Clever, useful, pretty

Both of these makes had people looking very closely when they were seen at ‘show and tell’ a high;Iggy of our regular meetings, so we expect to see more.

Pat made a clutch bag for a friend, starting with a Kawandi-style
panel, with an appealing mix of prints

The quilting is more varied than usually seen in Kawandi quilts

Pat made the button from resin.it’s loop is a stretchy
jersey to make it easier to close

Versatile fabric trays made by Julie can be packed flat,
and snapped at the corner to make a deeper, portable tray.
The flat measurement here  is 7” x 9”, but can be any size.

They are very useful for travel, or at home, for sewing notions
in use, or keeping other items together, such as keys or jewellery,
 then packed away flat when not in use.
A free online tutorial can be found on
Flourishing Palms blog.

 

A little lockdown reading

 Visit A Quilt Studio Like No Other: Maria Shell’s Alaska Off-the-Grid Hideaway

Peeking into an artist’s workplace can open a window into their creative process. When you consider how much time and effort it takes to create a body of work like Maria Shell’s – full of intricate improvisational piecing, exuberant color, and innovative techniques – and the prolific nature of her quilt making, you just know that the spaces in which she creates must be exceptional … Vivika DeNegre, Quilting Arts, 20 August 2021

Missouri Inmates Sew Custom Quilts for Foster Children

Every so often, Jim Williams wakes up in the middle of the night and lies awake inside his prison cell, thinking about quilt designs.

As his fellow inmates at South Central Correctional Center snore and shift in their sleep, Williams mulls over the layout of cloth shapes, rearranging them in his mind. “I’m kind of a perfectionist,” he said. “I’ll wake up at 2:30 in the morning and think, ‘That color really isn’t going to work.’”  Associated Press, 12 July 2021

True Confessions: First Quilt

… (Dr Carolyn Mazloomi) went home determined to make a quilt of her own. She knew that she wanted her quilt to have a cotton batt, but all the batts she found were polyester. She decided to make her own batt using the only source of flat cotton she was aware of: wound dressing…. Suzanne Labry, International Quilt Festival, 9 August 2021

 

Top 10 Children’s Books about Quilts

With so many children's books available these days, it can be hard to know the perfect book to get for your favorite quilting family. Sharing our love of quilts with younger generations is so important. And before you can sit a child in front of a sewing machine and teach them to quilt, you can read them books about quilts. That's why we're excited to share our top 10 children's books about quilts!   Laura Hopper, Suzy Quilt, 28 May 2021

 

 

Some lessons 2 (of 2)

Miriam brought a lovely big pile of quilts that we were delighted to see up close again, and talked us through her fabric choices. Most of them were her own design.

Like Nerida, Miriam collects small cuts of many different fabrics, and is not averse to quirky prints in some of her quilts. She also collects yardage for some backgrounds and borders. She has a very well honed eye for putting colour palettes together, and is conscious of achieving contrast through colour and tone. 

Miriam's most recently finished top features a vintage
linen as the centre background, an appliqued basket
border and a seminole-style outer border - a lot
of different fabrics working well together.

Some features of the basket border are constant, others are
more random. The vibrant background ties the quilt together.

This scrappy log cabin reads as a two colour quilt,
but on closer examination you can see there are flashes
of many colours adding depth. Note that the scrappy low
volume prints in the background are all white with red.

The low volume background here is a delicate pink print,
the feature fabrics are vibrant, but a controlled palette, and that
 border of squares is a serendipitous print.

Miriam designed this quilt as a class sample, with a controlled
palette on a contrasting fine cross hatch background ...

... and a second sample is in a completely different,
muted palette of blues, with small pieces of a honey
beige introducing warmth.

This 'Trip Around the World' was made in a hand pieced
Instagramsewalong with Brigitte Giblin. The red with white
spot fabricwas the feature fabric, required by the design.
Miriam recommends not choosing all the fabrics before
starting, as the look of the whole design can change
with each row, and dictate the next row.

Miriam included this bright quilt of simple shapes to remind
us how solid colours can add to the vibrancy of a quilt.

And this one to remind us that contrast is actually not
always necessary - similar tones and colours can provide calm
and softness, and look absolutely beautiful.

Community quilts 2 - Nerida’s quilt

Nerida  generously raided her own scrap stash to make 'Crooked Courthouse Steps', a free pattern from Bonnie Hunter (tutorial here), for our community collection. She's already started on another one, to use up some smaller scraps!

Stitched fun

Looking for something small and quick to stitch, rather than starting a new large quilt or tacking the ufo pile?


SewMiriam has posted a free tutorial on both her Instagram account and blog, for her Cheerful Chickens - an easy make with lots of uses. Maybe make them with or for some children in your life.

'In your hands these chickens feel very soothing. They can be used as sewing weights to hold down patterns, as pin cushions, or as a happy companion on your desk or window sill.'

Here is Hilary's first chicken:

Louise has alerted us to Sarah De Jonge's Kindness Hearts, little felt 'pocket hearts' given to people going through difficult times.

