Month: September 2020

Continuing with Morewood Mystery

Last month I posted about joining the Morewood Mystery Quilt presented by Meadow Mist Designs. We are currently in the first sewing step, making Half-Square Triangles. The administrator of the mystery presented a wonderful video with suggestions about how to make these blocks faster and easier.

But first I had to MAKE the squares and decided to “up my game” a bit when drawing the lines prior to sewing. Previously I would just put the fabric on the cutting mat and trace the line but often the fabric would slip and slide around so that the line wasn’t straight and didn’t fall perfectly in the corners. This time, I pulled out my sandpaper board and used it to hold the fabric in place……

It worked perfectly!!

Once the squares were sewn, I turned to the first of the video suggestions…… a way to press the blocks so that the corners don’t slide out of square.

I normally cut the blocks apart first and then press them but Cheryl suggested that a majority of the pressing should be done BEFORE the center line was cut.

Press one side first……

Turn it around and press the other side so that it is pre-folded and looks like this…..

Now you cut along the marked line…..

When you get ready to do the final pressing, the piece is already “Pre-pressed” and ready to go!!

I felt like it made a huge difference in how the squares turned out and it will definitely help with the trimming process but I will talk about that tomorrow!!

So my HST’s are now ready to go and I will wait NOT-so patiently for the next clue!!!

Practice makes…..one crazy!!!

The last step on my Meadow Art project is to add the daisies. In my last blog installment about this project, I showed some of my attempts and concluded that the best way to do them was to do the initial work on the machine and then use embroidery floss to finish the petals (#4).

THEN, I started thinking about using Perle cotton in the bobbin and working the flowers from the back. The first few attempts were not successful as I didn’t have the tension set correctly……

I kept changing settings until it looked like this…..

Those are better and would work for another type of flower, but not for these daisies!!

I made several other tries using a smaller Perle cotton (size 5) in the needle but it just didn’t look right.

In the end, I moved back to my plan of machine work under and hand-work over.

I decided to color in the centers to give me an idea of exactly where I wanted the flowers to fall…..

….. and then stitched the first five flowers on the machine The two on the left have been finished completely with hand stitching and centers stitched……..

They are not nearly as good as the ones on the sample, but they do look good on the piece. I also noticed that the ones on the sample have some shading on certain sides of the petals so I am going to explore that further before I finish the artwork.

The important thing is that I am still enjoying this process and am already starting to think of other ideas that I want to do in this same format!!

A little bit of ditch stitching

As I was working on the charity quilt and practicing free-motion quilting using rulers, I played with using a straight ruler for stitching in the ditch.

Previously, I had felt like it would not be easy to keep the stitching IN the ditch, but I was pleasantly surprised by the results……

I can see this being especially helpful when I need to travel from one area on the quilt to another one!!

TBT – Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Another of the 5 quilts that Mom made for my Hope Chest was a Grandmother’s Flower Garden.

Grandmother’s Flower Garden

She made this in the late 1970’s and it is entirely hand-made using English Paper Piecing and hand quilting.

When I talk to kid’s groups about quilts I use this quilt to show repetition and how it helps in design. In this quilt, Mom used the same fabric for each flower center. She used a solid fabric for each of the first rounds and then she bordered each flower with white. Those elements make it an enjoyable quilt to look at!!!

I particularly enjoyed these two blocks as I had favorite clothing made from the print fabrics…..

The brown was a fun shirt (NOT a cotton fabric) and the blue flowered was a cute short dress with capped sleeves and a sash….remember it was the 1970’s!!!

I remember her agonizing over how to finish the edges of the quilt and believe that she ended up appliquéing the flower sides to the border…..

One thing that I notice in this photo is that the red fabric has bled!!! This quilt has been well used and washed many times so this isn’t surprising. It was the only quilt that we carried when we moved to Australia in 1981 and it was used daily for almost 6 years!!

She kept the quilting fairly simple, stitching inside each of the hexagons and then adding a fun clam shell border to the top and bottom…..

As I said, this was a much loved and used quilt and I still enjoy snuggling under it today!!!