From winter to spring......

....in just a few short days. These are the colours I am currently seeing in my kitchen. Sunshine on the blue cupboards, and daffodils blooming on the balcony. But just a couple of weeks ago we had  a little interruption in our everyday lives with the novelty of snow!

I've lived in Rome for close on 18 years now and have never experienced more than a few hours of snow in the city. We had ten days of it February - complete chaos or perfect quiet, depending on how you look at it.

Schools were closed, cars didn't move for days, our busy streets were turned into a sleepy country town by 10 - 15  cm of snow. My girls made snow men and learnt to sled on sheets of plastic. At first we were sorry not to have a real sled, but I think they had more fun in the end with the endless variations they invented. My five year old would fly down the slopes of our local park, spreadeagled and fearlessly. She wants to find me a really large plastic bag next time so I can do it too!:)

There was a little interruption to quilting whilst I organised snow suits and mittens - very piecemeal. The little one wore her snow suit rolled up, and the elder had a snow suit that barely reached the top of her rubber boots.

I've always been envious of quilters who photograph their quilts and tops out in the snow. This quilt top below on the right would have looked perfect with a wintry white background, but as there was as much mud as there was snow, I decided to leave it at home (besides, I forgot that it was already sandwiched ready for quilting and not exactly at it's most photogenic).

Now that the snowsuits are packed away again and I'm thinking about pulling out our t-shirts, I'm getting in a little quilting. I'm not sure why I piece in the winter and quilt in the warmer weather - but that's how it is. Luckily I have two hoops. These quilts were started ten years apart - my tastes haven't changed much, have they:)

PS. The first picture in this post was for Serena, another hand piecer and quilter, check out her hands all round block. It's and old photo that I've posted before - I've actually quilted all the circles and the centre - and now that I think of it, I unpicked the outline quilting and did a centre line. I'll have to get a new photo of that - but either I quilt or I photograph.....
......speaking of which, thanks to all my new followers and everyone who has left a comment. I'm not very good at replying to comments although I appreciate every single one of them. With two children and a dog, I have to choose between quilting, blogging and keeping up with correspondence. I do write back when I can, but please don't give up commenting if I don't.

Pink lemonade on ice

I was hoping to have this photographed with it's backing but it didn't get pieced in time for Lori's 'Pink Lemonade Parade'.  So here's my 'Pink Lemonade on Ice' - hand pieced top.

The backing is going to be bars of this red stripe and the peachy roses. I've wanted to put these two fabrics together since they first met, but have never had the occasion. I fiddled around with them a little before settling on strips. I've always wanted to do a two fabric bar quilt, and here it is. (This is the year of finally getting around to doing all those quilts, or at least elements of, that I've been meaning to make).

The binding will be stone blue, I think. Quilting probably clam shells. Thanks Lori for hosting the quilt-a-long (and giveaway), that was a lot of fun. I'll be quilting this in the summer when I'll really enjoy the ice blue.

An ugly duckling

Kathie commented on my last post that this is one of her favourite fabrics. Since this is the first fabric I pulled out to make this quilt, I thought I'd tell you the story of how it came about.

This fabric has been floating around in my 'stash' for some time. I don't have a lot of fabrics, mostly fat quarters and less, folded into small plastic boxes in the cupboard. I go for clear colours - modern, 1930's, reproductions - no set style. I just buy what I like. Sometimes I sort the fabrics by colour, sometimes by project. This little scrap (a fat 16th I think) came into my life through a reproduction fabric club. I've used up most of the other pieces that came along with this, but this one kept floating around, not get used and not knowing where to go. To me it reads grey (even though on closer look, it's actually brown) and I don't have any other grey fabrics (nor many browns for that matter) so it just shuffled from one box to another.

When I chose to do Lori's quilt-a-long I decided to do it as an exercise in re-learning how to machine piece. I immediately went to my 'use-them-up' fabrics (things I want to get rid of) and came out with some recycled shirtings in beige and white and this fabric popped out. On close inspection I noticed the pale blue strawberries which drew out the setting fabric which so many have you liked (another use-it-up left over dressmaking fabric). The red strawberries drew out one of my favourite fabrics - a raspberry red batik which I bought a fat quarter of many years ago and has since become one of my favourite fabrics - it gives a nice pop to things like the centre square of this quilt.

Then because I loved the two mismatched setting squares in the antique quilt that inspired Lori's 'pink lemonade' (did anyone else do them too?) I pulled out this special fabric from Melissa of 'Tiny Happy' in New Zealand. I've been a long admirer of her work and when she started producing her own designed fabrics I jumped at the chance to buy some. I like the way the hand drawn fabric contrasts with the repetition in the small print. (Note my ironing skills:) ).

