June !

Wow the 6th month of the year is here. We are now using my Irish chain quilt as it has wool batting. This seems to be holding the cold at bay, but, as soon as it gets colder we are going to have to add a layer.

The temperature still warms up to an excellent temperature by about 10 in the morning.
I see that next week is going to be quite chilly. We will definitely going to be adding an extra layer. Possibly the Dear Jane can start earning her keep.

May was fun. I did something I had never thought I would do and that was enter my quilt into a festival. I was lucky enough to come second in hand made quilts and third on Viewers choice. Thanks to all who added their vote. I do appreciate it. There is even a prize which is quite exciting. The other quilt got 38 votes and that was fine seeing as it was the first quilt that I had made. 

I have made progress on my wall hanging. I have done the top of the cathedral window. I am now adding buttons. Oh the boredom of sewing on more than 100 buttons. Each button had 6 crossing strands and the a stay knot. On and on and on. I stole all of the buttons off my husband's shirts(old shirts not the ones he currently wears). Some of the buttons that come off expensive shirts are quite beautiful.

I bought some old fashioned buttons on Ebay, but, I think I will have finished this item before they arrive. I may add one or two on the border. Today I may work on the border. If I spend another whole day, stitching on buttons, it may render me incapable of ever sewing on another button on anyone's shirt and then my husband would be sad.

I have been going through Dear Jane withdrawal. I need to find the next large quilt project to do. I started the Dear Jane on the 1st of June 2012.
I want to decide today what my next large project will be.
What did you do as a follow up quilt to Dear Jane?

I don't want to end up in an endless cycle of making Dear Jane quilts.
It feels almost as bad as when you are studying. Once you have finished it takes an effort to give yourself permission to do something else. Quilting is the something else that I chose to do.
I have seen these two pictures each time I looked up a block when I was making my Dear Jane. 

I have been gathering pictures to try and spark the creative juices as it were. I thought a granny's garden may be fun. A stained glass window would be dramatic. A fully appliquéd quilt may be a challenge.  A mandala quilt would be Zennish. My husband wants me to do a fresh and original design. This would be fine if I just knew on which path my next quilt lay. I think this is the problem with hand piecing and hand quilting quilts, they take a long time and should not be entered into lightly. See I even think of quilts in the same way as I think of marriage. You should only start a quilt once you know that you can faithfully complete it. I think if everyone was committed to their projects, then no abandoned projects would exist. :D

I have been thinking of doing some mug rugs and some oven gloves. I don't know if this is considered a project as they should not take me too long to do. Maybe inter-project tasks are a good idea.

Hope all in the north are enjoying their summer and that all of us in the south are enjoying the cool weather.

Have a good one.

Kathy's Dear Jane

I thought it would be fun to join this festival. This is the Dear Jane that I hand pieced and hand quilted.

I used the English paper method for almost all of the blocks. I went back and appliquéd five of the small circles that I was unhappy with.

This quilt was a true adventure. It took about two years to achieve.

 Here are some photos.

The back of the quilt looks like this.This was when I was adding the three layers together.

Have an amazing blog hop. Here is the festival address:
Quilt festival

Dear Jane completed

Dear Jane is complete.

Here are the dates

started 1st of June 2012 and finished on the 18th April 2014.  This was a span of 686 days.

Piecing started 1st June 2012 finished 24th April 2013 which is 327 days.

Started stitching the blocks together on the 26th April 2013 and finished on the 18th of August 2013. It took 114 days to put this quilt together.

Took another 34 days break in which I made the backing.

Started quilting on the 21st of September 2013 and complete on the 18th of April 2014. The quilting took 205 days.

Took 646 days sewing to make my Dear Jane quilt. 

Here is the label. This is the first quilt that I have labelled.

What a journey.

Have an amazing day!

Dear Jane - quilting has started

So after such a long wait the poor Dear Jane Quilt has a back.

The batting was sandwiched in yesterday and today I have actually started quilting on it. 

Today I found my quilting thread and all of the tiny needles that I would need. I even bought some extra hand cream as quilting is quite harsh on the hands. I should have just gone and got my normal vitamin E cream that I use as the one that I got has perfume in it and it burned my poor delicate skin.

 It is such a thrill to put the quilt into the wooden circle for the first time. This thrill soon wares off as the reality of quilting 277 separate units. It was even fun seeing the pins that were keeping the layers together. This thrill dissipated as each pin managed to draw blood as I was taking them out of the quilt. My thumb nail too was complaining as the pins are really tight. The last one I opened using a quick unpick but that I think damaged the pin. The quick unpick I was not that worried about as I have sooo many of them.

