Colour Matching for Quilting

Many of our customers arrive in the shop and become overwhelmed when they have to start putting colours together, whether to match or contrast, mix prints or blend plains.

We've just received hot off the presses copies of the new book from Fun Quilts, Quiltmaker's Color Workshop. In fact it's so new that they haven't even got it listed on the Fun Quilts website yet. This book is actually an updated and expanded version of Color Harmony for Quilts. This book is a wonderful resource for people scared of colour...leading you step by step through colour decisions, but is also inspiring for quilters comfortable with colour - with a gobsmacking number of colour photographs included.

And the quilt patterns in the back are fantastic too, in a similar style to the graphic, clean lines of the quilts in their earlier book The Modern Quilt Workshop (we'll have copies available soon - they're so popular they're on backorder).

Finally, as I was playing around with the blog design this afternoon, I discovered (thanks Blogger Help!) this colourmatching website. I love that you can easily see 6 complementary colours at once, and thought that this would be an invaluable tool for quilters to create their 'big idea' from (a concept dealt with in the Quiltmaker's Color Workshop).

Banner testing 2

Tag Sale Quilt in progress....

Denyse Schmidt's Flea Market Fancy fabric line is due in store soon, but as I've blogged about before, we have been sent some samples to play around with in advance (don't you love that!). So instead of waiting to photograph the quilt when it's done, I've actually remembered to take some in progress shots.

These were before and during the basting process last week. And I've started the quilting, so hopefully the quilt will be ready for it's grand unveiling before the week is up. 

Plain or print?

Whenever I am working on a quilt with lots and lots of prints and colours, I always seem to be planning a quilt using plains or solid fabrics in my head. I'm not sure why - maybe it's like when you eat something really sweet, and you need something salty to counteract it...

I made a very improvisationally pieced strip quilt last Christmas to give to friends. And I intended that it would be the first in a series of these, but I haven't gotten back to it yet. This series would be the "Baustelle" series - a play on words with Bauhaus and the geometric shapes and solid colours of that style, but also representing that these are a bit of a building work in progress. Baustelle is a construction site in German, and I liked the idea that some of the bright coloured strips may run into the white/cream strips when the quilt was washed. So effectively the quilt design was still growing as it was used.

I'm not sure if the recipients would be as keen if the colours all start to run, and I don't think they will, but really there is no down side if they do or they don't in my mind.

Baustelle #1 is a combination of cotton solids, flannel solids and subtle prints and a big selection of different off-white/cream fabrics. They included a couple of different cotton weights/grades, 'oh-so-soft' fabric, linen and others that I can't recall at the moment (there's been many quilts since then).

I saw on weewonderfuls that Hilary has used the Freezer Paper stencil method, and I also used this to stencil a Dr Seuss quote on the back, that's the second and third photos. It's silver fabric paint on grey fabric so that's almost impossible to see (so look carefully!). But the 'oh-so'soft' backing on the back was definitely a hit!

So, now I think I can go home and work on my Flea Market Fancy quilt which is print crazy, toned down by white sashing strips. And photos of that quilt will follow shortly!!!

Happy Easter!

I shouldn't be here at the shop today as it is Good Friday, but you know what it is like when you want to get a project finished....

I'm working on a quilt with the fabulous Denyse Schmidt fabrics and I finished all of the blocks - yay! So it is on to the sashing strips, and of course that fabric was here at the shop. But it let me pick up a new packet of sewing machine needles that I badly needed, so it was worth the 15-minute drive. Sometimes it seems like that old saying 'no bread at the bakers house' etc. when it comes to replacing needles, rotary cutter blades and other patchworking necessities.

Because we don't have to physically go into a shop and hand over the money we forget that we need these items at home to complete our projects and samples for the shop. When we run out of something, downtime is forced upon us, so it's not always a bad thing.

Last week seemed to be a never-ending 'to-do' list with Gai and Elwin preparing for the Brisbane Stitches and Craft show next week, and many miscellaneous items like magazine ads to prepare. It is fun playing around with photo editing software, and I am in love with the magnetic lasso tool. Such a small thing, but very satisfying when you can remove the background from a photo so easily. And the image above was the latest victim of my magnetic lasso. The brilliant colours of the new oh-so-soft range needed to stand alone without background distraction.

And on that bright note, I will wish you all a happy easter!

