Wonky Donkey 2

Welcome if you've come across from Blogger's Quilt Festival or from Laurie's blog! I have a brand new quilt to show you...

There's nothing cuter than a donkey in boots, so I was very excited to hear that Laurie Wisbrun's adorable donkeys in wellies had been picked up by Robert Kaufman and released as "Jack and Jenny".  Some of you may remember the original Wonky Donkey quilt that I made using Laurie's spoonflower fabrics (modelled by Fizzy). My son loves this quilt!

I started straight away on making an updated version for my son (you can never have too many donkey quilts!) I love that the new donkeys and boots are just so vibrant and it was fun pairing them with some really strong colours - the grey background adds that extra pop - don't you think? 

On the new Jack and Jenny fabric the donkeys are a bit smaller (original donkeys measured 5in x 4in and the new donkeys measure 4in x 3in), so I was able to make the blocks a bit smaller and have more of them...

...giving it a more refined look... maybe?

I decided to quilt this with straight-ish white vertical lines, kind of like rain. Initially I was tearing my hair out trying to get it right, but once I figured out that I had to really reduce the pressure on the presser foot, it quilted beautifully and I'm thrilled with the result!

I made a very simple pieced back. My son picked out the red fabric, as it will be his quilt, and I didn't buy quite enough fabric, so I added some white lines (inspired by a block in Modern Blocks.)

I absolutely love this quilt, but I was in desperate need of a super cute donkey to plop it on. As I don't live in Sydney any more, Fizzy was out of reach and the rocking horse wasn't quite cutting it.

Yesterday morning I rang up Margaret from the Donkey and Mule Society of South Australia and begged explained that I needed a donkey urgently! She was fantastic, and a couple of hours later I met her adorable donkey Cocoa, the friendliest donkey in the world (sorry Fizzy, but you did try to eat my quilt.) He was the perfect model.

If you would like to try your hand at some stack 'n' slash, fussy-cutting donkey fun, the pattern's available here.

This quilt will be appearing at Australian Quilt Market in the HQW Distributors booth in a few weeks. Do you think I should stick with the name "Wonky Donkey 2", or try something new like Wonkier Donkey, Donkey got Wonky, Too Wonky for a Donkey... something else?

Now I'm off to check out all of the other quilts at Blogger's Quilt Festival, which I'm proud to be sponsoring. Thanks Amy for all of your hard work!

Straight Line Quilting Woes

I haven't been happy with the quilting on the last couple of quilts that I've straight line quilted. I love my sewing machine (Janome 1600p) but I just haven't been able to figure out the right settings so there's no puckering or pulling. When I bought my machine the guy I bought it off said that I didn't need to change any of the settings for quilting, just put on the quilting foot. So for quilting I normally set the stitch length on 3, the thread tension on 3 and the presser foot pressure on 3. This is obviously not working. So lately I've been on a quest to figure it out.

The other day I read this post by Rita where she mentioned that she changed the pressure on her Juki (which is very similar to mine) when straight line quilting. Okay, so I think pressure is the key to success here.  Then I watched this video pointing out how too much pressure on your presser foot can cause the quilting to bunch and pucker.

So I made a little demo quilt to practice on (with the fabric and batting I would be using for my next project). I put on my quilting foot and decreased the pressure. It still pulled, so I decreased the pressure some more until it didn't pull any more, but then the stitches became really really small because the feed dogs couldn't pull it through properly. It didn't help if I increased my stitch length.  Okay, so now I'm starting to pull my hair out.

Think, think.... there must be an answer. So I put on the normal foot that I use for piecing, and voila! It started quilting beautifully. Pressure 1.5, stitch length 3.5, tension 3.

Now it's time to bring out the big quilt. And that's when it all went pear shaped! You can see the terrible puckering on the back.

So now it was time to call Jody at All About Sewing. She knows everything about these machines - the Grandquilter, Juki, Megaquilter and Janome 1600p. Her advice - use the normal sewing foot, and keep reducing the pressure to one or even lower. Make sure the quilt is supported at the front and the back so that there's no pulling.  It worked! Thanks Jody, you're a guru.

BUT then... it started pulling just a little, and I remembered that trick to turn the quilt around and alternate sewing from each end. Not a good idea! I will be doing a lot of unpicking tonight.....aghhh!

I have reduced the pressure to almost 0 (about 0.25) and it's finally quilting pretty well - touch wood. I just have to watch that the stitch length remains even. What a saga! Any advice?

