The Last Piece

Fanciful Flowers

Just a quick one today.... been very busy looking after my friend Sue, who arrived this morning from the USA. Some of you may know her - Sue Spargo? 

Yes! Sue is here to teach classes in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Bathurst, and lucky me gets to hang out and take her to art galleries! This is her latest book which is a whole lot of lovely bags and sacks. The one with the elephant is so cute that has now risen to the top of my Make It Now list. That and the new Kim McLean quilt on Glorious Colour.... thanks you as always to Mrs Schmenkman for helping all of us to spend our money.

Just wanted to show you also this lovely version of Fanciful Flowers made by Michelle. Michelle made this for her mother in Scotland - lucky Mum I say!

Fanciful Flowers is from Material Obsession Book One, available from me right now ([email protected]) if you haven't already got one! Also still taking pre-orders for MO 2 via email, don't miss out!

That's all, I'm pooped. I'm leaving you with a quick quiz though. Does anyone have any musings on why I might have called my new blog The Last Piece? And what's with the bean? A few people have asked, so I thought I'd see if anyone knows. Thinking caps on....

Sarah x

Skippety Do Dah

Morning everyone... the sun is shining, the grass is green, and I have a new sewing room. But wait! Let's announce the winner before we get ahead of ourselves.....

The winner is Mandy! Congratulations..... Mandy said:

"Always love, love, love, fabric from Urban Chiks. It's always fresh but somehow vintage. Thank you for the chance to win some."

No problemo Mandy, drop me an email and I will get your Sweetie in the mail for you.

And now to the sewing room. Hubby and I have been trying to renovate our house since we bought it ten years ago. It's a nice house, but the man who owned it before us was a bit of a home handy man. He has left us some wonderful legacies, like the brown and green hexagonal tiles in the ensuite, the mission brown tiles in the living room and the shower that drains in the wrong direction (ie, AWAY from the drain!). All these things and more we have lived with for ten years, including the last two years when we had the plans, but no action! 

Anyway, all that is behind us and the renos are starting in two weeks!! We have to move out to have the house prettied up and we have rented a place up the road. It's a funny old rental house with all the paint chipped off the walls and a funky old kitchen, but yesterday I started moving my sewing room up there and I have found gold.

My sewing room currently looks like this:

So you can imagine my need to get out. If I put on any weight I will never be able to squeeze between the desk and the shelving to get to the sewing machine. It has so much stuff in it that it's just not funny. I was worried that there would not be enough space in the rental to get everything in there that needs to be there. But yesterday I discovered that I have a large, airy, bright classroom (I currently have two spaces in a Friday morning if anyone's interested!), a full wall of design wall and another room to be my studio!! In my huge and breathless excitement I didn't take a picture, but I promise to snap some when I take another load up to the house later today. 

Hooray, Hooray, happiness is neatly stacked fabric.

I also thought I'd share this with you.... my son Charlie went to his first boy/girl party on Saturday night, his little friend Jillie turned 12 and they had a dinner party to celebrate. He bought her the Killers album (dainty, Charlie, well done), and I thought I'd make her a little something as it's not every day a girl turns 12.

How cute is that? I recently subscribed to Mixtape, which is a fantastic little indie craft magazine coming out of Melbourne. With my subscription I was given some iron on transfers from Sublime Stitching by Jenny Hart which are very, very cute. As there are no little girls in my immediate sphere I was going to be reduced to embroidering girls heads onto all my pyjama tops until I encountered Jillie's birthday. An hour in front of the TV later (OK, it didn't take me an hour to sew it - it was Saturday afternoon and Cocoon was on!) and I was all set.

Think of me moving boxes and stacking fabric, and don't forget to let me know asap if you want a spot in my Friday class in my NEW CLASSROOM! :) 

Sarah x

Friday Madness

Friday again! Running late today everyone, but don't forget, it's Giveaway Friday so leave me a hello to THIS POST and you will go in the draw for a Sweet by Urban Chiks Charm Pack posted directly to you, your itchy sewing fingers and your sewing machine :) 

Draw closes Monday morning 7am Sydney time. Happy Friday everybody....

Sarah x

Reading

Reading this afternoon. Boys at football, hubby coaching, dog asleep on my lap. Dinner ready, wine poured, Antiques Roadshow on the telly..... "sigh"..... all good. What to read?

Novel of choice at the moment is this, which you can get here.

I am LOVING this book. Love, love love. If you are a fan of books such as The Cider House Rules (good John Irving is a heavenly reading experience) , The Pillars of the Earth (top ten "losing youself in another era" novel) or The Grapes of Wrath (OK, this is a huge comparison, but Edgar is a great story), run out and get this now. Oprah likes it, it must be good right? I can't put this down, perhaps that's where I'm headed....

I might need a quilting fix though, and I have some new books. A lighter read would be this little number, Hawaiian Quilt Masterpieces, which is eye candy at the extreme. 

