We’ve made a decision

When the English Quilt girls met this week for our regular monthly day of stitching at Gail’s there was lots of progress to be seen. 

Three of the four of us who had missed the June get-together because we were gallivanting around various parts of the globe (including our own wide brown land) were keen to prove our hands hadn’t been idle.

Rae has started on the hand applique borders for her Whirligig quilt in her signature mellow shades – she’s using plenty of terracotta, teal and sage, with some raspberry and a twist of lime as well.  You’re going to have to wait till Rae’s completed a border to see just how good this looks, but trust me it’s working a treat!

You can guess where Rae went on her holiday by this cute little souvenir she gave me.  It’s a sticky note pad with a design adapted from a patchwork coverlet in the grandmother’s garden design made in England between 1797 and 1852 hanging in the Victoria & Albert Museum.  Yes, our Rae has been to see the V & A special quilt exhibition! The colours in Jill’s kitchen chair cushions should give you a clue to her favourite landscape – red earth and gum trees, and a sky that goes on forever.  Jill’s been touring the outback of Australia, and I’m sure she was inspired by the terrain when she made these, the start of a bigger set.

As you know, I’ve been working on my Whirligig borders too.  I quickly laid out my 9 whirligig blocks on the floor (the order is absolutely random, so it will almost certainly not be the final lay-out) and plonked my unfinished borders alongside, just to get a feel for the colours. Our other wanderer, Lynne, is almost back home too and we’re looking forward to a little ‘show and tell’ soon.

You’ll recall that Anne’s been working away of a particularly gorgeous Candied Hexagon / Frederica Josephson quilt in mostly dusty pinks and blues.  It has the right amount of planned placement - with just a touch of randomness to make it interesting.     Robbie has been appliqueeing the blocks for this fresh floral scrappy quilt for months, it seems.  Suddenly it’s all together, and she’s well into the quilting.  Being a whizz at hand quilting, Robbie should have it finished quite soon. Gail is another one who doesn’t waste time, and her Prickly Pear quilt top is nearly complete.  She spent the day stitching on appliqueed leaves.  She was quite out of her comfort zone with these colours – deliberately so – but this quilt has lots of pizzazz and I think she should feel very pleased with the result. We had hoped to start another quilt together (not really together, but making the same quilt alongside each other, if you get what I mean) but we’ve decided to make this year a time to finish off our projects before starting a new quilt in the new year.   

Unusually sensible for a bunch of quilters, I know :-)) - but there you are!

Sue Ross Whirligigs, Prickly Pears and other sweet delights (Part 1)

How lucky are we Paddington Patchworkers to have Sue Ross visiting us over 3 months to teach us some of her most graphic quilts?
It’s a measure of Sue’s skill as a teacher that she can simultaneously teach three quilt designs, moving around to each group, instructing and advising, then moving on to the next.   Gail is making Sue’s Prickly Pear design, an exercise in putting together fabrics in difficult-to-use hues, and after she and Sue had crawled around on the floor swapping and re-swapping blocks, this was the final layout.  Taking a photo is the perfect way to remember the plan you’ve settled on, once you’ve gone home, walked the dog, cooked dinner, stacked the dishwasher – and then decided to get the sewing machine out again, and you have a “Now, where was I?” moment.
Jan and Di B are tackling the intricately pieced blocks of Strawberry Shortcake, but where Jan is hand-piecing hers --  Di is machining her version (working title “Lemon Cheesecake”!) Machine stitching calls for an accurate 1/4” stitching line, so once she had drawn around her perspex template, Di used this nifty little gadget to draw a cutting line exactly 1/4” from the first line.  Easy peasy. I love collecting sewing gizmos!!!  How about you?