behind the scenes with 2 quilting teachers – plans, projects, progress & procrastination
For Tile Tuesday this week we are heading to sunny Portugal for a little colour and inspiration –
Typical sharp colour combinations of yellow and blue abound – a combination that would be equally distinctive in a quilt. And what wonderful lines and shapes for applique!
Following on from last week’s post featuring Minton tiles here’s another Minton tiled floor in it’s original domestic setting. This one was spotted in Lichfield, Staffs – with some difficulty as it was hiding in an estate agent’s window there. Not terribly exciting in this picture and not terribly visible either.
But from this image (and a trusty notebook/pencil combination, followed by EQ7) Chris was able to draft a pattern and produce a quilt which we think is rather handsome. Barbara is currently resisting the urge to cut up fabric and dive right in to this project – and, as we know, resistance is sometimes futile!
The pattern for this Lichfield quilt can be found over in our Meadowside Designs shop.
No surprise then that we now have a goodly collection of tiled floor images sourced from house sale particulars!
It’s so easy to get side-tracked! Especially on, with or by social media. Today’s Tile Tuesday post presented itself via the Instagram account of David Wade (dav.d_wade) where we found many lovely things. This is a screenshot from his account –
No, we’re not suggesting replicating this tile pattern in full but with a little time spent in EQ8 we came up with this interesting block taken from part of the pattern above –
But, if you follow the grid lines of the block, this is not terribly easy to piece. Back to the EQ8 drawing board and there are 2 redrawn versions, both of which are much more pieceable –
Visit David Wade’s website – https://geometricism.com/ and be inspired and reminded of the breadth of his work. Our heads are still in a whirl!
Barbara got twitchy fingers when posting our Doodle selection “Arabia” the other week. Not always a good thing. Impatience won and fingers were de-twitched by finding and cutting into fabric –
At this point the mistake is not too obvious –
But, getting ready to mark the turnback line, the mistake suddenly leaps into view –
Which just goes to show that silly mistakes are SO easy to make, particularly if you rush at things. Keeping a turnunder allowance on all sides of a shapes where two edges (without seam allowance) need to be placed exactly on a fold is not a smart move. There are two solutions – cut the entire shape into four quarters and seam them back together again, or adjust the template and cut a fresh shape. Sometimes starting again seems the best option!
Starting this New Year with a fresh set of EQ doodles – this month the emphasis is on applique and a block that is one quarter of a full pattern. Find it in your EQ Block Library as “Arabia”.
This is the EQ default colouring –
So, 4 blocks put together look like this –
and an adjusted monochrome version looks like this –
At this point we are strongly reminded of encaustic floor tiles, and Barbara’s fingers are starting to twitch, feeling that an applique project may be imminent. Dialling down the contrast led to this –
And then, inevitably, we felt obliged to combine these two versions in alternating settings – the excitement proved too much and something went uncorrected …
stayed uncorrected in this one ….
and still uncorrected in this one! The joy of EQ8 is that no fabric is harmed in the design process and there’s no reverse stitching.
Download templates for Arabia 6 inch block to make a set of 4 blocks in your own arrangement (4 blocks will finish at a healthy 12inches square). Download a colouring sheet here January quilt to colour to try out colour combinations before cutting into precious fabric.
With our best wishes for a year full of stitching
Chris & Barbara
Over at the Rural Office the focus is still on squares but there are signs that half square triangles may enter the picture in the near future. A week before everything came to a halt Barbara had cut a bag of 2 1/2inch squares and we’ve shown some of the blocks that have grown out of that bag in previous posts. The bag is now greatly diminished but proved a handy starting point to lay out some reference pics for an informal online challenge with a group of indefatigable hand stitching students.
Here’s the original greyscale plan for a small (18inches square) quilt top –
And here’s a glimpse of Barbara’s progress so far – just 2 blocks to finish and then choose sashing and borders –
A further progress report in a future Scrappy Sunday post – happy stitching!
Log Cabin – probably our all-time favourite (Chris wrote a book on this block too) – same block, lots of ways to set and arrange, hugely satisfying!
Happy New Year! Hope you managed some quiet stitching time over the holidays. C&B Towers has been a veritable hive of activity during the past few weeks from the Catering Department right up to the Executive Suite. Even at the Rural Office the hum of a sewing machine could be heard, and now we’re both ready to start the new year with new classes and more plans than we can fit into our respective notebooks. So here we are at the start of another exciting quilting year, the EQ Doodles page has a fresh selection of doodles for your delight – let’s make this year “Right from the Start”!”
Serious connection and technical problems in the Overseas IT Department have delayed us from reporting on our “Delectable Lanterns” class last Saturday. But, better late than never –
We set a personal best time for setting up the room after the new caretaker forgot to open the hall for us. Not the best start! After that problem was solved everything went really well and everyone seemed to have a good time with lots of chat, cutting, chat, coffee and tea, stitching, more chat, coffee and tea – in other words a typical C&B class! Here are just a few of the pics we managed to take during a very busy day –
Our next (and last) class for this year is “Christmas Capers” on Saturday 21 November – just over three weeks away. Where does the time go?
We’re unforgivably late posting the report on Saturday’s class but better late than never! Everyone seemed to have a really good time and lots of creative opportunities were identified as we demonstrated some simple-but-effective piecing and quilting techniques. We are expecting to see a lot of cushions, bags and small quilts at the next Show & Tell session!
Barbara had a hard time walking past the heap of blue strips above without reaching out a hand!
It doesn’t look too exciting, but the demonstration of joining together quilted blocks was very well received, and we suspect that this method will be well-used in the future!
Well done everyone – look forward to seeing what you make!
chris & barbara quilts 