Cheeky Cat!

Cat borrowed my chair this afternoon, so I couldn't do any more of my little quilt!

In December we were given four pieces of fabric at Imperial Quilters and the challenge is to make a 'spring' quilt with them and only adding two other fabrics. (See Tuesday 27 December 2011 blog).

I bought a copy of this last winter - recommended by DIL and had a plan to make a wall hanging for the kitchen...

These are some foundation pieced table mats in the book.....

So as you can see the patterns are quite large - the cereal bowl and jar are both 4-1/2 square and the jug is 9 inches.

We need to do a hanging less than 15 inches square for the challenge ..... so I had a plan to do each square 2 inches. (well as near to two inches as is possible with metric squared paper!)  I couldn't reduce the patterns, so I started with squared paper and just drew them......

I did the tea cup first, then the jar and sewed them onto two x 2 inch plain squares.... this whole piece measures 4 inches square.

This morning I finished the milk jug.  It was my second attempt, because the first attempt was drawn wrong.  This is 2 inches x 4 inches.

And this afternoon - I will be doing some more.  I thought I had another week to finish this, but having turned over the page in my diary it will need to be finished and delivered somewhere on Wednesday evening - ready for hanging on Thursday.  So that leaves today!!!

London Quilt Exhibition Workshop

I went to a Quilt exhibition by the London Quilters at Swiss Cottage Library on a recent visit and they were running workshops for quilting techniques.  What fun!  Spent the day there - and I missed the rain too!

This is quilting - the designs were drawn out for us.

This is Cathedral Windows.

That reminded me of a Cathedral Window wall hanging I made ages ago..... using Japanese fabrics and a Sashiko style of stitching around the motifs.  It was hung up under the stairs - can't see it there - think I'll keep it in the kitchen for a while!

A few close ups - my darling son bought me the tassle for Christmas many years ago - it looks good on here.

My bag with Japanese folded patchwork squares is coming along nicely - it is partly sewn together.  I saved some for the Calder Quilters meeting, so I would have some hand sewing to do.

 

Three more page views.....

.... and I will have 1000 page views since I started this blog.

I'll have to have a free giveaway next week to celebrate!  Watch this space!

This is going to end up as a quilted bag!  it is circles folded into squares with a different piece of fabric and wadding as the square. Tinkerbelle is holding some of the pieces down so they don't run out the door!

There are three left to do.

Bought this postcard at Tate Modern of a Gees Bend quilt

Fabric bought from Quilting Antics - it's very cute, not sure what I'll make with it yet.

I love London fabric bought on my trip to London from a stall at Stitch and Craft at Olympia.

Bought from Quilting Antics

For £1 tombola ticket you get a random mystery piece of fabric - this is red and green with cherries on......

... and this one is red and green with cherries on too!

Dyeing Workshop..

No, it wasn't like the Retirement Workshop I was sent on at work....

The dyeing workshop was run by Hazel from  Cotton Cocktails .  Thanks, Hazel, for a very exciting workshop.  The workshop was suitable for both beginners and the more experienced dyer - some people had brought threads to dye too and different cotton fabrics.  In the afternoon Hazel showed us how to dye silk scarves in the microwave - I didn't do that because its not very vegan.... but it was fascinating to watch and the other course members had terrific results.

We started with one of the primary colours in the cups, then added another to it....  We used magenta, turquoise and lemon yellow.

This was pink shaded, adding more water to each dye bath to make it lighter....

Here's me cutting up fabric....

I folded these two pieces into little wads and added colour

These were tray dyed - soaked in fixer first then drops of colour added

Rinsed, washed and hung out to dry

ditto

ditto

ditto

ditto

This was folded into a wad and yellow and orange added

Tray dyed

Tray dyed

tray dyed

I tray dyed some turban cotton

This was pulled from the centre and string tied round then dye added in stripes... love the effect

This was folded into a wad and pink and turquoise added

This was rolled into a bun shape and yellow green and pink added - the green was a pale lime and doesn't show up much

yellow dye in a cup then turquoise dripped down the sides

ditto, but with magenta dripped down the sides

These are all the gradations of colours from the cup dyeing.  Four spoons of the primary colour in the front cup then three, two and one in subsequent cups and then one two and three spoons of another colour added to the next cups......

Three shades of pink