Linky party open!

Morning all - hope everyone had a great Easter weekend and the Easter eggs were plentiful!  Apologies for opening the linky late this month - managed to get a bit of a flu and spent the weekend getting better.  So better late than never it's time to post an update on any progress on medallion quilts and our round robin bee!  Random number generator will chose a winner for Cindy's very generous prize of €20 euro voucher to spend on fabric @ Fluffy Sheep Quilting.

One of our bee's has just come back from a trip travelling in Asia so while she is making her starting block for me to add to, not having any progress on our round robin to share, I thought I'd share some medallion quilts I love for inspiration and what I learned about solid borders when making my first medallion quilt.

Image from first special edition of Love Quilting and Patchwork

Two of the most popular medallion quilt patterns in recent years are the Marcelle Medallion by Alexia Abegg and Made to Measure by Sarah Fielke. What really caught my eye on both of these is the use of black to add frames in the quilt drawing you into the centre block and the clever use of fabric in the prints used for borders (chevron and scissors above!)

Made to Measure quilt in Sarah Fielke's book Hand Quilted with Love

Sarah made a beautiful version of this quilt shown here in our gallery of our Happiness exhibition and I really like this one by Lynne@ Lily's Quilts in soft greys. Doing a quick search on pintrest using Marcelle Medallion will show you some amazing medallion quilts.  These are just some of the ones people have shared.

So what I learned in making my first medallion quilt, is that, in addition to making the length of the quilt easier to work with, adding a solid/un-pieced border can have some other very beneficial effects when making a medallion quilt.  Melanie @ Catbird Quilts has a really good series on making a medallion quilt and we followed her guidelines during our last QAL. 

This is as far as I got last time and there is one more round yet to be added to finish it.  In the making of this quilt top, I experienced 2 problems.  The first problem is the checkerboard border I used to frame my starting block was a bit stretchy and pulled my rectangle out of shape, when I added it.  Adding the first border by measuring and taking the average helped but adding a second border helped more.  It's still not right and I'm hoping blocking it will sort it out as I really don't want to unpick back but might have to!

I used Melanie's advice about using an un-pieced border to add some place for the eye to rest.  After adding in the low volume border the next round of diamonds was too busy against the checkerboard so I trimmed the first border down and added in the pink chevron to add a frame and give a resting place.  It's a skinny second border but without it the quilt wouldn't work so well at all!

Love this mad border by Sarah Fielke

But if you really like a pieced border check out this crazy pieced one again by Sarah Fielke from her book Hand Quilted with Love.  Am very tempted to try this sometime!

So onto the linky party.  Click on the button below to link up your progress!
-Ruth

Update and Modern Irish Bee reminder

Morning Modern Quilters Ireland.

Reminder for all those taking part in our Round Robin or making medallion quilts, the linky party opens this Friday for the first round addition to our starting blocks.  To be in with a chance of winning a voucher from Fluffy Sheep Quilting you can post a progress photo and random number generator will select a winner. Thanks again Cindy for sponsoring our bee!

Congratulations to Erin who won last month's voucher!

Just a quick update to tell you about some of the changes made to our blog this year.  I've opened a Beginners Corner page where the info about our swaps and some of the posts exploring Half Square Triangles and Swoon blocks etc. are featured for easy access.   We'll be adding to this and hope in addition to a summer swap to have a Quilt A Long this year too so stay tuned! 

Links to Modern Irish Bee blocks from 2014 and 2015 are up and available if anyone is looking for blocks to make.  This year, as it is a free form Round Robin, I won't be posting any from Modern Irish Bee but will post regularly on some free bee blocks and Quilt-A-Longs that are happening in blog land!  (See January's post if you are looking for inspiration or a Quilt- A-Long still going - its not too late to join any of them!)

I've created a Gallery to show our quilts from our first Happiness exhibition last year.  If anyone wants to add to this I'd love to add more photos so send us a mail!

We are trying to get a virtual library together by having a page where we have book reviews.  If you have found a book or a magazine that you love please share so we can explore and find new things to read too!  So far we have only 2 reviews up so please if anyone has a spare moment to write a few lines about a book you recommend and take a cover photo we'd love to hear about it!

