Townmouse

Ocean waves quilt

Saturday morning is always a nice time for some sewing in our house.

Everyone is calm and enjoying the slower pace a weekend brings.  And I'm pottering in my studio and enjoying the precision required to piece these blocks.

This creation is totally inspired by Denyse's Ocean Waves quilt. Most of the fabrics I'm using are Denyse Schmidt fabrics from various ranges.

There are lots of exciting things happening in our family and life is good.  But does anyone else find the return to a new school year exhausting?  I'm only just finding my feet now and the term is nearly over.  It's always the way, but seems evermore so this year.

Down Under Doll Quilt has been sent

On Friday I bundled my doll quilt into the post.

Continuing with my obsession with flying geese, I pulled some happy fabrics from my stash and got to work.

I then played with the layout.  Once I have blocks where I want them I take a photo.  It's the easiest way to remember which bits belong where.

I did a little free motion quilting.  

This red hoop is called a Quilt Halo.  It's rubbery, so grips the fabric.  There's no need for quilting gloves.  You can pick one up here.  I haven't had the chance to try it on a larger quilt, so can't say yet whether I love it or not.  I will aim to give it another try soon.

I couldn't resist including a couple of matching t-shirts for the little girls in my swap partner's home, who are the true recipients of the doll quilt.  Well that narrows the field a bit if you're trying to guess who my swap partner is, doesn't it?  I suspect my parcel arrived today so the game is up anyway.

Best quilting rulers

A few posts back I mentioned quilting rulers and what an improvement they have made to my piecing.

Lately I've been a little fixated with flying geese.  An obsession traced back to this quilt.

I had a play around with a few blocks myself.

And then got sidetracked by the blue and white shirting quilt. These two blocks are draped over my airing rack and will possibly be added to when the urge strikes.

As well as a classic flying geese ruler for cutting the triangles, I invested in possibly my favourite ruler to date - the Wing Clipper.  This ruler is used to trim down the little geese blocks after you've stitched them.

It works a treat and I love the perfect little blocks I end up with. They are much more satisfying to put together when they're this accurate.

I wish I'd known about these tools when I was inpsired to make this quilt years back.  Unfortunately it hasn't progressed.  I pulled out all the blocks to trim them down and they were a mess of odd sizes.  As a result I'm not sure this quilt will make it any further.

Pickle dish quilt progress

These little arcs of colour make me inordinately happy.

They come together really quickly. The most time consuming part is cutting around the templates.  Once that is done the sewing is a snap.  I now have nearly 100 of these arcs - enough to make a quilt of 4 x 5 circles.

At the time of purchase, I didn't realise I need an accompanying set of templates for all the joining blocks. They've been ordered and I'm eagerly looking out my studio window while I sew to see if there's a nice looking parcel in our letterbox. Hopefully today.

Until then, I will just have to satisfy myself with laying these blocks out on our bed.

Pickle dish quilt

Last week I dropped by the Quilt and Craft Fair that came to Melbourne.  As well as seeing the amazing quilts on display, I went hunting for quilting supplies.

Specialty rulers and templates were a bit of a revelation to me.  I'd never used one before I made my kaleidoscope quilt. When I discovered the difference they can make to accurate piecing I was hooked. So I'm now on the lookout for other nifty rulers and devices that make my quilting better.

One of my purchases at the fair was a set of pickle dish templates.  These are fun!  And I love sewing pieces that have the corners trimmed.  It makes for quick and easy alignment.

Look at these little piles of loveliness.  I pulled all the happy fabrics from my stash.  Clear and bright fabrics that look fresh and cheery against the white.

Yum.  Now I'm off to join them together.

My house is a mess.  There are little snippets of fabric all over the carpet.  I'm covered in threads and I haven't eaten lunch. But I'm happy as a lark while I potter in my studio for the day, playing with fabric and listening to Pandora.  Life is sweet.

What's your favourite quilting tool?  I've got a few.  I'll share with you my other purchases in a future post soon.

Down Under Doll Quilt Swap Round 3

Round three of the Down Under Doll Quilt Swap is on.  And a doll sized quilt is perfect for me right now, as term 3 is a busy time for us.

Here is my inspiration mosaic - to give my partner an idea of what I like.  No real common theme here, so probably not that helpful for her.  But in reality, anything would be divine.

So I'm off to study my partner's blog and flickr feed and faves to get some ideas forming for what I might make.  Fun, fun.

A 'very me' quilt

I'm blogging from the snow.  We are here for 17 days and I didn't bring any sewing or craft with me.  I am missing the stitching and handling of fabric.  There is a lot of down time here.  All the children are occupied in lessons each day. (Adelaide came home from her lesson today with a "Level 2" badge she is very proud of.  She has graduated from her beginner class which means she has mastered the snow plough. She gave the badge a little kiss as she snuggled into bed for her day sleep.)

