Author: charlottenewland

Pervalong – preparing your foundation papers

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Fracture is foundation pieced using paper templates, but don’t panic! The templates are very simple with only three or four sections each, and if you make a mistake you can just add another piece of fabric until you have covered the whole shape. It’s the reduced-swearing version of paper piecing. If you are new to foundation piecing then there are lots of tutorials available on the interwebs, like this fab one from Katy.The quilt is constructed using large and small squares and rectangles. To make a quilt the same size as the original (36 inches square) you will need to cut the following:If you want to make your quilt bigger (or smaller) then simply adjust the paper sizes accordingly. As [Read more...]

Head in the sand…

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Or at the very least, buried in fabric.My work situation is a little uncertain at the moment, for all sorts of boring reasons that I won't go into. Although I have a shed-load to do it seems that what ended up happening instead was a little bit of stitching. I'm playing around with some Field Study to make a shop sample for Annie. This is such a beautiful fabric line. Gorgeous colours, and such a fantastic mix of prints. It's pretty much the definition of eclectic. Just a sneaky peek for now, but I'll show you more when it's done.I have also got my Pervalong bundle in my hot, sweaty hands. I love it so, and I can't wait to get started. I'm very excited that I will have some lovely people [Read more...]

Welcome to the pervalong!*

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*does not involve actual pervs. Sorry to disappoint you.   Hellooooo! I'm a little bit excited (and also scared) to launch the pervalong today. Please go ahead and grab a button from the sidebar and join the flickr group too, if you like.    Here is the (hopefully sufficiently relaxed) schedule: Today: Choosing your colour scheme Preparing your foundation papers Piecing central blocks A and B Piecing central blocks C and D Border 1 Border 2 and finishing your quilt top  Colour scheme The basic principle for choosing your fabrics is to start with a strong colour in the centre (I used Papaya – a lovely warm yellow) and fade gradually through to paler colours (corn yellow, [Read more...]

A new dress and a quick question

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On the last day of the school holidays (for 2/3 of the kids, anyway) I locked the children in a cupboard and made myself a dress. It's the Washi Dress, which turned out to be the most wonderfully written and easy to follow pattern. Brilliant enough to overcome the often irritating "print everything out and tape it all together" issue that you get with PDFs.Thanks to my lovely husband for his photography skillsI made a muslin for the bodice as suggested and decided to go for the small. In retrospect I could have probably done with a medium on the top (I have rather large bosoms), but the shirring in the back makes it quite forgiving, and there's nothing a good boob hoik (see below) won't [Read more...]

A finish (and an eeeeeep)

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First, the finish. The "Touch of yellow" quilt is done. I really struggled with finding a name for it (not least because Kelly insisted on calling it the "50 shades of perv" quilt). I don't normally name quilts at all, but I wanted to enter it into Quiltcon so I had to come up with something. So, may I introduce "Fracture" (sorry, Kelly).It's 36 inches square and made using 10 kona solids (black, pepper, charcoal, steel, iron, ash, canary, papaya, maize and corn yellow). It's a bugger to photograph because of the huge difference in value and the low contrast between the groups of dark greys. Thank goodness for photoshop. It's tied, rather than quilted, with the stitches made from the [Read more...]

ANOVA

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It's done, probably, although I keep tinkering and stitching even though the binding is on and it's hanging on the wall. It finished at 12 x 16 inches in the end. Just a tiny thing.I might enter it into QuiltCon. I'm a bit proud of this baby - it's me, if you know what I mean.

Get out of my head, dammit

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As if having a puppy in the house wasn't messing with my sleep enough there has been a quilt brewing in my head, mostly at night. It was time to get the bloody thing out of my brain and into fabric.It's little (about 12 inches by 18 or so, but I haven't measured it), and is made of eight or nine (I forgot to count) warm neutrals and a single pop of red. I'm going to hand quilt the bejeezus out of it in several neutrals and a gorgeous variegated red perle by Valdani that I picked up at the Festival of Quilts. It's called "Analysis of Variance", in a nod to realjob (it's a statistical method). I can't believe that I have finally named a quilt. I never thought I would see the day.

A little extra something

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It's almost time to send off the Brit Quilt Swap mini quilt (assuming I can bear to let it go), so I snuck a bit of time yesterday to make a little extra something. I thought a pouch might be in order (not least because you can stuff it full of sweeties), so pulled out some scraps and put together another Perfect Zip Bag. I really love this pattern - it is so well written and easy to follow. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone wanting to try zips for the first time. Anyhoo, once I had finished it I decided that, actually, I really really needed to keep it. It's perfect for all the extraneous handbag crap (headphones, keys to my grandma's flat, car key, pencil, moo cards, shiv) that [Read more...]

Small miracles

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Lilly's little memory quilt is finished. It came together pretty quickly in the end, once all the interfacing and fussy cutting was done. Blimey, sewing knits to regular woven cotton is tricky. Even with the stabilising influence of the interfacing there was still a fair bit of stretching and wriggling going on. I have never been more thankful for my walking foot!The quilting is really simple squares, stitched in the ditch. It's quite heavy and I wanted it to stay as cuddly and soft as possible. I broke a bit of a personal rule and machine finished the binding for a change. I figured that it would be getting a lot of use, and if I waited until I had time to hand finish it then Lilly [Read more...]