Over the River and Through the Woods

Again, I found the subtle colours in this quilt very restful. It was another block of the month. I worked on the embroidery at night and set up packs of the squares in the weekends. I remember rushing home in my lunch hour to stitch the squares. I could get two squares pieced in my lunch break. So it seemed to come together quite quickly . In my later quilts I would have been more tempted to quilt in the negative spaces of the embroidery but that step was still a way off at this stage

The quilt is machine pieced and quilted using very basic quilting repetitions.

Antique Sewing machines

I loved the antique colours in this quilt and stitching each antique sewing machine at night kept me calm from an exhausting day job. Today we would call it slow stitching or being in the moment but when I made this quilt it was just a relaxing way to spend each evening. I often marvel at how my instinctual draw to working on a quilt in the evening helped to balance my day work. In my book, “Life is a Journey” I call it one leg of a three legged stool: writing, quilting (art) and gardening.

I have seen other renditions of this quilt in a standard square block layout. I think the diagonal layout in the single Irish chain is very pleasing and I prefer it to the standard one. I don’t know that i would be so keen to join all those little squares today but the colours are still very appealing to me.

African Oyssey

There was a phase when naïve patchwork on ethnic themes, like Africa, were quite popular. I purchased the pattern for this at a craft fair and then had the added pleasure of selecting the fabrics from my stash - which was growing all the time.

While the style is quite different from the traditional American style patchwork I had been following,. choosing bright colours to stand out against the more sombre background was fun.

It looks like it was windy the day I took this photo with the quilt pinned on the fence as the quilt is not hanging straight but looks like it is in motion.

When I was exhibiting the quilts in the garden for a garden ramble someone said to me that I didn’t really have a style. I do not know that I even have a style now. My interest is captured by new techniques and new challenges and what if questions. I do know my more recent quilts use a more subdued palette, almost monochromatic.

This quilt is hand appliqued, machine pieced and was a very early machine quilted piece, using predominantly stipple stitch

The 30 Year Quilt

I call this the Thirty year quilt because, if I can go by the date on the bottom Baltimore Quilt block, it took me 30 years to complete it. As you can see, it is quite a large quilt. It was begun as a block per month, designed by Ngaire Brooks as a NZ Baltimore. The squares are hand appliqued (not very well) as I was still very much a beginner.

I daringly discarded some of Ngaire’s designs and replaced them with my own. This was a major step forward from my thinking that I had to follow the rules. I loved doing the applique birds so I put in the keruru and the kea. I can’t remember what the blocks were that I discarded. I joined the squares together and then it sat in the UFO pile for a very long time - not sure what I would do with it or how I would finish it.

As the years past, I decided to go into first machine quilting and then free machine quilting as per Karen McTavish’s great book. I found drawing out the quilt patterns on fabric to be a tedious process so free machine quilting gave me some immediacy and was better suited to my temperament.

In 2018 I joined the on line Creative Strength Training with Jane Dunnewold. Studying the archetypes that affect all of us and learning about the committee in our heads that tell us our work is not good enough or no one will like our work, I discovered that my Saboteur whispered in my head that if something wasn’t completed, it couldn’t be criticised. I decided it was time to put the Saboteur to rest. I took out my NZ Baltimore centre and decided this would be the year that I completed it. It was a mammoth task. First I added the borders, complete with the applique ivy and berries and then I began the quilting. The trapunto diamonds were the first to go in.

As I began the free machine leaf design from Karen McTavish’s book - I think she calls it a fire design or open Cs but my designs always form a leaf type outline. It has become one of my staple designs). I began to feel the quilting needed a bit more. I introduced the random butterflies and dragonflies into the background. I felt this provided an additional design element. I was really getting into free design by now.

I did not want the borders to detract from the squares so the ivy and berries are just on alternate corners . They are stipple quilted around but the rest of the borders are just straight line quilting.

The hand applique hadn’t improved but it was less a focus now.

I include this story because there are many who have UFOs hidden away and maybe this story will encourage them to take out their work and revisit it. I was pleased with the end result and most people who see the quilt are more interested in the overall design and effect than the less than perfect applique.

In the gallery below you can see the individual blocks and quilting a bit better.

Love is . . .

This began as a block per month helping to keep me sane as I worked at the office during the day and stitched the redwork centres at night. I added the last three stitched panels ( designed by me) to increase the length of the quilt. So I was beginning to be more adventurous and not so by the book in may ways.

Not my favourite colour scheme but sometimes we need to push boundaries. The panels are hand embroidered, the piecing is done by machine and the quilting is one of my earlier attempts at machine quilting using stencils to mark out the design.

