Ooops it’s been two weeks…

image of centre block progress

Sorry, I didn’t mean to disappear for a fortnight but that flu did knock me I’m afraid.

Thank you for your well wishes, and yes my DH looked after me well…he cooked all the meals and kept the fire roaring.

I didn’t manage any hand-sewing over the last two weeks, but I did sit down and put in the time to finally finishing the pattern for the

Banyan Tree Medallion Quilt

image of Banyan Tree Medallion pattern

It’s amazing (not in a good way, maybe astounding would be a better word) how long something can be at a virtually completed state, but then just sit in limbo waiting for me to give it a final ‘tweak’.

But I am glad to say that the Banyan Tree Medallion pattern is complete, and being printed as we speak.

It will soon be added to the Quilt Patterns for on-line purchase and also hopefully at your local quiltshop.

Now that it’s nearing Maltaville mailout time again, I wish I had felt like sewing the last two weeks but I did nothing on that.

So last night I hastily got the centre out and started selecting and cutting some more pieces because it was looking a bit unloved.

image of centre block progress

It’s looking a little better now isn’t it, I will get some more happening with it tonight.

Today I have been tracing the copies to go out to you this week…

Yes  :-) those of you who are up to mailout number five will be getting the Centre Block.

image of Tracing

It’s great to see some blocks over on the Maltaville blog,

it’s making me keep at it that’s for sure as I can see that there are a couple of you keeping right up to date with the mailouts.

Here’s a block I finished a little while ago that I don’t think I’ve shown yet.

This one was really fun to do.

image of G6

I am off to Sydney this weekend for the Sydney Quilt Show, I’m going with Jennifer and we are both looking forward to it.

I’m also meeting up with Petra who is bringing ‘home’ my Mid 19th Century Star quilt.

It will be super to meet her in person at long last.

Jenn and I want to get to the Quiltsmith and Material Obsession shops as well as the quilt show of course so we have a busy weekend planned.

It’d be great to meet up with any of you who are going to be at the quilt show on the Saturday, let me know if you’re going to be there and we’ll work something out.

Til soon…

Maltaville countdown

P2110729
blocks

Finished Maltaville Blocks ...or nearly finished

I know you’ve all been so patient, waiting for news of the Maltaville Quilt~ Block of the Month patterns.

I’ve been drafting and stitching madly for the last few weeks and learning all sorts of things about computer stuff (retaining some of it is proving harder than I thought but never mind…practice makes perfect) and thank you to everyone who wrote with paper sizes.

Apart from being indebted to Jennifer at 5foot1quilts for all her techy help I am also grateful to Michele at Betwixt the Betweens who patiently printed off the same appliqué pattern over and over as I tried to clarify in my mind how to write instructions to make sure the pattern pages aren’t shrunk to fit printer margins.  It took a few goes but we got there :-)

The release of the Block of the Month is virtually ready to go, I just need some final assistance in adding the shopping cart to this website (and that is this weekend’s job) so if all goes according to plan I anticipate the release of the pattern by 22nd February which is a little later than I had hoped but I under-estimated how long it can take to get all that other stuff ready.

The release of the Block of the Month will contain all the BOM program details… Cost, Time Frame, Block Placement Map, Fabric Scans to help with your fabric choices and Instructions for signing up to the Maltaville Album Quilt blog.  I have been busy over on that blog too adding extra pages but they’re all hiding in the wings waiting for the pattern release.

It would be an understatement to say I’m thrilled to have now sewn fourteen blocks and have a further four drafted.

Tomorrow it is the Castlemaine Appliqué Group (CAG) and I have a Maltaville block basted and ready to sew, it’s the first CAG for the year so it will be lovely to see what everyone has been doing over the summer hol’s and to spend a relaxing day with friends.

I hope your weekend is a good one too…

That Notebook…

Work Book

My friend Irene left a comment a couple of posts ago about my open notebook  next to a block I had photographed, so I thought I would elaborate on it a bit.