Our Tutorials page is growing!  Thank you Irina for allowing us to add your zipper pouch tutorial!  We have a baby quilt from Fiona and note book cover from Cindy.  I have added a 72" big block quilt and a patchwork drawstring bag. 

Finally I've updated the resources page to add in teacher info, members that take custom quilt orders and members shops. This page is a work in progress so if you want to be included or want me to amend any details please drop us a line!

We would love to hear from you so if you have anything to share for Beginners Corner, Gallery, Library or if you have a tutorial on your blog, a block or a pattern you would like to share please let me know!  Also if there is anything else that you would like to see here on the blog or in our facebook group please get in touch!   Our contact info and hashtags for sharing are:

Email - mqgireland@gmail.com

Blog - http://modernquiltersireland.blogspot.ie/

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/groups/modernquiltguildireland/

Facebook - http://facebook.com/mqgireland

Instagram - hastags:  #mordernirishquilters or #modernquiltersireland

-Ruth

Modern Irish Bee - We have a winner!

Congratulations Erin on winning the €20 voucher for Fluffy Sheep Quilting!

Thank you again Cindy for so generously sponsoring our Round Robin Bee this year!

Modern Irish Bee Round 1 - Hints and tips for Medallion and Round Robin Quilts

Now we all have made our starting blocks and posted them on, I thought I'd pull together some tips and examples for our first round of adding to our neighbour's blocks.  The starting block could be anything up to 16" finished (16.5" unfinished) so each block will, more than likely, be different in size!

Measure the block you want to add to and decide if you want to add a border to bring the block up to a different size that might be easier to add to.  For example, my 16" block could be made bigger to 18" or 20", if I wanted to add a border that needs pieces 3" or 5" high, to make up the next border.

If I use a white border, then my block will float in the frame and the border will disappear into the background. 

I can also add a border in a solid or print that reads as solid to frame my block and make it stand out before adding the next round of piecing or applique.  Melanie @ Catbird Quilts has an excellent series on Medallion quilts and recommends the round 1 border combination be approximately 5" wide.

Carla's original block image used with permission from Wendy's Quilts & More

Round 1- dark skinny border from scraps provided to frame it and wider patchwork border 5 in total to emphasise the greens in the original block by Jane @Where Jane Creates- image used with permission from Wendy's Quilts and More

Echoing the original block can be a very effective way of adding to and emphasising the main block idea.  In the above example, Jame echoed the colours used in Carla's orignal block.  In the example below, Carla @ Granny Mauds Girl added to this block from Serena @ Sew Giving by creating another circle around it.

Serena's original block image courtesy of Granny Maud's Girl

Carla's addition echoing the original block image courtesy of Granny Maud's Girl

The addition to the original block doesn't have to be symmetrical.  In this starting block by Jo@Riddle & Whimsy the arrow resulted in a long rectangular block.  Serena squared it up by adding in half arrows on either side and Carla took it back to rectangle again in the round after that! 

Jo's arrow block image courtesy of Sew Giving

Serena's first round addition to top and bottom only!  Image courtesy of Sew Giving

Turning a block on point will make it much bigger and can be a fun way to add piecing.  Instead of using a print for the corner points, using pieced triangles like these flying geese, is a very effective way of growing your quilt and can open up fun colour options.

Sharon @ Mother Dragons Musings original block image courtesy of Wendy's Quilts & More

Jo's (Riddle & Whimsy) colourful addition framed and turned on point image courtesy of Wendy's Quilts & More

So lots of ways to grow our quilt tops!  The shipping date for the next round is 4 weeks from this week so Friday 25th March.  The linky party will open then to link up a photo or blog post of our progress and to be in with a chance to win €20 Euro voucher from Fluffy Sheep Quilting!

Don't forget to link up this months progress on round robin or medallion quilts - closing date for this months draw is tomorrow with winners announced on Saturday!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with for our next round of Modern Irish Bee 2016-Round Robin style!

Modern Irish Bee Round 1 Link up - We have a sponsor!

