To continue with my story of the journey I have made and am continuing to make.

Below is the Laura Ashley quilt , the center of which was peiced by my daughter Heather and the borders added by me and how I did the quilting...  This shows the tear away paper being used.

After my trials with the tear away paper, I discovered Press and Seal - which I coudn't get here in Australia at the time,  although I believe we can now get it locally .  A good freind from the USA sent me quite a lot of rolls...which was lovely.

My daughter Heather had sewn together some squares of fabric from the Laura Ashly line, when she was in her second teaching post quite some years ago..at a remote school  inland from Kalgoorlie.

As she didnt know what to do with it then...and as Mum did quilting :)  could I finish it for her.

Well I added two borders...eventually...  and first using the the tear away paper, quilted the blocks and the border.

 I must say this was a UFO for quite some time.

In 2004 not long after we moved here to Leschenault, my studio was more or less sorted,   so I put the 3 layers together...on the floor of our bedroom I think ( NOT good for the back!) 

After machine quilting the blocks one by one  (in the ditch around each block first.) I used the tear away paper for all the blocks and then for the first border.

 This was a bit harsh on the stitching

I then discovered Press and seal...and this was really good

It even stayed in place on the door while it waited for me to use :) which was handy as they were long pieces.

So then I happily quilted along with the Press and seal.  It stuck really well to the fabric with safetly pins at intervals. 

I did discover that after a time, my stitches skipped and the needle gluncked up heaps..but I persevered till I had finished the quilt..it did work better if I also sprinkled a little talcum powder on the plastic as I sewed..bit messy...but smelt nice!

This method wasnt bad...still a bit harsh on the stitches when taken off ..and tiny bits stuck in the stitching which took a while to take out.

Press and Seal - some still to be removed.

The making of the Laura Ashley quilt - AND the lovely view I have when seiwng..plus as a bonus, you can see my DH working hard in the garden :)  Which reminds me - I MUST go clean the windows!

As you can see - my quilting gloves then consisted of gardening gloves...the best thing I could find to use when quilting

This is the only other photo I could find of the completed quilt.

My story will contiue again a bit later.

Where we were last night!

Andrea as The Black Queen after the school performance of Alice last night.  Apparently she even had her teeth blackened.

We had a great time - she has one more performance on Saturday night...and of course we will go again.  Stuarts wife Jennifer is coming with us, which is very special too.

Woohoo...My new Sewing table, the SewEzy, arrived today.

It makes a great difference, as my sewing area is all level.

Took me a while to get it together, however all is well now.

I did a quick play and made a quilted feather...and there are some of my' doodles' that I practise each time I sit for a while and am waiting in the car .
Sadly  I have flattened the battery in the car twice now.

I now take a notebook and pencil with me wherever I go... and try to sit near a light.
Its a great help.

Wont be sewing much now we are off to a drama performance at Andrea's school soon...and I become the driver once more :)

Hope you all have a great day

Proudly showing you our younger son Stuart, a Captain in the Australian Army Reserves, at the Anzac Day service on the 25th April 2010.

This day means a lot to us, as my husbands father served in the Austraian Army at the age of 18 years, fought and was wounded at Galipoli .

He rarely spoke of his experiences, which was understandable, as it must have been a really dreadful time in his life.

Well - something I wasnt going to show...but I guess I need to confess to my mistakes...so here is the back of the quilt ... not sure if you can see the tension problems I had.

The blue fluffy bit on the right side is some wool roving I was using to make pin cushions with :(

I think this is a better photo to see the incorrect tensions...and the many colours of the silk...the border colour is great - that is the Aurofil, and works well with the silk on top. The yellow you can see is the silk that I was first using top and bobbin...but I ran out SO fast it wasnt funny, so I first changed to different coloured silk...then got the Aurofil.  The blue in the ditch was Guterman cotton - and I didnt like that - it was too heavy.

This is a closer shot of the back showing the sewn design of the fabric I was sewing round FMQ on the border, from the top...Sounds confusing ..hope you get what I mean?

And this is REALLY showing you dreadful tension !

Now I have to wait till the Posite gets here with the next lot of silk, so I can finish the last length of the border and do the binding.  This time I have ordered the large spools of silk as suggested by Diane Gaudynski, which you can find in here

I have learnt many things

1.  Dont use squares on the backing - it never seems to line up.

2.  Always check you tension - even if it looks great from the top!

3.  Dont forget to pin the backing out of the way when you are sewing the border

as its very hatrd to un-pick. 

$. Dont play with wool roving while you are quilting ...not on that table anyway. 

5. Practise Practise Practise :)

6.The next one will be better.

My First quilt - King sized!

I began this quilt in the 1980's .. I went to a sampler class when I lived in Perth, and instead of making just one block ...I did 2 of the same in different colours.

