Dilys The Quilt

Sunday, 4 January 2015

BLOG 229

BLOG 229 JANUARY 4^th 2015

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!

January 1^st usually brings on the urge for a fresh start but for us it is still a day for celebration because it is the birthday of our eldest daughter, Tamana (named after one of the Gilbert Islands where I did VSO). She is 39 this year which gives me a gentle reminder that time is ticking on.

January 2^nd in this household is ‘Getting back to Normal’ day. All the Christmas stuff comes down; it is carefully and methodically packed away into several large plastic storage boxes and they are all returned to the loft. But I couldn’t let this chore go without one more laugh at Roger in his turkey onesie!! We have howled our way through the Christmas festivities whenever he has worn it and, at half-price for £7, this was by far the best buy of the season!! It was not a statement of sartorial elegance however as you can see from the picture below.

MY CHRISTMAS TURKEY

I have done precious little sewing for the past 2 weeks, thus giving myself a complete break from creative activities. So now I have to hit the ground running with deadlines rapidly approaching for 2 exhibition pieces. These are required for ‘Quiltfest’, an exhibition which is held in February in Llangollen each year; one is an A4 piece for the Contemporary quilt group and the other is 16” x 24” piece on the theme of ‘I like Region 13 because…..’

My A4 piece is inspired by the work of Susan Lenz which I have been trying out lately and I have shown the method in previous blogs. Here are the steps in pictures.

Painted fusible x 2

Fusible onto felt

Fused synthetics

Rectangles on felt

More detail

Fusible over the shapes

Sheers to co-ordinate

Sheers on fused surface

Surface stitchery

Detail 1

Detail 2

After soldering

Detail 1

Detail 2

This piece is now complete thankfully. It is so good to be blogging again and therefore being creative so I have something to post; you can’t have one without the other. And just as an afterthought, this post probably took you a couple of minutes to read but it represents a several hours of my creative time. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Sunday, 21 December 2014

BLOG 228

It’s that time of year again, the time when I look back over what I have achieved during the past 12 months. All around me people are saying ‘I don’t know where the time has gone since last Christmas’ but I do, because I have a blog to prove it. I can look back on it to confirm that I have been creative and productive and that is where a blog is worth its weight in gold. Whenever I come to the grey face of the computer, habitually on a Sunday morning, I sometimes start by thinking of blogging as a chore but, once I get going, I start to enjoy seeing what I have done during the week. It is second nature to me now to take pictures as I work and these pictures are the basis of my visual blog. I hope you have enjoyed visiting throughout 2014, I’d love to hear your comments. Without further delay though, for your (and my) delight and delectation, here is a summary of my year.

Scrappy Trip round the World

String Stars

Faux chenille

Jacobean hanging

Cat mats

Stained glass 1

Stained glass 2

Projects for sale

Macie’s box

Tooth fairy cushion

Q4Quilters

Red Equus

Birthday tweets

Soldered sheers

Soldered felt

Lady of the Lake quilt

Region 13

Clematis cover

Poppies

Autumn diary

Sheep

Poppies

Finished unfinished

Disappearing 4-patch

Richard Box workshop

Felted panel

And all that remains is for me to wish you all a happy Christmas and don’t forget to follow your New Year star to wherever it leads you. Dilys x

Sunday, 14 December 2014

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!!