Hand Quilted with Love by Sarah Fielke

Like many of you, I waited patiently for this lovely book to materialise, having been tempted with a few sneak peeks here and there by Sarah over Instagram and Twitter. Just those few little snippets were enough to know that this book would be amazing, and it certainly is! 

Material Obsession books one and two have been staples on many quilters' bookshelves for ages. Who hasn't spent a good hour or two re-reading and flicking through, soaking up the colour? Sarah's first solo book Quilting from Little Things was just as beautiful and full of inspiration. And now we have Hand Quilted with Love, which is (to the relief of some) not just about hand quilting, although this is Sarah's preferred method of finishing her quilts, but more about Sarah's making of the quilts she's always wanted to make. Her passion for her craft shines through in the way she describes the inspiration for each quilt, and in the luscious photography.

I was lucky enough to be given a head start on one of the quilts from the book and being a big fan of appliqué I was quick to choose Millefiori. This quilt was a huge challenge for me in terms of colour selection, and this is not the kind of quilt where you want to play it safe - better to go bold or go home! And I'm happy to say I'm so proud of how this has turned out. Big thanks to Sarah for giving me the push I needed to test my colour boundaries and try some new things.

This is a bit of an epic quilt to make, being as it is almost 100 per cent hand-sewn (appliqued and quilted). But in the scheme of things, it hasn't really taken me all that long to make - working mostly in the evenings, I started this around three months ago and it's almost finished. Even the hand quilting (using Perle 8 thread) has been quick - I'm nearly done and started less than two weeks ago. I really do encourage anyone who's been put off by the idea of hand quilting to think again - using Perle 8 thread makes everything go much faster and it's really satisfying to see the quilt come alive with each shape being outlined in a different colour thread. The book provides lots of tips and tricks on both hand quilting and needleturn applique, and you can see Sarah's hand quilting technique in action (and how to make perfect applique circles) thanks to the wonders of YouTube on her blog.

Incidentally, I also made a version of the fabulous Whirligig from Sarah's previous book, and it is still awaiting its hand quilting moment in the sun. After this experience with Millefiori, I'm well and truly inspired to take it out of the cupboard and finish it!

But back to the book! I'm already daydreaming about what other projects I'll make. While the Made to Measure medallion quilt from the book's cover is definitely a contender (I love Lynne's version, and there are quite a few others popping up now), I think I'll tackle this fabulous checkerboard design with its applique border. I have been hoarding stacks of Kaffe Fassett and Keiko Goke colours which would be perfect for it.

And this teapot and cup one takes my fancy too! Just to name a few!

Be sure to visit the other stops on Sarah's bloggy book tour and see what other beauties have already been whipped up. You can pick up a copy of the book from Book Depository or direct from Sarah's website.

SewTake a Hike - 4th May

Belinda Stitches – 5th May

True Up - 6th May

LilysQuilts (UK) - 7th May

Creative Dabbling (Australia) 8th May

Mrs Schmenkman Quilts (USA)9th May  

I'm A Ginger Monkey (UK) - 10th May 

Petits Elefants -(Australia) 10th May

Prints Charming (Australia) - 11th May

RedPepper Quilts (Australia) - 12th May

HandMade by Alissa (USA) - 13th May

Meet Me at Mikes (Australia) - 14th May

Sew Mama Sew (USA) - 15thMay

A bit of this and a bit of that

I'm back again, with promised pics of the quilt that Angela Walters recently quilted for me. I've been a huge fan of Angela's quilting style since I first discovered it a few years ago through Flickr. Not only is she a superstar quilter but also a lovely person to boot and very generous with her advice and tips, both through her blog and on Twitter.

As some of you may know, over Christmas my family and I embarked on a big round-the-world expedition, including a short stop in the US. When I stumbled across a quilting convention website and realised that Angela would be teaching, and it was at exactly the same time that we would be in Los Angeles in late January, well you know what I had to do. And in the lead-up to our departure I got to thinking, wouldn't it be awesome to send Angela a quilt to quilt for me and I could pick it up from her in person in January? Yay me!

So I threw together this little throw-sized quilt using some of my favourite Anna Maria Horner fabrics (and there's one Violet Craft Madrona Road print thrown in for good measure too). The idea was to leave heaps of space to allow Angela to do her thing. The background fabric is one of my favourites to work with - Carolina Chambray in natural from Robert Kaufmann. I've got a little of it stashed away for emergency purposes. Big thanks to Jules and to my Mum for helping me get it done in time!