The lace in the Grandmothers Fan blocks belonged to my Grandmother..and the pink and the pale teal fabric is from the sheets we had when we first married - nearly 50 years ago.

I cut the sashing..and forgot to wash to wash the fabric first...it runs ... very badly....so I put the blocks away in a chest for another 10 years...and when I moved to the country in the hills above Perth, I made a very special friend of Liz, and I have mentioned in an erlier post that without her, I would not have been on this journey...

Anyhow, I managed to sew it together with her help and encouragement, and marked - very heavily in pencil! -all the designs,  after first drawing and cutting my own stencisll....I burnt them with a hot knife...difficult.

This is all hand quilted - I really thought that was how I had to do all the quilting.  

Well... I finished the hand quilting last year! and the binding is still not on...but we sleep very warmly under it :)

The back of the quilt.

Very heavily quilted as it was a wool batting.

As this quilt had taken sooo long...I decided there must be quicker ways to do this.  Hence I have been learning to do machine quilting.,

I have made a few quilts now, but never FMQ ...and I now prefer to sandwich the quilts and put the designs on afterwards...also time consuming.  

I tried various methods one of which I used in the quilt below. 

Called 'From My Heart to Yours', this is a quilt I made for Andrea in 2003.  All machine quilted...and also not marked before it was put together.  I machined the designs onto  a heap of tear away fabirc with the sewing machine - needle and no thread, then threaded with the cotton I sewed each design with a separate 'block' of the tearawy fabric. ...and long strips of the tear-away for the borders. That was easier than the pencil

A different view of the quilting on Andfrea's quilt.

More later...I am trying to get a video up af me quilting the border fo my Prism Quilt....but not having much luck getting it from the camera to the computer.

Oh - I had more bad luck last night.  Silly me wasnt watching the edges of the quilt when I was quilting, and of course - I sewed some of the edge bits onto the patterned area...so unpicking is in progress...not easy!

But a lesson hard learnt!

More of my story later

What I have been up to today so far.

For the first time I have hand sewn the basting for the small quilt..I have always used safety pins before.  This was actually a lot easier than using the safety pins.. though I have a sore index finger now!

I can now put this away till the new large cones of silk thread arrive .. hopefully next week.

I have only two more of the Prism blocks to complete...a blue and a red, and I hope to get these done tonight..then two and a half sides of the border to go.  It seems to be taking ages, but it is fairly heavily quilted, and I have to keep stopping to stretch.

This is  turning out to be a great learning project .  I can look at what I have sewn first on this quilt...see what I have done badly, .and hopefully correct it the ...next? ..one :)

I have been watching a lot of DVD's on FMQ and these have been enormously helpful.

My DH has been terrific, and  has cut me boards to use for the hand basting...and filed some of a sewing foot from my Pffaf to make it easeir to quilt with.

So far I have been using my Bernina 440

The Chook Yard is progressing and the chooks will arrive next week - YAY.

Need to stop for a bit - I guess we really should eat !

After my small disaster slicing through a 'play' square..I put the borders on this, a block I had previously drawn a design on, and now it is ready to sandwich...and do some more play with my machine quilting.

The photo is not very clear though I hope you can see my design.

Today was a bit bad...as you can see - I sliced through this design - three of my own and two (the same) from Wendy, which was availabe for public use, at Ivory Springs... (through a magasine article of some of her work)...and I was looking forward to this one...so - I shall do it again on some different fabric -

Later...probably much later.

My studio has changed again, as I have a new counter...and so a different set-up which actually is working well... maybe a photo later.

It was tiday till I stared playing ,

Machine quilting this morning.

Three of the blocks have now had the 'filling' on the outer edges quilted and are complete....and one side of the border is completed.  I am slowly sewing round the actual design on the border fabric.
This is all taking heaps of time, frequent stops...and a huge amount of silk.

I will never show the back of this quilt, as it is a learning curve with many differnt threads. 

The silk is working best at present so I am going to go with that...but as I run out of colours - the back coloured thread is changing.

The right hand border is finished and I have three more to go.  I will alternate between hand sewing and machine quilting for a bit..Getting too side-tracked.

The strange thing is that when I look at these photos I can see parts I have missed!!

Back to my sewing now.

Look what Came in the Mail today.

A fantastic gift from SandyB with the McCalls Quilting book with the Cubism quilt - and many more Inklingo-able projects. some fabric cut to size to press to the freezer paper....to go through my printer to make the diamonds in Inklingo, and a printed sheet to show me how she fitted the number of shapes to the page. Also some ready cut and marked.

I feel so spoint...

Thank you Sandy...they are beautiful!

