Crumbs and early Kaffe books

 Actually this small piece is made up with cut up HSTs but
the result does look like small pieces sewn together individually.

So my last post I was here

 

Next I added a 1" finished Spot border followed
by a 2 and 1/2" finished border of the left over HSTs sewn together
in no particular order. 

I simply cut the top and bottom border at the required length of

23 and 1/2"
then repeated the two sides with 28 and 1/2"
so nothing matches, no good looking for points meeting up,

just ad hoc,  easy peasy!
I followed on with another narrow 1"finished Spot

and this is as far as I go I think, simply because I have no idea right now where to go from here!

This really was only a sort of practice piece, but I do like it very much,  mainly

 because I love all shades of purple/lavender.

Apart from Crumbs all I have to show since my last post is the find

of five Lego blocks in my Spare Parts box, completely forgotten why

I stored them away here, but together with my latest Lego blocks stored in their project box

I now have 10 in total!! A bonus find I think.

My aim here is for a 50" x 60" lap quilt.

Stop Press - See the bottom of the post following on from the shell- something for all Kaffe fans!!

To tone down the colour a little here's a photo of a shell found

on the local Sandspit beach, beautifully soft and restful and although I zoom in on the

bright colours I do also like the pastel shades.

A quilt using these shades of cream, and peach is possible.

Not including the brown!

For Kaffe fans here are  two very, very early books of his

published and purchased by me in 1985 - don't know how the tear came into being

as I treasure my books and treat them like gold dust, anyways next up

published and bought by yours truly in 1987.

Just click to enlarge.

See you all soon.

Maureen

Playtime with Half Square triangles and Big Sur

 You see I make mention of my latest upgrade on my Mac
to Big Sur, these are early days and I'm  still finding my way
around the new system, there may be a few hiccups along the way
so fingers crossed I can actually produce a reasonable post!

In an earlier post I had this photo below

a Churn Dash cut in two halves  ( I had lots of others to cut, different fabrics)
and was wondering what on earth
to do with them.
quiltdivajulie
said they would make 'pretty cool half square triangles'
and just cut them up,  armed with ruler and rotary cutter I did just that.
Each HST you see above yields cut into four smaller HSTs giving me eight in total and decided it was playtime.

Here is the result as of yesterday

I used two shades of violet/purple as the solid half.
NOTE yes I do have the letter m all on it's own and haven't time to
go back and redo, reasons below.

I must be on a purple kick as I have backing fabric for eldest sons quilt

and in sorting through older fabrics found this one below,
 if memory serves me correctly
this is an early KF fabric - Chard

I love this one!!

I'm rushing to get this post written as I am heading off to the hospital shortly to the
pacemaker clinic as there is a possibility that my battery is discharging quickly
and causing real problems - I am pacemaker dependent and without it
there is only one outcome!!
They are also checking me out in case I have had a heart attack, oh and my doctor
thinks I may have become diabetic, lots to choose from here, so much fun!

EDIT

No heart attack, pacer battery OK - Hooray!!

On with quilting.

All for now but here is a beautiful cheery cyclamen sitting my bedroom

and  new fabric received a few days ago

Maureen

Liquorice Allsorts - a flimsy

 My last post  HERE I had the centre portion of Liquorice Allsorts -  let's just shorten to LA - sewn up.
The earlier post HERE showed two photos of the original quilt and also one made
by Kaffe Fassett.

For those who thought the dark squares were black, not so,  here's a close up  before
I go further of the Orchid colour way, the base colour is black the dotty patterning
is purple but admittedly difficult to see.

As usual I veered off course a little and progress made is below, you can see I added
 another thin border of Aboriginal Dot in Orchid to the Guinea Flower strip and then moved on to
 the rectangular pieces 8 and 1/2" by 2 and 1/2"cut from scraps. When I came to a corner and
the fabric piece was too long I just lopped it off, turned the corner with another piece, see the photo below.

I wanted to go with lighter fabrics - lighter for me anyways, and just two rounds.
Had I kept with the original pattern I would have been adding many more
rounds and ending up with a 74" square piece. Didn't want to go down that path, so stopped 
with the two rounds and then added two more border strips
but reversing the placement of Guinea Flower and Orchid, see below.

Here I stopped to ponder my next move, should I just add a couple more
rounds and repeat the whole process, should I just add a wide border, should
I bring in one of the fabrics used in the rectangles - answer was a no for me.
LA was telling me to stop faffing around and follow my instincts, I loved it and
the main focus for me was the central block of squares, so

I just added another 1 and 1/2" strip border and called it done!!
48" square, nice size for a wall quilt.

Here's a quick photo in the garden

 

excuse the weeds in the background!