 I always quilt from the centre out and I enjoyed starting with a happy circle. My stitching is really gross to start with and then improved to merely shoddy. As an excuse is the fact that I have only been doing quilting for 3 years and ... ok so I just need more practice, no excuses give.

The thing is that the quilts feel great and tactile and that is all that you need form a quilt. What I also liked about the centre block is that the first square is going to be right in the middle of a backing square and from here on in the will slowly but surely slide of the centre and meander into no-mans land of imprecise placement. See quilting is really and exercise in Zen.

You really have to just accept what the way the quilt will come out and not destroy the calm of trying to only accept perfection.

The next three I will do are all the greens and then I will box off the middle and start on the next occurrence.  I can see the program and now that I am initiated I just have to keep on stitching and before I know it I will be at 2% complete as it is I have not even reached 1%.

See the Dear Jane quilt is also good for maths skills as I sit and stitch I also calculate what percent I have completed and how far the thread that I have stitched would actually go.

Have a stunning day.

Top together

The borders and corners have now been added to the centre of the Dear Jane. Here are various pictures.

Centre complete

Oh yay the centre is now complete.

If there is one thing that I have learnt from this exercise that if I ever make another Dear Jane quilt I will do the sashing and joining as I go.

The only thing that kept me from going completely insane was the fact that I re-did a few of the blocks that did not measure up in the cold light of day. I know the thought is that it is better done than perfect, but, even at my best they are not perfect, and down right ugly should be re-done. I now will start stitching the borders together. I did about 3 inches on one of the triangles and could not find my rhythm as the triangles feel a whole lot different from stitching blocks. My fingers will just have to learn this new lesson.

Hope everyone is having an amazing Wednesday.

Rows 7 done - middle more than half way

With the completion of row 7, the middle of Dear Jane is more than half way there. The photo is a bit weird as the quilt was blowing in the wind. 

I went to a fabric store today and the strangest thing happened; I only bought a thimble that I had gone to the store for. I think this is due to the fact that I have to take my sewing room in hand and organise all of my fabrics. The other thing is that I have not really settled on what I will be doing when I have finished stitching my Dear Jane. I am sure the next time that I am in a retail situation with fabric being available I will succumb to temptation  as I normally do.

Have a good one 

Dear Jane - 6 rows together

So another week and another row attached to the Dear Jane. Now I have 6 rows and I am now working on the middle row.What a long and arduous task it is to attach the sashing.

The thing is it is not just a quick stitch of fabric to fabric, what it is actually is a quality control exercise.

I have had to realign some of the squares on new paper so as to get the squares nicely in place. I then stitch on the white fabric and depending on where the block is going to ( the edge or the middle) I cut out a new piece of paper according to the stripes I need.  This then ensures that all of the blocks are the same size.

The kitty decided to come outside whilst we were taking the picture of the quilt.


Have a good one.

Schlocks made

The family has had a group project and we all got together to make schlocks. These are fleecy socks to run around the house in. We had one or two technical problems (if you don't cut fleece in the correct direction it doesn't stretch) which cause us to have to remake half of the batch again. The full effort took us 3 hours to make 5 pairs.

Dear Jane's progress was a bit slow this week what with having to go fetch a replacement for our smart TV that went funny. The poor thing was only 9 months old and decided to have a wonky picture  and smoke coming out of its back. It was still under guarantee but the trouble with living in a third world country is that you have to be quite firm on getting your first world habits satisfied. In the end we got a new set that had the same specs as the one that blew up. This however took up stitching time. The other thing is that is currently pretty chilly here and we always seem to hibernate during the coldest part of winter. We can't complain seeing as we only normally have about 8 weeks of chilliness.

Now Jane has 5 rows.

This weekend is a three day one which will be grand.
Hope everyone has a great weekend.

I have added some chick fabric in a homage to the fact that the original Jane was made on a farm.


Have a good one!

Dear Jane - this week's progress

A week later and a little more progress has been made. Here are various photos. I like the ones with the sun shining through.

 Stain glass effect or a way to see all the nips made in the fabric to get the curvy bits in place.

These colours are so pretty, especially the blue and the yellow.

Hope everyone has a stunning weekend!

Dear Jane progress - to the purple line

Managed to get the purple blocks wearing their white sashes and the hook them up to be part of the quilt. With the Purple row done it gets to 23.66% of the centre done. Now on to the blue blocks.

Hope you have a good week.

Dear Jane progress report

The progress is slow but sure.
I have put the sashing around the first three colours in the corners.

This is the sequence in which I created them in the first place and it make logical sense to me to do the sashing in the same way.

I redid B1 as it had worked out too small and I redid the round bit on E5 as it way way too square. This has slowed my progress a bit as has the weather.

I am now doing the purples and it is always lovely to see the blocks once I remove the paper.

Have a good one