I love to sew, mainly quilts and bags. I am 66, married to Fred and have one son, Matthew, who is 27. I enjoy embroidery and applique and prefer to machine piece and quilt my projects. I love my vintage Singer sewing machines especially my Featherweight 222K. I’m enjoying treadling on my 201K Singer and I collect Miniature Sewing Machines and currently have three Essex , one Singer 20, one Singer 40, two Vulcan Miniatures and my latest, a Grain. My love of sewing I believe comes from my Grandmother - I still have the drawings she made for me to embroider on tea towels many many years ago!

Thursday 11 August 2011

IT'S FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY......

FLANNEL QUILT

It's almost three weeks since I last posted!!  good grief.... what HAVE I been up to?

Well, I just now put the final stitches in the binding of my Flannel Quilt - this one is just for me!  I had a heap of flannel fabrics that I bought years ago and I decided that they needed to be made into a quilt instead of just sitting in the plastic box.. so here it is!!  I had fun quilting this one... I decided to try using InvisiFil WonderFil 100wt in the top as well as the bobbin and boy oh boy, did I learn a few things!!  Firstly, you need to use a  60/8 sharps needle with this thread and you also need to loosen the top tension quite a bit.  Sadly, I didn't learn these things until I was almost finished quilting the quilt!  The good thing is that the InvisiFil thread just disappears into the quilt, so you can't really see all of the starts and stops (and there are many!!).  I should add that I have never had any problems with this thread when I have used it in the bobbin only).   The weather has turned cool again, so I will be able to snuggle under this quilt tonight while I watch some tele!

On August 3rd my sister and I had our sales/display table at our Mum's Nursing Home pretend Ekka day.  Brisbane is quite famous for it's Ekka (you can read all about it HERE).  As the Nursing Home residents are unable to attend the real Ekka, they have their own!!  Our table looked so lovely - very bright and pretty.  We sold lots of things and had a wonderful day.  My friends from my craft group helped out by making items for the sales table which was great - our table was groaning with goodies!






Last night I made another Chalkboard Roll - I'm getting better with each one.  I like to mitre the corners and the last couple I made were okay but not perfect.  I found a great tutorial HERE which shows how you trim off a triangle at the corner, then fold over to form the mitred corner - it worked so well.....


I did have a problem with the tension when I made this one and I have since read up on working with Chalkboard fabric.  I think I should have used a 90/14 needle.  I already use my walking foot.  I sewed this one on my smaller sewing machine (Brother Compal Sovereign)  but I had used my big machine (Brother Nouvelle 1500) when I made the previous rolls and I didn't have the tension issues with those (I have this machine set up for all of my quilting).

I'm a bit behind with my Civil War blocks (you can see the latest in my Flickr site & on my Civil War Blocks Page) so perhaps I will get some sewing time in today and try to catch up!  again!!

I also have my Royal Critters quilt ready to do the quilting on so I might even set up my machine and get started on that too!!!

Happy Sewing!!


7 comments :

  1. Well at least we know you haven't been slacking off! ;-)
    And you now have a pretty quilt to snuggle under when it gets cold! (Well cold for Brisbane, I suppose!) My sister Helen is up in Brisbane this week! Be sure to say Hi to her! Hee Hee!

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  2. It does look as though you have been keeping yourself busy. I love a flannel quilt. That thread is a challenge to work with.

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  3. Your flannel quilt looks so warm, cozy and inviting! I love the big block quilts. I saw some in Fons and Porter magazine a few years ago and have been thinking about making one.

    Your table was lovely. Looks like you were both very busy. I'll bet everyone had fun looking at and buying your things.

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  4. What a wonderful table of goodies! You girls were busy indeed.

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  5. Hi Helen. Great to see what you have been up to... I'm intrigued about the chalkboard roll...what exactly is it? (sorry if that is a dumb question!!)I can totally relate to lots of learnings while quilting - experimenmting is fun but can have its down side! Your new flannel quilt looks nice and snuggly and gorgeous colours.

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  6. Helen you have been so busy and i love your flannel quilt what a good job you have done of all your projects

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  7. I love that big star quilt!!!

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