Tomorrow is set aside for dealing with the backing for the quilt for eldest son,
as I am currently being dosed daily with 40mg of steroids my mind is racing
and I am really having to try and slow down when sewing.
Reduction to 20mg tomorrow - hooray!!

A purchase made last week was this Anna Maria Horner fabric

to be used in a column strip quilt, should cut up beautifully into wide strips, adding this to
my squirrel collection!

Time for dinner - see you soon.

Happy Quilting 

Maureen

Liquorice Allsorts

My last post HERE was focused on the start of a new quilt,
Stamps and Bricks.
I showed a few early 9 patch blocks - bright blocks!

As I placed more and more pieces up on the wall I became more and more
excited, this quilt just called out to be named

Liquorice Allsorts

   

 those of you who grew up in the UK or are still living there will surely know
how popular these sweets were, especially as children, and I think every
sweet shop in the country had them on the shelves.

For those who are not familiar with Allsorts they were, as the name suggests,
based on liquorice and were brightly coloured. They were definitely a favourite
of mine.

A number of years ago just on Christmas I spied tin boxes of these delights
on a shelf in the supermarket, one just had to come home with me

and oh did we all enjoy them - the 'kids' ( 45 to 52 yrs now) were delighted!

You can see the bright colours of the sweets, there was more selection than
shown on the tin.

Back to quilts - the centre block is 32" square presently, because of all the colour
I decided to go with a narrow border break - what else could I use but
Kaffe Fassett Guinea Flower in White, this echoes the 9 patch directly in the centre.

Aboriginal Dot in Orchid is used for the alternating squares,
it looks black in the photo but in reality is more purple/aubergine.

The only other patchwork related happening was pulling out my
spare parts box, this post from quiltdivajulie inspired me, but I had one
heck of a shock at the amount tucked in there. I pulled out
two Churn Dash bocks which I had made many years ago
when I was just discovering KF fabric, at least in the left block.

I had obviously become a devotee by the time this block below was made

but don't let the photo above fool you, for some un-known reason
I had done this

  

yes, what I pulled out was two halves!!
I truly do not remember doing this at all.
I promptly closed the box in case there were any more halves lurking there.
On a positive note my love of the Churn Dash block has been
re-kindled so watch out for a visit from the squirrel.

That's enough from me right now, closing with one of the beautiful
camellias flowering in the garden

Have a happy weekend, see you next week.

Maureen

Stamping Along

Somehow I have been able to put together
a brief post and apologise in advance for the photos,
especially of my blocks which have not been trimmed!
I lay the blame squarely at the door of my second Covid 19
shot two days ago. and it's effect on my whole body!!

So, the blocks are for my take on a quilt seen in the new book by
 Kaffe Fassett mentioned in my post
HERE

Below is a photo of the original quilt which inspired him

to make
his version below
Stamps and Bricks

I was hooked!
But as usual I decided not to follow exactly either of
the two quilts.

Here are a few of my blocks for the central portion

which all need trimming but until my body stops this incessant aching
they will stay just as they are and I've done a little cropping!

Another 14 to go if I stick with the size in the book, but I'm not
too keen on making a 74 and 1/2" square quilt, I may add another
row of blocks so the set will be 5 across by 6 down which will give a little
more length, or I may go smaller!

The only other exciting happening this week is receiving the backing
fabric for Matt's quilt - I went with the KF Hydrangea in Purple,

and I'm very happy with it.

I'm heading off to down a couple more pain meds but here's one of
the roses in the front garden - can't remember the name.

Happy Quilting

Maureen

Paintbox - quilted and bound

Paintbox has been waiting patiently to have the hand quilting completed
since - believe it or not - 2015!!!
I quilted up the last block four days ago and had the binding on
two days ago.

I should have quilted in the wider border and only really noticed
the wrinkles when this photo was taken - I think I can very carefully
hand quilt following the straight line design of the machine quilting.
Hopefully it will work because I'm not taking off the binding.

The hand quilting is minimal, the centre 'petal' in each  small square
is quilted in the ditch, difficult to see, and machine quilted good old
straight lines in the sashing.
The block design is Windmills from the beautiful
book
Cultural Fusion Quilts
by
Sujata Shah
click on the link above to see more quilts.

Two more photos

You can see I still need to work out how to have standardized  
lettering on all my photos!

I used this colourful butterfly fabric for backing.

Paint Box measures 40" square

with

Cotton/bamboo batting 50/50

We're well into the colder, wet weather here now, our Japanese Maple
is dropping leaves like crazy

and the large oak next door is bare, I now have a reasonable
view of the sunset.

"When the sun is setting, leave whatever you are doing
and watch it"

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Enjoy the week

Maureen