Quilts and Cards: Patchwork and Quilting

In September 2017, a group of keen ladies met together to form a new Patchwork and Quilting group in Lincoln, New Zealand. Initially, there were 5 people interested in forming a group, but by the time we had our first meeting, we were up to 12. Since then the group has continued to grow by one or two each month.

The first project was to make a pot holder.

This is a fairly classic design using half square triangles and squares.

I liked the first one, so I made another one for practice and I think it is better! The fabric for both of these was from a couple of sets of charm squares I bought years ago to make some patchwork bags.

Soon after I began doing patchwork, I decided to upgrade my Cricut Explore (which I bought about 3 years ago) to the latest model, the Cricut Maker. The Maker is designed to cut fabric without having to back it with a stiffener and uses a rotary cutting blade instead of the knife blade system that the other machines use. This design was one of the free designs in Design Space so I decided to try it out. The Maker certainly made the cutting extremely easy and took very little time.

So begins my journey into Patchwork and Quilting!

Patchwork Projects in 2018

This star quilt called When you wish (free) from Bonjour Quilts was one of the first bigger pieces I made. The top of the quilt is shown here. Love the design and the colours. It is popular with my grandchildren too - my granddaughter wants one like it now! (March 2019: See below!)

This is a quilt I made for my grandson for his 2nd birthday. Max loves elephants so I found this lovely fabric featuring elephants. I cut the half hexagons using my Cricut Maker and using a Design Space pattern. This was the first big project using the Maker and its fabric cutting capabilities and I was very happy with the accuracy of the cuts and the clean cuts. If you have a Cricut Maker, here is the link to the cut file.

There have been a number of new babies in the wider family over the last year or so, and this quilt was made for a great-nephew. I thought the fabric was so suitable for a boy, with dogs featuring on all the different fabrics used in different ways.

During the year, we made a trip to the UK and I made this table runner for our friends in Scotland as a gift for having us to stay with them. I loved the colours in the fabrics which I bought on a trip to Akaroa with the same friends when they were here earlier in the year.

I made this wall hanging for a colleague who was retiring at the end of last year. I bought the design from a Craftsy shop and the fabrics from my friend who runs an on-line fabric shop.She has a huge container full of gorgeous fabrics!

This is another quilt design from Cricut Design Space. It is a Riley Blake design and can be found here if you have a Cricut Maker.

I used some of the same dog themed fabrics for this quilt for another great-nephew.

I have also made a few mug rugs and table mats that I will post about later.

Hopefully, I will keep my posts more up-to date this year!

Birthday Quilt

March 2019

When I first made this quilt design, my granddaughter loved it and wanted one like it for herself.

The design is called When you wish and is a free pattern from Bonjour Quilts.

So, on being reminded that she wanted the “rainbow” quilt, I got busy and made this version for her. I used slightly different colours from the original one I made and added a border to make it a little bigger.

I am pleased to say that she loved her quilt!

PATCHWORK PROJECTS IN 2020

This is a table runner I made for our son and daughter-in-law. I had made a Christmas themed one for them at Christmas and my son decided they would like to have one for each of the seasons! I finally got this one completed for Autumn!

I had adapted the pattern from a larger quilt pattern. It is about 60" long and 20" wide. I quilted lines on the cream parts of the quilt and it took about 2 days to get it finished.

We recognise ANZAC Day each year on April 25. I made a large poppy to hang outside the house, but thought it would be nice to have some poppy placemats too. I found the poppy design on Cricut Design Space and I cut out the fabric with my Cricut Maker. I then appliqued the flowers and quilted around the flowers using free motion quilting

Grandson Emmett had his third birthday while in lockdown this year. I found some cute fabric representing Toy Story 4 and decided to make a bed quilt for him.

He has now graduated to a big boy's bed and this lies across the foot of the bed very nicely.

March 1 2021

Last year, I made a black and white Crosses quilt. I thought I might keep it for myself, but the colours were not right for my bedroom since we had it painted a year or so ago. So when I showed it to my lovely daughter-in-law, she fell in love with it immediately so I decided to give it to her for Christmas.

When I went to get the backing fabric for the quilt, I found an extra wide black fabric with grey crosses and decided that this was just right for the back of the quilt. Because of the size, I decided to get it quilted professionally and found a lovely lady not too far away who made a beautiful job of the quilting process.

UPDATE: (July 2021) It is winter here now and the quilt is being used! My daughter-in-law assures me it is very cosy!

I also made another Lone Star Wall hanging. This was for my grandson Max, who loves the first one I made that hangs in my room. He wanted rainbow colours so I chose the brightest colours I had in my stash! The pattern was from Jordan Fabrics and I followed the you tube video in making it.

I used a darkish grey for the background as the wall is a light grey. Max loves it!

Recently, I completed a small wall hanging using Foundation Paper Piecing. It measures approximately 18" square and took a couple of days to complete. I quilted it using stitch-in-the-ditch and it has come up very well.

I still have about

4 large quilts to finish off now before I start anything new!

Christmas Quilts

This is one of the first quilt tops I made, but because it was quite big, I procrastinated when it came to quilting it. I finally got it done on my Elna machine, but it took ages to do and it was mainly stitch in the ditch.

I made this quilt for David and Gayle for Christmas this year. It is about 30 inches square and made from scrappy bits left over from another Christmas project.

The two mats below were made at the same time.

