Australia’s 1st Modern Quilt Show

May 2, 2014 jessica Leave a comment

It’s finally here! Only one more sleep until we open the doors to Australia’s 1st Modern Quilt Show.

This year the Wollongong Modern Quilt Guild is presenting a Modern Quilt Show for the annual Berry Quilt Show. We’d love to see you there if you’re in travelling distance. Berry is a gorgeous little town with lots of fun shops, great cafes, and the markets will be help on Sunday just down the road. For more details visit the website.

We have some amazing quilts from Kathy Doughty, Sarah Fielke, Deborah Louie and some of my favourites from blog land Jess @ Elven Garden Quilts, Amy @ Badskirt and of course Molli Sparkles!

Our committee has been working tirelessly to get everything ready. It’s our first ever show so we’re jumping in the deep end and there’s a lot to learn but considering we’ve only had a few months to pull everything together I think we’ve done a pretty good job. There’s a lot to learn and we have lots of ideas for improving things for next time.

I cannot wait to walk in and see all the hanging quilts tomorrow.

aussie modern instabee

Aussie Modern Instabee – March

April 1, 2014 jessica Leave a comment

It’s been a bit quiet over here, I’ve been a busy little bee and there’s lots to share with you all. Rather than hanging out here, I’ve been building the website for Australia’s 1st Modern Quilt Show presented by the Wollongong Modern Quilt Guild, and helping out on the committee for that, it’s all very exciting and I’ll have more on that soon.

I also just spent an amazing weekend learning from Kathy Doughty from Material Obsession, in a two day modern wedge workshop. She’s one amazing woman and gave me a bit of a kick in the pants to enter the Under 35s Quilt Competition so I hope to share my quilt progress for that to.

Something else new for me that I wanted to share is the Aussie Modern Instabee! Back in February I saw a few posts on Instagram about organising hives for a quilt bee based on the book Modern Bee by Lindsay Conner similar to those happening in the states. I haven’t joined a bee before as I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up and that my work wouldn’t be to a standard where I could make things for other people. I tried a block of the month last year and got a few months in but didn’t really have anything pushing me to get the blocks done, it’s not that I didn’t enjoy making them and I hope to finish them off but I need a little more concrete motivation. After checking out the book I decided to put my hand up and give this bee a go.

The Aussie Modern Instabee (#aussiemoderninstabee) has been organised by the awesome Lisa Chambers (@chambsvacc) who has pulled together 6 or 7 hives of 12 people each to take part in this awesome bee (there are 10 or more hives in this bee in the US)! Rather than it being 1 persons month to receive all their blocks, it’s been organised as a round robin, where each month everyone makes a block for someone else, which means we’re all working on different blocks and everyone gets a block each month. I’m in hive 3 and you can find all our blocks and chatter on Instagram with the hashtag #aussiemoderninstabeehive3, while you’re there you can find me @pescapresents

I’ve chosen the Mosiac Tiles block and have requested bright jewel tones ranging from greens through blues, purple, pinks & reds against a scrappy low volume background. You can see my example block below.

Here’s the first block I received in March from the lovely Natasha.

The first block on my list to make was the Come Together block, this one is a monster finishing at 20.5″ square (20″ square once in the quilt), so with just 12 blocks you get a 60″ x 80″ quilt. I’m making a test block for each different block design in my own fabric scheme just to make sure I get it before I make my partners blocks. I quite enjoyed this one and really love the size. Here’s my block in jewel tones & low volume.

And here’s the block for my partner Alex who supplied the greys so that all her blocks match at the joins, and requested aquas, teals, navy with a bit of mustard yellow and a white background. I hope you like it Alex!

I’m really looking forward to trying out the variety of blocks, I think our bee only has 2 double ups across the book so there will be plenty of new skills to learn.

classes, craftsy, finishes, patchwork, quilting

Riley Blake MQG Challenge – Quilt-As-You-Go Bag

February 9, 2014 jessica 4 Comments

It was a perfect match, a Modern Quilt Guild Basics Challenge sponsored by Riley Blake Designs to make anything quilted, with six fat-eighths to start us off, and a fabulous Craftsy class to make Quilt-As-You-Go Patchwork Bags that I could not wait to try. I’m so excited to share this bag so look out, lots of pretty pictures coming up!

I’d been hoping for a chance to take the Quilt-As-You-Go Patchwork Bags Craftsy class with with Tara Rebman when it was announced that Riley Blake Designs would be sponsoring the 3rd annual MQG members fabric challenge, we heard about it at a Wollongong MQG sew day and I knew exactly what I was going to make. Light bulb moment!

