Front Basting

For lack of a better term, I do a "front basting" technique on my Lollys. I learned this technique about a year ago and I am completely won over. No more freezer paper, no more toothpicks, no more glue. And best of all, NO PINS.

Draw the sewing line on the top of the fabric. Cut out the shape about 1/8- 1/4 beyond the line. Hand or machine baste ON THE LINE to the background. As you needleturn, remove a few basting stitches.

This techinque works well for fussy cutting which is a huge advantage over back basting.

Back Basting

Hi All.

I need to figure out how to add photos, but in the meantime I thought I'd ask if anyone else was using back basting for the Rossville quilt.

I've traced all of the patterns and am working on two of them-- the first is the same block that many others have tried for their first (the lower right) and the second is the bottom inner border panel, the one with two trees.

I've found that backbasting works ok since many of the pieces are large and layering is minimal. So far, I've just appliqued the chicken beaks and feet, the horse tails, and the bird wings and tail.

Michele

A finished block

I think I satisfied the need to stitch up one of these blocks now. I chose the same fabric as Kim for the center, it was the need to have orange in there, it was all the chatter about orange I think.

This was my first option for the center but I changed my mind.

I better get back to the other quilt now. You may not have realised unless you followed my blog from way back that I have two of Kim's other patterns in various stages. This is where Princess Feathers is up to. I ran out of omph at border two. I also have twelve of the big Lollypop Tree blocks and some smaller ones sitting around somewhere. I'll have to see if I can find some photos.

I'll slink back to my corner now.

Sorry, no photos

I love that this blog is a resource, with pictures that I can refer to as I stitch along. I went back to a previous post and looked at the squirrel panel magnified. I wondered how others were doing the stems and I have to say, I love the fan folded detail on the bird (lower right) of Pam's panel. Nice job.

Robin

No not starting yet....

But I have found my background fabric today and bought all they had 10.7m so should not run out and the best part was the price
at $ 7.95 per meter.
I got the fabric at East Coast Fabrics, they have three shops in Queensland and stock some P&Q fabrics at great prices, the one store is only 10 minutes from me. I have found 1930's, Reproduction and all sorts there from time to time.

Hope you all have a great day and maybe I will just start a trial block... big grin.

cheers
Christine

Roseville itch

I guess I belong in a corner with Janet, as I couldn't resist Roseville either.  I've decided on my background, too.  These were the more serious possibilities:

I really wanted to use a lavender and white, but wasn't able to find one that didn't have a cream background.  The one above left was tempting, but seemed too busy for such a large quilt.  Ditto for black and white spots.  I considered plain white but couldn't find a soft white in town, and my husband pointed out it would show dirt (I'm sure he was thinking of how dirty it would get over the years it takes me to finish).

I tried the others above on my design wall with some Kaffe scraps I had, as well as a few more in the shops.  The Peach spots made using pink difficult.  The black and white (Scribbles/Kauffman) was too creamish.  I use a lot of pink, so the Magnolia would be too pink.  The final debate came down to Water (green) and Sky (blue).  I finally went with Sky (the main reason being it was closest to lavender).  Janet's lovely blocks will no doubt make me wish I'd chosen the green, but the blue's been purchased, washed and ironed.  Now I just have a couple things I've promised myself I'd finish before I can start. 

MUCH thanks to everyone who graciously told me how much fabric to order before I received my pattern, and thanks especially to Kim for typing in all the details of cutting--so helpful! 

Just a little distraction

I just couldn't help myself, the Roseville has been like an itch that needed to be scratched. I'm sure a little test block will suffice at this stage.

Background decisions aren't hard, it was between these two spots, the grey is chalk and the other is water spots. I put a few pieces on for auditioning.

Water spots won but the chalk will definitely be for the next quilt on the list. I love spot fabric so much that I even made a whole quilt with all spots and dots which just made me love them more. You can see it here.

I think I should go and stand in the corner, I feel like the kid in class that got caught doing something other than what I should be. 

I put my blinkers back on for the Stars and Sprigs. Happily the stems are now all down for border number two.

Normally I'm a die hard needle turner with a toothpick chaser but I've mixed it up for this quilt. I'm using Floriani stitch and wash tearaway to prep my leaves and buds. It's a fusible and used with a cool iron, I can slit the backs and get the tearaway out after washing. The fusible in it is water soluble but the tearaway has never dissolved away in any tests I've done.

I've used a glue pen to turn the seam allowances down. I wouldn't use this method for anything that wasn't a simple shape or needed super thin points or little curves such as in the Roseville.

After this quilt I think I'll be going back to needleturn because the less prep the better. I like to get to the stitching part as soon as I can.

The Fower Trellis

Here is another one of my earlier quilt - possibly made in 1999 - 2000, can't remember now.

I think this was the first quilt I did after about 6 - 7 years of not picking up the needle. During these years all I did was buy the fabrics, wash & iron and put away. The last quilt I did was in the early '90s, it was a Christmas quilt for my daughter. My daughter then embarked on her horse riding phase and my time was spent ferrying horse and little lady to the various riding related events. I did however, learnt a lot about horses and dressage. I love these horses, which is why the horses appear in my quilts now. Daughter finished riding during her year 12 as she had to do her yr 12 exams to qualify for entrance to the university. The horse went slightly lame and we sent him off to the country for retirement and I went back to my quilting!

I love red & green quilts and those turkey red fabrics just came in so I drafted this quilt. It is 97" x 94" but have shrunk after machine quilting. Kay Fernihough of Quilts on Q has done all my machine quilting. We work well together.

I would have loved to do this quilt in Kaffe's - all different flowers and leaves and multi fabric diamonds - AND smaller! Cheers, Kim McLean