Tag Archives: Andalusian Tile Quilt

New project sneak peek…

11 Monday Mar 2013

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I’ve begun a new project. I’m planning to write some patterns and run some internet classes based on my Andalusian tile pattern quilt. To this end I had some acrylic templates made by Sunset Seams and they arrived today. Here they are:

P1050614

Each set consists of four pieces – an Andalusian tile, a hexagon, a star and a triangle.

P1050616Stay tuned for more details in the coming months. It’s going to be a lot of work so wish me luck!

P.S. Sunset seams were fantastic to deal with. They sent me prototypes, colour samples and worked with me to get the templates exactly how I wanted them. Their rates were very reasonable too.

 

A new quilt, the cloak of invisibility and a quilting bee

11 Thursday Nov 2010

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A new quilt

I’ve started a new quilt. It’s in the same tiled pattern as the Andalusian tile quilt but it will be smaller. I’m making another prayer quilt. The recipient of this one likes muted colours, taupes, creams, browns and deep reds. Well I don’t have the deep reds in this but it will be muted. I’m using my lovely Laura Gunn Mosaic Tile fabrics.

I’m also photographing the construction and making notes so that I can either produce an ePattern or teach an online class in this quilt. Here’s what I’ve done so  far.

The cloak of invisibility

Now you may think this is a joke but I kid you not. This is a very serious scientific research project and you can see the results here. It’s quite impressive really (not to mention spooky) but my question is why did they go to all that trouble? Why didn’t  they just come and ask those of us who are WOFs (Women Over Fifty for the uninitiated)? We are experts at invisibility. Ask any WOF and she will tell you she can quiteeasily stand at the front of any queue for hours at a time while those people behind her are served first. Back me up ladies. Is it not an established scientific fact that WOFs are invisible?

A quilting bee

Have you ever wanted to join a quilting bee? Well I did and so I joined this one – Quilting Bee in OZ . The trouble is we’re scratching for members. It was supposed to be an Aussie group but we’ve had to recruit some overseas members to make up the numbers but even then we still don’t have enough. Come you Aussies, come and join us!

A helping paw

Just in case you thought he’d gone into retirement here is Mr Tiggy sitting behind me on my chair and gently but surely manoeuvring himself to try to push me off so he has it all to himself.

However when I look at him he assures me he’s “just there to lend a helping paw”.

Rotary cutting, the Bloggers’ Quilt festival and more…

06 Saturday Nov 2010

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Rotary cutting

I’m not very good at rotary cutting. Probably because I’ve never been taught how. Anyway I was lamenting my lack of skills to my friend Sylvia and she recommended a book called Rotary Magic by Nancy Johnson-Srebro. It’s out of print but I managed to hunt one down on the web and it arrived the other day. I started reading it while waiting for the physiotherapist and it looks very interesting indeed and I’m planning to do some of the exercises to see if I can improve my accuracy. Do any of you have any rotary cutting tips for me?

The Bloggers’ Quilt Festival

The Bloggers’ Quilt Festival is still on. Only a day or so to go so do go and have a look. There are some amazing quilts on display. At last count there were 648 quilts entered. My entry is here. Here are a couple of photos of it since I washed it. I love the crinkly texture it has now.

and more…

I’ve been continuing to work on my Splash of Colour Quilt and have nearly finished my second appliqué block. I’ll show you when I’ve  finished some more. It turns out that my lovely subscribers are now getting emails. However for a while they will just be extracts with links as the plug-in I am using doesn’t send HTML emails. Have a lovely weekend…

A finish…

02 Tuesday Nov 2010

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The Andalusian Tile Quilt is finally finished. I’m really thrilled with it. It never ceases to amaze me how different a quilt looks once the binding is on. I didn’t go with any of the fabrics I showed you . When I auditioned them next to the quilt they just didn’t do anything for me. Instead I used this Kaffe paper fan fabric in teal colourway and I’m really happy with it.

So, do you want to se the finished article? No? Oh OK. See you later… Just teasing. Here it is.

This quilt was the third quilt I started. I designed it and made the templates myself. There was no planning. The completed design was totally organic. I hand-pieced all those curved pieces and when I thought I had enough then I appliqued it onto a border of the same fabric as the white tiles. Then I squared it up and did some maths to work out how many triangles I could put around the edge. A little fudging was required on the shorter sides but I don’t think you can tell. Then I decided it wasn’t big enough or looking finished enough and so I put the rectangles around it. I hand quilted it all and then decided that there wasn’t quite enough quilting and so tripled the amount of quilting that was on it. That’s why it’s taken two years.

Here’s what it looks like on the back. If you click on the photo you’ll get a larger version and you’ll be able to see that I quilted the coloured tiles with coloured thread and the white ones with white.

I’m going to enter this quilt in the Bloggers’ Quilt Festival – wish me luck! You can see all the other beautiful entries by clicking on the button below.

Amy's Creative Side - Blogger's Quilt Festival

Remember this…

27 Wednesday Oct 2010

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Well I’m on the last leg! Only 8 more of the coloured triangles to quilt and then I can bind it! I’m not sure what I’ll use yet but I might cut one of these two stripey fabrics on the bias and use it.
I’ve also been thinking about the Which way? quilt. I was going to machine quilt it but now I think I might hand quilt it with larger stitches and one of the Perle threads that arrived recently. What do you think? I’d be interested in your opinions.

Progress on the Andalusian tile quilt

01 Friday Oct 2010

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I’ve been making a concerted effort to try to finish my Andalusian tile quilt. I’ve now quilted all of the white tiles! Phew!

Most of the coloured ones are done. I just have 18 triangles and 17 whirligigs to complete.

It takes about 45 minutes per whirligig so you can see I still have quite a way to go.

As my sewing will be morphed into a guest room for the next week, hand sewing is all I will be able to do as the sewing machines will be packed up.

Hopefully I’ll get some time in the evenings to chat and sew.

Thinking, thinking…

13 Monday Sep 2010

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Hmm the creative process is fermenting.

I have started a couple of designs and now they’re just sitting bubbling away until they come to fruition.

The first is an idea taken from a Moroccan tile to use for an applique block, the second is patchwork pattern based on some Moroccan tiles.

You might have guessed that I like Moroccan tile work by now. 🙂 It’s called Zillij and I have a wonderful book full of it. While these two projects are fermenting I’m back to hand quilting my Andalusian Tile Quilt.

Back to old favourites…

24 Tuesday Aug 2010

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The Andalusian Tile quilt

Now I’ve finished the Arabesque appliqué top I’m doing some hand quilting on my Andalusian Tile quilt. I really want to finish this but there is just so much left to do. I already quilted every piece but then decided I needed more quilting and so I jumped in where angels fear to tread and began adding extra quilting to every single shape! This will triple the amount of quilting I need to do.

I guess I’m about half way through. It’s such a lovely quilt and I’m so happy with it that I really want to devote some time to completing it. This is a bit hard when you blog as you can’t show the same project day after day. My plan is to try to do at least a couple of hours of this quilt and then another project each day so that I can do both.

Arabesque detail and photos

I was asked on one of the email lists to show some photos of the details of the piece so here they are. I’ve also tried to take another photo that is better than yesterday’s. The whole piece actually seems to glow in the “flesh” but that just didn’t come out in my last photo. I hope this one does it more justice.