Bee blocks & more FMQ practice

I enjoy being in a Bee but I do feel the pressure of getting my blocks done and dusted asap.  These are April's blocks for Kate, and are called Converging Corners - here is the link to the online tutorial.

Kate wanted to use up scraps from a green quilt she had been making so here are my 2 blocks:

 Apologies for the big creases running down the middle - I had packaged them up for sending before remembering that I hadn't taken a photo!

I have also been having another go at FMQ - this time a paisley / clam shell type design:

One of the things that I am finding hard is keeping the shapes big - I thought it would be harder to do smaller shapes but actually it's the other way around.

Still lots of things on the back burner - Pervalong, Amelia dress, my PP'd February block that I need to knuckle down and do.  I have half the binding machined down on my daughter's Dolce quilt so hopefully that will be a nice thing to hand sew in the evening once I get the other half machined on.

I have also been doing a lot more reading recently.  Earlier this year I read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which is just a superb book.  I think Bring up the Bodies has just come out in paperback so I am going to get that one to carry on the story.

 

Another good book I read this month was The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh - little spoilt girl gets sent to South Africa - another good read.

Any book recommendations gratefully received!  I am getting to the point where I am too old to waste my time with rubbish books.  I only have time for good ones!

FMQ 101

FINALLY!  Nobody is ill, I don't have any accounts to do or dull meetings to go to, and everyone is in school or nursery or wherever they are supposed to be.  In celebration, I have found my balls, attached my free motion foot (not to my imaginary balls) and finally had a real life go at FMQ.  Huzzah!

Disclaimer:  Please excuse the lurid green cloth that I have been using to practise on, and perhaps go and get some sunglasses before you scroll down, so that you don't damage your eyes.

Here is FMQ attempt #1, during which I fought with the cloth, forgot to breathe and declared "This is ridiculous.  I am NEVER doing this again".

Happily, I rarely listen to myself, so I had another go on a fresh piece of green straight away - here is FMQ attempt #2:

Much better!  I can see why people say that the key is to practise, practise, practise.  I found Leah Day's Craftsy course very useful for helping out with things like how to stop big long stitches on starting and stopping (still getting used to that).

My mantra of the day - SLOW DOWN.  My instinct is to push the cloth away like an unexploded bomb.  I think I spend so much of my day rushing about that I forget how to do things slowly.

Also, how much bobbin thread does FMQ use????  I think I might just go and wind 10 bobbins in advance and be done with it.

G x

The best laid plans etc

Apologies for the lack of action on this blog.  The plague of ill children has struck the Pye household again, this time knocking out any kind of fun for 3 out of the past 4 weeks.  Hopefully a course of antibiotics will see off the current dastardly ear infection so that normal life can resume soon.

I didn't even have time to post about my Q1 Finish-a-Long, which is probably just as well, as despite a roaring start, it stalled in February and never really got going again.  On a happier note, I now have 2 quilts at the binding stage, and without the FAL they may have still been in boxes, so progress made.  Here is my elder daughter's Dolce quilt ready to bind:

I genuinely enjoy doing the binding which gives me an additional incentive to reclaim my evenings and sit on the sofa hand sewing, while my husband watches one of the many tedious series currently clogging up our Sky+ Planner.

I have missed the Q2 FAL deadline but I am still going to set some personal goals.  Although given this last month, just "any sewing whatsoever" would have been something to achieve.  I must also factor in my Bee blocks - I always forget to put them on my list, but they do take time.

I am also delighted to see BBC2 running the Great British Sewing Bee, on one hand just to get sewing on the map and also to see the poor contestants trying to whip up a piece of quality clothing in far too little time.  I haven't seen last night's episode yet so don't tell me who goes home!

It has also given me the nudge I needed to get my dressform (Christmas present from 2008) out of its box for the first time (*hangs head in shame*), adjusted to my expanding waistline, and set up in my sewing room:

... which, by the by, is another new development  - clearing out the cot & assorted paraphernalia from the old nursery and claiming it as Mummy's Dedicated Sewing Space.  Next step is to put a lock on the door.  Muhahahaaa!