I bought this at Craft Fest a few weekends ago. Lots of pretty, pretty piccies of really yummy quilts. Makes me want to pull out meterage and get stitchin'. Also luring me though, waiting for a nice chunk of free time, is The Fabric of Society by quilt historian Annette Gero, which I have lusted after for AGES and only just given in to. Its HUGE and heavy and full of the most beautiful quilts, interesting text about Australian quilting history and patterns for some of the quilts by none other than Kim Mclean if you please! 

Kim unfortunately doesn't have a website, but you can read an interview with her here and buy some of her patterns here. I also suspect but don't know for sure, that the quilt on the front of this piece of deliciousness coming asap to my bookshelf (thank you Mrs Schmenkman for that heads up!!) is by Kim as well.She is a marvel, if you don't know about her quilts go and look now! NOW! 

Hmmm. So many decisions, but I have to get going now and decide, or they'll be back and I will have spent all my heavenly free reading time talking to you lot! Go on, off you go!

Sarah x

Annie's Garden

Jacoline in New Zealand has made her own version of my quilt, Annie's Garden, and was kind enough to share the pictures with me. She has done a lovely job.

The pattern for my quilt is in Material Obsession One. 

Don't forget if you don't have either Book One or Book 2 you can order them by emailing me at [email protected] The webshop will be up soon, I promise, I'm just waiting for me IT guy to get his game on. You know who you are!

If you have made one of my quilts I would LOVE to have you send me a picture of it for the blog, and I will get a Flickr group going to show them all off. I know you're out there so send them in!

Hope you're all having a quilty day :)

Sarah x

Red, White and Brew

What a weekend. Sleepover, orchestra rehersal, orchestra concert for son number 1, two sleepovers for son number 2, four games of football on Sunday and a night on the chardonnay with the SIL on Saturday! Phew. However, I did manage to grab some instant gratification in between things by tipping my red drawer out on the floor and doing this - 

Chop, chop, chop.... that drawer runneth over anyway and I have wanted to do a red and white quilt for ages. I actually have another one in design which is much more complex and I wanted blocks NOW! So I pieced for a while and came up with this... bear in mind there are blocks missing.  Not actually sure I'm happy with this configuration, I think actually I'm going in this direction but I have to piece a few more before I'm sure... and make sure that all the apples are up the right way!

What do you think? 

I'll keep piecing and chopping but all opinions are valued, if not agreed with! In the mean time I have Super Dog to keep me company.

PS. Brew is for all the coffee I had to drink on Sunday after the night with Ceece. Thanks for that !!

Drumroll....

Random number generator.... count down the list of comments to the winning number...... And the winner this week is.....

AJ from Scotland! Who is going to laugh, because this is what she wrote:

Hi Sarah, your books look great, I'll have to see if I can get hold of them here. I'd love to win that jellyroll, snippets is a great line and I don't have any jelly rolls - not one, never! So winning my first and from such an exotic locale would be seriously cool.

Mind you, you'll be hoping my number doesn't come up - I'm in Scotland!

Cheers,
AJ

Congratulations AJ, Your very first jelly roll all the way from Down Under. Drop me an email so I know where to post it to you.

Come back later everyone and say hi, I'm off to golf (we're learning to putt today!) but I'll blog properly later, I started a new project yesterday.....

Sarah x

Friday Give Away + Excitement!!

Top of the morning everybody! Don't forget to leave a comment to THIS POST today, Saturday or Sunday until Monday 5am Sydney time to win this beautiful Jelly Roll of American Jane's Snippets line.... have fun and enjoy your Friday!

Sarah x

PS. OMG, OMG, OMG!!! Look what that lovely postie just brought to my door. MO Book 2 - am so excited it looks lovely. YAY!! If you want to pre-order a copy for delivery early May just email me to [email protected] and I will put a copy away for you and invoice you when I get my PayPal hooked up. Yay!!!

Curvy Class

As promised, here is a pictorial class in free form curvy piecing. This technique seems very complex, but give it a go with some scrap first and you'll soon see it's not nearly as hard as it looks!

First up, I have four pieces of contrasting fabric of varying widths and lengths. You can make them all the same size if you like, but remember that they will shrink up quite a lot with piecing and will not remain the same length either.

Take two pieces of fabric, an original and an insert. Next, lay the piece you want to insert (the white and orange spots) underneath the original piece of fabric (the pink). Make sure that the insert piece is a fair way underneath the original piece or you will not be able to cut a very deep curve.

Using your rotary cutter, freehand cut a gentle curve through both layers of fabric, making sure that you get both layers and not just one. Do not make the curve too deep or it will be too hard to piece. This is not as hard as it looks, just jump in and cut and you will see what I mean!

Take the piece of orange fabric away from underneath the pink, and the pink from on top of the orange, leaving the two pieces you are going to sew together. Trim the orange piece to be level with the top of the pink fabric. The bottom edge doesn't matter so much.

Turn the piece of orange fabric over onto the pink fabric so they are right sides together, and align the curves at the top edges. Sew the pieces of fabric together very slowly, stopping to adjust so that you are sewing a straight line all the time and NOT stretching or pulling at the fabrics in any way. If you think you are going to sew a pleat, stop, lift the foot, re-arrange the fabric and keep sewing. You should always be sewing a straight line ahead of you even though in the overall picture you are sewing a curve. Go slowly and it won't seem so complex!

