Bee, Myself and I # 36

Just one more to go 🙂

This is Block 29. Another gorgeous fabric from Philip Jacobs for Westminster Fabrics. One of my most favourite fabric designers. I got this one done during my Melbourne trip and after – I took two with me but that was overly hopeful, I was having waaaay too much fun to get both done. I’ve got this done and scheduled well in advance because I know that right now I’ll be in the middle of demolishing things, making lists, deciding where power points should go, etc.

Anyway, to return to the subject…. Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Till next time.

Bee, Myself and I # 35

And another one to add to the growing pile 🙂

This is Block 28. Just as No 27 was very appropriate for Christmas, this one is equally appropriate for now, as the colours are perfect to go with my colour choices for F2F – and February is my month!  I’ve chosen soft greys and lilacs, and you can be sure that the rest of the hat box fabric will be going into the fabric pull for my F2F blocks.

Two more blocks to go after this one. February is crazy (moving house, trip to Melbourne, working on ITAA month). So I reckon I might just be in a position to start assembling this quilt in around April. If I think of it, I’ll take the last two blocks with me as handwork for the trip to Melbourne – there’s a lot of hanging around in airports and I’ll need some evening handwork for the days we’re there. You never know, I might actually get them done!

Anyway, to return to the subject…. Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Till next time.

Colours of Happiness #16: completed

I got the binding finished and the label attached last night.

That’s a fair bit quicker than usual, but two things were in my favour: the quilt is not huge, and the Husband was on night shift, so I had the evening to myself to power through. After yesterday’s post went up, I made the binding and had it ready to go. While the Husband was getting his afternoon sleep before starting work, I got it all attached and made the label. So all I had to do was fold over the binding and stitch it down, and finally, attach the label.

There was sun this morning (no big surprise there, no rain in sight yet…) so I hung it on the line for the traditional photos. As always happens when I hang a quilt up to take photos, the wind immediately came up and started whirling the clothes line around, making it rather hard to get a straight, in-focus shot… This is the best of a bad bunch, and even so, there are blurry areas on both of them. Never mind, at least I have a record. (And do you see how dry the grass is, and the bare earth showing through? Please, rain….)

So, a fond farewell to Colours of Happiness. There’s a long list of jobs waiting for my attention, so I’ll do the usual tidy up in the sewing room and then decide what’s next.

You’ll just have to wait and see…

Colours of Happiness #15: all together now

All the panels are joined. Glad that bit’s over!

Now I have just the binding and a label left to do. I’ll need to piece some fabrics for the binding; I have one which is perfect but there isn’t quite enough, so I’ve decided to make a feature of the issue. This fabric will bind 80% of the quilt, but one corner will be different. Sounds odd, but I think it’ll work and look good; for the extra I’ll use fabrics already seen in the quilt, so it should tie together well. I’ll make my usual straight-grain double fold, but using 2¼ inch rather than 2½ inch, which I find a bit too wide; the slimmer edge looks better to me.

Once it’s made and sewn on, I’ll have a couple of evenings of gentle hand stitching to stitch down the binding on the back, and then I can take photos and fold it away carefully till February.

Not so very long to wait…

Colours of Happiness #14: centre quilting completed

OK, that’s the hand quilting finished, loud cheers.

So we have the big centre starburst quilted with radiating diamonds, looking a bit like shattered fragments of glass. It’s a pleasing contrast between the spiky quilting and the soft, puffy, cuddly feel of the quilt.

In the little border cornerstones, there are tiny simplified lotus blooms, referring back to the Dresden plate flowers in the big outer corner-stones. In the 2 inch border around the centre there’s a simple zigzag, also like the outside of the large cornerstones. Works for me… the quilting doesn’t distract from the colour and layout, but it does hold the layers together nicely.

It looks good on the back too, which is always a bonus.

I’ve enjoyed the slow interlude of hand work, but it’s time to speed things up again. So, what’s next? Trim out the sections to get rid of the extra batting and backing, and then it’ll be time to cut the strips I need for joining all the quilted pieces together. Orange 1¾ inch strips for the back, and pink 1 inch strips for the front.

