My latest project is completed! Little Winter Wonderland, designed by Lynette Anderson Designs, was bought as a kit from Cross Patch - my favourite online quilting shop! The kit included the pattern, fabrics (also designed by Lynette, these are from her Frosty Friends collection), and hand painted wooden reindeer buttons. As you can see, the centre square is hand embroidered (I used Valdani variegated threads for this) and hand appliqued (my favourite method of hand applique is using applique paper and Apliquick tools). This was machine pieced, and then machine quilted very simply. Finally I used a single fold binding and the scalloped tabs were hand stitched in place on the back of this small quilt. I'd stitched a small sleeve on the back of the quilt, so it could slip onto a free-standing small quilt hanger.
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I often get asked what type of interfacing I use for my hand embroidery and applique projects. I tend to use a variety of fusible interfacings and try to keep a good supply in my sewing studio, as I use a variety of interfacings for different projects. My local quilt shop, Kis Quilting Ltd in Ipswich, stocks interfacing, and I particularly like this Vilene F220. This is very fine, and will be used on the back of the "Hearts and Happy Flowers" blocks. My favourite interfacing for several years had been "weaveline" (Vilene G700, which is a woven lightweight fusible interfacing), which I had always bought online. It's lovely to use, and gives structure to the finished piece. I'd used it on the first block of "Hearts and Happy Flowers" but as I didn't have a large enough piece of weaveline to cover the back of block 1 in a whole piece, I'd fused it to individual pieces that were going to be embroidered and appliqued. Unfortunately it was just a little too bulky due to the number of seams in the block.
A gorgeous parcel of goodies from Cross Patch (a super online quilt shop based in Wales) arrived in the post recently. One of the items was a kit for Little Winter Wonderland, a festive design by Lynette Anderson Designs featuring applique and hand embroidery. My evenings over the past week have been spent curled up on the sofa with my embroidery needle and Valdani variegated threads, stitching this project ready for the festive season. Here's a little peek at the jolly snowman - he's looking very cosy wrapped up in a nice red scarf! This will be displayed on my sideboard when it's completed, on a freestanding quilt hanger.
My weekend away on a quilting retreat was very productive and this is the result of my sewing marathon! Blocks 4, 6, 7 and 8 of Hearts and Happy Flowers just need a good press, then I can trace the stitchery designs for all those tiny hearts and mini bunting flags. Some of the mini-blocks that are repeated throughout the quilt were already cut and pinned together and organised in zip lock bags, which made piecing these larger blocks together much simpler... ...this picture shows block 8 in progress - one of the ladies on the retreat took the photograph - Carole I hope you don't mind me using this! If you're on FB, there are lots of pictures of the other projects that were stitched by the very clever crafty ladies who were also on the retreat on my quilting FB page and also on the Kis Quilting Ltd FB page. We really did have a blast - and I'm definitely going to go again next year - bring it on!!
So this was the view first thing yesterday morning - we'd set up the room ready for our quilting retreat on Friday evening, and some very eager ladies had already made a start then! I'd arrived at Belsey Bridge Conference Centre in Ditchingham, Norfolk, the previous evening, ready for a weekend filled with having fun and also for a bit of sewing! We had a great time on Friday evening, getting to know each other and making new friends as well as chatting and laughing with old ones. And yes there gin involved too... ...as you can see there was so much creativity going on during the quilting retreat over the weekend! I've had a great time, made lots of new friends, and actually managed to sew a few blocks of "Hearts and Happy Flowers" too. I'll share some pictures of my blocks over the next couple of days.
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About me...Hi - welcome to my quilting blog! My passions are my family, my dog, my friends and sewing, not necessarily in that order! Archives
July 2023
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