Adventures in Small Piecing

Following on from yesterday's QuiltCon Report post I'd like to look in more detail at one of the workshops I attended and the projects I've made from it.

This was Adventures in Small Piecing with the adorable Chawne Kimber. Though I think it should be renamed 'Adventures in Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Piecing' as  the word small doesn't really cover it!

Chawne (@cauchycomplete on IG) took us through her amazing wall of tiny piecing explaining her many experiments and how to avoid the various pitfalls. We were then instructed to 'make it smaller'!

Myself and my very talented neighbour Deborah, took her at her word and went as tiny as we could. Deborah tried to go so tiny that her pieces actually disappeared inside the seam!

I had great fun playing around and making these wee pieces above (which I added to). It's a great way of using up the tiniest of scraps too!

After lunch I decided to change tack and try some rainbow log cabins.  Three hours later (!) and I had four of them! The workshop at an end I packed them all away and took them home to finish.

Somebody (*cough* husband) did ask the question 'why?' about this tiny piecing, and I really had to think before I could answer. In the end I think the best answers are 'why not!' and 'because I can!'.

Last weekend I had another of my Zippy Pouch classes and needed something for a class sample. So I pieced the tiny bits I did in the morning of the workshop into a background using this lovely swirly grey fabric that I bought at QuiltCon.

One of the other lectures I attended at QuiltCon was Social Media Photography by Christopher aka the Tattooed Quilter. This was a really excellent event and I learnt so much stuff that I didn't really know I needed to know (if that makes sense!).

So in the photo above I tried to use some of the points made at the lecture, like using props and also editing the photo properly in instagram (rather than just selecting a filter). And I've found that I really enjoy the creative side of 'styling', and I do think my photos look better!

I have a real obsession with needle-turn applique at the moment, especially with trailing stems of leaves (like I used on this recent wall hanging).

So of course I added some to my tiny piecing, using the same colour fabric to pick out the lime green from the patchwork. 

These are probably the smallest leaves I have ever appliqued and I would have liked to get them and the stems a bit smaller, but everything has it's limits (including me!)!

I was in a real quandary about how to quilt this. All those tiny seams stacked on top of each other meant it would have been too hard to hand quilt and I thought machine quilting might just cover over the tiny patchwork. 

But then I saw Matthew (@misterdomestic) quilting with Aurifil 80wt on an IG post and I realised that was the perfect solution. It's given a subtle, almost ghostly effect which has meant it hasn't over powered the piecing. I kept the quilting simple with a loose open matchstick (also I was doing this just before I left for the studio and only had a spare half hour!).

The back is a lovely lime green Blueberry Park 'Allotment' fabric and the lining is from Denyse Schmidt's new line 'Winter Walk'. The 'day-glo' green zip was the perfect finishing touch.

I have to say that I am totally in love with this zippy pouch. It's the third in a little collection of precious pouches, each of which had a lot of time and love put into them. And each one focuses on a different set of techniques.

Yesterday I had time to finish the tiny rainbow log cabin quilt. I sashed it with some lovely low volume fabric by Moda (from QuiltCon of course) and then used the same 80wt Aurifil and proper matchstick quilting. It was then bound in an Ink and Arrow fabric (yes again from QuiltCon!).

Now it's finished I'm not really sure what to do with this Tiny Quilt. I guess I will just treasure it as a reminder of the wonderful day spent with Chawne and all the other lovely quilters on the class, and of course all of QuiltCon 2017.

And here's my styled photo.

I think there is a danger that you can over do the styling and make your IG feed and blog look too sterile. I am hoping I can avoid this by using relevant props (which are useful for scale in this instance) and by keeping everything warm, quirky and personal to me.

Would love to know any thoughts you have about this subject.

Linking up with Scraptastic Tuesday!

St. Catherine's School Quilt - FINISHED!

I'm going to be sharing not one but THREE quilt finishes this week - phew! So watch out for more posts - but in the meantime...

I wrote about this project a few posts ago here. It is a commission for an Edinburgh primary school to commemorate their 50th anniversary.

I really had a lot of fun making this, despite it being quite a bit of work. I especially love the 'flower garden' area above which is needle-turn applique and hand quilting.

St. Catherine was the saint who was condemned to be tortured on a spiked wheel but it broke at her touch (so the legend goes). Sounds like a happy ending but Wikipedia tells me that after that she was beheaded, oh dear.

Anyway the 'broken wheel' is the symbol of St Catherine and therefore the school. The children have a school garden so the flowers growing from the broken part of the wheel were to symbolise this, but I like to think of it as a healing symbol (after all the torture and bloodshed in the story).

The design of the quilt was a joint effort between myself and one of the teacher's Morag (who is also one of my students). It was Morag's idea to commission the quilt and she talked the rest of the staff into it (thanks Morag!).