Press the seam towards the orange, inserted piece of fabric.

Repeat this with the next colour by laying the fabric to be added (the green) under the last piece (the orange).

Cut your next curve and remove the green fabric behind the orange, and the orange on top of the green.

Sew and press the seam towards the inserted fabric (the green).

Keep going until you have made the piece as long as you wish. If you want to make a panel of another fabric inside what you have already pieced, continue as follows:

Place a larger piece of fabric underneath the panel you have pieced and cut as before. This is the steepest curve I have cut in this tutorial and I wouldn't recommend cutting a curve any steeper than this or it will be difficult to make it lie flat after it has been pieced. Set the piece of fabric you cut away aside carefully.

Piece this panel in as before and press the seam.

Take the piece of fabric you set aside and lay the edge of it underneath to cut away as before. Cut a gentle curve so that you do not have to take too much off the right hand piece.

Sew and press.

Lay another piece of fabric under the curved edge that is left. Using the rotary again, cut along the edge of the curve carefully and remove the piece of pink fabric left behind.

Sew, press and trim to be square! 

This method is great for lots of things, including wavy borders and scrap quilts. I most recently used this technique when I was at the AQC. The class I took involved designing an art quilt based around trees, and I wanted to make something representing a gum tree I pass every morning while I'm walking my dog.

The tree has a twisted trunk and when the sun comes up, the pink and gold glimmers on the smooth white bark of of the trunk. In the summer, the dark bark sheds and leaves behind another smooth, whiter layer underneath.

I made several panels of curved piecing and pieced them together with larger, solid blocks of fabric.

I am currently playing with the bark and leaves to create the effect I want.

So there you go! Freehand curved piecing, which I must point out is very different to the curved piecing you would want to do on a Drunkard's Path block or something of that sort which requires precision.

Get out those rotary cutters, throw your rulers to the side and have a go!

Sarah x

Simplicity

Yesterday I went to the supermarket and did a few boring household chores. I felt I had done my good deeds for the day and thought I'd treat myself to the Jan-Feb issue of Fons and Porter's, which I'm sure came out in the US ages ago but we have only just gotten here. I went home and unpacked the groceries, made a cuppa and got ready for one of my favourite things - a new quilting magazine.

The first thing I turned to was Gerald Roy's column, This Old Quilt, which is just about my favourite thing to read in any quilting magazine anywhere in the world. You can read a great article about him here. 

For his column, Gerald picks a quilt from his extensive antique quilt collection each month and writes a column using the quilt as an example of whatever aspect of quilting he is writing about. This month's column, Too Much Sugar for a Dime,  happens to be about hand quilting. 

This quilt was made in 1936 by an unknown quilter and is in the collection of the International Quilt Study Center in Ohio.

The gyst of the article is that Gerald was recently judging a show, when his fellow judges began to debate about the level of quilting in the show. He expressed his view, which was basically that in times past, quilting was purely for stabilising the batting, which in those times was not able to withstand wear or washing. It was several decades before quilting was actually used as decoration or to enhance design. Although amazing battings are available today, quilting is actually still for exactly this purpose. The show he was at contained many over worked, over quilted, over designed quilts that were too busy and complex. He says:

"It is such a pleasure to see contemporary quilts that exhibit not only expert execution, but restraint in the number of techniques used. As a judge, I always love to hear that sigh of relief when such a quilt appears."

This quilt is also in the International Quilt Study Center. It is a Whig Rose pattern, probably made by Del Patterson between 1895 and 1905.  

This touched such a chord with me. Although I fully appreciate the work and technical expertise that goes into many heavily machine quilted or extremely complex pieces, for my money the quilts that make me gasp are the ones that are beautiful in their simplicity. 

By simplicity I don't mean plain fabrics, or big pieces, or wholecloth - I just mean that the quilt maker has concentrated on getting her message across by perfecting her idea. The quilting serves to enhance the piecing, or raise the applique, the colour is balanced and the components are working together. These are the quilts that I stand in front of for long moments, staring at the composition and printing the things that work for it into my mind for the next time I am tempted to over-design or over-complicate.

Also from the Quilt Study Center. It's a Log Cabin, Chimney and Cornerstone pattern, by an unknown maker between 1890 and 1900. 

I think this is why so many of us keep coming back to antique quilts. Wether through nessecity, trend or personal preference, many antique quilt books are filled with quilts such as these that make me smile and hesitate to turn the page.

Anyway, that's just my 10 cents. Get a copy of the magazine and have a read, it's a great article, and there's also another very interesting one on machine quilting by Dawn Cavanaugh. Feel free to disagree!

Stay tuned for the curved piecing tutorial I promised tomorrow and don't forget to comment on Friday, Saturday or Sunday to be in the next weekly draw.

Sarah x

PS all the quilts shown above are from the International Quilt Study Center and Museum's Quilt of the Month program. This is a great, free service where you sign up and each month they email you a pic of a quilt from their collection. I usually put the quilt onto my desktop so that every time I turn the computer on I get a stunning new quilt to look at, that changes each month. Sign up it's really fun!