Little and Large

A quick progress report on the English Paper Piecing projects:

The four corner squares of the Gameboard quilt are done.  These finish at 12 inches.  Here they are with their papers still in.  The next step will be to do the four squares which make up the playing area for the game.  I will leave the central "home" square until last. I've been doing some Wiki research on the rules of the American game Parcheesi, and the British game Ludo.  In Parcheesi, the players progress round the board anti-clockwise but in Ludo they go clockwise.  There are loads of variants to both games.  I think I'm going to modify the Minick and Simpson pattern to make it a bit more like our Ludo.

On the tiny front, I've got this far with the Liberty Lawn hexagons. There are sixty-one 3/4 inch hexagons in this 6 1/2 inch piece, which will probably turn into a pin cushion.  I'm hoping it will turn out half as nice as Fabadashery's and have started researching local suppliers of crushed walnut shells for the filling.  It's ruinous to buy it online because the weight makes the postage expensive.

Linking up with Lily's Quilts Small Blog Meet

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Game Board Quilt

This book about North American Gameboards was given to me by my sister sometime around 1985, following her visit to the American Folk Art Museum in New York.  

Most of the boards in this book are for Parcheesi, which seems to be similar to the game we call Ludo in the UK. But other games are represented too.

I love these game boards, no doubt for the same reasons that I am drawn to patchwork and any kind of geometrics.  Apparently antique game boards are now keenly collected and go for silly money.  Could I make a game board quilt?  Last week I got all enthusiastic and got as far as drawing a rough plan on graph paper.

But there is nothing new under the sun.  Minick & Simpson have already done it!  

After some muttering I bought their pattern and made a start but could not cope with the curves.  I think I might be able to use the English Paper Piecing method.  It is the biggest EPP I have ever done - the square will finish at 12 inches.  Here's where I got to this week:

Also in the pic you can see some small hexagons.  I started these to use up some of my tiny Liberty Lawn scraps.  Liberty Lawn is perfect for small EPP because it is so fine.  This may become bigger or get used as it is in some small project.

Pets on Quilts Show 2013

Fuzz and Muppet on the Blue Star Quilt

This is Fuzz and Muppet's entry into the Cats on Quilts 2013 competition at LilyPad Quilts.

Fuzz and Muppet are sisters who came to us from Battersea as kittens about 11 years ago.  Both have used up several of their nine lives, but have enough left to spread themselves (and their fur and claw marks) over quilts and fabric around the house. I even made them their own quilts but they prefer human ones, especially works in progress. 

The quilt they are decorating here was my first full size quilt, done by hand over a year, around my (then) full time job.

Thanks to Fabadashery for introducing me to this link up - go and look at her entry!

Liberty Hexagon Quilt

The quilt on this postcard was not on display at the Fashion and Textile Museum's recent Kaffe Fassett exhibition.  But we caught sight of it hanging on the wall in a teaching room where a session was going on.  I spent some time trying to find out which of Kaffe's books it was in. 

I thought I could use some Liberty Lawn for this.  I wanted to use the same fabric for all the triangles in the design, so I chose one of my favourites - Cranford, designed by Grayson Perry for Liberty in 2010. Good job I already had some as you can't get hold of this one easily now.  It is the second one from the bottom in this shoe box of liberty lawns.

Later I did find out that the quilt is called My Fair Lady and the designer is Brandon Mably, not Kaffe Fassett. By the time I tracked it down I had worked out my own pattern.  Brandon Mably's design, as it turned out, was done with strips sewn together then cut into triangles which are then pieced into hexagons. Mine was done with a central hexagon with log cabin style strips around.  This was better suited for some of the large scale prints I wanted to use.  The hexagons to 8 inches and added the triangle pieces.  Here are the rows ready to be sewn together.

The quilting is straight line echo around the hexagons.  This brings out the star shapes quite well. 

It went OK with the walking foot until the last few lines of quilting where things started to slide around a bit.  I realised afterwards that the screw holding in my walking foot had worked loose and the foot was about to drop off.  I must admit that I did not go back and unpick the puckered bits and actually they don't show up too much.  Was cross with myself at the time though. Note to self: check that the screw is tight every now and then when using the walking foot.

Typo Bag

I could not resist this funky typewriter fabric while I was visiting Tikki Patchwork.  I had an orange portable when I went off to university in 1972 - just like this one.  How things have moved on.  We are now calling these machines "vintage".

 I also bought this pouch pattern (you can get it online here ). 

 I did not have a plan, but I am thinking about my next large project so I needed something to get on with.  I also wanted to try Paula Doyle's method for piecing smallish squares.  The typewriter fabric would do for the lower striped section, and I found I already had some ice cream coloured solids for the squared section.

Paula Doyle's book Mini Mosaic Quilts has a printed grid which you use to position your squares on lightweight interfacing - this worked rather well although cutting the interfacing and opening up the seams was a bit fidly. And my seams were off - less than 1/4 inch - so the pieced section ended up bigger than the typewriter section.

Here's the finished pouch.  And I still have a bit left from the FQ for another project - might be good for a vintage v.modern iPad case.

Krumply Kona and Liberty Log Cabin

These cushion covers are proper Kona - yet I find myself plumping them up every 5 minutes.  When I see lovely cushions on people's blogs they never look like this - OK they may have been freshly plumped for the photo, but I wonder if they always look smooth and neat.  

Perhaps the secret is in the density of quilting and/or the type of wadding (batting) used - I used some leftover polyester.  The one on the left is not quilted at all, and that seems to get the worst of the crumples.

Oh, and an update on last week's tiny skinny log cabin - I made a second one and sandwiched the two together to make a key fob for our old shed.  

The two liberty prints used here are Mitsi in pink and Jugendstil in grey.  I think these folded log cabin blocks look best if you only use two fabrics.  This is a great way to use up tiny liberty scraps.

Thanks to everyone who passed by last week and those who commented on my first ever blog post.  Thanks also to Crazy Mom Quilts whose brilliant blog and weekly link-up helped me to get started with this blogging lark.