Inspiration

Attending a Quilt Festival like the wonderful National Quilting Festival in Bloemfontein is so inspirational.

Iessie (Festival Chairlady) Rita and me

Since I came home I tried to spent as long a time possible in my studio every day. When I look at other peoples' blogs I realize I am a slow quilter. I have many projects in the making at a time but I slowly finish anything. I do not have a completed quilt to show for this year!

On Saturday the Boland Quilters are the group of the month at Good Hope Quilters Guild quarterly meeting

I plan to have this scrap quilt I started about 10 years ago, ready for Show and Tell. At Bloemfontein I taught a class, Fearless Feathers. My students inspire me so, I definitely had to quilt lots of feathers. This will be a "blanket" and has a wool batting. So apart from the feathers that will pull the design areas together, I will not do back ground quilting because I want the quilt soft and warm. Compression with too many quilting lines will prevent the wool of doing its job to create warmth by trapping air.

The Scrap blocks for this quilt was started in a class with Karen Combs at Quilt University. I made a lot of blocks and still have enough to make another quilt.

Now back to quilting to make sure I have something to show Saturday. (This is the nice thing- if you want to Show and Tell you have a great motivation to complete something. Luckily I can show my DIC (Delayed In Construction) projects here on my blog and there is so many!)

Hope to see some of you on Saturday.

Marié

This is why I am a Quilter

When I pinned my completed block on my design wall and stood back, I once again know why I am a quilter. I get so much joy from my work, not only while I am doing it but for this moments when my own work surprise and impress me!

As I said in a previous post, making blocks is instant gratification. One has this vision of how it will look and how the colours will work together. Sometimes the results is not really what you thought and sometimes the results is just a jaw dropper. These moments put me on a high that no drugs can ever give!

I am celebrating my thirtieth year as a quilter this year. I am so thankful that I have found my purpose in life so early in  my life. I am in the privileged position that I can spent a lot of time living out my passion. I am really in my element when working on my quilts or when I am surrounded with quilts and quilters.

Another project that has a lot of surprises is my BOM quilt I do with Jinny Beyer. If you subscribed to her newsletters you get access to monthly installments of her Quilt Solstice. It is not to late to join- all the previous months instructions is accessible till the end of the year.

I have completed my connector blocks.

The instructions for the other blocks is available every month.
In the first block you make use of a border print. I am using a border print that I have available, not a Jinny Beyer print.

In the second and third block one use soft edge applique. I use fabrics from the same range as the border print. I really have to search in this fabric to find areas with interesting edges.

 I was very pleased and nicely surprised when the simple circular edge still produced lovely result.

Quilting is my life and my life is beautiful!

Enjoy your Quilting.

Marié

Procrastination

Dear Readers

I hope I still have some readers of my blog even though I were absent for a long time. I am still here, alive and well and living on the farm. I do have a lot to tell and show you and I am going to try to get in the good habit of writing regular posts again.

I have decided last year to make a quilt for each of my 3 children. We sleep under down duvets and the children have preferred fluffy blankets above quilts. When I am inspired to make a quilt I am driven by the design. I also like to plan a quilt around a specific fabric. The size of the quilt is determined by the design. I do not make the quilt for a purpose. The process of making the quilt is what captivates me and not the product.

So although I have made more than 200 quilts till now my children only have a baby quilt that was made specifically for them. I made a horse quilt for my eldest daughter as well. Anyway it is time to make them each a quilt. They do not have a say in the design or colour- although my second daughter has a very specific taste so with her quilt I will take that into account.

When working on their quilt I will think about them and stitch my love for each one in their quilt. So this quilt is for me to think about them and for them to remember their mother when I will not be here anymore.  I have started with this labour of love.

The piecing on Van der Byl's quilt is halfway. This quilt is made by hand using my quick hand piecing method.

A small part of it

I have changed the Delectable Mountain pattern to create subtle "windmills" where the blocks come together. The design change on the outside with a sawtooth border. I have pieced the triangles for the middle part and have sewn them in blocks. The blocks are also partially sewn together. For this I have used 72 different Taupe fabrics. After making 2 Taupe quilts I think I have a good feel for this "colour scheme" When I show the completed piece to people I get a lot of compliments for the choice of fabrics.

Here is my plan for the quilt as I designed it in EQ7

The design

I plan to bring in some Blueish triangles in the outer part of the quilt as shown in the upper right hand corner. I am now busy sewing more traingles together. Another 100 strips of fabric is used for this. Some of the fabrics I repeat and some "new" fabrics is included. In the end I will use almost 100 different fabrics in this quilt. It will consist of 3528 triangles.

I have started with Hedwig's quilt as well- but this is another story.

Enjoy your projects- I have a lot of joy with mine!

Marié