School bags and horses

Last week was long awaited midterm holidays, so Charlie sat down and played with treadle for the first time. 

After I played a bit with sewing machine embroidery last month, Charlie was itching to try it herself. 

Design ideas were no problem for Charlie as everything needs to be about horses. She made several drawings, copied it roughly on the black fabric and off she went. 

She had wanted to make a bag for herself for a while, and week-long holidays were just perfect for such a project.

The densely quilted bag was a very good project to get treadle motions under the belt. It took several broken threads until she learned the smooth forward motion, but in two hours she was able to put the needle exactly where she wanted at exactly the speed she wanted. 

The bag also has several rather advanced inside pockets, densely quilted (the only black fabric I had at hand was very soft, so dense quilting was needed to make the bag hold the shape and the weight expected from a hard working school bag. 

In some places there are 18 layers of fabric and the batting – thank God for the durability of an old Singer! 

What impressed me – she just kept working, hour after hour, and in three days her bag was ready – exactly the right size, right design and all that. For a 12 yo  it is rather impressive. 

Time of the year II

This is also the time of the year for the Blogger’s Quilt Festival and somehow I found bravery to enter my Pheasant quilt. It fits to several categories like large quilt, home machine quilted, applique, original design.... I decided to go for applique, because basically this quilt was about learning applique. You can click on the links and see yourself all the entries and if you find something you really like, you are very welcome to leave your vote.

Design is mine, each corner has a story behind its design, quilting is rather dense, back is plain red and surprisingly, at the end of the job there were rather small amount of big quilting mistakes to deal with. The fabric is cotton sateen.

The making of this quilt are here, here, here  here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and finally here. 

Oga quilt done

So finally the horse quilt is ready. Weather is bad so for now there will be no better pictures.

It is very special quilt for me as this horse was born right in my arms, I was the one who opened the sack and since then I watched the baby growing. Now it belongs to my good friend and I can assure you that Oga is one very well pampered horse.

The quilt has an official name as well - after our folk song "Tumša nakte, zaļa zāle" (Dark night, green grass)

I'm quite happy with what I achieved with the quilt. I wanted to concentrate mostly on quilting, and I think it has starting to improve. Still a lot of learning to do, but at least I see some light at the end of tunnel.

O happy day! I'm back!

Skipping and dancing around the table! I finally ... FINALLY.... finished quilting the pheasant quilt! Hurrah!

I must admit there were moments when I was ready to rip it apart, wrap tightly and hide in the deepest drawer, or drown in the sea...

Right now, before washing, it contains about two pints of my own sweat ( I carried on at +38 C in shade), daily from March till August. And now the quilting is done. My biggest project so far. And hardest.

I took advice about practicing on quilting, and slowly I'm getting there. The quilt is very densely quilted, just for practice, overall about 25 standard 400 Y spools of yarn for the top (the same amount went for the bobin). Of course, there are still plenty of mistakes, but I can see some improvement in my quilting so it was well worth it.

Tomorrow it will be washed and all that, but in general it's DONE! WHOOP-WHOOP!

So now it's time to tidy up the scrap bag - the minute pieces of scrap had built up past the last 6 months. Already divided the leftpvers into three colour schemes and will put as much of these bits together - plenty for few quite large blocks. 

Finally getting there

Right. I finally did it - I started quilting the pheasant quilt. It has no deadlines, so I probably will be having fun the whole July over it but who cares - I started it. 

It's not a show quilt, it will be tested by dogs and cats, so I'm not afraid of rough environment while making it - it must be ready for spinning in washing machine instead of gentle "dry clean" only approach so as it was a nice sunny day,  I got my sunbathing gear on and voila! Birds singing, butterflies passing and right beyond these little pines is sea.

Here, see - it's a proof! I do take holidays seriously, you know. 

Sometimes (only sometimes) life can be sooo good!

Free motion quilting

While in general I’m still doing nothing, there are others working hard for me. Yesterday I studied a bit of free motion quilting.... by sea. 

 I must admit, sea is an expert and creates some fantastic stuff even without a long arm machine. 

Look at these beauties!

So it is rather difficult to open the sewing machine still - competition is too hard! 

There are so many distractions – all around here is pine forest and as I have discovered, the first chanterelles (Cantharellus cibarius) of the season are out! Yay! They are gorgeous in cream sauce. 

Och, and then there was the Summer Solstice to celebrate which we do all night long (the next day is public holiday here). Big bonfires, a lot of singing and dancing with ocassional beer and BBQ on the side... One must have time to recover after that, right?  

So I’m spending more time lurking around and watching the Nature doing all the jobs.