A nice change of pace from sitting at the dining table, hand quilting.

Bee, Myself and I #32

Only one block quilted this month, I’m afraid.

I have been putting a lot of work in elsewhere, so I’m not going to beat myself up about it 🙂

This is block 25, so there are only 5 left to go. I’ve quilted around each butterfly, both the colourful ones and the gold ones, and the effect is lovely: they’ve puffed up and look a little 3D. You don’t see it very well in the photo. You also can’t see how metallic the gold is, which catches the light prettily.

Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Till next time.

Colours of Happiness #13: on to the centre

In the end, the quilting design for the centre was an easy choice.

As you can hopefully see, I’m keeping it simple and quilting diamonds in all the starburst squares, a bit more ‘sparkle’ for an already eye-catching arrangement of colour. As luck would have it, the design is one where I can quilt long continuous lines rather than stitch each diamond individually, which cuts the time it takes almost in half.

I used the same process on the final long side panel; I wasn’t sure if the fish-scale design would be quicker quilted diagonally or horizontally. Turns out diagonally is faster on this pattern too, and produces a very neat result. Something to remember for another time… And the Peace cornerstone is done too. So the ‘recipe’ for Happiness is finished as well: Family, Love, Prosperity, Peace.

Once the centre’s done, I have to trim out all the pieces and make the joining strips. They’ll be pink on the front and orange on the back, to match the backing colour so they disappear as much as possible. Still not sure about the binding colour, but there’s time enough to decide about that. Any thoughts on the subject, Vera my lovely? What colours do you think would work? I don’t promise to use any of them, but all suggestions are gratefully received 🙂

Almost time to swap quilting colours; I still have my BM&I post to do for the end of the month!

Colours of Happiness #12

Cornerstone No. 3 is done.

This is the Prosperity corner. That just leaves one more long panel and one more corner (Peace), and then I have the centre to think about. The long panel is about 2-3 days of work, the cornerstone 1-2 days. That means I could be ready to start the centre by the beginning of November, bearing in mind I have one or two other things on the go.

Once the centre’s done, it’ll be time to make the joining strips for the 8 seams, and stitch everything together. Then the binding, and it’s finished! I’d like to get it done before I have to start assembling the Go Teal it on the Mountain quilt, which will be demanding in a different way: no hand-quilting but bigger, heavier, and still very much an unknown quantity.

Right, on with the next thing 🙂

Colours of Happiness #11

Another chunk done 🙂

This is long side panel no. 3, and I’m in the groove now: Do the first three rows, rotate the panel and do the second three rows. It’s easier to work close to the bottom edge, because I can dispense with the weights I was originally using to give some tension to the surface. Closer to the edge, you can grip the fabric area you’re working on. By rotating the piece, I’m never more than three rows from the edge. Makes it all a lot quicker.

So, next will be the third cornerstone, followed by the fourth side panel and cornerstone, and we’ll then be onto the last and biggest and potentially trickiest piece, the centre panel. And I still haven’t worked out what to do there… I suspect I shall have to press it and sandwich it, lay it on the table and then just use my eyes and listen to what it’s telling me.

I hope the quilt has a clear idea, because I don’t!

Colours of Happiness #10

Another cornerstone completed.

This is the one for Family. Of course, all the other components are the same as the previous one, but the hand lettering is different. I’ve tried to incorporate the shapes and curves of the Bengali lettering into the English word. I think this one works better than the previous one. Shame the lighting’s so washed out, but that’s what happens when you don’t have good daylight.

I’ll do another long side panel next, before I proceed to the other two cornerstones. They’re beautifully mindless once I’ve done all the marking up, I can just sit and stitch and think about other things – or indeed, nothing at all – as I work.

And some mindless work may be called for. The minor infection I had last week has risen up, gnashed its teeth and turned into a bit of a monster. I now have a very tiring and painful kidney infection which is not responding to treatment nearly as fast as I’d like. I’m on my second round of antibiotics and this second lot is strong and the tablets are huge, like horse pills, over 2cm (almost an inch) long. So, a little non-taxing distraction is called for.

Next time, I’ll show you what I’ve been distracting my miserable and rather grumpy self with