magikquilter June 30th, 2008
Made Octavia over the weekend…all sewn by hand and finished off by top stitching with turquoise perle thread. The wadding was 1″ thick [think that is 2.5cm] anyway it was really thick and created a lovely padded effect. I shall be doing quite a few of these in various fabrics as the local artisan market is opening and I have been offered a stall. It will work really well for me as it is just down the road in an historic home attached to the local Catholic Church. There are heaps of helpers clammering to assist me and now its just a matter of sandwiching a lot of my finished quilt tops into tied quilts and run up some some smaller items as well. Octavio is for Ollie the little boy who lives opposite who is a little chilly in his unit at present…what do you think of my alliteration?
Update……..Ollie loves Octavia!!! He jumped naked onto him after his bath this evening and generally had a great time counting his legs and checking his little hat out!
Tags: artisan market, baby quilt. handmade, wadding
magikquilter June 26th, 2008
All bound and tied and pressed…at last! I finished the top of this quilt last September, along with several other strippies, simply strips sewn together making a pattern when put together with the other strips. The process was very simple …. I bought several pieces of feature fabric…..grabbed co-ordinating ones from the stash….then fretted for a few days because I didn’t have enough blacks and grey accent fabrics. My friend asked me to get her some of it too, as usual, so I went back into the city to get hers and the rest of the blacks and greys at the same time. While I was there I bought the cranes in two other colourways so that anyone body else who liked it would have a bit of a choice within the context of the design.
The other two colours are burnt orange and a sage/silver green with more brown than black accents. I luckily have a lot of accent fabrics for those two quilts so did not have to buy any more at the time and also did not show my friend the other colourways as I can only take so much imitation. I actually don’t find it flattering as I go to great lengths to find my fabrics and need to keep some semblance of originality going.
The top was easy to run up, in fact I made several tops in a few weeks in the strippy style, mostly shabby chic ones though. A few months ago I sandwiched this one together using a pair of almost new Laura Ashley curtains as backing and then I tied it, then I took those ties out and quilted it using largish naive stitches in perle thread. I hated it! It just lost all its appeal to me so I put it away until a few weeks ago when I decided to unpick all the quilting stitches and retie it. After binding it with the remaining pieces of fabric joined together scrappy style I was more than happy with the result. I think you will be too if only because it is so different from my usual dark florals and scrappy quilts. It has a contempory feel which I like and I can’t wait to find my black oriental vases and various other china to photograph with the quilt for my decorating with textiles group on flickr, have to keep up with Sally and all the other wonderful people there!
Tags: one of a kind, Oriental cranes quilt, original design, pink black and silver quilt, tied quilts
magikquilter June 22nd, 2008
My heart is breaking for Glen McGrath and his two children after Jane died today after a 10 year battle with cancer. She initially was diagnosed with breast cancer then 4 years ago it returned and more recently she again had a recurrence elsewhere in her body.
She became a tireless crusader for cancer awareness in younger women…along with the much loved Belinda Emmett who died 11/11/06 also after a long battle. Jane and Glen helped create a foundation for research into breast cancer and untold good has come from her disease. No doubt this does not comfort them tonight, yet hopefully in the future it will come to do so.
I am with the Australian journalist who named her the most naturally funny guest he has ever had on his programme Enough Rope with Andrew Denton. Although I would take it further to say the most brave and most inspiring. May she rest in peace and God grant her family the strength to endure.
Tags: Belinda Emmett, cancer, Enough Rope with Andrew Denton, Glen Mcrath, Jane Mcrath
magikquilter June 21st, 2008
I went up to the Bondi Junction shop “After A Fashion” which is one of several charity shops of the Presbyterian Church in Australia. They have a really clean and well organized shop with all their clothes in categories ie skirts, tops, jackets, coats and dresses. A really good feature is the large sizes section, after Australia was named yesterday by a study as the fattest nation on earth this seems like a good idea! Of course there is the problem of larger sizes being so hard to find that they are in limited supply in second hand shops because unless you outgrow them, or lose weight, they are very rarely disposed of in this fashion.
There were a lot of size 26 and a lot of size 14 and in my size [16] several knee length coats of the type that were in fashion several years ago. I did not buy them however as I would have to take them up to modernise them and also they were more appropriate for office workers than for my slightly bohemian take on classics. I am now wary of buying anything new from stores that is the height of fashion as it really does date an item…all those handkerchief hemmed skirts I bought a few years ago are now a dead giveaway of that period, same with the peasant skirts that were everywhere last winter….though I am happy to store all these against the eventual return of the style in ten or twenty years! Although I have to say that they do look good dressed up with strappy heels and jewellery…..thing is to have variety I guess. I also think that velvets and silks and mixtures of those never really date as long as you keep the rest of your outfit current.
So this week I found a couch cover…[$49 new still had label] for $12 in a colour I would actually use and a vase to go with my oriental collection [new] $3, also another little hand embroidered doily for 50cents and a simply divine little dessert or fruit dish for $3, it is Royal Tudor Ware by Barker Bros Ltd England. The pattern is lilactime…so far I have only been able to find information about chintzware in lilactime but it seems to have been from around 1940. Also found out something I did not know about Royal Kent china….a lot of the original molds were made by Jewish internees in Walbrzych, Poland from concentration camps…it does focus the mind somewhat, doesn’t it?
