Dilys The Quilt: BLOG 227

It’s that time of the year again when the colours red and green become the focus of attention. As complementary colours, they are just right together and, because I have invested time and effort into red and green quilts, they will be the only colours of my Christmas.

I am still making gifts for those who I know will appreciate them. One of the projects going around at the moment is fabric wreaths made by tying strips onto a metal ring; no skill required! The metal rings are cheaply available from a florist shop and the project is great for using up stashes of Xmas fabric. I have a load of Xmas strips left over from other projects so they require little preparation from me. All you need is a pile of strips 1” x 6”; I just happen to be using mainly red and gold strips with clusters of green and multi-coloured fabric and a touch of hessian.

Ring and strips

Here is the wreath in progress, it probably took half an hour to iron and cut fabrics and do the tying this far. It’s quite fiddly and best done when there is something interesting on the telly!

Progress

Wreath detail

This week I was presented with my new Husqvana Opel 67- sewing machine. Here I am with Russell the shop owner and Hayley the rep for Husqvana. The machine is partially hidden by the quilt but it came home with me and that’s all that matters!!

Presentation

And here it is with work in progress. The first thing I am doing is to make a book of stitches with their reference numbers. With past machines I have done the same and it is an excellent resource which saves me masses of time trying to find a stitch at random. There are 200 stitches listed for this machine and it’s a sad thought really that I will probably only use about half a dozen of them regularly.

Book of stitches

I can’t tell you how much fun I have had with the soldering iron, burning the patterns and holes on this wall hanging. I was supposed to use a heat gun to melt the felt between the rectangles but it proved impossible, it just wasn’t hot enough. So I burned them away instead with the soldering iron and I sculpted the edge in the same way. I need to do more of this!!