Black & White

I spent most of my creative time this week working on my Black & White quilt.

I used black poly velvet in strips between the squares and around the edge.

Side 1

I'm quite pleased with how it has turned out so far......

its not finished though......I hope to work on each of the squares to hand quilt around the flowers but that can be done as and when the mood takes me :)

Side 2

Now it sits on my sofa and I can cuddle under it in the winter evenings.

Just in time it seems as I think I'm coming down with a head cold and in need of a little comfort :(

sniff sniff

on another black and white note this is a little Zebra I bought last year for Charlotte's Christmas, she has now outgrown it

 (catching her toes under it on Monday while trying to have a go! :( poor wee thing)

Hes a lovely little wooden rocker, I bought him from a lovely seller on EBay.

now he needs a new home.

cute isn't he!

I was always going to fill the name in

but never got around to it. It kinda suits him anyway
So Clark is heading on to gumtree to find a new home, and
yesterday Charlotte and I went for a drive to collect a new rocker

needless to say shes delighted with him! she can just about climb up all by herself and as you can see, has had lots of fun already..... thanks to Gumtree, my favourite place at the moment.
The best thing about it is, it's free to list and sell, meaning the sellers gets to keep 100% Thats good for everyone :) I know its been around for a while now but I think its growing and more people are using it everyday worth a look for those who like a bargain.

Rose of Sharon Quilt

Firstly I want to show you this picture of the Rose of Sharon quilt my sister Theresa and I worked on for her daughter Adele. It's a double bed size completed in 1994.

As I wrote previously, I'm now working on a black and white one, a smaller version, for my sofa, a square one with 4 blocks each side.

After I posted about the problems I was having with the grey fabric, I read Anne's post about using freezer paper for applique I thought that it looked like a much better way so I gave it go.

If your read her post the shape is first cut out of freezer paper this is then ironed onto the right side of the fabric, however....I didn't have any freezer paper but the outline of each shape was already drawn on the back of each of the cotton pieces so I thought I would give it a go with the glue

you can see the coloured glue along the snipped edge up to the line.

edge folded over with the use of a cocktail stick

the finished piece already to sew on.

This worked fine I thought but I decided to get the freezer paper to try it out on the bigger bits to see if it would give me a smother rounded edge and to try it on the grey fabric.

The freezer paper method worked great on the cotton fabric but not the grey, it wouldn't stick with the glue, the folded cut edges kept jumping back up and it also melts too easy with the iron....as I found out on my trial piece, so after about 30 mins trying to get the edges to stay stuck under, I melted the whole lot with the iron!!!! grrrr.....I didn't keep, I popped it in the bin, decided not to let it annoy..... it sorry no pic.

However I'm still delighted to use this new method for all the other pieces and have found the sewing machine method of backing the grey pieces and turning right sides out is the best way forward here.

I have now competed the first two blocks for the second side.
The glue method gives a much neater finish and I find the pieces a lot easier and quicker to stitch on.

Not the best picture I have to say but I took it this evening in artificial light.

I'll get a better picture tomorrow of these and all the other 4 completed for the other side of the quilt.

WIP applique

A close up of the leaf section of the ROS quilt

This is one of the first ones I stitched on, they can bequite fidley to do because of the fabric I have chosen. It's a rayon type fabric that freys easily but it has a lovely sheen on it and is hardwearing.

I decided against bondaweb after it left glue marks on the fabric and made it quite stiff, ok for wall hangings but not for a lap quilt, I want if to drape nicely and feel soft.

Theresa suggested that I use a different method for these pieces, she showed me some applique pieces she had bought from USA which had been backed , this made them easy to sew on and took the frayed edge problem away.  I wasn't keen at first but after stitching another couple on, I decided I would try this other method. I don't know if it has a name,  if you know of it and can tell me what its call do let me know.

You could do it by hand but I decided to use my machine

The fabric is pinned right sides together with a thin backing fabric,  and the outline of the shape is drawn onto the backing fabric.

The outline is then stitched on the machine, leaving an opening somewhere

the piece is then cut out and trimmed close to the stitch line turned inside out, ironed flat then stitched in place. Here is a picture of how it looks.

It's not as flat as the other one but still looks good, and I think it will be more durable.

I have to say it was so much easier to stitch down, although some might think this is cheating.....

I decided to try this method with the outer petal section and took more pictures to show you.

As these shapes had already been cut out and marked with the outline on the back, I place these right side down onto the backing fabric and stitched on top of the outline

Cut them out and sniped across the corners 

turned them inside out..........

I used this ball end tool to help me get into the corners

and ironed them flat.

it was more difficult stitching these into place and some puckering occurred on the inner petal piece as you can see in the next picture......

but I was able to straighten most of it out when I stitched along the other side

this puckering is mainly due to the fact that the inner petal pieces were not a more uniform shape as they were stitched on the using a different method......hope I'm making sense here

I think if this method was used for the inner petal pieces also then they would all fit nicely together.

Although this method, does take more time preparing the pieces and involves using the sewing machine, its quite straightforward and I think once you have the pieces it's still enjoyable to sit and hand stitch them in place, what you don't get is the fiddly fraying edges popping out and I'm not having to find the outline all the time.

I will decide at the end of this forth block whether I will carry on with this method for all the shapes on the blocks on the other side, or to revert back to just using it for the grey leaf sections where it worked well.

Its been so long since we worked on Adeles quilt I forget how I stitched them.

W I P Black & White Quilt

 I started this quilt in February, but haven't taken any pictures till today.

My sister Theresa bought me a beautiful stack of black and white FQs for my birthday Last year, to make a quilt for myself. She saw me admire the fabric bundle at the creative stitches show and bought me it.

It has taken me so long to start it because I just couldn't make up my mind what I wanted to do with it.

A few years ago when I used to live in the country Theresa and I lived next door to each other in farm cottages. We spent many a winter evening by coal fires stitching and sharing ideas and fabrics.

One birthday she bought me this book

I have made and re made many of the lovely projects in this book and it has remained one of my favourites

We both worked on this quilt pattern from the book for her Daughter Adele.

A beautiful Rose of Sharon Quilt

It was a lovely pattern to work with, all hand appliqued.

There is a little bit about the original quilts (there were 4 of them)

all made by a mother and her sister for her 4 daughters.

If you click on this picture you can read it.

It was only quite recently when Theresa was mending the quilt for Adele that I remembered how I had enjoyed working on it so much and it was later on that evening that it struck me how beautiful this quilt would look with the black and white prints.

I couldn't wait to get started

so far I have completed 3 blocks the quilt will have 4 blocks on each side. the centre circle is black velvet and I plan to get more velvet for the sashing and borders.

These are the rest of the blocks all cut out and ready to stitch.

Each square measures 17" the finished quilt size will be about 48"square.

 I will try to get a picture to show you, of the quilt we worked on together for Adele.