Needless to say I'm thrilled to the moon and back with Angela's quilting, it completely blows my mind every time I study it. And I do that a lot.

Just look at those incredible feathers! Hugely distracting when I'm trying to get work done!

Anyway, the disappointing backstory to this quilt is that I never actually made it to that class in January. We were at Disneyland at the time, and the class was on the very last day of our holiday. The plan was for my husband to take the kids for a fourth day at Disney and I would go to the class. We would then meet back at the hotel at the end of the day and go to the airport for our trip home. But on day three my eldest son came down with a vomiting bug. Which meant that my husband stayed back at the hotel while I went with the other two to Disney. Just quietly, we had the most amazing day, including the best. ride. ever. The Radiator Springs Racers. Awesome. I still feel sorry for the big boy (and hub) that they missed out! All the while I was worried about the rest of us (or just one of us) getting sick, you know how these things go, and feeling slightly queasy just at the thought of being on a 16 hour plane trip with a family of vomiters. So with a big lump in my throat I decided that I couldn't in good conscience go to the class. On the plus side, the big boy was better the next day, and nobody else got sick, and we had a brilliant fourth day at Disney - it was the perfect end to our holiday, we made it to the airport and survived the big trip home. But without a quilt.

Luckily Jules came to the rescue, being lucky as she was to be going to Quiltcon in February, at which she kindly met up with Angela and safely delivered the quilt home to me. Phew!

I also need to catch up on telling you about some other projects I've been working on. Perhaps only then will you realise the extent of my problem. First up Green Tea and Sweet Beans, the beautiful hand-pieced and appliqued quilt designed by Jen Kingwell of Amitie Textiles in Melbourne. This was run as block of the month a few years ago, around the time when I was getting back into quilting after a hiatus. I loved it then but wasn't ready to jump into a big project. Happily the pattern is now available in a book form and I started working on this as my holiday project. I've done almost all the appliqué blocks now and need to get cracking on the hand-pieced ones, of which there are quite a few challenging ones.

Finally I'll leave you with this shot of my kiddos with their quilts in action. They make the best quilt forts. Lucky for them they have quite a few to choose from. :)

Adventures in hand quilting

One thing I've noticed about the projects I'm taking on now is my determination to just get. them. done. I have so many quilts on my 'bucket list' that if I don't get wriggling, I'm going to be 98 before I've made half of them. In my mind (I'm too scared to write too much of this down) there's a list of the quilts I can do this year, and next year. And a list of the quilts that I'll think about at some point. Most of the quilts on the first list I have the fabric for, give or take. I suppose technically this should mean no more shopping, then hey!

Anyway, I digress. I started Millefiori around the time school went back this year in early February, and have been working on it fairly solidly most evenings. Now the top is finished. And rather than let it languish in the pile of unquilted tops, this time I'm going to finish it! And it deserves the full hand-quilting shebang, don't you agree?

This process may look like it's not for the faint-hearted, but it's really not that bad! The basting is a bit of a palaver, taking place as it does hunched on the floor for several hours. But it was finished well before I thought it might be. You take long stitches, working from a gridline at the centre out (use a new piece of thread each time, starting on one of the centre lines and working out to the edge). Secure the end of the thread in the batting with a couple of little stitches. The rows are around 6 inches apart.

Working flat on the floor, it can be a little hard on your hands and wrist. You can use a little teaspoon to  help 'lift' the needle up as it comes through. I used this technique on and off throughout the process and it worked quite well but I found I didn't need it all the time. Perhaps that had something to do with how tired my hand was feeling! Speaking of which, don't expect to get this done in one go! This quilt is around 60 inches square and I estimate that it took around three hours to baste, in sessions of half an hour or so.

And since Sunday I've been quilting merrily away, using Perle 8 thread. This is also going faster than I had imagined and so far I'm loving the process! Once again, a little hard on the hands, and I need to remember to take some breaks (including all of today)!

So there you have it, I'll be back with some more progress pics soon! And I'd love to hear about your hand quilting adventures, please leave me a comment! Do you love it, hate it, haven't tried it but want to?

This doesn't happen too often (but maybe it'll happen more often from now on), but my blogging actually coincides with Lily's Quilts Fresh Sewing Day, so I can link up for once. Hurrah! If you've come over from Lynne's, thanks for popping in!

