My scrap Pinwheels are now in a quilt

For the past few weeks I have been sewing triangle scrap pairs into small HST units and then turning those into pinwheel blocks.  Sometimes I have made these units in a leader/ender scenario and other times I have sat at the sewing machine churning out the HSTs and pinwheels.  As they piled up I thought of Gwen Marston and Freddie Moran with their "Parts Department".

But a few days ago I had enough "Parts" to start constructing a quilt. In true Gwen/Freddie style I have made a Medallion Quilt, using the pinwheels to make a centre panel and also borders.  The small HST units I also pieced into narrow borders.  As the colours were predominantly Autumn shades I just used two other fabrics for alternate borders:  an apple green with a yellow spot and a bright yellow with a deeper yellow spot. I hope these have helped to give this rather "busy" quilt a sense of calmness.

Again, like the dynamic duo, Gwen and Freddie, I let the "Parts" lead the design.  The black and cream and jazzy coloured pinwheels seemed to lend themselves to a dramatic centre panel and then I chose the borders as I got to them.  Good fun.

And here it is!

 

It measure 41" square.

 

I was given the scrap triangles by Wendy, a lady who makes (and gets others to make) hundreds of Project Linus Quilts.

 

On Monday I will see her at a Patchwork Group meeting and will hand over the finished quilt top so Wendy can back it and quilt it on her quilting machine.  I hope I see it before it is given away to the Linus organisation.

 

Lots of work in this one - I can't imagine how many hours sewing - but I am pleased with the cheerful quilt I have created from scraps most people would have thrown away plus some solid scraps and polka dot yardage from my stash.

 

And to finish, a couple of close ups of the pinwheels and HSTs:

 

 

I have also finished hand quilting my Rainbow Quilt so I hope to showcase that one next week.

Linking up with Maybush Studio's Brit Thursday Linky.

 

 

My Quilt books

I saw a photo on another blog a few days ago which showed some of the quilt books the blog-writer owned.
It set me thinking of my own collection of Quilt books.

Over the years I have amassed quite a collection, many bought myself and a lot gifted to me.
I have loved reading through them all, lots of them many times and I like to dip into them when I am looking for a particular idea or method of sewing or piecing.

This is the corner of my sewing room where I keep my books, ring binder files of Quilt ideas cut from magazines, my sweet jar of Perle cottons and plastic tubs of cut scrap squares and strips of various sizes.  As you can see, I use a bedroom for sewing so there is a wardrobe and bed in there too.

Close ups of the book shelves:

However I realised that actually there are 5 I use all the time. And here they are:

Sorry, for some reason the photograph as turned itself sideways en route from my Flickr Photostream to my blog!

Most of these books are never back on the bookshelf, they are on the bed with half-finished projects beside them.  In fact, I had to gather them up and return them to the shelves for these photos.

I love Gwen Marston and Freddie Moran books.  Their quirky style, wonky blocks and their liberated block ideas sit very happily with me.  Also, the use of so much colour excites me.  Freddie Moran's view that the more colours in a quilt the better and her wonderful notion that RED is a neutral colour are just great! When I first started quilting back in 1997 my use of colour was very restrained: three or four colours in a handful of different fabrics, in pale or quiet ( not as interesting as the recent craze for Low Volume!) colours were used in my first quilts.

Bit by bit I became more adventurous, colour crept up on me and then I saw some American Quilt Shows on TV in New Zealand.  There I met Freddie Moran, and that led to Gwen Marston.  I was blown away!  I even did a One Day Workshop with Gwen In New Zealand when she came to the Quilt Group I belong to out there.  I have never looked back!

I probably always liked the idea of Scrap quilts and using Freddie and Gwen's ideas I was able to make one Scrap quilt after another.

Then through blogs and Flickr I met Emily Cier's Scrap Republic book.  Her use of colour and scraps excited me too so that book is also in constant use.  I am currently working on two quilts based on projects in this book.

So, if I had to limit my collection of Quilt books to just a few those five would be an absolute must.

What are your favourite Quilt books and why?  I would love to know.

Making progress with Mr Scarecrow

I recently started to make a Gwen Marston style medallion quilt using an appliqued scarecrow for the centre.

This week I have been slowly adding borders. The original idea stemmed from Gwen Marston's Liberated Medallion Quilts book.
When I began to think about the borders I also used ideas from the two books Gwen wrote with Freddie Moran: Collaborative Quilting and Freddie and Gwen Collaborate Again.

I love the quilts and the clever way Gwen and Freddie simplify blocks and use colour and colour and MORE colour!

One of the borders I wanted to try was the Sawtooth border made from HSTs using 2" squares.
I was very pleased with how these turned out.  I am using an autumn palette of yellows, oranges, green and some blue, picking out the colours of the scarecrow.  The dominant colour of the HSTs was orange so I decided just to add this border to the two sides.  Top and bottom as well would have been overkill!  Another border was made from my favourite scrappy pinwheels.  I used 2.5" squares from my stash for these and I was pleased with the result.

So, here is Mr Scarecrow Medallion Quilt so far:

Still a long way to go and I think I need to add some other colours, not sure what at the moment.

However, this is on hold as I have to hurry and finish my Frog Quilt.  The baby is due any day and I discovered two days ago that it will be a boy.  I have several Girl quilts finished but this is the only Boy one in the pipeline.  Lots of hand quilting being done over the last two days!  Nearly finished so hopefully it will be done in time.

Linking with Clare's Maybush Studio blog and her Brit Sewing Thursday Linky.