Sydney continues to sizzle with this past week and weekend's temperatures 30+ again - making sewing under a quilt top a challenge. On top of that work has been insanely busy, with my company's submission to the Federal government for a $10m grant finally being submitted on Friday- meaning late nights this week and working on my days off. As a result only small progress has been made on the birds and hexagons, slowly but surely the appliqué is being finished off and thoughts are now heading towards backing fabric and hand quilting designs.
Thoughts are circling too, around WWIT M2 (What Was I thinking Mark2) aka Jane Pizar's Wedding Quilt mentioned in a previous post, which will be my monthly workshop project at Material Obsession this year. Jane's circa 1860 quilt is a masterpiece of complex circular hand pieced blocks with a Mariners Compass-like centrepiece. I now have the centre pattern (drafted by Marg Samson in 1996), next workshop is in two weeks so pre-planning and fabric selection is under way.
Detail of centre from original quilt
(cropped from a purchased licensed hi-res copy of an image so I could study the blocks more closely)
The Pattern for centre block - yikes!(cropped from a purchased licensed hi-res copy of an image so I could study the blocks more closely)
Gorgeous French General perfect for an 1860 feel
I'll use a combination of English Paper Piecing and hand piecing techniques for this - I'm really looking forward to making a start.
Elsewhere in empty field's life, these gorgeous repro reds arrived in the mail this week from one of my fav. US quilt stores. Not new, but I wanted to snaffle up some more before they were gone for good. They've been earmarked for the BTCT (currently being ignored) and the Mary Manakee Album(on the drawing board).
Three from the Quaker Quilts range by Lancaster County Heritage Centre
Wishing you more productivity than I am managing!
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