We have made the wheel representative of the school year by the colours of the rainbow stripes between the spokes and also by the hand quilting in each one (oak leaves for autumn, a bare tree for winter, etc.). The summer break occurs where the wheel is broken.

The 'C' in the centre is the school logo. 

In each corner I've put an aspect of education, so a globe (not as hard as I thought in the end - thanks for all your suggestions after my last post everyone!) ...

... a book. I had a bit of fun with this, using my last scrap of Moda Hometown fabric. I've managed to include a name that will be familiar to any serious quilter but lost on everyone else - so like a secret code!

And lastly an abacus! I think the buttons are fun and hopefully the children will agree.

Learn, Inspire, Grow is the school motto, embroidered here around the wheel. 

You can also see a little of the FMQ in the photo above. I outlined most of the Blueberry Park 'scruffy daisies' with free-motion quilting after straight line quilting around the wheel and wheel sections. I had been thinking about hand quilting around the remaining daisies but in the end I thought it was getting too busy (that is definitely the reason and not at all because I ran out of time...).

I used Aurifil 50 throughout for piecing, applique, machine quilting and FMQ, and DMC perle cotton 8 for the hand quilting and embroidery.

Lastly I embroidered that dedication around the top of the wheel. It reads 'gifted to our school by Veronica Halloran, head teacher 1973 - 1997'. Mrs Halloran generously gave a donation to the school for commemorating the 50th anniversary and this is what paid for my quilt.

The quilt was unveiled last Friday after a full catholic mass by the Cardinal of Scotland in the school's parish church, which I attended - fascinating stuff if you have been brought up a strict atheist. I was particularly interested in all the Cardinal's hat changes! He did look quite splendid in his scarlet robes and his big shepherd's crook, and the children's singing was wonderful. I actually found it all very moving.

At the end of the service the current head teacher invited myself and Veronica Halloran up to the front to unveil the quilt for the first time (I had made a curtain to cover it). I was very pleased with the gasps from the little children when they saw the quilt and Mrs Halloran seemed genuinely moved (I had taken the quilt in to Morag a few days before and one of the other teachers who saw it then had actually started to cry -always a good sign I think!).

I got a chance to speak to Mrs Halloran after the service and she is actually a quilter herself! Morag and I didn't know this but it has made me so happy because only another quilter can really appreciate the time and love that goes into all those stitches.

The quilt will now hang permanently in the school reception area. I love the idea that it may inspire some of the children through it's colours and imagery, and that one day, when they are grown-up, they may remember it and pick up a needle and thread themselves.

St Catherine's School Quilt

I have a couple of different quilts on the go at the moment which aren't for publication so I can share some WIP posts about them. This first one is quite exciting as it's the first public commission I have ever had.

One of my students, Morag, is a teacher at a local catholic primary school, St Catherine's, which is coming up to it's 50th anniversary. An ex-head teacher gave them some money to commemorate this event and Morag suggested getting me to make a quilt to hang in their reception area. I was really touched and honoured to be asked and said yes straight away.

Morag and I worked on the design together and I came up with this plan above. Part of St Catherine's logo is the broken wheel that St Catherine was crucified on (not an auspicious start I know but stay with me!). We decided to make the wheel representative of the school year with the broken spokes being the summer break. The different areas between the spokes are coloured to represent the seasons and they will be quilted with images to enhance that. 

There will be an image in each corner to represent different areas of education and the children have a school garden so flowers are growing out of the broken spoke (which I like to think of a nice healing image). The 'C' in the centre is the other part of the school logo and 'Learn, Inspire, Grow' is the school motto. I will also be adding the name of the ex-head teacher around the wheel somewhere in the quilting.

I started putting it together a couple of weeks ago by making a life size template to work out the size of different elements (it will be around 1M square). I then pieced the rainbow stripes and the spokes between them above.

It took a fair bit of 'fabric engineering' to work out how to make the wheel but here it is all laid out ready to be top stitched down along with the drawing to give folks on IG an idea of where I was heading. The outer and inner circles and the broken spoke are all lined and the curvy outer bits have had their edges turned under using a card template and tin foil. I have an abhorrence of raw edge applique with a zig-zag edge so, though this is machine applique, all the edges are turned under :)

Turquoise is part of the school uniform so the background is a pale turquoise Blueberry Park fabric (courtesy of Karen Lewis herself - thanks Karen!), I was going to use a solid fabric but I thought these 'scruffy daisies' worked so well and I plan to quilt around some of them.

All the other decoration will be by hand so I began stitching the leaves using needle-turn applique at the weekend. The stems will be added with hand quilting.

