June 2017

Rosemary chose this gorgeous backing for her quilt

Janet did these beautfiful daisies all over the dresden plates

Jackies almost done

Add with beautiful hand quilting with perle cotton I think

and a wonderful backing fabric

And this is Jackie's next one.....

Rosemary and Janet inspecting the fruits of their hard work - beautiful

Janet's wonderful wreaths again

This one is Lynne's, being held by Wendy

and Lynne made this wonderful grow chart for Benjamin

Kim,'s beautifully delicate BOM

Rosemary's dresdens quilted with daisies by Janet

Another gorgeous collaboration

Chris's Dresden Plates

Dresden Plates by Chris.  She has finished it now, I think, but was just doing the binding when I took this pic.  Chris made this using the quilt as you go technique; I think she has decided to make all her big quilts this way as each block is quilted on the way and when they are all put together, the quilt is more or less done.  The thin blue strips inbetween the floral borders are the connecting strips.  It is a clever technique and when done badly a quilt can be quite stiff but Chris is a master at this and the quilt drapes beautifully and looks fabulous.

History of the Dresden Plate Quilt Block is here http://www.patternsfromhistory.com/colonial_revival/dresden-plate.htm

If you visit you tube you will find many different video tutorials for making and joining quilt as you go blocks - there is more than one way to skin a cat!

Breakaways May 12th

Another picture-heavy post - worth 1,000 words, though! The following are Libby's quilt as you go blocks - aren't they beautiful

And the above are Christine's Dresden Plates.  Wilma's tip of making each centre out of one of the fabrics in the plate is a good one as that way you don't have to worry about running out of the centre material.

Well we are off to Quilts UK at Malvern tomorrow, with the exception of Pauline who is still up in the Lake District not feeling well.  Thank you to the ScrapHappy Quilters who have welcomed us onto their coach.  We are all looking forward to seeing the quilts and the traders!

7th April Breakaways

I thought I had better put these pics up before I forgot!  Christine was ill so hopefully when she feels better she will be able to have a look at this and see what she missed.  From the week before -

Wilma has been quietly beavering away and this is one of her lovely dresden plates - she has lots more blades tucked away but this is the one I was allowed to take a picture of!

These are a couple more of Kim's sunbonnets - she has currently stopped making any more and is busy sewing them down. This will be a gorgeous quilt when it's done.

And from this week........

Chris J's utterly gorgeous Antique Flower Garden quilt being ably held up by Norma on the left and Linda on the right.  She is thinking about sending it out to be quilted, if she can afford it.  It is such a beautifully stitched piece of work and looks beautiful.

 My version, Taupe Flower Garden is not so well made and has more borders.  My flowers go in different directions as well I think - ah well, never mind....the other pic is of the bottom where the applique is.  Neither of us liked the original positioning much, Chris had one idea and I had another but in my case you wouldn't really have seen the applique so I went for the bottom, as did Chris but we positioned them differently.  An odd thing about these two quilts - we found them very depressing at one stage and decided it was the colours but when the blocks were finally put together they looked so much better and brighter, we just couldn't believe it.  Mostly we sewed these two quilt tops together once a week.  It worked very well and we have another pair of quilts to make, also from Antique Angel.  So perhaps by next year there will be another pair to show....

This is the main top I have been working on for a bit.  It's probably big enough so maybe just a thin border and then a slightly wider one.  I will have to have a think.  All furnishing fabric samples and made up of half square triangles flipped around though it took me a while to get the pattern right!

Now these are two of Linda's hearts.  I could have sworn I had taken pics of more but my camera card got corrupted at one point and I lost some data.  Of course, it could be that I have forgotten to take any pics in the first place.  Linda is making these hearts with a backing on so that you just turn them right side out and applique them onto a backing square.  There are no problems with that little vee at the top of the heart and they turn out beautifully every time.  I think I might have a bash at them sometime.

Anyway Linda has made loads and loads of these and her daughter is going to take them away and work out a layout.  I can't wait - it will look Gorgeous!!!!

No more pics - Lesley is making a bag for her mat and ruler - something I ought to do one day (gosh my to do list gets longer by the minute - has anyone noticed?) and Libby is appliqueing an extraordinarily complicated block for her Patricia McLaughlin course.  Norma wont let me take any more pics of her pyramids for the time being, but it is growing and looking spectacular and ChrisJ is hand stitching a border onto her pyramids.

I have been dyeing with mixed results.  I am not sure I like the cloth I used so will try something else for the next batch.  I tried dyeing with frozen fabric and parfait dyeing. I wrote down what I did but need to number the pieces next time as some of them were a bit of guesswork after the wash out.  A single colour is wasted on frozen fabric, I think. I couldn't see much difference between that and a parfait dyed top layer, but then turquoise is such an in-your-face colour, there may be subtleties I haven't noticed LOL

Linda's Dresden Plates

Linda brought along her dresden plates, originally uploaded by cazh.

Linda is new to us and to quilting - not for long. She had a lesson from Jane on how to make Dresden Plates and took off. She brought along quite a few to show us. Aren't they great?