A Log Cabin

Log cabin displayed over the side of the gazebo in the bottom garden

Early days in my quilting Journey: Using log cabin blocks to create a medallion effect and concentrating on the graphic effect of the barn raising layout.

Blue and white are always a traditional and refreshing combination. Once again I was forced to find a coordinating fabric for the outer border as my original amounts were not sufficient to make a quilt large enough for our bed. All part of the learning journey and pushing me more and more toward using multiple fabrics and back to where I started making quilts from remnants of hand made clothes.

This quilt was machine pieces and hand quilted

Even though my choice was to work in blue and white, I was fascinated by the tradition of building the block around a central square, representing the hearth and warmth of the home.

My First Pieced Quilt

This pattern was called Bear’s Paw and I was upset that I didn’t have enough fabric to create all the pieced squares the same. I certainly wasn’t into the scrappy look in those days. Focused on symmetry and everything being as the others. So this was a jumping off point of allowing things to be different. A long way from what I do today but still the learning is there. The Bears Paws are stitch in the ditch quilted and the dark green alternate squares are hand quilted. I still seem to be working in fairly “masculine” colours here.

The very first square was completed in a class and we had been told to bring fabric in teal colours. All the completed squares were put up on a board to show how a colour palette blended the different squares together. I still wanted my finished one to be all the same but it was a learning curve for me. Maybe not having enough of the pattered fabric to do the middle square was synchronicity.

A Crazy Quilt

Jewel colours in a traditional format

I had never really been a fan of crazy patchwork until my sister, Rae, went to a class and showed me what she was creating. Her work was much finer than my one but the ability to sit at night and embellish the squares appealed so this is the result. I tried to make each square different and each square had a butterfly and a hand embroidered flower somewhere in the square.

It was fun to work with satins and velvets rather than cotton. The rich colours and reflected light brought a whole neew effect to my patchwork. The sashing is black velvet but the finished quilt with all the embellishments is quite heavy. You will note, I am still working in the traditional block format.

Finding embellishments from broken jewellery and $2 shops was also part of the fun in creating the embellishments.

Playing with Values

Values described by half square triangles

The colours in this quilt always make me feel better. Perhaps it is the sunny yellow - a colour I don’t work with very often - or just the haphazard way the triangles create their magic. It was made during a very difficult period in my life and was just a pattern taken from a quilting book. I liked the idea of playing with scraps of different values to create the blocks and then joining them in a manner that created alternate shapes. Concentrating on the joining of the shapes took me out of my mind set and calmed my spirit - something that so often happens when I start creating and there is too much other stuff going on in life.

My scrap fabrics were sorted into lights and darks and then the half square triangles were joined one light to one dark in a fairly random manner.. I did concentrate on having the yellow triangles pieced so they would meet in the centre of the square blocks. I like those pops of colour in contrast to the subdued tones in the octogen centres.

Someone said to me, when I had my quilts displayed in the garden for a garden ramble, that I didn’t really have any style. Maybe I still don’t, but I was concentrating on refining skills in all of these quilts so that my repertoire and understanding of shape, colour and pattern was growing. Basically I was just making quilts that appealed to me and learning basics of design at the same time.

McKenna Ryan Country

A McKenna Ryan Block of the month

For quite a while I was enamoured of McKenna Ryan’s quilts. They were quite a challenge as each block was like a mini quilt in itself. And then they had to be joined. From memory there was a bit of fudging that went on to get each block to align properly. This was the frst one I did as it harked back to our farming heritage even though some of the images are quite American inspired. I have always thought it would be fun to do a quilt with the round haybales that are now such a common sight in the rural community. I love the tree in the block at the top of this quilt. I had grown away from the country themed quilts like the one I did early on in my quilting journey but this was a return to base almost. Of course batiks work beautifully in quilts like this because they give such depth with their marbled patterning.

Oriental 3 D Baltimore

The idea of 3 D applique is continued in the quilt which has another block of the month with an Asian theme. There were lots of new techniques to be learnt in creating the blocks. I chose a black background to set off the brilliant colours in the blocks and then white sashings as a foil to each square. The quilting is machine done but the blocks are all hand appliqued using the various methods that came with the pattern.