Also ...from the Cotton Club  an Isabelle  fat roll...yummy!

Never heard of a fat roll before...but looks great.

Last but not least - some Micro-brushes to clean my sewing machines...and some aurofil thread for my machine quilting.

Now to wonder what to do with whats left of today.

This is taken yesterday. 

These Kangaroos are always snacking on this paddock not far from us.

I may take another photo when I can get a larger number in the photo.

Baltimore...thought I had done more..have lots more to do yet

The first I did were the four pink flowers and buds and leaves...not well sewn, but I guess I will keep it, as its part of the history

Then...another

Machine Pieced Applique .

I remember I stopped at this point as I was not sure what to use as a border...

I think I may finish this one soon as I can practise my machine quilting.

I am NOT looking through any more boxes!...Yet

My husband Mal and son Andrew clowning yesterday while putting up my last design board...

Three blocks of the 3rd row of my Patchwork of The Crosses, using the Inklingo collection of Linda Franz - which you can find here, .....so it is progressing slowly, though I did sit and sew quite a lot!

Bought these fabrics in Perth Yesterday...and this is actually anothe Jinny Beyer book ...I gave my original one to a good friend ( I had been VERY late with a birthday present...so gave her my one) and what a great surprise, mine was waiting for me to pick up, so as I had a heap of food shopping to do  of course I went and picked up my book. 

What a great book this is!

Waiting for me when I got home were 3 DVD's on Free Motion Quilting...hope to watch them later tonight.

They are all by Sharon Schamber which I got from this site

We stayed at Andrew and Cristina's house, and here is Andrea, her father Andrew ( my eldest son) and Patrick, Andreas young brother Patrick. Cristina was busy working.

When we got back home, Heather and her boys were here too.

They are now back in Perth..Andrew and Patrick go back on Sunday.

As you can see by the lovely colours in our Chinese Tallw tree - Autumn is here,  the rain from the last two days is gone and the sun is shining..and its cool.

My younger daugther Heather with her 'heirloom cushion' that I gave her for her Birthdy.

so now you see how that project has been completely completed ..

I meant to post these before I went off to Perth.

No idea how they ended up in my car :)

Not sure what I will do with them - or when !!

Hi... I have been in Perth for a few days - ...managed to get 3 more of my 8  POTC blocks... Patchwork of the Crosses ...completed ...for the 3rd row...while here with my eldest son Andrew...Andrea's father.  We will be back home tomorrow,  so hopefully some photos then. Thankyou all for your comments and your visits...I will answer all the comments when I get back home ♥ Some photos of Andrea's young brother Patrick then too :)

Oh and somehow some more fabric got into my bag today......photos later!

First two rows of the POTC quilt completed...its quite a marathon..but easily pieced with Inklingo.

I have seven more rows to put together..........

And up on the big design wall...

First of 2 new design walls up today...so I thought I should put something on it.  At the top are small Inklingo blocks for the Insanity Quilt, and the lower half are for my almost insane...I hope I got the name right.

Next design wall goes up tomorrow...my DH and DSIL have been wonderful!

Cousins, Mattie,Andrea and Lachie, watching a DVD under the 25?  year old hand quilted, King sized, unbound (as yet) first quilt I ever made. 

When I get to binding it I will post a picture..till then it keeps us warm.

Looks like it was a great film ☺

Look what came in the mail today.

What a wonderful book!  Well worth waiting for.

Yesterday sewing!

The first 2 rows of my POTC going together...

I am halfway with these 2 - 7 more rows to complete after this

Practise machine quilting.

The white I did with great frustration...I couldnt get the tension right and was trying different threads.

 In the top and bobbin.

Then I put the BSR foot on the machine, ,which I have been having trouble with, and did some sewing on the blue fabric.  I used BSR 2 with the large clear foot, and much to my surprise,I actually managed to use it a lot better.

This morning I did some more squiggles with it, on the blue and now I am a lot happier.  I am using silk thread top and in the bobbin...so I may get some more machining done on the Prism quilt later.

So Joanne  I am keeping up with  my daily practising.

Off to have a read of my wonderful new book, and to sit, listen to my audio book and do some more hand stitching on my POTC quilt.

While I was inside, Andrea and my DH Mal were outside busy painting the chook yard :)

One day we may even have chooks!!

Just thought I would show how I am mult-tasking today.  I have put the Prism quilting on hold, as I think I may use a slightly different sik thread colour., and I am waiting for it to arrive.

 Joining the 2nd row of POTC blocks...three of the eight are joined.

Sandwiching some fabric together as I am off to have a look at some new sewing machines on Thursday and I want to try sewing on my own fabric.

Not that I am getting one  - YET...but it will be good to look.

Back to my hand sewing now for a bit till my hands give up again.