• ABC news story about 1000 Hearts

• Sarah's 1000 Hearts website

A quick guide to making a disappearing 4 patch block

There's been renewed interest in disappearing 9 patch and disappearing 4 patch blocks lately, as some of our members have made them for the first time. Links to tutorial for both are in the 'Links to techniques and resources' list just under the banner photo at the top of this page.

A small sample of our disappearing four patch quilts -
they work well with just two fabrics , a limited palette,
or with scrappy backgrounds and feature fabrics.

Here is a quick pictorial guide to making a disappearing 4 patch block. The starting squares can be any size, and the cuts to the four patch can be any width - this block started with 6 1/2" squares, and the cuts were made 1 3/4" from the centre seams. The wider the cuts, the less distinct the design becomes:

Run out of ideas for scraps?

Are you looking for ideas to use up all those scraps? Well, maybe not all of them ... here are a couple of ideas:

Warm and Cool - a great scrap-buster quilt by My Quilt Infatuation
It turned out shockingly busy and loud; and I totally love it!

Good Day Sunshine: A Scrappy Quilt Tutorial - from Sew Mama Sew
... (It) does double-duty! It chips away at your scraps while shaking off the last weeks of winter, in a palette that promises spring is on its way.

Stunning contemporary embroidery

You might be surprised by every aspect of these embroiderers' work - the subjects, techniques and the surfaces used (or not) - there's a lot to see and ponder, so maybe one for a lazy weekend afternoon?

• 19 Artists Creatively Pushing the Boundaries of Embroidery, My Modern Met, 24 February 2016

Modern pieced animal quilt blocks

If you can make a basic Drunkard's Path block, you can easily make one of the cleverest and cutest sets of pieced animal blocks that ever got itself quilted.  Dani Miller's online Wee Animal Quilt tutorial caught the attention of Cindy of Live a Colorful Life, who produced her version, Animal Planet, for her little grandson.  The two blog posts together feature many excellent photos of the process and the finished quilts.

• Dani Miller on Instagram: @knitty34
• Live a Colorful Life on Instagram:@liveacolorfullife

One of our members' test block for
Elizabeth Hartman's Fancy Fox pattern

Elizabeth Hartman, of Oh Fransson! fame is also renowned for her growing menagerie of very cute and clever pieced animal blocks (kittens, foxes, hedgehogs, whales, with bunnnies, owls and others in development).  Her website/blog is currently under reconstruction for a relaunch at the end of this month, but you can see images and purchase patterns from her online shop in the meantime, and several local quilt shops (such as Cottage Quiltworks and Kim Bradley Creations) stock print editions, and have sample quilts on display.

• Elizabeth Hartman on Instagram: @elizabethagh

More 'disappearing' block trickery

Disappearing nine patches and disappearing four patches are well known and popular, and some of us have ventured into the double disappearing nine patch.  Time for some more disappearing' block tutorials.

In these You Tube videos, Jenny Doan from the Missouri Star Quilt Company demonstrates how to make two more 'disappearing' blocks:

• Disappearing hour-glass

• Disappearing pin-wheel

Luckily, the blocks don't actually disappear, they just create an illusion by becoming something that looks much more complicated than it really is. And that can be quick, and very handy indeed.

Don't forget to add a sleeve to your show quilt!

Origin of SLEEVE
Middle English sleve, from Old English slīefe; perhaps akin to Old English slēfan to slip (clothes) on, slūpan to slip, Old High German sliofan, Latin lubricus slippery
First Known Use: before 12th century ... (Source: Free Merriam-Webster dictionary online)

Overheard: an amusing conversation among some Fairholme members this week about their puzzlement as novice quilters at the very suggestion that a sleeve might be added to a quilt - how odd would that look? And just the one?

So here is a timely blog from Brenda Gael Smith for Fairholme members preparing quilts for our show in just 10 days, with a link to an excellent tutorial by Susan Brubaker Knapp: A “D” for Quilt Sleeves.

Handy online tutorials

• Triangle thread catcher (Needling Things)

• Colour Theory for Quilters (The Elven Garden) - a series of blog posts by Modern quilters, some of them Australian, designed for novice quilters

• Continuous bias binding (McCalls Quilting)

Free online tutorials ideal for summer holidays

Visit Fresh Lemons (a blog by Faith from Chicago - a quilter, writer and designer) who along with her quilting business services, is involved in community projects and offers a range of free online patterns, and quilt-along activities.  Two that might catch our interest at this time of year are:

• Solstice Stars Series - 5 block tutorials for new star block designs (originally posted in January - February 2012)

• Summer Sampler Series - a quilt along based on 12 blocks in Barbara Brackman’s book The Encyclopedia Of Pieced Quilt Patterns (originally posted June - August 2011)

For the hexie-ists ...

The predilection for hexagons amongst Fairholme Quilters member has been noted! Want to make a cute pouch with hexies to keep your hexie-making stuff in?  A great excuse to make a few more hexies ...

Here's a neat, detailed tutorial written by Haley Pierson-Cox, from The Zen of Making - clear instructions, lots of photos, and links to two earlier tutorials on English paper piecing in case you've forgotten how to do it, or you just happen to be a hexie-virgin.

Image from The Zen of Making, with Haley's kind permission