Liberated amish quilt together Part 2

I've joined up for the next challenge on Lazy Gal's Liberated Amish quilt together. I'm going to try and use the same source of inspiration, and the same colours, as for the Little Pink Pig quilt that I did for the first challenge.

The challenge is to try and take it a bit further; either more liberated, or more different, or something that you would not usually do. I'm going to try and make lots of those tiny little half square triangles, which I would normally avoid, and emphasise the diagonal lines in the source inspiration. We shall see!

Broderie perse

I've been pottering about on this broderie perse central medallion for a few weeks now. It's lots of fun to do, if a bit fiddly, but I've reached the stage now where I don't know whether to keep piling on the flowers or stop. Every time I add flowers they don't look right, so I take them off, which may mean that it's got enough going on already.

It's raw edge machine applique - not the fanciest option but suits me. I'm planning to pick up the red of the vase in all the subsequent borders, it will probably be quite over the top with lots of red and cream and the occasional bit of something else and lots of slightly wobbly borders. Yay! Some of the flowers seemed very unlikely when I cut them out but they work together OK, even the blue. It's not super co-ordinated, but I like that in a quilt!

And now it's bags

I had given up on the idea of making bags for the school fete - too much like hard work and not at all economical when you consider the cost of the materials vs the likely sale price. But then a friend at work gave me a bag (a large, stuffed full bag) of curtain samples ... and I've been making bags.

Not very good or very imaginative bags, but they should be able to flog them off at the fete? Maybe? It's much nicer making them from upholstery weight fabric too, than the earlier experiment with quilting cottons. The samples include a lot of nana-prints and brocades which I don't think I'll be able to use, but there was a lovely range of linen-style stripes. And every bag has a co-ordinating lining! Hilarious.

I think I've reached the end of my enthusiasm now, although I've hardly made a dint in the sample bag, but it was fun while it was lasted.

Baskets, many baskets

Another quilters' Wednesday, another binding done! Today was red-letter day at the daytime meeting - three people said "Hello Lynley!" I'm not much of a joiner, or mingler, so it takes a while to get to that level of recognition, trust me. That's the main reason I started in the guild twenty years before most of the ladies ... it'll take me that long to fit in and get comfortable.

Anyway, it was a good to chance to finish these baskets. I'd done the hand quilting a month or two ago but put aside the binding to do later, as you do. I like the colours and the style of this quilt. I doubt I'd make another liberated basket one - there's only so much you can do with it as a pattern - but this is nice. It has a lovely soft rumple to it too because of the handquilting on cotton batting.

The baskets I quilted with clamshells, and the borders a freeform zigzag.

A blue distraction activity

I'm pottering away on the big broderie perse medallion centre - it's quite fun but a bit fiddly so I tend to wander off into little distraction activities. And I didn't have anything to hand sew, so I pieced this a couple of weeks ago and I've been using it as my evening stitchery (now that Fox8 has decided to play Glee again from the beginning! Yay!!!).

It's pretty small, about forty inches square, and pieced entirely from the scrap box. I tried to control the size of my stitches and get them small and even ... with limited success but on solid fabrics you can see where you've been, and make an attempt to improve. Here's one without the flash to show the quilting.

And a close up. I don't quite know what I'll do with it, but that's not the point ... is it?

My sewing machine is getting mended

And so it's been a traumatic few days without sewing! It was not stopping when I lifted my foot off the foot control - just randomly keeping on sewing for a bit - which is kind of ignorable when you're piecing, but very unpleasant when you're trying to do some broderie perse flowers. Which I was.

So the machine went to the shop and I seized the opportunity to clear out the sewing room and polish it up. I did it two years ago when I re-painted but not since, and it was really quite disgustingly filthy. Dust! and fibres and sewing garbage and cat hair. And then, because I was still a bit bored, I refolded the fabric stash. Most of the fabric stash that is, not my hand-dyes - I was going to do them but they rang and said my machine was ready, so I loaded the kids in the car and went straight on down.

So this is my stash. It's very modest compared to some out there, and mostly one yard pieces. I think there's about 155 yards there, which is nothing really! It would only keep me going for about three years ... I think the minimum to be taken seriously in blogworld is enough to keep you going until the life expectancy of your youngest grandchild.... about another 120 years? Still, no need to shop just yet.

Scrappy baby quilt

Here's a quilt I finished off at quilters last Wednesday - again with the binding! It is a very easy and peaceful thing to do in the group. And it keeps my knees warm ... it has been absolutely freezing the last week or two.

This is for a friend who had a baby boy last week - she knew it was a boy but no-one else did so the colours are gender neutral. If I had to give it a pattern name I'd say it was a liberated log cabin. But that seems too fancy for this! I haven't seen my friend yet to give it to her but maybe in the next week or two.

Machine quilted with freehand flowers of varying shapes and sizes.