Addit:
Thanks for all of your suggestions. I am going to try pinning it more closely next time. A couple of people have commented about using a walking foot for quilting. I don't think I was clear - when I said "quilting foot" I meant "walking foot". I do have a walking foot that is made for this machine (pictured below), and when I use it the quilting gets worse. If I reduce the pressure too much the walking foot doesn't work anymore and the stitches become tiny, so I've found that it's much better with the normal foot pictured above. Weird isn't it! Maybe there's something wrong with my walking foot.

By the way, I've unpicked, restitched and almost finished the quilting, and it's not pulling at all - yay! Also, I wouldn't exactly call it straight line quilting, more like 'go with the flow', or 'organic' straight line quilting.

We've gone wild with fabric covered buttons!

Sarah cut her fringe off at school yesterday. Her hair was "in her eyes". She very tidily put the trimmings in the bin, and her substitute teacher didn't even notice (why do they think they can get away with things with a substitute teacher?)

You may remember last time she didn't just cut her fringe, she went the whole hog. But I'm a seasoned mum now, and we're taking in our stride.

We've enjoyed the afternoon covering 23mm buttons in little red riding hood fabric and celebrating the fact that it still goes into ponytails!

Gathered In - Modern Baby Quilt Pattern

As promised, here's another new baby pattern for those gorgeous charm packs sitting in your stash.

But first some background; the very first pattern of mine that was published in a magazine was my "Gathered In" quilt pattern, which appeared on the front cover of Down Under Quilts a couple of years ago. It was an incredibly surreal experience seeing my quilt on a cover.

It was a lap-sized 'stack and slash' quilt using 22, 10 inch squares. I was going for traditional fabrics with a modern layout.

Then I thought it would be great to make a baby sized version using a charm pack (5 inch squares) with more modern fabrics.

I think it works really well with Sweetwater's Reunion range and the pale blue background. I also added an extra border between the little squares in the middle and the outer border.

After much deliberation I quilted it with dense straight line quilting (about 1/4 inch apart) in quadrants. I love the look, but it was a bit of a headache trying to stop it from pulling/warping. If I was doing it again, I would quilt it a little less densely, which would also make it a little softer.

Although it looks similar to my "Scattered Showers" quilt, it's constructed in a different manner. Scattered Showers uses strip piecing, whereas this one uses the stack and slash method (and smaller scraps of fabric). Both are easy and quick to put together.

I would like to try this pattern in girly colours when I get a chance. If anyone gets around to it before I do, send me a pic, I'd love to see it.

You can find the downloadable pattern here, or ask you local quilt store for the hard copy version.

Whirly Garden pattern released

After receiving quite a few emails asking about my Whirly Garden pattern, I've finally taken some photos, formatted the instructions and uploaded the pattern. It's only taken me... about a year!

Some of you may remember it originally appeared in a Quilters Companion "Precuts" edition. It takes two charm packs or a bunch of scraps from your stash. I cut my own 5in squares from Denyse Schmidt's Hope Valley range to make it.

I had some fun with the back too! Isn't the orange great? I would have really enjoyed the straight line quilting if I hadn't had morning sickness at the time (yes I quilted it that long ago - Grace just turned 1.)

Thanks Sarah for the kick up the pants I needed to get this one done!

If you'd like to try this fun pattern, you can download it here.
And guess what... I have another pattern coming up next!

Lovin' the Rock Garden

I've had fun with Umbrella Print's gorgeous Rock Garden range, pairing them with some lovely French General linen and Kona Cotton solids. I particularly love the Stone Flowers print. I think there's something Scandinavian about them, and the way Carly and Amy have made the prints look like they've been hand printed is very clever.

I used my "Through the Trees" stack and slash tutorial for this one, but made the blocks smaller (the starting blocks were 13" across and 12 1/2" down) and I made 5 angled vertical cuts instead of 7.

Also, instead of using a ruler I freehand cut the strips. I've been wanting to try this for a while and I'm so pleased with the result. It's a subtle difference, but gives a nice 'organic' feel. I might try to post a tutorial if there's any interest.

I will be demonstrating how to make this quilt at the Moonlight Markets tonight. It looks like it's going to be a lovely evening. I'll post some pics of my booth tonight on facebook.

Bowerbird Bazaar

I've already told you about my mummy-daughter date with Sarah at the Bowerbird Bazaar and what a lovely time she had with the Planks... Well I wanted to share a couple of other great things we found there.

I was excited to meet some more Adelaide-based fabric designers - Surface Art. Their vintage inspired and contemporary fabric was right up my alley. They will be bringing out some quilting weight designs soon. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with!