I have traced the pattern pieces for this Green Bee Amelia dress which I am going to make up in a muslin first:

... with a view to then making it properly in Tula Pink's Saltwater - hoping that the bias cutting does some interesting things with the stripes:

But who knows!  I am not very experienced at dressmaking (except for children's clothes, which are much easier).  And it is possible that if a dapper beardy man from Savile Row doesn't appear to check my handiwork and let me examine his trouser waistband, I may well lose interest.  If I get this finished before the proper summer weather arrives, I will be very happy indeed.

Zephyr sundress

Hello peeps

Head on over to The Village Haberdashery blog to see my daughter's Zephyr sundress featured in this week's newsletter!

(Pictures by Annie -  much better with a camera than me!)

Slowly but surely

For once I have some sewing output to show - not much (blame half term) but a little:

First up, a Bee block for Tracey at QuiltMeHappy:

This is the same Tracey who so expertly long-armed my Apple Crisp quilt.  Tracey sent ready-made HST blocks and asked us to arrange them however we liked - one big block, a couple of small blocks, even all in a big long row!  No matter how wacky I tried to make my block, symmetry kept winning out so I went with this layout in the end.

The other thing I have been chipping away at is my Pervalong:

I have made all of the central blocks now but just need to sew them together into 4 quarters and then join the quarters to make the centre of the quilt.  The thing with paper piecing being backwards (well it is in my head anyway) is that I don't really have a feel of how the quilt is looking as I am going along.  I can't wait to get these blocks all together so I have something to show for it instead of 4 envelopes stuffed with numbered blocks.

Right - off to carry on binding my Apple Crisp before the 31 March comes around and it is still on my WIP list.  Not this time!

All the gear, no idea

Back when I was young and hip (all right, just young) we used to go on a group skiing holiday every year.  It was a real motley crew - various friends of friends - and one of our group always had all the latest stuff - titanium skis, heated boots, de-misting goggles.  However, whilst the rest of our group went merrily sailing down black runs, he usually skied with me on the nice gentle blue runs in what we termed "Remedial Ski School".  One of his mates dubbed him "All the gear, no idea".

I am the equivalent of "All the gear, no idea" in the world of machine quilting.  Take a look:

Supreme slider - check

Bobbin washers - check

Craftsy online class with Leah Day - check

Multitude of FMQ books - check

300 pages of quilt doodles - check

Hideous fabric from remnant shop to be sacrificed in inaugural FMQ attempt - check.

Have I tried it out?  No.

Too scared.

Quilt doodles

Perhaps one of the ironies of having a blog called "Quilting for England" is that I am actually not very good at the "quilting" bit.  More accurately my blog should be "Mainly piecing and the occasional bit of applique for England (and Wales)" but it didn't have quite the same ring to it.

My choices would appear to be:
     (a) change my blog name
     (b) live with the hypocrisy
     (c) learn to quilt, woman

I am opting for (c).

I am far better at being a "theoretical expert" - got the books, bookmarked the blog posts, noted all the top tips - than I am at biting the bullet and actually *doing* it.  One of the "top tips" I speak of was to doodle quilting patterns on paper before trying them on a machine.  I realised I had to get better at this, as with my first few doodles, I would get stuck at a point and not know how to get out of it.  If I can't doodle my way out on paper, there's no way I could quilt my way out.

I have been practising swirly doodles and I think I have finally found a pattern that I can do competently and always find a 'way out' for where I would move next:

 

My doodle is based on Judi Madsen's Feather Swirl Tutorial on Youtube - admittedly I was watching this in a popup window at the same time as my youngest was watching IgglePiggle - but I think I caught enough of it to work out how to do the basic move and then move onto the next space.

If you haven't read Judi's blog (Green Fairy Quilts) before, do pop over - but first fetch a cushion and pop it on your desk so that when your jaw drops at what this lady can do with a long arm machine, you don't injure your chin too badly.  Here is the link to a "Dear Jane" quilt which is one of my favourite quilts of all time - but if you read the rest of her blog, you will see it is fairly par for the course for Judi, who is playing a whole different quilting game to the rest of us. 

Judi has a book out in the near future which I will be popping onto my Amazon wishlist straight away - it is called "Quilting Wide Open Spaces" and is due out in the Autumn.

Totes amaze, as the yoof of today might say.