Anyone still here?

Well hello there! It has been an insane number of months since I last checked in. If you happen to follow me on Twitter or Instagram (I'm @petitselefants on both), you will vouch for the fact, however, that I haven't been sitting around on my behind idly twiddling my thumbs!

First reason for the rather lengthy hiatus has been the six month house extension/renovation project. We moved out on September 28 last year, and moved back in exactly six months later on March 28. 

Herewith a few photos to prove it. I really need to get my act in to gear and take some better photos and assemble a few before and afters. The house is totally transformed, it feels like a new house! Above is the new living/dining space, and through the window on the right of the picture is a glimpse of my new studio (still awaiting furniture and unpacking of fabric).

There are still a few things left to finish off (including a balustrade on this staircase - happily the kids have actually listened to us for once and don't play silly horses on the stairs. They do that elsewhere - ha!).

My kitchen. I LOVE the kitchen. It's about trebled in size from what we previously had. And behind those red doors is a butler's pantry. I have yet to work out when the butler is arriving though.... It's so hard to find good help these days!

On to things quilty. When I haven't been organising house-y things or chasing after kidlets, I've been busy for the past three months working on this little quilt. It's called Millefiori and you'll find it in Sarah Fielke's beautiful new book Hand Quilted with Love, recently released. If you don't have it yet, please consider purchasing it for your quilt library - it's absolutely gorgeous. My version of Millefiori will be popping up again soon when Sarah runs a blog tour of her book in coming weeks!

Just one more thing before I go - have you heard of Craftsy? They have a library filled with online video classes in all things crafty, not just quilting but pretty much anything you could think of. You purchase the class of your choice and have access to it forever more. I've downloaded a few and I have to say they're really fabulous! So far I've tried Angela Walters' machine quilting class, Sarah's 'Big Techniques from Small Scraps' class and Camille Roskelley's 'Pre-Cuts Made Simple' class. It's so fun being able to watch these ladies do their thing - the next best thing to taking a class with them in person!

Speaking of Angela Walters, in my next post (no, not in six months), I'll show you my quilt that she quilted for me! It's just a little bit awesome.

Well hello there friends!

It has been an embarassingly long time since I've blogged. That's not because I've not being doing anything worth showing, ohhhhh no! If you happen to follow me on Twitter or Instagram you'll know there's quite a bit happening chez Petitselefants.

But today I'm posting to tell you:
1. I admit I'm a hopeless blogger.
2. I will try harder. I promise.
3. I really appreciate the fact that hundreds of visitors are still reading my blog, even though it hasn't been updated in 3 months. Thank you.
4. I'm so excited about everything that's happening at the moment, I can barely begin to think of where to start. And that's just the sewing stuff.
5. So I'll just start by telling you I have another quilt in Fat Quarterly, just out today. It's full of Christmas projects. Including this little one here which was great fun to sew and I hope that somebody out there will make one! How excellent would that be?

My absence from the blogosphere is in part due to stuff happening here:

We've been rearranging the furniture, a little.

(Yes we have moved out, don't worry).

In six months time this little spot here will be my NEW SEWING STUDIO. And we will have half a brand spanking new house. I'm excited about both of these points. But at the moment it feels like a hard slog. Even though we're not doing any of the actual building, there's a lot of brain power going into choosing fixtures and fittings, paint colours, layouts, etc etc. I won't show you my list, it's scary.

2013 is going to be a great year. I can't wait.

If you've made it this far along, please leave me a comment and tell me what you've been up to! There might be a little something in it for you. I've been storing it up.

Off to London

Perhaps it's a total coincidence, but there's a bit of a sporting shebang going off in London at the moment and in case you hadn't noticed, everything Brit-themed is big news. And Fat Quarterly is in on the act this quarter with their new Sew Britannia issue, full of Brit-themed projects, including this one! My very first quilt pattern!!!! (Please forgive excessive use of exclamation points in this post, I am a little excited).

It's no secret I have a bit of (well, OK a big) soft spot for Britain, England and London! I'm married to a proud Englishman (who's lived here in Australia for way longer than he lived in England) and I love visiting London (and I can't wait until December when we'll be back there again!)