More from Amy Butler - WOW! And a Denyse Schmidt update too....

I've just spotted the latest quilt weight range from Amy Butler, named 'Belle' it is truly beautiful. The image of just one of the three colourways above is from Amy's website. This is Amy's first range for Rowan/Westminster fabrics, who you will all be familiar with - they bring us the fabulous Kaffe Fassett, Martha Negley and more fabrics saturated with both colour and detail.

We've already fallen in love with all of these fabrics, so you will be sure to find them on our shelves as soon as they become available.

We're also looking forward to seeing the new sewing patterns and book she'll be releasing in coming months.

We presume that Amy's products will be as lovely as the Denyse Schmidt range - we're expecting another shipment of Denyse's book in store before the end of the month, and we have a lot of her stationary items here too... And, with some samples here ready to be cut into we should have a quilt available to show as soon as the bolts of Denyse's fabrics arrive too.

Diamond Days of May

We received our copies of the new Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine today (Vol 14 No 5). I have a project in this issue, and there are also a bunch of other fantastic quilts featured as projects. And they have covered the Australian Quilt Convention and the Best of Australia quilts.... so it certainly is jam packed with quilting goodness.

Of course I have to say that though because it also includes my profile, and pictures of some of the quilts/projects I have finished lately. Very exciting stuff.

One of the pictures shows my Diamond Days of May quilt. It is nice and bright, and (to my eye anyway) it jumps off the page. Coincidentally I've just finished writing the pattern for this quilt and have also cut some kits for the shop. So I decided to post about this quilt today.

The top photo is the whole quilt, and the bottom is a collage of some close-ups I have taken. I think that it is always interesting to see a more detailed view of quilts. You get a completely different impression of most quilts from flat photos to how they actually look in person, but a details photo bridges that gap.

Diamond Days of May was started last May, when we first received the Charm fabrics from the US but that's actually not the May that the quilt name refers to. My grandmother, May Taylor, was diagnosed with cancer in April 2005 and I spent a few weeks with grandma and pop in Cowra before she passed away in July 2005.

I cut all of the fabrics for the blocks at their kitchen table and sewed all of the half square triangle units on grandma's old Bernina machine. The diamond shapes were quilted sitting at a SewEzi portable sewing table set up temporarily in their lounge room.

Grandma was a keen sewer and soft toy maker and she was very brave in her fabric and colour choices. This was the last of my quilts that she saw me working on and she liked the bright colours and large patterns used in this quilt.

So Diamond Days of May seemed a fitting name for this quilt, a name that came to me during the many, many hours of machine quilting worked onto the large borders.

Once I finished the quilt I had to pack it away for a little while because I had become so accustomed to seeing these colours and patterns. But now, several months on, whenever I see or use the quilt the bright colours jump out at me and it seems a very happy quilt to have around.

Wow time flies....

I can't believe that it has been over a week since my last post. Time certainly is flying, but we are getting plenty achieved so I guess that is the main thing!

I ran around the shop last week taking photos of shelves, quilts hanging over the stair rails and other assorted scenes. I thought that I would post some photos here for our customers that maybe have never visited our shop in person.

The Rowing Quilt (and the story behind it)

I've been wanting post this quilt for a while now, but hanging off while I looked for a photograph to accompany it. It's our latest 'oh-so-soft' quilt, designed by Gai and it is a large throw size - 60" x 60".

We've called it the Rowing Quilt, largely thanks to the bright yellow oh-so-soft fabric, the exact shade of the rowing singlets worn by Taree High School. Throughout the 70's and 80's, Elwin was the Rowing Coach for the Taree High School crews.

So my childhood memories include many days spent at Rowing regattas, and I have the photos (somewhere!) to prove that I grew up on the riverbanks of Australia.

But not only does this quilt include that distinctive yellow/gold shade, but the Manning River Rowing Club shades of cerise (red) and navy (blue, obviously). Elwin is a Life Member of the Manning River Rowing Club having been secretary of the club for almost four decades. Now though with all of his travelling to Quilt Shows around Australasia he's has to take on a silent supportive role within the club.

And we've had several customers tell us that their rowing club/sporting club colours are here on the quilt in the colourful dot and stripe fabrics. So it's the perfect sports supporters quilt. Take it to a rugby league game this winter and chances are you'll be able to sit on the fence with the team colours.

