Carolyn Forster's Quilting-On-The-Go

As many of you know I attend Quilt Market in the USA usually twice a year. I am currently preparing to be in Portland, OR in May.

I have been here a couple of times before, and am looking forward to the latest visit. Fingers crossed I will meet up with Lori! Yeah!

Quilt Market is a great Trade show, I get to catch up with some friends, (including Jennifer, Victoria and Jen)  and spend time with Landauer my publisher. I should say this is all work, but boy, is it fun too!

However, this year I will also be at Quilt Festival following on from Market this fall!

As, you might have guessed, I will be teaching!

I am so excited!

Over the next few weeks I will be letting you see which quilts and projects we will be stitching.

At market I do some take and Teach sessions which is a great way for me to spend time with shop owners, but now at Festival I get to spend time with the folks who shop in the shops! Well people like me really, I shop in the shops!!!

Look out on Quilts Inc to see when the catalogue is out, to see how much fun stuff goes on there.

And as this has been quite a 'linky' post, here are some shots of a String Quilt Project I stitched last week:

I just love the way everything gets stitched together from so many past quilts:

These are my usual 6in blocks sewn on a Vilene (Pellon) foundation, and in this case machine quilted in hanging diamonds:

Welcome!

For those of you who have not stopped by before, I hope you enjoy seeing the sorts of things I stitch!

For my Spring Project I used the Plain Leaves Die. For all the patchwork dies, I am used to cutting my fabric with the Sizzix, but for the appliqué that I do I use the die to help me design the finished project and then to cut all the shapes from Freezer Paper! The Plain Leaves gives me one of my favourite applique shapes. There are endless ways to make great applque with this shape.

When I started to think about all the possiblities that this leaf shape offered, I cut shapes to play with from coloured craft paper. I choose to use the Large leaf (you get two sizes on the Die).  Cutting the leaves from craft paper easily on the machine really opens up the ease of designing!

Here are some of my ideas:

I decided on a wreath of reds and pinks cut from my scraps with a green stem.

For this project I needed:

Background Fabric, 20in square ( I used Moda Essential Dots)

Wadding/Batting, 22in square

Backing , 22in square

Freezer paper to cut 29 large leaves

Red and pink fabric scraps

Green fabric for the stem, 1 1/4in wide, 36in long, cut on the bias

Binding for the mat, 2 1/2in wide, 90in long (three strips cut from the width of the fabric)

To begin:

1) Cut the fabric for the background and press into quaters and diagonally. This will help you with placement.

2) Cut the freezer paper on your Sizzix.

3) Make the circle for the wreath stem by joining the bias strip to form a continuous loop. Then fold wrong sides together into thirds, and either tack/baste down the centre by hand or, I use the largest stitch on the sewing machine. This will easily pull out later.

4) Position the circle on the background fabric. I often use a plate to help centre this! Pin with the raw edge side down. Applique in place. Remove the tacking.

5) Prepare the leaves. Iron the shiny side of the paper to the wrong side of the fabrics, allowing enough room to cut them out and adding the seam allowance.

6) Turn the seam allowance over to the back of the shape and tack in position. The freezer paper shapes cut on the Sizzix gives a nice crisp finish!

8) Pin the leaves around the stem. I have 10 in the centre and 19 around the outside. Applique down starting on a curved side, not on a point. Remove the tacking and the freezer paper before the last half inch of the shape is sewn down.

9) Once the applique is complete layer with the batting and backing fabric. I quilted around all of the appliqué. I filled the background in, by dividing it into quarters, and filling each section with lines marked 1in apart. You can see this here on the back of the piece .

10) When quilted you can trim the backing and batting and then sew on the binding. I use  2 1/2in strips, that you can cut on the sizzix, folded wrong side together and pressed to make a double fold binding.

Don't forget to pop over to the other blogs this week:

Wednesday 20th March  , Laura Taylor

Thursday 21st March , Hadley Gordon

Friday 22nd March, Anna Draicchio

To make the week even more exciting, you can enter this exclusive competition to get started with your patchwork and quilting adventure….. CLICK HERE to enter! The closing date is 28th March at 10am GMT.

Having been on a bit of a roll with my scrappy trip around from Bonnie's site, I started with a vengeance on some more fabrics that have been sitting around a while.

I was pleased to see that the Triangle Die  from Sizzix worked with 5in charm squares, so I started cutting a whole batch of those first. When they were all done, I started on the yardage and fat quarters. I cut the strips for the Big Shot 5in wide and fed them through until they were nothing but triangles!

This is what I have to show for it so far:

With the snowy weather around this weekend, looks like I should have lots of sewing time!