I took the photo below yesterday when I planned to write this post, but I got distracted (by my other project!) and ended up finishing all the flowers in front of the TV last night (see top photo). I LOVE the flowers! I adapted flower patterns from all the seasonal garland cushions I have been making for Today's Quilter this year.

The 'C' looks a tiny bit wonky to me and I am considering unpicking the circle and rotating it a tiny amount to the left - what do you think? But on the whole I am pleased with how it's looking. Though now I am on to the trickier bits in the corners. I plan to use buttons for the abacus and text print for the book but I am a bit stumped by the globe! I guess I will just have to applique land shapes on to sea - any other ideas folks? If only I had some globe fabric!

But I am working to a deadline as the anniversary is at the end of November and includes a special mass and a visit from the cardinal! I am also making a curtain so we can have a proper unveiling!! Very exciting, though I think I am more worried about the technicalities of producing a small working curtain than finishing the quilt!

I will write another post after the event so you can hear how I got on and see the finished quilt in situ.

A little more news... and a fantastic community quilt!

Let's get the news bit out of the way first! I know I asked you to vote for my shop a couple of weeks back in the Sew Awards but like buses, two award nominations have come along at the same time!

I found out this week that I had been nominated for not one but TWO British Craft Awards in the Quilting category - Best Quilt Designer and Best Quilt Blogger!!! And The Thread House has been nominated in Best Quilt Brand! I am really blown away by this and so honoured to be in the company of such fabulously talented quilters and bloggers (most of whom are really good mates/business partners!).

So if you do decide to head over here and vote for me then I completely understand if you change your mind and vote for someone else when confronted by the rest of the list! If you do vote for me then THANK YOU very much!

I thought you might like to know about this wonderful quilt project that I took part in for the Museum of Childhood which is on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. They have a new exhibition called Bedtime Stories which is all about memories of bedtime stories. Part of the exhibition is a special quilt made by over 60 adults and children from across the UK.

I contributed this cute deer block which was from a pattern by Shapemoth and available on Craftsy here. It was a great little FPP project and I love how it turned out.

Here's what I wrote to accompany it:

"When I was six years old I had a very powerful dream about a deer. I can't remember anything else about it now apart from the deer, but the memory of how the dream effected me has stayed with me through all of my life. At the time I had probably just seen Bambi at the cinema (which I loved) and this was probably why I dreamt about a deer. There was also a favourite sit-on ride at a nearby supermarket which was of a deer. I used to think about all these deer at bedtime because I wanted to have this dream again, but I never did. However I still have amazing dreams and often write them down, and I still love deer, and think of them as a kind of totem animal for me."

If you are in or around Edinburgh then you should definitely try and get to this exhibition, it's on till 24th February. If you want to find out more about the exhibition click here.

One more little thing, I am having a giveaway over on Instagram for this gorgeous big box of Blueberry Park Aurifil and some lovely BP fabric!! Head on over to IG to enter!

Scraptastic Tuesday - the first time!

For ages now I've been meaning to post about and link up with Scraptastic Tuesday, hosted by the wonderful Nicky and Leanne, but I've never been able to get my act together. If I am using scraps I forget all about it and if I remember it then I have nothing scrappy to show!

But last week I started working on my Blueberry Park Mini Quilt Swap piece. This is an Instagram swap hosted by Nina. I have a lot of scraps of Karen's screen printed fabric left over from the Buffer Wheel quilt I made last year. Karen printed these up specially for this quilt so I think some of them are quite unique and may be appreciated by my Karen Lewis loving partner.

So I started having a good old play around with them and ended up with these improv curve blocks. 

I made these four (above), but when I put them together (on my lovely design wall!) I thought that the bottom left looked a little out of place (with it's thicker circle). So I made another one, below...

But when I put them all together I realised that it was the top left pink and orange block that now looked out of place. So with a little jiggery pokery on the other block, I swapped them back around and I think I made it work (check top photo to see if you agree with my final decision!). 

I then sashed in that lovely charcoal crosshatch from Carolyn Friedlander. There was a lot of very helpful feedback and advice via the IG crowd while I was working on these and sharing my progress .

And then on Friday I found myself using scraps again! I was prepping for my Buffer Wheel workshop which was on Sunday and the first one of these I had taught. In my head it was very straight forward and I had the pattern notes written and everything. Still I thought I better just try it out as a refresher.

So I 'decided' to change around the background and colour wedges to make it look a bit different (yes that's right, I did decide this and in no way did I totally forget the pattern and mistakenly make it this way!). Anyway it's a good job I tried it out so I could show the class how to do it the right way as you can see below. Lot's of Blueberry Park on show here and some very clever students.

Meanwhile I quite like this rising sun half block and think I will leave it like this (otherwise I will have to make ANOTHER cushion!!).

Check out all the other Scraptastic Tuesday action here!