Scrappy Sunday – a basket case

Much rummaging deep in The Cupboard at the Rural Office this week and this gloriously scrappy (and pink) quilt top came to the top of one of the quilt stacks.  Hand pieced with fabrics dating from 1860 onwards we think this would be a great scrap project to remake in contemporary fabrics and you can find a pattern over at our Heritage Quilts Payhip Shop.

Hard to believe that July is slipping away and it’s almost time to tidy and close The Cupboard and transfer to the Overseas Office for a while.  But Scrappy Sundays will continue – see you next week!

 

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Scrappy Sunday – still stitching squares!

Barbara has been very happily stuck in a groove of scrappy squares and it looks as if there will be many more squares cut, marked and stitched together in the coming weeks.  All sorts of ideas are floating around but we thought you might like to see the current state of play.

Four of the five 4patch/9patch blocks might go together like this  and there would be one block left over – each block measures 12inches edge to edge before setting seams.

or put all five blocks together like this –

The five smaller double4patch blocks might go together like this.

Blocks measure 8 inches edge to edge before setting seams.

or possibly like this –

Barbara’s stash at the Rural Office has been the subject of thorough investigation to come up with suitable scrappy choices for settings and sashings.  The investigation has not yet reached any firm conclusions so it’s back to stitching squares into pairs for a while!

 

Flashback Friday

Definitely a purple streak for our Flashback today – surprising how often this colour appears.

 

Flashback Friday

Hard at work – two different specialities,  one book.

 

 

Heritage quilts

Chris has been beavering away in the IT Suite updating the Chris and Barbara website. It now sports a new drop-down menu for patterns with a separate page for our heritage quilts patterns. To buy these you have to visit our Payhip page (for the EU) or our Craftsy page but you can get a preview and information about the quilts on the new C&B page.

Some new patterns from Ann Jermey’s quilt collection have been added to the Payhip page (coming soon to Craftsy) and another quilt from Barbara’s collection has been added to both pages.

Ann’s quilts are this lovely1940s Windmill design (spot the mistake in it?)

and this little red and white quilt which (with our usual talent for stating the obvious) we have named Red Bricks.

Ann remade this quilt using some left over 2 and 1/2 inch strips in various reds and neutrals –

The quilt from Barbara’s collection is a Triple Sunflower. This is hand-pieced and Barbara has been remaking the block (but we don’t yet have a photo – or I can’t find it, Chris). One of these blocks would make a lovely cushion, or just make a few for a table runner.

The colours have faded somewhat – the green leaves and stems have all but disappeared – but it is still a lovely quilt.

More quilt patterns to come before too long, and maybe even some of Barbara’s quilting designs . . . !?

This week’s class report

Handpiecing, curved seam strategies and a goodly dash of basic machine quilting were all on the menu for this week’s class.  The Tangled Star block from last week had worked very well and the homework looked great –

Barbara didn’t manage to take pictures of all the homework because she got sidetracked into a discussion on handpiecing in general and some of the historical background.   This is a reference picture of the quilt we were talking about – the Rajah quilt

taken from this book

We did do a little hand piecing in class

and we also managed to take a shot of a quilt in the making – well, it’s got as far as choosing the main fabrics and pattern –

There are two blocks for homework this week – Scrap Violet and Summer & Winter.

 

Onwards from here!  Chris has 2 more classes to teach this week and is also busy with cupboard construction while  Barbara is sorting and tidying and doing necessary admin. before her trip to Houston.

Nearly ready …

… for the Uttoxeter Quilt and Embroidery Show. We’ve both been gathering stuff from the four corners of our respective houses and piling said stuff up in heaps in whichever room is nearest the door. The hope is that we’ll fall over it all on the way out and thus not forget anything. Let’s wait and see if that works. (Don’t hold your breath on this one – Barbara)

Chris has found the power cables and some books and, unable to decide which couple of quilts to take,  has just grabbed both bags full and Barbara can decide being as she’s ‘her in charge of aesthetics’ – Chris is ‘her in charge of technology’.

Barbara meantime has found the display boards, the table coverings and the cash box as well as an assortment of quilts.

We both still need to work out what we’ll be stitching by way of a demonstration over the weekend and Barbara is busy trying to put kits together for hand-piecing workshops as well.  To take her mind off similar thorny problems (and taking advantage of the fact that the neighbours were away) Chris drilled more holes in the wall and managed to get her sewing threads unit up. Suddenly life seems much better!  (how smart does this look?! – Barbara)

Barbara’s distraction showed up in the form of trying out some small-scale handpiecing with 2 1/2inch and 1 1/2inch squares – take a look at the step by step pics to get an idea of where things were going …

Then, after all that palaver, Barbara decided not to use this in her hand piecing classes at the show….. And while deciding what she really would do, this little cut-and-glue design got cut and glued.  Of course, it would have been SO much better if she had taken that all-important moment to reverse the design before tracing the shapes onto the fusible web, but it looks ok – sort of.  This design showed up last week at the Reunion Class Barbara taught at Denman College, but in the guise of corded and stuffed quilting (pics on Barbara’s blog).

After all this distraction and marshalling, it will be quite a relief to get to the show, get our space set up and settle down into show mode.  Hope to see some of you there!