There were tonnes of gorgeous stalls with countless handmade items, but this one really stood out for me -  Lino Girl. Kerry's hand painted porcelain was exquisite.

Gretel Girl was another highlight for Sarah and me. Her wares were so eclectic and quirky- check out her adorable hand printed and embroidered "Very Happy Pork". Tracy was so much fun - we chatted at length about how we pretended to be domestic goddesses, but really tried to avoid domestic tasks whenever we could. Sarah was absolutely delighted when Tracy gave her a little present.

Rebound Books had a cute idea - turn old books into notebooks and diaries...

 
and use the spines for bookmarks.

All of this hanging out at markets has inspired me to set up my first stall at a local market. If you're in the Adelaide area you can find me this Friday (13th April) at the Moonlight Markets at Thorndon Park. I'm busily sewing bits and peices to sell along side my quilt patterns.  I'm a little nervous, so please stop by and say 'hi'!

Planks - the best toy ever!

On the weekend I took Sarah to the Bowerbird Bazaar as a reward for filling her reward card (she earns a punch in her card for doing things like getting ready on time in the morning or getting ready for bed without a fuss). It was a fantastic market and we had a lovely time being together, but she kept pulling me from stand to stand until we got to this one - Green Hat Workshop.

She was immediately hooked on these "Planks".  They are identically sized plantation pine blocks. The ends are perfectly precision cut so that they can stand end to end and you can build amazing structures with it using gravity and friction alone (the structures in the background are not held together with glue.)

My kids have tonnes of toys - the baskets are literally overflowing - yet they complain that they have nothing to do. I almost feel like throwing them all out (they toys, not the kids) and just having a massive box of blocks - helping develop their imagination, creativity and dexterity.

Do you think Sarah was going to let me take her away from this?

A crowd of people developed to watch a little girl enthralled in play and delighted that she could build a structure that was almost as tall as her...

... or maybe even taller.

She used about 100 blocks to build her tower. I bought a box of 200 blocks for Dane's birthday next week and I can't wait to see what they do with them!

Rough tutorial for baby Cohen's minimalist quilt

Thanks to everyone who helped out by voting for their favourite quilting pattern for my new baby quilt. There wasn't much of a concensus on this one, so I might just have to go with my original idea... you'll have to wait until it's done to see which one I picked!

So, on to the tute...You can probably figure out how to make this without instructions, but I've had a few people ask how I put Cohen's quilt together so here's the rough guide.

I didn't use any measurements as I was making it, and I don't have the quilt anymore. But I thought I could share the general directions and some rough measurements (using the photo as a guide) for those who are interested in making something similar. It's a really easy, fun one to play around with!

So here's a picture of the master plan to refer back to, with VERY rough estimates of measurements. I used a charm pack and a cotton/linen blend for the background.

• I chose (well actually, my husband chose all of the fabrics and laid them out for me to sew) 12, 5" square prints for the main vertical strip and sewed them together. 
• Then I cut four 5" squares in half and sewed them together (joining the narrow ends) for the bottom left hand corner. 
• I cut the four squares with the fish on them into 3 1/2" squares and set them aside.

Then I took my background fabric and cut it to the approximate size that I wanted the quilt to be (you'll want to cut it approximately 3" longer and 4" narrower than the desired finished size - I would have cut my background piece to approx 38" x 58"). 

• Using the diagram and photo as a guide, cut a long narrow strip vertically down the side (number 1) approx 8" wide and put it aside.
• Then from the left over fabric cut four 3 1/2" strips and one 2 1/2" strip from the bottom (number 2).
• Lastly, you'll make a horizontal cut where you want the fish strips to go (number 3).

To make the fish strips, lay out your four 3 1/2" strips and make cuts in them where you want the fish squares to go. Then sew the squares where you made the cuts.

Sew the strips together and insert them where you made cut number 3 in the background. Trim the strips in line with the background fabric.

It's pretty easy from here to put the rest of the quilt together. Sew the 2 1/2" background strip to the end of the four half squares strip for the bottom left corner. Add this strip to the bottom of the quilt and trim in line with the background fabric.

Then add the strip of 12 fabric squares to the right of the quilt top and then the thick strip of background fabric (which was your number 1 cut). Trim it to the size you like and voila! You have a funky baby quilt top which you could put together in an evening. Let me know if any of this doesn't make sense. It's meant just as a quick guide not as a pattern.

You could easily use this method to design your own quilt. Have fun!