I Made Two [More] Houses

These are further modifications on Carolyn Friedlander's outhouse pattern - such an unfortunate name - for our current Monday Modern challenge/project.

Don't think I have a favourite from the three houses I have made. I like them all for different reasons. Now for some trees.

I Made a House

Our current Monday Modern challenge is house blocks. 

Being on a bit of a Carolyn Friedlander roll at the moment, I purchased her 'outhouse' pattern. I tried to upsize it, but my home printer has limited functions so it ended up a bit stretched and that's it.

Clearly I made up bits of it as I went to get it to 12.5 x 12.5 - the lawn being in five pieces is the best example of that! I know what I would do differently next time.

I Made a [Pineapple] Quilt

I am going to call it Hala Kahiki because that's Hawaiian for pineapple.

Last March I made a small pineapple quilt - can you call it a quilt if it only measures 23 x 30cm? Anyway, it hangs on the wall in the lounge. Since then I have been wanting to make a big one. Our Monday Modern Ugly Brown challenge provided the opportunity. Poor old brown has a bad rep. When quilts with brown in them get shared, often the comment 'that's a nice brown' is made - like all browns are ugly. So someone came up with the idea of Monday Modern Ugly Brown challenge. Liz and her daughter went Spotlight shopping for some ugly brown and we were challenged with using our eighth in something quilted.

I used a 100% wool batting and hand quilted it. I used diagonal 3" crosshatch for the pineapple and tied where the lines intersected because you know how pineapples aren't smooth skinned. I did lines 1.5" apart on the leaves. And 3" regular crosshatching on the brown.

 

I found this island-style backing at The Fabric Store in Otara. It is a nice deep brown and appropriately island-ish for a pineapple quilt.

Being wool and hand quilted, this quilt is super snuggly.

Original quilt - Sassafras Lane Designs.

Saturday Quilt Done

This is my second quilt to gift to cold children (come next Winter) as part of the challenge Helen issued our Monday Modern group. It passed the cold feet test during the binding process. It has two different bindings - both leftovers from previous projects. I like the colours in this quilt.

Binding the Herringbone Quilt

I felt very 'Pride and Prejudice' sitting in the ballroom at Highwic binding my quilt on Sunday morning. (I quite like the idea of living during that time. Then or with the Ingalls family in their Little House on the Prairie. Or with the Waltons on Waltons' Mountain.)

It's not a particularly well-balanced quilt. I decided the quilt was too narrow, so added an extra row and by then I had used up a couple of the fat quarters so I had to introduce a new one. Pretty sure the unbalancedness won't affect the snuggliness. I do like the backing and the blue binding. Job done.

I should get on with finishing the tree quilt and quilting the red hexagons at some stage. But it's almost the end of term and I am trying to get my marking finished before the holidays!

Low Volume Herringbone

This is the result of raiding Helen's stash -

I am annoyed that I didn't spread out the pretty pink floral better and that close to the centre I have two fabrics the same. Grrr.

I got the idea from this lovely quilt when I googled 'low volume quilts'. It wasn't what I had planned at all - I was thinking about a 'plus' quilt. I can't find the tutorial I used, but my take on it was to cut 4.5" x 11" rectangles and then angle each short end to 60 degrees. It used between 7 and 8 fat quarters. 

The next step is to square it up and baste it for quilting. Given the short deadline (start of Nov) and my lack of free weekends between now and then, and my already planned holidays, I may be forced to machine quilt it. Yuk.

Raiding Helen's Stash

A couple of Mondays ago Helen brought along her leftover shop stash to our Modern Monday group. We were able to help ourselves from a massive collection of fat quarters from which we are to make a quilt each to be given to cold children.

I am keen to try something low volume. I really like the quilts Linda makes. So with some help from Linda (so I didn't choose my same old, same old colours) I chose the following fabrics:

I have cut them into parallelograms:

Next step, sewing it all back together. You can see what some of the others in our group are up to with their charity quilts here: Megan, Jacqui and Linda.

Our group's first exhibition is happening very soon at Highwic House in Newmarket, Auckland. It runs from Wednesday September 18 through to Sunday 29th (the first weekend of the school hols). Free parking ... always a bonus in Auckland. If you want to know more, I found this article. We had a bit of a see what we've got a month or so ago and it was lovely to see quilts that were made before our group existed.

Tiny Triangles

Our challenge for Modern Monday is a zip pouch using Noodlehead's tutorial. I have been putting it off. But I finally made a start over the weekend.

First I cut a few 1.5" squares and then drew a diagonal line on the back of them.

The I sewed 1/4" either side of the diagonal line. Thank goodness for chain piecing. I always think this part is like sewing a kite's tail.

Then cutting and ironing. Voila ... half square triangles.

And I didn't get much further. Lucy the Cat looked on from the ironing pile.

Polaroid Blocks

I have whipped up these polaroid blocks for the Monday Modern Quilt Group I have joined.

One of the polaroids had to be of an animal. Is a snail an animal? I have plenty of birds in my stash, but no animals ... other than snails!

Machine Quilting

The walking foot for my Bernette still hasn't arrived - I could have just ordered it from the www with the amount of time it is taking. So I brought one of the school machines home for the weekend under the guise of learning how to use the walking foot for my i-extend group on Wednesdays.

This afternoon I have quilted my AMQG Challenge quilt. It probably took an hour and a half or so, but saved at least 8 hours of hand quilting. It's not perfect. But I think it's a pretty good first go. I am in awe of people who quilt quilts bigger than this tiny one on a regular sewing machine and do anything but straight lines.

I don't love the back - the stitching stands out a mile. Every single deviation from the straight line stands out! I should have used a different colour thread on the bottom so it blended better or not used a fabric from the stash for the backing. Next time.

Challenge #2. Take 2.

I like the idea I had in the previous post, but felt it wasn't precise enough. So I will play with that idea again later.

In a couple of hours this afternoon (after lawn mowing and garden tidying) I whipped up Take 2.

I will show the entire thing when it's finished. I think I have three weeks ... probably less, because I need to get it into Patchwork Passion before Easter.

The acorn/flower print is by Denyse Schmidt from Spotlight, and the other two come from my local - The Crafty Needle. I am loving the bluey grey solid - so much so, I bought another metre of it on Saturday. The little check is leftover. I have used it on the bias