Saturday, March 31, 2007

First off, I just wanted to say, I just learned that Lazy Gal has dropped the Quilt Mavericks ring, and I am a little sad by this. She represented what a quilt maverick should be. She was one of the first blogs I always returned to and gained inspiration by. (listen to me, it sounds like I am eulogizing her! Don't worry, she is not dead! and I wish her all the best in her quest for finding her place!) I just wanted to say I will always think of her as a quilt maverick! And her blog will always be on my blogroll. Good Luck Tonya!

Meanwhile, what have I been quilting lately? More of the same...have started machine quilting Split Personality, but will not post photo until it's bound...every other day or so, I hand quilt a bit of the other Suske quilt:


It hasn't been going as well as I had hoped...I've learned a few lessons with this one. All the fused applique receives quite a bit of stress when held in your hands while handquilting and it also makes it hard to put in a frame, so I didn't. And it is getting a little worn, I think.

I've also started machine quilting a small kids quilt for the guild's outreach program.

I took out Jinny Beyer's Quiltmaking by Hand book, from the Library. I am really enjoying this one; it is very helpful and has great instructions on hand quilting and piecing. I think it is important to learn the old methods, so that they are not lost, and if there is another power outage like we had a few years ago, I can still keep on quilting ;)



Here, I experimented with hand piecing with some scraps:



I've tried handpiecing twice before. I first learned about it while being instructed in the making our guild's logo for our chatelaines. The guild logo was a little difficult to learn and there was much griping in the guild about it, but I was determined to learn it. I tried to do it by machine but the little 1 inch squares were just as fussy to do by machine. So I thought I should practice my hand piecing with other little scraps. Don't you hate to throw out those nice little triangles you chop off the flying geese? Well I had lots of those, so I would practice hand piecing those little buggers together. I even came up with a method of string piecing them together; I would string 6 or 7 of them on a thread:


Then, I got out Jinny's book from the library and read about her techniques and I brought out the little triangles again. The good news is there is improvement! I've gone from 6 to 10 stitches per triangle.


OK so you are thinking I am a little nuts, making 1 inch squares, what can you do with 1 inch squares? I could make a quilt for my dollhouse! 1 inch = 1 foot in my dollhouse. So it would be perfect.

2 comments:

Tonya Ricucci said...

Thank you for the compliments. But as you said, I'll still be around. Can't get rid of me that easy. I heard once that handpiecing also really improves your hand quilting skills, so you are accomplishing more than you think!

Tazzie said...

Hand piecing is super fun, one of these days I'm going to get a looky at the Jinny Beyer book, I've heard good things about it.
*hugs*
Tazzie
:-)