The blue of this fabric is a lovely grey blue and it takes away some of the overly sweetness of the aqua one. As with all special fabrics that risk being 'too good to use' - the first cut was the hardest, but once I started I couldn't resist making this little sweetie for Miriam's four patch quilt.

After that, I just headed for my favourite fabrics to  fill in the rest. I'm starting to have a usefully full scrap basket now and I love digging in there for things. These blocks are tiny and a little bit of fabric goes a long way.

To cut a long story short, my ugly duckling fabric, which wasn't so grey after all (Kathie rightly called it brown) is a delicate little thing that found it's home at last amongst some pretty little florals and stony blues and just because it isn't pink, yellow or blue - my usual favourites - it's fast becoming my favourite fabric too:)

How did you spend your weekend?

A feverish five-year-old meant that I spent more time than planned working on this project - my 'not so pink lemonade' (I see that Lori's got her's quilted and the binding on! I'm loving seeing all the different variations of this). I'm just missing the corner blocks and the top is done. A head cold of my own meant that I should have spent an afternoon in bed myself, but I was so far gone with cutting and piecing those half blocks and wanting to see how it all fitted together that I just ploughed through. My wrist is complaining a little, but I can slow down now.

The chair in the photo by the way is a neat little Italian invention - a short legged (37cm -14 1/2 inches high) chair with a woven seat. There is nothing more comfortable for sitting in and sewing, embroidering, knitting or sorting beans. If only I had a wood stove and a stone floored kitchen to complete the picture:)

Do you ever get into a panic halfway through a quilt that you think it's all wrong? Well that's what I kept thinking all weekend. That pretty floral fabric was playing on my nerves a bit - I originally bought it to make a pretty summer dress for my daughter, then decided against it because it has a high thread count and is a little stiff. It's a very bright, aqua-blue. I chose the stonier blue in the two odd setting squares to tone it down a bit. I think with a dark grey blue for binding then I'll be happy with it. Seeing your work in a photograph is a good way to get a bit of distance and perspective, isn't it?

A bit of weekend sewing

There's nothing quite like a deadline to get me moving. This camera case was supposed to be a thankyou present/Christmas gift back in December. Sunday became the day so I sat down and sewed. The tutorial I used is here. I didn't folow the instructions too accurately, for lack of time. The recipients favourite colours are orange, lilac and green - not my colours at all, so I added in some blue. The solids are Kafee Fasset shot cottons. I started with a strip of pieced fabric.....



Added batting and lining......

Quilted it by machine, folded it over, sewed up the sideseams and added an old-fashioned press-stud. The pattern called for a button and elastic, but I settled for something easier. Look at that great piece of leftover fabric - I'm looking forward to using that. The strip of paper is my template/pattern. 

And this is the finished camera case. I'm not so happy about all the orange ending up on the front, I'll have to think about fabric placement next time I make this, and I will be making one soon for our own camera - I promised my daughter one a year and a half ago - I need another deadline.

I even put the camera in this to show you how it looked, but didn't manage to get a photo. It took me a few minutes to work that one out and I'm still laughing at myself:)

Progress report

 Lori's quilt-a-long; 5 out of 6 blocks. And look what I found in the cupboard while I was searching for scraps.........

Lunch anyone? The templates weren't sitting there ready to start work, but that's a new habit - template in the box, ready to go.

 More blocks than I thought. I'm about 2/3 of the way done on this top.

And now something completely different......

WIP's seem to be growing in there like mushrooms. I'm not even going to count them. Just keep my head down and work away at them.

About face

This is where I like to quilt, at the breakfast table while I'm waiting for the girls to get up, while the coffee pot is boiling - in those little scraps of time that crop up during the day - waiting for the pasta pot to boil, talking on the phone, waiting outside dance and music classes, sitting next to my daughter while she does her homework or 'reading' aloud to my younger daughter picture books that I know from memory. I have pieced during homemade puppet shows and have even pieced while wearing a crown and pretending to be a queen while my daughter played around me. This is the way I work.

My first quilt (top) was rotary cut and pieced by machine but it all went together so fast that I didn't realise that I didn't like it until years later when I began to hand quilt it. Hand sewing gives me time to reflect. The quilt that comes out at the end is always different to what I expected.

When I started piecing the shoo fly blocks in the previous post for Lori's quilt-a-long I thought I was going to piece the whole quilt on the machine. I only got far as one block - I wasn't enjoying the sewing machine, the steam iron, the rotary cutter and mat. Even for free-pieced quilts I just use scissors and the sewing machine, ironing just at the end of a session.

When I decided to go back to handpiecing for these blocks, what I enjoyed most was the silence. Yes it's slow, and I'll still be piecing well beyond everyone else in the quilt-a-long. Hand piecing doesn't get you anywhere fast - but I love it.

If anyone out there would like to see how hand-piecing is done, leave a comment and I'll put a description in my next post. (warning; hand piecing is addictive!)