Last Friday was the target date for completing round 1 of our Modern Irish Bee.  This year, we have 7 hive members taking part in a Round Robin style Bee and we would love for you to make along with us.  We are linking up our starting blocks this week and Cindy @ Fluffy Sheep Quilting has generously offered to sponsor our Bee to encourage us to keep on track throughout the 6-7 rounds this year!  The prize is a €20 gift voucher for Fluffy Sheep Quilting - thank you Cindy!

If you ever wanted to make a medallion quilt or are intrigued by the Round Robin style - make a block pass it to the next person who adds to it and passes it on - I hope you fill follow our progress and support our hive mates. 

We are sharing in progress updates with Modern Quilters Ireland members on our Modern Irish Bee Facebook group which is open to members only.  We are also linking up here on the blog at each round to share the finished rounds with you all and posting regularly to our open Facebook page!

We have over 100 members to date in Modern Quilters Ireland and if you want to join us its free and the sign up sheet is here.

If you are working on your own medallion quilt or round robins please link up an instagram/flickr photo or blog post to be in with a chance of winning this brilliant prize of €20 gift voucher.  Cindy has just gotten in some beautiful Lil Red fabric and I am eyeing up the print with the wolf - so that would be my choice if I'm lucky enough!

The link up will remain open through to Friday and the draw and winner announced on Saturday!


 

Tutorial- Quilting with rulers on your home machine!

Good morning Modern Irish Quilters - we have a brilliant tutorial for you today!

Tomomi has kindly shared her process of quilting with long arm rulers on her home machine sharing tips and lots of photos.  Thanks a million Tomomi, this is something I have been wanting to try for ages!

If you want to see more of Tomomi's gorgeous quilting head on over to her blog and webiste Slaney Handcraft and if you are in the Carlow area looking for a class Tomomi teaches from her studio and has drop in classes midweek too!

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Free motion quilting with a ruler:

Hi, I'm Tomomi of Slaney HandCraft and here to talk about free motion quilting with a ruler.

If you haven't heard about free motion quilting with a ruler (call it ruler work from here on), it is a method which a lot of longarm quilters do for quilting clean straight lines or certain shapes and it involves using special rulers. There are lots of different shaped rulers available from doing simple straight lines to making special shapes. And now more people are doing it on the domestic machines. I think most reliable info you can get is from Amy Johnson of Amy's free motion quilting adventure whom I am following a while and she has released Craftsy class about the ruler work this autumn. If you are interested, you should check it!

What you need for ruler work is some acrylic rulers and a ruler foot. Rulers for ruler work is twice thicker than cutting ruler in order for foot to slide along. And the foot itself needs to have some thickness to do so. Mine look like this.

 

My Janome free motion foot is convertible and I can just change the actual foot part as you can see on the second photo (The free motion foot with main part and ruler foot are sold separately by the way). Some sewing machine manufactures are producing ones now and also there are universal feet to fit various machines. Do check with your machine manufacture.

 

The circular part of ruler foot is 1/4” tall or so and if I drop the needle while foot is up, the bar holding the needle gets stuck. Always drop the foot first!

And this is how it looks on the machine.

I have a 6” straight line ruler and a set of half circle rulers. Both are from Handi quilter. Those white dots on the ruler are anti-slip stickers I put on and I couldn't hold it in the position without them.

I haven't got any special shaped rulers like feather and wavy lines. I wanted to have a straight one because I wanted to quilt nice clean straight lines while free motion quilting. Of course you can quilt straight lines with walking foot but it is slow and I have to turn the quilt a lot. With free motion, I can go any direction and I don't have to turn the quilt on every corner. The semi-circle ones are doing curves without marking and getting wobbly!

Now quilting in action!

You hold a ruler against the foot and move the quilt and ruler together along the foot. You can place the ruler left, right or front of foot and any angle as you like. Technically you can place it even behind the foot but I don't do it because it is beyond awkward.

 

The foot's diameter is 1/2” and your quilting line comes 1/4” away from the ruler. When you are doing ruler work, you need to have it in your mind(talked later).