We adults generally ski in the mornings and then come indoors at lunchtime.  The family is benefitting from my lack of craft distractions with yummy dinners every night.  Tonight it's roast pork with crackling - perfect winter fare. I managed to do a 15 day menu plan and bring everything I needed from Melbourne, which means I don't have to rely on the limited choice here on the mountain. 

In fact our family has been eating very well since I discovered Bill Granger's cookbooks.  All the recipes are tasty and simple and I've put him up there ahead of Jamie Oliver for tasty family recipes.

These are photos of a little quilting project I started working on a few weeks ago.  I was inspired by this image, and suddenly I just had to replicate it.

I rumaged in my box of shirting fabrics and pulled out all of these that shared the same pretty blue tone.  Many of these are from Townmouse production, and some are from a local shirting maker who I have been known to visit from time to time to beg for scraps.

I will look forward to progressing this some more when we are back into term time.

Free motion quilting practice

I'm practising my free motion quilting.

This isn't something I've tried before.

I needed a small project on which to practise, so another hot water bottle cover was whipped up.

I like these loopy loops.  They remind me of those handwriting practice sheets my youngest son brings home from school.

Free motion quilting is relatively easy on a small piece like this.  It's when you try it on a bulky quilt that it gets harder.  

I'm thinking of purchasing one of those unattractive sewing tables that your machine sits flat in. Do you have one of these?  

My industrial machine sits flat within a table.  It's as ugly as can be, but is lovely to sew at.  I'm sure it will make all the difference to machine quilting.  My machine currently sits on a rickety little Ikea table with my overlocker.  Not really ideal.

(By the way, does anyone else get confused between 'practice' and 'practise'.  I'm having to recall primary school grammar to write this post.)

Finished Ribbon Quilt

Finishing a quilt was such a good feeling, I was inspired to finish another.

This quilt is from way back.  I started it years ago.

I call it the ribbon quilt as the background fabric looks like a ribbon running through the blocks.

The Purl Bee did a cute version and called it the Masking Tape Quilt.

Most of the fabrics in it have been in my stash for 15 to 20 years; back in the days when I was drawn more to antique quilts and reproduction fabrics.

The quilt isn't that large (I ran out of the background fabric). It's cot quilt size.

It will be more at home at our place at the snow, where the interior has red touches.  This can sit over the back of the red armchair there (yes, red chair, a la Graham Norton). An old print from our first house has gone there, which has the same muddy reds and yellows in it.

I think it will all hang together quite well.

Now, which quilt will I finish next?  I must make the most of this momentum.

Finished Tide Pool Quilt

Oh my, I've finished a quilt.  This is a rarity.

The quilt top has been hanging around since mid 2010.  And it's not the only quilt that has stalled at the quilting stage.

But nearly two years later I'm still fond of it, so it was on the top of the To Do list of quilt finishes.

As I said in my earlier post about this quilt, it really has no place in our current house.  It's too fresh and modern.

So this might be relegated to the linen cupboard with my other quilts that don't see the light of day.

Or maybe I could clear a shelf or two in the armoire in my studio.  Now that I don't have a lot of Townmouse stock left, it might be better use of that storage space.

I'm so excited to have finished a quilt, I'm going to post it over on the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's blog. Do head over and take a look at the many hundreds of quilts that are popping up there.

Quick quilting project

Recently I've moved my many thousands of family photos onto an external hard drive.  My previous external hard drive hit the floor that many times that it started to really falter.

Family photos are too precious to lose, so I decided to satisfy a sewing urge and whip up a simple protective pouch for it.

I decided to put a buttonhole at the top so it can remain closed even while in use.

I just plug it in through the buttonhole.  Now if it gets knocked off the table the photos aren't lost.

One of Adelaide's hair elastics, stitched into the binding, serves as a button loop.

Quilts in the making

This airing rack I bought a while ago seems to have become the place where my quilt tops hang out while they wait to be completed.

There are a couple of swoon blocks hiding there; there's my half square triangle star quilt (3 blocks complete) and some blocks made with the Quick Curve Ruler that are awaiting sashing.

Adelaide has taken a liking to this quilt because it's in the favourite colours of most little girls - pink and purple.  Not my favourite colours but this quilt seemed to call for bright fabrics.  These are Joel Dewberry Heirloom prints.

I've decided I'm going to take my quilt tops to a long arm quilter and get them finished.  There are too many now that at are the quilt top stage and aren't progressing any further.