I was sent a pack of Laurie Wisbrun's new London range by Robert Kaufman to play with. The line is just four prints, two each in two colourways. As you can see I've done a little take on the Union Jack theme, but these are big, chunky blocks that are very quick to put together. If you're looking for a true Union Jack, look no further than Lily's Quilts Jumping Jacks quilt which also features in Fat Quarterly.

(Fun fact: I was in a Flickr bee with Lynne and contributed to the Jumping Jacks quilt! Sadly, I found the paper piecing all a bit much and earned a few grey hairs in the process. Happily, that was a couple of years ago and I have advanced beyond that point...)

Anyway, the purpose of today's post is to show you how to cut squares on the bias! Why would I ever want to do that, you ask? Well, if you want to feature motifs from your fabric running on the diagonal, as they do in the corners of each of the Union Jack blocks above, then you'll need to fussy-cut on the bias. Otherwise, you'd end up with a decapitated Big Ben or London Bridge, and that just would never do.

This block is based on a 6 inch square. To work out how much fabric you'll need for your fussy-cut squares, just take a regular 6 inch square, and measure the diagonal. This distance is 8.5 inches. (If you're working off a different-sized square, just do the same thing - measure the diagonal and cut your fabric to that width).

Cut a strip of fabric 8.5 inches wide, across the width of the fabric. Line one edge of the fabric strip up against the bias line on your cutting mat. (Never noticed it before? It's the diagonal line running across your mat - if there are multiple diagonal lines, use the longest one available).

It helps to have your mat positioned on the corner of a table as you'll be cutting from both sides of the mat for this exercise.

With the fabric lined up on the bias line, take your ruler and line it up carefully so that your first cut will be exactly 6 inches across the fabric, as in the photo above.

Now go around the corner of your mat, and make another cut of 6 inches. You'll see now you've got the first two edges of your 6 inch square!

Go back to the other side of the mat, line up the ruler at the corner of the bottom edge of the 'square' and cut - this time it will be 12 inches - made up of the 6 inches from the square you're currently working on, and 6 inches of the next square.

Go around the corner again and make another 12 inch cut. Now you've got one whole square cut, as well as two edges of your next square.

I've separated out the pieces in the photo above to show you what's going on. Clever, innit?

Keep cutting in alternating directions all the way along your strip (you will need to move the strip back down the mat to give yourself room to cut).

And there you have it, perfectly positioned buses and taxis ready for their Union Jack treatment.
As you will notice, there is a bit of fabric 'wastage' doing this, but you end up with triangles large enough to be used for another project, or pieced for the back, or whatever you like!

I'll be back in a few days with a little announcement! In the meantime, I'd love to hear your feedback on   this method of bias-cutting squares, or on what you think of my pattern! Or on any of the other patterns in the Fat Quarterly Rule Britannia issue. If you haven't got your issue yet, head on over now!

Serenading

Even though I'm not hanging out on my blog as much as I would like these days, I am working harder at getting more sewing (and knitting! and crocheting!) done, and even finishing some projects! (Shock, horror!) And although I'm not 'here' very much, you can often find me on Twitter, having a little natter about all things fabric, quilts and a lot of other stuff too. I really love Twitter (my husband would even say I'm addicted. No comment). And best of all, I'm amazed at how many lovely people I've met through Twitter, and some of whom I've been able to meet in person too!

One of those lovely people is Jane. Jane lives in Brisbane, is a prolific quilter and quilts for others too, as well as running a fabulous online shop selling Moda pre cuts (amongst other goodies).

Jane had admired my little leafy appliqué escapades and very kindly sent me a jelly roll of Serenade by Kate Spain to have a play with. If you've had a wander around my blog or have been reading here for a while (thank you!) you'll know I have a thing for appliquéd leaves....

I soon got to work, cutting out lots of leaves with the gorgeous Serenade fabrics. I love the colour palette in this range, beautiful autumnal oranges and browns through to greys, purples and blues. I love the marbled effect prints which show a graduation through the whole palette.

The leaves are hand stitched onto a background of Essex natural linen - beautiful to sew on to, lovely and soft! And then I attached a piece of batting and machine quilted around each of the leaves to make them standout.

The final touch, a pillow back made with the jelly roll strips, echoing the colour graduation effect of the leaves layout. This is a pretty big pillow - 20 inches. I didn't even have a pillow form to fit it, so sadly it's looking a little baggy at the moment!

Thanks again Jane, for these beautiful fabrics to play with!