Yes it is my ‘work-book’ and it is my life line when it comes to writing up a new quilt pattern, by the time I finish a quilt and then write the pattern I need this book in order to know what I did.

I usually start my design on EQ6…I have an idea in my head about what I want to make (usually heavily influenced by an antique quilt in a book) and on the computer I start playing around with blocks/settings/borders etc.

Of course, I can’t wait until the whole quilt is designed before I start sewing so I will often start trialing fabrics once I”ve decided on just the centre. I really just have to start sewing so I can see if I’m happy with the fabrics…there is a limit to what you can achieve on a computer and I just have to see it in the real…Now.

That’s where my work-book comes in, it’s nothing flash, just a school book available from any office supply shop.

Work Book

Spirax 5 subject Note Book A4 No.P596 by Esselte

What I like about it is that it is divided into 5 sections and between each section is a double sided pocket, perfect for keeping templates or other relevant ‘stuff’ in so it doesn’t fall out.

Work Book

Work Book Pocket, photo doesn't show very well that the pocket is coloured for easy reference.

In the photo below you can see the start of my Connecticut Quilt.  I have been very organised and named the quilt but I have not put the date at the top…not good, I pledge to date the start of a project in the future.

You will notice WOF which is ‘shorthand to self’ meaning width of fabric, I always note how many units I can cut from 40″ (I allow 40″ to be safe even tho most fabric is 42″…you never know when you’re going to get a really deep selvedge and because I’m writing patterns, I would feel responsible if someone didn’t have enough).  Tho actually, by the time I get to writing the pattern I will still allow a bit extrain the fabric requirements…just in case.

I paste the fabrics into the book, in this example it’s the eleven fabrics for the centre star and a note about how many diamonds I need from each fabric and how many across the WOF or in some cases a Fat 1/8.

Work Book

Instructions for Connecticut Quilt centre.

At the moment I’m working on the Basket blocks which go around the centre star.  I got back on EQ6 and fiddled about a bit until I was happy with the scale and that everything would fit and then noted and pasted in my book what I had come up with so now I can work off these notes  and make corrections if necessary.

When I was at 6-midnight at Threadbear a couple of weeks ago I got all the basket ‘bottoms’ made and am now up to appliqueing the handles on to the triangles.

Work Book

Instructions for Basket blocks, Connecticut Quilt.

If I can offer one piece of advice about using this method of note-taking it would be to always always always write the finished size of the block/unit (you know that means the size without a seam allowance don’t you). It’s the finished size you need to know in order to know that things will fit.  Cutting sizes are clearly marked ‘cut’.

On another topic, I have been catching up with my customer’s quilts this week and have been ‘pedalling’ away at the Long-Arm machine like a woman possessed.   I feel very virtuous.

Til soon…

Banyan Tree Medallion

Banyan Tree

Banyan Tree Medallion

Here it is, the Banyan Tree Medallion quilt.  I’m steadily working at writing up the pattern as I hope to have it ready for purchase next month.  As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I designed this quilt for the Golfields Quilters 2010 exhibition raffle and many friends (obviously not feeling confident of winning it) have asked me to produce a pattern for it.

I based the design on a quilt in the Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Science having seen a photo on page 13 of  Maggie Malone’s book Heirloom Quilts You Can Make.  The quilt maker used a very gorgeous floral and fruit panel/print in the centre of her original quilt but because I just love Indian Palampores I decided my newest ‘reproduction quilt’ ought to have a tree centre.  Actually, I want to thank my super generous friend Megan from Ryland Quilts for her assistance/encouragement in getting me started with the tree at one of our ‘Six to Midnight’ quilting sessions. (Thank you Megan)

The rest of the quilt follows reasonably closely to the original but as the photo in Maggie’s book is black and white, I have no idea at all about the original quilt’s colour.   I have trawled through the Museum’s website too (they have a lot of images to look through…but only a few quilt pictures) but I have not seen another image, nor do I know the maker’s name.    I wish I did because I would love the pay homage to her by name.

Thanks for visiting,

’til soon,

Margaret