July | 2016 | threadonthread

It’s not really Christmas, although the summer weather has been a bit chilly this month. We’ve seen single digits, lots of rain and some high winds. Today is a perfect day for the 5th annual ‘Ewe da Best’ golf tournament, which is held on a local sheep pasture.

Last summer I participated in my first webinar, called ‘Wedge Quilts Go Modern’. It was put on by the Modern Quilt Guild and the instructor was Christina Cameli. Christina showed us how to use a wedge-shaped ruler to cut strips of fabric. Yes, it could be done without this tool, but it would be more difficult and I don’t think the results would be as accurate. We learned how to join the strips and ways to work with the hole created in the centre of the strips. (In my quilt the white circles fill in that hole.)The webinar also covered making pieced strips, fractured strips and negative space strips. Webinars are a terrific way to learn a new skill, without having to leave home. You could even be in pj’s having a glass of wine! Here are some wedge rulers.

Without an end in mind, I made the three circles last fall. Then they sat. After a couple of months I added them to a white background. They are appliquéd on using the blanket stitch on my machine. At the same time, I made the backing, using bits and pieces of reds, greens and whites. I squared up the top and the backing and then put them away until May. This is the second quilt that I’ve done this way and it seems that taking a break from them makes them exciting again.

I made a quilt sandwich with the top, the backing and bamboo for the batting, but wasn’t sure how to quilt it. In the end, I started with the three circles and did a pebble pattern in each of the coloured spokes using Superior King Tut thread in White Linen. The white spokes are not quilted so they puff out a bit. The grid pattern is random and I used the same thread in Limestone, White Linen, Cheery Red and Holly and Ivy. The binding is a great fabric that I stumbled on in Fabricland. It doesn’t show well in the photos, but it’s Christmas candies in all of the colours that are in the quilt. The finished quilt is approximately 60″ x 60″, perfect to curl up with on Christmas morning. While I love it, I am going to put it up for sale in the Denman Island Studio Tour August 6 and 7. Here are some photos; you can click on them to enlarge and see captions.

Front of quilt.

Pieced back of quilt

Close up of pebble stitch quilting and blanket stitch appliqué.

HO! HO! HO! and thanks for reading.

Hello! I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend and had a chance to celebrate our amazing country. We took in some local events; including a dinner at the pub, an awesome Saturday market and a pancake breakfast at the fire hall.

The weather that we’re having is great for sewing. It’s grey, cool, sometimes drizzly and generally not what we’re used to for July. My typical plan is to do chores/workout in the morning and then hit the sewing machine in the afternoon. Having this kind of schedule helps me to see progress. I love having that ‘carrot on the stick’; it makes getting the chores done so much easier.

I’ve got a few things on the go right now. The big push is on to get my Postage Stamp quilt finished this summer. It’s been a fun project to pick up and work on in bits. Now it’s at the stage where I can visualize the end and I’m keen to get it done. In this post – A Grand Day, – I have a picture of one block from this quilt. Each block has 256 pieces and there are 16 blocks, so the completed quilt will have 4,700+ pieces.

Usually, one makes all of the blocks of a quilt before starting to put them together. I’ve gotten a bit impatient with this one and jumped the gun. Sashing is the fabric that separates the blocks. My choice for sashing is more 1″ square pieces, but all using different text fabrics. Here’s a picture of four blocks with their sashing.

(We’re replacing a window and I love the scaffolding for hanging quilts!) I’ve sashed 12 blocks and have four more blocks to make/sash vertically. Then the same sashing, horizontal, will go on and I’ll be ready to get it all assembled. Moving ahead like this has revived my interest in the Postage Stamp quilt.

I’m also getting things ready for the Denman Island Studio Tour, which will be on August 6 and 7. This year the Denman Quilters will have a demo area and I volunteered to take that on. I’ve chosen a small trivet in a Log Cabin with Labyrinth pattern that I saw on She Can Quilt. I’ll have a completed trivet as well as the trivet in various stages of construction so that people will be able to see the various steps involved.

And, nearly finished, is a quilt that I started nearly a year ago, after listening to a Webinar on using a wedge-shaped ruler. I’m just hand stitching the binding on, then it’s into the washer and dryer to be cleaned up and made to look ‘quilty’. This one has me quite excited and I’ll show you a picture next time. Until then, think Christmas candy!

All for now, time to go after that carrot on a stick.

Thanks for reading.