My Stars

When photo image transfers (now called heat transfer) first became available, I was keen to try them out and the idea of this quilt was born. The quilt is completely self designed and begins with a black and white photo of my husband and I on our wedding day at the centre. a starting point. This is surrounded by a very busy patched inner section representing the business of our lives that were chaotic and yet had some order within the chaos. It is held in place by the thin red border. The white corner quilting gives the eye a resting place from the busyness in the centre (and provided me a place for more machine quilting practice). Each side shows photographs of my children growing up: my eldest daughter on the left, my son at the top and my youngest daughter on the right. The bottom has my Mum, my husband and the three children together. The white square represents our son who was still born and who we never had the opportunity to see. My garden surrounds them all

From Darwin with Love - A Colour Palette Challenge

This quilt also owes its inception to Kim’s years in Darwin - “The Top End”. One Christmas a package of fabrics arrived in the colours of the Top End: Ochre, bright yellow and intense blue. I will always associated these colours with the Northern Territory. These were colours I didn’t usually work with and the palette was a challenging one - Kim was probably aware of that. I used lots of cream to tone down the complimentaries and this is the result. I was quite pleased with the result and the fact that I had lots of space to practise using machine quilting. A good example of how pushing past our comfort zone can push us into new creative practice.

The quilting patterns were traced onto the quilt and then off I went. There are back to back hearts in the squares between the large pieced blocks. This was the first time I had used a mixture of curved quilting patterns and straight echo stitching

The Country Bride Quilt

This was one on the first quilts I machine quilted. The first applique block was begun in a workshop. The applique is machine done using rayon threads which I loved because of their shiny and fine finish. Everyone else in the class was using very traditional pale pinks or pale blues for their applique blocks but I just loved the more vibrant colours I chose.

At this stage in my life, my husband would go to the club on a Friday night and, as the children had already left home, I would use this time to quilt. Then go and collect him from the club so he wasn’t driving home having had a few drinks. It was a special time for me, a space in the week that was dedicated to what I wanted to do without interruptions.

Each block, including the quilted blocks, was made separately and then I joined them in a quilt as you go fashion. The top seam is sewn right sides together but the back seam is folded over and hand stitched down.

The quilt patterns were all pre-marked on the quilt top before stitching. I think form the photo I must have used a different weight batting in the border because is stands out more readily than the internal blocks.

Handstitched Candlewick Quilt

Hand stitched white on white Candlewick quilt

The commitment to make a hand embroidered, hand quilted candlewick bedspread was quite a large one. I have had people ask if they could purchase this quilt but I will probably never make another one like this so I have refused those offers. Each square is a different design and was completed in the evenings over a period of time. The squares were machine pieced and each square is bordered with cotton lace. I had to save up to be able to afford to buy enough cotton lace of the same type to go round all the squares. You can see a close up of one of the squares below.

I don’t think my hands would cope with all that hand quilting today. Part of my move to machine quilting was the beginning of arthritic pain in the base of my right thumb.

White quilts are notoriously difficult to photograph because the definition of light and shadow is quite minimal but anyone who has attempted to create a similar quilt will appreciate both the beauty of the completed project and the time it takes to stitch. The inner sashings are quilted in pumpkin stitch and the outer border in a rope design

Hand Applique Rose Quilt

This was a block of the month that I signed up for and when the first block arrived the colours were not what I was expecting - they were very modern and I was wanting to create a traditional looking quilt - so I withdrew from the contract for the rest of the blocks and substituted my own colours and fabric. I probably wasn’t very popular with the online supplier but the colours in the first block were nothing like what had been advertised in the pink version. It was an indication that I was becoming braver in my journey and more particular in what I was going to spend my time working on.

You can see I am still working very traditionally when this quilt was made with traditional blocks and sashings. I remember those saw tooths being a real challenge and having to fudge to get them to meet at the join. but that was all part of my quilting journey. I Was still making bed sized quilts at this stage. Quilts that had something practical as an outcome. Very traditional and quite controlled. But then that is part of the journey that has continued into the more free form quilts I create today.

This quilt is hand appliqued, machine pieces and machine quilted. It easily fits a Queen sized bed.

Fancy Cut Dresden Plate

In this stage I was still working very traditionally in blocks. The learning from this quilt was to fussy cut the sections of the Dresden plate and join them together to creating individual mandalas. I really enjoyed creating the patterns in the central squares and if I get back into piecing I would like to try some of the more extensive fussy cut kaleidoscope ideas of Paul Nadelstern. I do have a hinged mirror which enables me to see what the completed fussy cut piece will look like when pieced. Here I have just used a single very patterned fabric but Paula creates her own initial section and then repeats those to create a whole. They are extremely complex. There never seems to be enough time in the day to try all the things I would like to delve into.

I often smile when looking at these old photos at how conditioned I was. The sashing quilting is within the green bands whereas today I would probably ignore those confines and quilt across the borders.

The first time I washed this quilt, the purple dye ran into the white blocks and I felt the quilt was ruined. But then I discovered Dylon washaway and a second wash with that and the quilt was pristine again. I tend to keep a packet of that in my laundry now - not just for quilts but as an insurance against dye runs in the laundry in general.