this quilt I am still enjoying my journey so far.
Already thinking about 'what's next?'
Enjoy your weekend and thanks for stopping by.
Rhianon.

Angela's Sampler Quilt

My friend Angela ( we belong to the same quilt group - Glenrothes Quilters) made this beautiful sampler quilt.  It is from the Lynne Edwards book, The Essential Sampler Quilt.

Angela did a fantastic job making all the blocks, adding sashings etc and had got as far as basting and stitching in the ditch around each block then she got stuck and didn't quite know what to do with it.

After we got talking one day about vintage sewing machines, she offered me not one but three vintage machines including a Singer treadle and a Jones hand crank that is GREEN and an electric Singer with beautiful decals.  In return I offered to do some quilting on her sampler quilt and so the deal was struck!

I quilted it on my Janome 1600p on the table top.  This quilt is so big it would not have fitted onto my Gracie frame anyway.  To me most of hard work was already done, i.e. basting and ditching, all I had to do was fill in the blanks.

Have to say, I really enjoyed quilting this.  Here are some of my favourite blocks:

                                             
For the borders, I quilted a continuous feather.

I didn't take many photos of the back - but here's one :

I gave the quilt back to Angela today and she loved it!! I am so pleased.  It really was quite nerve wracking working on somebody else's labour of love. I watched Angela make this quilt and I know the effort and care she put into it.   She is going to bind it in either the dark green or the same fabric as the border.  I think either will look great.  I will try and get a photo when the binding is done and I will tell you all about the vintage machines in another post.
I'll leave you of one last photo of this beautiful quilt and say Thank you Angela for letting me loose with my sewing machine.  I had a blast!

Til next time
Happy Stitchin'
Rhianon.