Showing posts with label Win a Quilt competition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Win a Quilt competition. Show all posts

Sunday, 30 March 2014

Spring Fling

Spring Fling
The Win a quilt competition has ended on 21st February and the winner was Helen Groenewald. I handed the quilt over to Helen 2 weeks later and was so excited to meet her and her daughter, Chantelle, who was equally excited to receive the quilt.







I had so much fun quilting Spring Fling, doing a lot of free motion quilting, also using some of Judy Madsen's designs on some of the blocks and designing some of my own blocks to match and fit in with Judy's designs.

























Thank you to every one who has entered into the competition, it is heart warming to see so many people enjoying seeing my quilts.  I hope Helen will have many years to enjoy this quilt and that it will become a heirloom in her family.


Wednesday, 12 February 2014

Want to win a quilt, final reminder


Win a quilt reminder
This is a final reminder that if you would like me to make you a quilt, you will need to leave a comment on this blog. I originally stated that I would do the draw when I have reached 10,000 views, and I now have only 29 views to go before the draw, so get those comments in :-)  I will post the name of the winner in next week.  Fabric that I will use in the winning quilt is here:

Winning quilt will be made from these 10 fabrics

Kutch Diamonds
When we were in India, we saw diamonds everywhere, 60 degree diamonds to be more specific.  Jinny had asked us before the trip to cut at least 500 of these little diamonds for a hand stitching project,  and great was our surprise when everywhere we went, they were popping up.  They were on walls, on floors, on doors, on fabric, on jewellery, on purses and especially on trucks.


My first few diamonds hand sewn together






I came back desperately wanting to make a quilt (not hand stitched) that would remind me of these diamonds, so I started Kutch Diamonds.  It took two and a half days just to cut out all the pieces and get them organised in a way that would make sewing them together easier and I grew increasingly more desperate and impatient to start sewing.  Imagine then my disappointment when I realised that I did not have quite enough of the dark brown fabric to do the binding.  And it needed that dark brown, no other colour would do!

Not enough of this brown fabric

I decided to just start sewing anyway and spent a lot of time in the evenings online trying to locate some more of said fabric. Unfortunately the only information I had was that it was produced by Moda and is in the Basic Blenders range. This specific one must have been produced a few years back because I could not find it anywhere.  Of course I could not remember where I had bought it, so I turned to a Facebook group I belong to, they came up with some great ideas but still no fabric.
At this point a friend saw the quilt and convinced me it was worth entering into a show, so I looked up the show and the Rules for entering a quilt.

Kutch diamonds

This quilt is a biggie at 100" square but the rules stated maximum size of quilt to be no more than 96".  What to do?  I would clearly need to loose 4" of the side but was not sure it would still look right with the outer border taken off, but it did seem like fate that I now would not need the extra brown fabric.
After 5 days solid stitching, it was a relieve to know I did not have to unpick the pieced border as well (that I was so proud of as it fitted together just perfectly).

Initial ideas for quilting





















The quilt was loaded onto HQ yesterday and I started the SID with my new Linetamer ruler (I love this, only wish I bought it before), all the SID now done, which meant I could start having fun with the rest of the quilting.   This is a peek into what I have done today



Applique quilt
I got some really rather nifty tools called Apliquick tools recently and have been itching to use them.  I have now decided what applique project I would like to do next and has copied all the pattern pieces onto applique paper and cutting them out.  O boy, is that going to take time. Thirteen blocks will make up the quilt, each one with a HUGE applique motif, each motif consisting of between 20 and 50 intricate pieces. Something to do when listening to and not watching television. My efforts so far:

Pieces for 1 block cut out so far 

Update on Dutch Treat
I know it is not quite the end of February yet, but I do know that I will be spending my evenings cutting out applique shapes and not stitching, so for February my total is 8, which means 94 to go

Reverse applique blocks for February


I will be in Sunny South Africa in March (yay!) as my mum has a very special birthday and we have planned a lovely SURPRISE party for her, so I will escape all the floods and rain that we have here in southern England for a little while, so looking forward to some sunny weather or at least an end to all this WET.


Wednesday, 2 October 2013

Want to win a quilt?

When I had just started this blog, it was to really start to record what I am doing and build up a timeline.   I thought I might get the odd interest and maybe all the rellies will be looking at it. After the first month, I had just under 300 views and I was so excited.  I thought I would have a huge  celebration when I have reached 1000 views, but then I missed it and did not pay too much attention to how many viewers I had as I was struggling to organise my time efficiently between spending time with family, going on holidays and trips, still keeping up the stitching and doing lots of courses.  (I have discovered the joy of tutorials on Craftsy and so many many more on You Tube and can safely say I have become a bit of a tutorial junkie).
Then when I updated my last blog, I had a look at all my settings as I am thinking of  updating my profile and to my surprise there were 4,996 views (my own excluded).  I could hardly believe it, but kept my fingers crossed and wondered if it would reach 5,000 without another update. It did and now I am celebrating!

ANOUNCEMENT

Everybody who leaves a comment from now on, on my blog, until I have reached 10,000 views, will be entered into a draw to win a quilt.  The quilt will be made by me and quilted by me, it will be a double size quilt  and I will post updates on the blog with photos of the progress of the quilt.  The quilt will  be delivered by myself,  if this is possible, or posted out by secure post.  Should the quilt incur import taxes, I will however not be responsible for that. I will announce the winner of the quilt on this blog within a month of reaching 10,000 views.
Thank you to everyone who has so far showed an interest in the blog, I do hope you will come back to see what other projects I am working on.