With a straight line ruler you can quilt parallel lines with various distance. If you want to quilt parallel line 1/2” away from the previous one, you place the 1/2” mark of the ruler on the previous quilting line and quilt it. It is not precise 1/2” and it's ok because the purpose of ruler is creating straight lines, I think and it doesn't matter as far as they are kept same distance away.

 

This is me quilting parallel line to green square and starting from the corner of purple one. I put the needle down on the corner, placed the ruler beside the foot and made sure ruler is parallel to the green square.

Now I am trying to finish this quilting line on the corner/target and I place the ruler 1/4” away from the corner/target.

I still put a lot of registration mark in order to know where I should stop or turn the quilting line.

 

And this is the finished product.

 

All free motion quilted without wobble.

Of course you can mark all the lines before quilting and just follow them but I find myself getting wobbly and concentrating a lot to stay on the line and still wobbly which annoyed me so much.

Ruler work needs bit more concentration and slower than free hand for me but way faster than with walking foot and neater than free hand. I think it is slightly different department of free motion quilting skill but very useful one to know.

Modern Irish Bee 2016 Round 1

Welcome to 2016 Modern Irish Bee!

Apologies for the delay to those who have signed up for 2016 for the late start. As quite a few people are taking a break from Bee's this year, we have re-formatted our Bee to suit a smaller group and are trying out a Round Robin format.

In a Round Robin Bee, each hive member makes a block and passes it to the next person who then adds to the block e.g. purple makes a block (round 1) and sends to red who adds a bit (round 2) and sends to green who adds a bit (Round 3) and so on until eventually, on the last round the quilt top gets back to purple who finishes it up into a quilt.  At each turn the hive mate is working on a different quilt that keeps growing with each round e.g. while red is working on purples block from round 1, green is working on reds round 1 block and black is working on greens.   Clear as mud?  Don't worry it will explain itself in the doing!

Sarah's quilt from Happiness exhibition

Quite often round robin quilts are medallion quilts with a square centre block surrounded by borders but they don't have to be!

Liz's quilt from Happiness exhibition

We are working with a block maximum 18" finished on the longest size to keep the rounds reasonable as they will get bigger as we go along.  Your block doesn't have to be square but can be if you want to!

used with permission from Serena @ Sew Giving

This block below arrived to Serena with the middle arrow as a long rectangular block.  She kept the arrow idea but split the ones she made and added to top and bottom only and then sent it on its way to the next person.

used with permission from Serena@  Sew Giving

Try to be kind with the size of the starting block having sides 12.5, 15.5, 16.5 or 18.5 including seam allowance.  This will allow the next person to add to it easily by keeping the maths simple.  The block can be any design, applique or pieced and can be any fabric from your stash.  The more colours used in the first block, the easier it is for the next person to pull inspiration from it and choose fabrics to compliment the quilt block. 

Carla's first round block used with permission from Granny Maud's Girl

We will be doing 6 rounds and maybe 7 depending on the resulting size of the quilt. The intention is that each person ends up with a quilt top measuring 60-70" so perfect for a lap quilt. The quilt can be made bigger by adding to it again if desired. The intention is to finish up around the end of September just in time for a Christmas quilt a long we have planned so mark your diaries for that coming up!

To keep us on track, Fluffy Sheep Quilting is sponsoring our bee and offering a prize. To be in with the chance of winning the prize you must complete your round on time and add a photo to our link up which will be in the next Modern Irish Bee post in February!

We will be using our Facebook group Modern Irish Bee to share ideas, brainstorm fabric choices and post progress. Members of Modern Quilters Ireland are welcome to join our bee group and quilt a long with us and join in the conversation!

For now, Modern Irish Bee 2016 hive members please make your first block for your quilt and have it completed to send to the next person on the list (I'll be sending this by email along with addresses shortly!). Please post to your nominated hive mate by 19th February and link up a photo on the linky party which will be open for 1 week up to the 26th. The draw for the prize will be awarded on our leap day this year February 29th!

If you have not signed up for the bee please feel free to quilt a long with us on your own quilt top, made in rounds, this year and join us on Facebook and Instagram #modernirishbee #modernquiltersireland and here on Flickr!

-Ruth