We received our fabrics towards the end of last year as 5.5″ x WOF strips from the range of Riley Blake basics. The fabrics I received were:

solid dark grey
light grey and white 1″ stripes
navy and white medium gingham
aqua tone on tone medium chevron
white on yellow small dots
orange pop

I’ve supplemented these with some other Riley Blake fabrics from my stash and a few solids including:

yellow tone on tone small dot
orange tone on tone small dot
white on aqua dot
orange solid
yellow solid
sea green solid
navy solid for the bias binding
navy blue solid cotton duck cloth for the bag base

I started off by cutting a few small and medium strips and squares of varying sizes from each fabric and began the quilt as you go process which uses a log cabin approach. Each round adds a new piece of fabric to cover the join of the previous two pieces and gets quilted down (as you go), towards the edges using pre-patched slabs rather than single fabric pieces. Stay tuned for an upcoming post reviewing the class and sharing some more details of the bag making.

I used Aurifil 50wt threads for this project, a light grey/silver (2600) for piecing & quilting the main panels and navy (2745) for quilting on the base panel and attaching the bias binding. My quilting is roughly 1/4″ apart, though I did vary on purpose to give some subtle difference in textures and in some cases to suit the fabric. My favourite part of the quilting is this navy gingham piece below.

The bag is a pretty good size as you can see above with it on my shoulder. In opens up wide and has a handy flap with magnetic snap to keep it closed. I included both pocket options, a hidden zipper pocket on one side and a divided pocket on the other.

I really love these challenges, this one in particular took me out of my comfort zone with colour but seeing all the fabrics combined I quite like the overall effect of the outside of the bag. I wish I didn’t choose an orange solid for the lining, next to the navy binding all I see is football team colours. This is a perfect case where a subtle tone on tone chevron or dots would have been a better choice for such a large area. I already have some fat quarter packs of the Riley Blake small dots and tone on tone dots and I’m sure more of their basics will make their way into my stash, I just haven’t been able to source it locally yet so couldn’t get it in time to finish my bag.

A huge thanks to Riley Blake Designs for sponsoring this challenge and providing the fabric for us to play with. Thank you also to the Modern Quilt Guild for organising these challenges for us and to our awesome leader Rachael of the Wollongong Modern Quilt Guild who does all the organising so we can participate.

ramblings

New Year, New Site

January 31, 2014 jessica Leave a comment

When I started this blog about 2 years ago now, I just went with a really bare bones theme, did a few things to it, collected more ideas but wasn’t going to spend too much time on it just yet in case I didn’t use it that much.

Fast forward to now and we’re not doing too badly, so I think it’s finally time for a new outfit!

This is the WordPress Twenty Fourteen theme with a few customisations here and there. I build websites as my day job, I didn’t really want to spend my sewing time ‘working’ so I’ve taken a good looking theme and just done enough to make it mine.

I hope you like it, it’s all nice and responsive so should work well on most devices, however in older versions of Internet Explorer it might not be awesome (try a new browser like Firefox or Chrome, or at least upgrade IE, pretty please!? You’ll love it, I promise). If you have any issues feel free to let me know.

Psst… you can follow my blog with Bloglovin if you want to, but you don’t have to, it’s just a necessary evil to show this link to get my blog registered over there.

sunday stash

Sunday Stash – GJs Discount Fabrics

January 19, 2014 jessica 8 Comments

For Sunday Stash this week we have part two of my fabric buying adventures in Melbourne from a few weeks ago.

I’ve seen GJ’s Discount Fabrics mentioned by a few Aussie bloggers, in particular on Red Pepper Quilts and You Sew Girl as their local quilt store, click through to their posts to see some beautiful photos of the store and their fabulous fabric range.

The store is an easy tram trip from the CBD out north to East Brunswick, it should take about 20 minutes, unless your tram gets stuck behind another tram that breaks down, in which case it’s about 15 minutes on a tram and 20 minutes to walk the remaining 5 blocks… ask me how I know!

I must have been seeing spots because at first I picked up these dotty fabrics, the two on the left were pre-cut fat quarters, the third from left is a bright fluro dot on a linen background that unfortunately doesn’t photograph well but trust me it’s really bright. On the right, I believe the white on teal is a birch organic cotton.

Spots and dots in blues and oranges.

Not only do they have a great range of quilting cottons, including a wall of Kona cottons and a tonne of basics like spots and stripes, there’s a whole other floor of dance & costume fabrics. Lycra and sequins and glitter.. oh my! I was very disciplined however and went back downstairs without anything shiny.

Right by the cutting counter I spied some sneaky raccoons looking out at me, I’ve had my eye on those raccoons for some time so grabbed half a meter each of that and a complementary Humming Bird print. These are destined for a purse/wallet/bag type thing (when I finally decide which one).

From Tula Pink’s Acacia range – Humming Bird in Dusk, Raccoon in Blueberry.

The sooner I get a few more WIPs out of the way, the sooner I get the play with these gorgeous additions to my stash. Linking up to Sunday Stash with Molli Sparkles so I can go see what everyone else is playing with.

Pesca Presents

Australia’s 1st Modern Quilt Show

Aussie Modern Instabee – March

Riley Blake MQG Challenge – Quilt-As-You-Go Bag

New Year, New Site

Sunday Stash – GJs Discount Fabrics

crafty distractions