Hopefully I will get my scrappy trip together as all 36 blocks are sewn!

Thanks to everyone who commented about the EPP.

To put you out of your misery, the Random Number Thingy came up with number 18! This means Jackie Doyle  whose comment was: 

has won!

Email me your address Jackie and I will get the fabrics out to you.

I have gotten my hexagon flowers that I cut on the Sizzix all ready to go with me to Jersey next week. I am excited to be teaching over there, so I get to meet new quilters and see a new place. I am already packing so that I remember everything!

In the meantime my stitching week has been motivated by my friend Victoria. She is a busy lady, but still found time to make  a quilt from donated blocks for a friends friend. When I read she wanted blocks, I thought I didn't really have time. And then I thought 'if Victoria has the time to put this together and quilt it, then surely I have time to sew one block!' So still in my dressing gown (yes, this was before breakfast!!) I sat and sewed a block, and had it read yo to post when I took out Bosco later that morning…..and yes I was dressed by then!

Here's what I made:

Can you spot it in Victoria's quilt?

They were not my usual choice of colours, but I really enjoyed working with something a bit different.

Victoria then blogged about how she was stitching in a different way to re-jig her creativity. This got me thinking that I hadn't sewn a string quilt in a while, and I love doing them!

So I got out my light scraps (I have bag of lights and one of darks) and got sewing!

And the rest of my sewing this week has looked like this:

I still have more to do, but I am enjoying this sooo much. Just picking fabric randomly you come up with such unexpected combinations of print and colour!

So liberating!

Are you sewing anything different this week?

Look what the postman delivered!

I was at Quilt Market last weekend to promote my books and especially Utility Quilting. This really seems to be hitting a chord with people, so if you think you want quick simple ways to had quilt, stitches and designs, then check it out! Have a look over at Karin's blog to see a picture of me in action!

One of the best bits of news from Quilt Market this spring was that Liberty cotton will be out in August! Yeah!

Just look at all of the clours. We are hoping for Charm packs, so let them know if you think that would work!

I had another chance to meet Marcia Derse and see her great fabrics:

Check out her website as you can buy directly from her, so no wondering how to get hold of the great fabrics!

And Lotta Jans Dotter had a new line, Bella! Had to have that. And so I thought you might like some too.

I  will do a give away for the bag and the 5 fat quaters  below:

I think this has a nice summery feel, so tell me your thoughts on sewing in the garden! I will do a drawing next Friday.

Enjoy the sun!

Thanks so much for all of the great comments.

I hope you all had fun seeing the other blogs and seeing what the book had inspired!

So without further ado, I shall reveal that the draw winner was comment no. 252

This was Gill, who wrote 

Just to say I added the comments from the second post on to the original, as there had been a glich. So everyone who commented got a chance!

And in keeping with the Utility tour, I was in one of my most favourite places yesterday teaching a Utility Quilting class.

I was in Lewes at Patchwork Dog and Basket. They have a great new space for classes, roomy and light.

As ever, some students I had met before, one of whom was Walter.

He was good enough to let me see the finished quilt from a class he did with me a while back. This is his Hidden Stars Quilt.

Doesn't it look great!

And here are a few shots of the day:

Have a quilty weekend!

Teaching for 2012 kicked off with a great start this last weekend with ladies at Three Bridges, Crawley stitching 'Japanese Bag of Squares'. A busy day, with most ladies stitching all four bags – Well done!

This Wednesday 'Start with Stars' begins at The Quilt Room Dorking. And to get you in the mood for that, this is what the ladies from the course at the end of 2011 made:

Well done Ladies!

And on Friday, the Spring Quilt Show is at Ardingly. So come and say 'Hi!'

What a great quilting start to 2012!

Well at this busy time of year I have spent a few moments winding down, and treating myself to a little something that I could quite happily be sewing with in the New Year!

This twinlkly little bundle of fabric came from HERE, and were created by the lovely and talented Karen over at Blueberry Park! So yummy, Thanks, Karen!

In the meantime though we will be taking  a break over the holidays and I hope to see you all in the New Year!

If you would like something to browse through, those of you who are waiting for 'Utility Quilting' to wend its way to the UK, have a look here.

Don't forget to find time for some relaxing stitching! And, yes, Bosco is thinking hard about that design on the floor!

I have been cutting up my Malka Dubrawsky fabric from Moda for a 'Diamonds and Square' quilt:

And I thought you might like to see some pictures I took of an old quilt I have, a Sanderson Star. Pippa is doing research into these quilts and asked if anyone had examples. I think the results will be really interesting.

From thr cream border:

A corner motif:

From the star points:

The Star:

Happy Thanks Giving!