Not long now

I’m looking at my calendar and counting down how many sleeps until Christmas. In other words, how much time I have got left to do all the pre-Christmas things that need doing and my list is getting longer.

I have managed to complete one project, a Christmas tree ‘skirt’ for a family member who hasn’t seen the finished item yet – and as she doesn’t read this blog, I am fairly safe it will be a surprise when I give it to her.

I looked and looked for a suitable pattern, and was thrilled to find a whole book with beautiful Christmas things to make.

I wanted a modern look, and this design suits my criteria – colourful, modern and relatively quick to do.

I had to add a slight change to the pattern, as I stupidly cut the centre hole far too big.  Memo to self:  read measurements twice before cutting! I cut the circle out of the centre twice the width it was supposed to be (measured out 7 inches on both sides of centre inside – darn!). Of course I had started to scissor cut the circle when I realised. So my design has an extra ‘garland’ to match the outer one.  I guess that makes the pattern more original!!

Naturally some AURFIL thread was used in the construction and quilting. I had the right colour for the buttonhole stitch in Ne 28, and used the Ne 40 in red and soft aqua in the quilting.

I bought some pretty reindeer fabric for the backing

and a chevron striped binding worked too.

Happy Christmas to everyone – just one week to go…

PS  Our shop, “Always Thread” is closing from the 19 December 2014 until 5 January 2015.

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Round Robin Round-up

At the beginning of 2014 the members of the Always Thread team set themselves a challenge, in the form of a round robin quilt project. We wanted this to be a small wall-hanging sized quilt, and one with a very modern feel. To see how we set up the specifications for our challenge go to http://alwaysquilting.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/taking-the-round-robin-into-the-21st-century/

The original four blocks using colours determined by the colour wheel.

 

At various stages in the year we have blogged about our progress and posted photos. To track our progress you can visit http://alwaysquilting.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/round-robin-round-two/ ‎ , http://alwaysquilting.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/round-robin-bl…e-21st-century/ ‎ , http://alwaysquilting.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/quilting-the-2…-c-round-robin/ ‎, and http://alwaysquilting.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/twenty-first-c…-quilting-plan/

At our final handover day the four quilts looked like this…..

….. and this.

Ladybirdee added both machine and handquilting to her quilt, using two different weights of Aurifil thread. (Ne 40 and 12 respectively).

A combination of hand and machine quilting.

A view from the back shows her extensive quilting.

Back view.

She has also used pieced binding in 2 colours to add to the visual impact.

Judysewforth also added lots of detailed quilting in a very “fun” design!! (#FUN)  Her binding is also pieced in two colours to match the outer border.

Her backing fabric is a bit of fun too. (Sorry about the direction of this photo – WordPress is doesn’t seem to like this photo!)

Jenny found some binding fabric to complement the colours in her quilt and used a variegated thread to machine quilt her project.

The back view.

And as for my quilt….I could not decide how to quilt it and spent ages gazing at it without inspiration! In the end I machine stitched in the ditch to stabilise it (using Aurifil 40 weight), then added modern look hand quilting using Aurufil cotton in 12 weight. I trialled lots of colours before being happy with the apricot/orange I used (colour 2220) which doesn’t really show up very well  in the photo.

Although this project took me very far from my comfort zone, and I engaged in a fair bit of sighing and complaining along the way, it did prove to be an intriguing exercise with interesting quilts as a result.

What about your group? Is anyone up for a challenge? We’d love to hear!

 

The end of the year is nigh …

It is almost the end of 2014 and looking back all I can say is what a busy, adventurous, year it has been with lots of trade events and new directions taken for the business.

As always the final event for the year is the Australian wholesale Quilt Market, held in Melbourne in November.

Not a huge event by world standards, but still very important for Australian shops, and a great opportunity for us to put faces to names & voices that we have met by email, & telephone, during the year.

It is also the perfect place to catch up with many of the pattern designers who feature Aurifil threads in their work.

So let me introduce some of our favorite designers:

Marg Low uses a lot of Cotton Mako’ 12 threads in her designs

The Quilted Crow Girls have been using Cotton Mako’ 28 to applique their beautiful wool fabrics.

Zoe Clifton uses Cotton Mako’ 40 & 50 to piece, applique & quilt her designs.

Leanne Knell of Petals & Patches has started to use the Cotton Mako’ 12 for her stitchery designs.

The Australian Quilt Market is always such a great opportunity to meet people, to see what is new and go home inspired for the next year.

I wonder what we will do in 2015, after the 2013 market we decided to give our 2014 stand a modern twist with our Twenty First Century Round Robin.

Watch for more information about our “Twenty first Century Round Robin”  in the next post by KnitsnQuilts.