Quilts from 2022

During the COVID lockdown in 2021, I manged to complete all the blocks for a mystery quilt designed for the Kiwiquilters Facebook page. I was not sure who the recipient of this one would be, but once I got it all together in January, I knew that Eilidh would love it. When I had finished quilting it on my Elna machine, I knew that I had to get a machine that would make quilting much easier.

This quilt fits a single (twin) bed beautifully and is a permanent fixture on Eilidh's bed now.

I made a decision in February to buy a Cutie frame for quilting larger quilts. I had this table runner top and decided to try quilting it with my Elna on the Cutie frame. It worked OK but I found it frustrating to only be able to quilt about 6" at a time. So I did a bit of research and found a good mid-arm machine that was available in New Zealand.

I bought my Q'nique 15 Pro in April and have not looked back since. It more than doubles the available quilting space and with the stitch regulator built in, the stitches are even and I can sew a little faster as I don't have to worry about the foot pedal to make the machine go.

So this table runner also went to David and Gayle as a summer themed table runner.

I made the top of this quilt during 2021 but had no idea how I was going to quilt it.

When I got my quilting machine, I decided that dot-to-dot quilting was the way I was going to go, especially after watching lots of Angela Walters' you tube videos. Spent a lot of time marking out the quilt ready for quilting, but it was worth doing it as the final result was very effective.

Black, White and Red

This double bed quilt was a kit I bought last year. I used my Cricut to cut the circles from red fabric and appliqued them to the blocks using a blanket stitch on the Elna machine.

Since I had spent a lot of time quilting the previous quilt, I decided to do a loopy meander on this one.

Baby Floor Mat

This hexagonal quilt is about 1 metre across and was designed to be a baby floor mat. I used it as a way to practise different quilting designs. I used different rulers to produce straight and curved lines on the quilt.

ANZAC Challenge

Our quilting group had an ANZAC challenge in April this year. I found some lovely poppy fabric and some Kiwiana green fabric and decided to incorporate both. I used the red poppy fabric for the petals of the poppy blocks and the kiwiana green for the sashing blocks.

I quilted it using a variety of designs.

Tone-on-Tone Challenge

The quilting group had a Tone-on-tone challenge and I found this cute wall hanging design that worked with some fat quarters that I had in my stash! Have to use the stash more!

I used this as another opportunity to practise dot-to-dot quilting using rulers. The finished wall hanging is 20" square.

Frankenbag Project

We had a request in the patchwork group to make frankenbags. https://agilejack1.com/2021/03/25/frankenbag-tutorial/

One of our members brought along her frankenbag and we thought they were such a fun thing to do. Great way to use orphan blocks and scrap fabric.

Since we made the first one, I have now made two more. This one was for Suzanne.

The photos show each side of the bag.

Instead of quilting each side separately, I made a big piece of "fabric" from which I could cut the front and the back. I then placed it on the batting and calico for quilting in one big piece.

I then cut the sides of the bag out and sewed it up, adding the lining with a zip pocket, plackets on the top for a zip and a sleeve for a bottle.

Colour Fair Down Under

This quilt from Sewn Up Quilts was made over a period of about three months. Each of the four blocks was repeated a number of times. Sewn together with sashing separating each block.

I used this quilt to practise the skills I learnt from completing Angela Walters Quilting fillers course. She is the best teacher I have come across for all aspects of free motion quilting. I am really pleased with the final result.

Rainbow Snap (Kiwiquilters' Mystery Quilt)

Over a number of weeks, Kiwiquilters Facebook group ran a mystery quilt challenge. This is my version of the quilt. Quilted with meandering flowers on the coloured blocks and meandering leaves on the grey and white blocks. Twin sized quilt.

Last year, I bought a special sewing machine for quilting. It is a mid-arm machine, meaning I can do the width of the quilt at one time. I had a frame to quil on, but soon found that it was taking longer than I wanted to complete the quilting. So this year, I purchased a bigger frame, 8 feet long, so I can now put the whole quilt onto the frame and get it done more quickly. It also allows me to experiment more with my quilting and try out different patterns. I have really enjoyed ruler quilting and most of my quilts now have some elements of ruler work on them.

Up till recently, this was my favourite piece of quilting. It is called Wind Drifter by Robin Pickens and is a wall hanging. Made with batiks and homespun background, I quilted it with a variegated thread which turned out to be a good choice!

Last year, I found this pattern in a British quilting magazine and it reminded me of the times we had spent with friends on the Kent Coast in England.

This quilt was all foundation paper pieced. Each block has eight pieces and these are then joined together to make the completed block.

The nine blocks are then joined together. It certainly makes the points easier to manage! I quilted it on my longarm with a star based meander pattern.

This easy jelly roll pattern came out much better than I hopd. The pastel colours worked quite well in the pattern.

Each block was quilted with a different pattern and it took some time to get it finished. I used ruler work and free motion quilting.

This isnthe quilt I made for Max for his 7th birthday. He wanted a Harry Potter quilt and I wanted to make one that you could see the fabric patterns, rather then cutting smaller blocks to make a more complicated design. Quilted with an all over meander pattern.

This is the quilt I made for Emmett for his 6th birthday. He is very knowledgeable about dinosaurs and when I saw these fabrics, they were juct what I needed.

The centre piece is a panel and the outer border pictures were another panel. As you can see on the next photo, I used the rest of the smaller pictures as a centrepiece for the back of the quilt.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to quilt this one until I saw a similar quilt in Australia which had been meander quilted and looked amazing.