So anyway the haul this week was $18.50
I have decided to feature a previous spectacular buy each time I do a thrifting post….this time it is my all time favourite find ever! A handcrafted by a tailor no less cotton velvet fitted yet flowing jacket in my favorite shade of purple. This little beauty was purchased along with a navy silk shantung pant suit with a teal silk chiffon camisole and a white linen camisole with hand finished embellishments and a white swiss voile shirt with pintucks. All by the same tailor and all the most exquisitely worked and fitted that I have ever seen. The jacket fits as if it were made for me, last winter when I wore it to little bistros in the city I had waiters in their twenties who were Oscar Wilde lookalikes swooning …..all the more when I said it was from Vinnies and I paid $12 for it!! Thank goodness it is winter now and cold enough to wear it…think I will take it into the city next week…its nice to have gorgeous twenty something young men swooning over me…even if it is only for my purple beauty.
Tags: "Walbrzych Poland" Royal Tudor Ware, After A Fashion, Barker Brothers Ltd, Lilacs, Lilactime, Purple, Royal Kent, tailor made
magikquilter June 18th, 2008
Scrappy Jewels was the third quilt that I made after teaching myself to quilt in 2000 from magazines found at various newsagencies. I had seen a book “Victorian Crafts” edited by Tracy Marsh at our local library and along with a lot of soft cloth dolls for children to take to church and embroidered and embellished crafts and fabric covered hat boxes just dripping with fringing there was decoupage and embroidery and all sorts of things used for “high days and holidays” along with a couple of gloriously photographed Drawing Rooms which impressed me no end! The rooms showed the colours of the day in all their glory. Deep ruby red door and window drapes edged with lush fringing, velvet topped occasional tables and wonderful circular drawing room tables draped with heavily fringed, silk embroidered shawls piled high with books and sewing baskets and fabric and lace embellished writing compendiums. Amongst all this over indulgence of the times a photo of a simple quilt stood out and over a period of a few days I found myself going again and again to that page to feast my eyes on the apparent simplicity of the design.
Probably for its time it was quite simple, after all crazy quilting with all its attendant embellishments was all the rage. I already had several rich floral fabrics in my collection and as the 2003 NSW Quilter’s Guild was/were (?) about to have their annual show I enlisted my husband’s help to get as many bejwelled type fabrics as I could. I had absolutely none at that stage as had been mainly working with florals so I needed a good selection and as we only have two chain fabric stores near us I knew I had to be serious about getting as many as I could at the show.
I will spare you the details of how David mowed over these little old ladies as he elbowed his way through boxes of fat quarters. He claims he does not see people “down there” [he is 6' 5"] but he does not see anything else when he has an objective in sight! The amount of times I said “we quilters just don’t do this”!! Well we exhausted all the florals with black and jewel backgrounds and we, okay me, eventually decided that we’d had enough, after a final walk through the quilts on display of course! I was still astounded that the quilts were so thin as all I had been able to find locally was Tontine polyester high loft wadding. Is there any wonder I tied most of my early quilts?
When it came time to arrange the sewn 9 patch blocks with the alternating 15cm one patches I decided to accentuate the red and green aspects, as I had in the 9 patch, and placed more of those than the other jewel colours. So in all the quilt was eight blocks by eight blocks, and I also used several sapphire and opal blocks to achieve the bejewelled effect I was after. I found a very pretty floral fabric at Vinnies to back it with and at last found a pure cotton batting. I tied the quilt as in the book I think it was only a patchwork top with no batting or quilting that I could discern. I bound it the traditional way in black with coral cabbage patch roses that I had found new as two tablecloths at the local Ted Noffs Charity Shop. Other views are here.
This quilt has been well used as a cover for a chest in our lounge room although I had to move it at times as I lost time gazing at the wonderfully rich patterns, especially in the 15cm alternate blocks. There are two sapphire blocks that are simply breath taking! I have not taken leave of my senses everyone truly! Some visitors over the Christmas period were heard to say, “I can’t take my eyes off that quilt, it is sort of hypnotising me”. Isn’t that just the highest praise?
Tags: hand made, jewel toned quilt, tied quilt, Victorian Quilt
magikquilter June 16th, 2008
Here is part two of my new series for the crafters and quilters. Maybe showing how many wips [works in progress] may shame me into actually getting some things finished! Jacquie is joining in with other quilters to try to finish five tops into completed quilts by the end of July. It would not be fair for me to do the same as they actually quilt their quilts, usually by machine, sometimes by hand.
I will take this opportunity to say that I think Jacquie is an incredibly talented quilter/artisan and am really impressed by her colour choices and the purity of her design choices….if that makes sense! She has a considerable following on her blog and apart from her winning nature I think it is because she is not afraid to ask others for advice. Of course her work is not to be sneezed at either!
This little tied baby quilt started out as a piece of reclaimed fabric which was purchased about five years ago. After starting the flickr groups a few people said that it simply could not stay in the cupboard unused as it is too gorgeous. I started work on it but became distracted by the Japanese silver cranes quilt that I have almost finished see above photo. At present I have sandwiched the snails together and have already changed the ties from soft pink to turquoise and the edging from aqua checks to violet polka dots. And since taking out all the soft pink ties I have barely worked on it. The moral here is stick to what you were working on and sell or gift the fabric to someone else who can work on it themselves!
Tags: babies quilt, handmade, Japanese cranes quilt, snails, wips