So that's the story behind the name... but it's a fun, bright quilt whatever you want to call it :)

Vintage Variety

Although things have been quite quiet on the just patchwork blog, we've been working hard behind the scenes to finish off some projects to show you. I'm moving on from the roses theme of the past couple of posts and the next couple will have a decidedly dotty outlook.

I fell in love with the Amy Butler Ginger Bliss fabric range, and am very sad that it has almost disappeared from our shelves. Of course we've got all of Amy's Charm fabrics and the new Sis Boom Girlfriends line that goes some ways to fill the gap, but I had to make one more project with the Ginger Bliss line before I could properly move on.

I'm also very taken with Vintage look quilts. If you can't have the real vintage, why not fake it? So I grabbed some stars and pinwheels rejected from another project and whipped up this wallhanging over the weekend. And with the soft dots surrounding my star & pinwheel centre, I am pleased with the faux vintage effect.

Continuing the theme I bravely decided to hand-quilt it, though I was going for the 'utilitarian vintage' not the 'showpiece vintage' standard of quilting. It just reinforced that I am much more comfortable with machine quilting, though it was good to be able to watch the Commonwealth Games on television while I quilted away. And the texture of finished quilt is so soft with the hand quilting.

The final result? My very own Vintage Pinwheel Puzzle ... so named because some of the pinwheels are spinning against the wind.

Bohemian Rose

There definitely seems to be a rose theme going on here... but this will be the last rose related post for a while I promise!

With the shop camera back after a trip to the Melbourne Stitches and Craft show last week (more on that later...) I am now able to show you a picture of my completed 'Bohemian Rose' wallhanging. I posted the original Stained Glass version last week.

I used most of the fabrics from Amy Butler's new Charm Fall palettes, all available at Just Patchwork! It was hard to part with this wallhanging as it looked wonderful hanging on my wall at home. But it looks equally great in its new home in our classroom.

I used both white and pink bias tape, and I think that the colourful border fabric looks like a gorgeous wallpaper print. Very bohemian, hence the name.

The entire project took just a couple of nights to put together, and would be a great project for a rainy weekend. But here in Tuncurry with daily temperatures still around 30 degrees celcius, it might take a while for one of those stay inside weekends to come around again!

Photo Fabric Fun

We have had a rush on the printed treasures fabric sheets today ($59.95 for 10 sheets). Everyone is discovering the fun of printing photos and digital files onto fabric to use in their quilting projects. Most people have seen Elwin's talk at one of the Quilt Shows around Australia and New Zealand, and it is fantastic that you're all going home to experiment!

We've done a lot of experimentation too, and Elwin is very excited about the new high thread count muslin ($10/m)that we received in the recent shipment from America. It works so well with the Bubble Jet Set and Rinse solutions for making your own fabric sheets.

The picture above includes a close up, cropped photograph of a rose that I've added to with fusible applique shapes. Look closely and you'll see where the photo ends and the patchwork begins.

Out of the Garden....

Heather Ross' Lightning Bugs and Other Mysteries fabrics are all in the shop, looking great nestled against some 1930's prints.

I have already taken some to make a quilt, but to satisfy me until that is complete, I also made a cushion with just the blue garden gnome print, and the coordinating spots and stripe fabrics. It made me want to make a cushion for each of the prints in the range - they're so cute!!! See the whole 21 fabrics (including the fabulous beach border print) at Free Spirit Fabrics.

Charmed I'm Sure

The two new Amy Butler 'Charm' colourways have just arrived in store, and as usual, I want to make a new quilt from them - immediately! The new colourways are called 'Chocolate Mint' and 'Midnight Glow'.

You can see both colourways on Amy's website. Click through to see all of the fabrics in the Charm range. These are all available for A$24/m, and we do colourway fat quarter packs too...

To use these beautiful fabrics, I've decided to use Amy's great idea of reworking an existing design. I'll be making Elwin's Rose Garden Stained Glass wallhanging, this time with white bias tape and of course the new Charm fabrics! Stay tuned for photos.....

Welcome to Just Patchwork!

Hello and welcome to our brand new blog.

After many months of reading other people's blogs...we've decided to jump in and have a go ourselves. Not only will this be a great way to update anyone who wants to spend some time finding out what is new at Just Patchwork, it will also give us motivation to finish projects that we talk about.

See you again soon!