Clover and stitch

During the first meeting of 2024 in February, friend Ansulet Swanepoel demonstrated a rather mind-blowing technique enabling quilters to turn any photo into an actual quilt.  Yes, any photo can be printed on fabric and incorporated into a quilt, but she developed a technique whereby the photo is broken up into squares or triangles in the size of your choice and then printed on 100% white cotton.  The only prerequisite being good, high-quality photos to prevent pixelation from happening. 

After requesting a specific layout, a preliminary design was done and send for my approval.

Happy with the layout, the actual breaking up of the photos into the individual shapes started.  The printed shapes already include a 1/4" seam allowance and all pieces are numbered to simplify the process of matching the correct pieces.  All that you need to do once receiving your printed pieces, is to cut them on the edge, match them up and start stitching.

After aligning all the bits and pieces and sewing them all together, I ended up with a beautiful, quilted photo.

Me and my husband decided to use our two grandsons, Aiden and Nathan's first school year photos and made each a cushion by adding matching black and white gingham.

So, if you have a special photo you want to convert into a really special keepsake, just contact Ansulet on +27 83 406 9461 or visit her website Clover and stitch for Clover sewing products, wool as well as a variety of other stuff.

Santa Claus

Visting the grandkids over Christmas time offered me the opportunity to embroider the Large Applique Standing Santa of Kreative Kiwi as they decorate their house for the holidays.

Although we personally do not participate in any of the festivities or put up any decorations, it was such a cute design, I just could not resist.  The design is reversable, so I used similar colors at the back.  Total length when done is 650mm/26.5".

Fabric used included chintz, bridal satin, polar fleece, faux fur, glitter vinyl and imitation leather. 

The design is digitized in such a clever way, that when the last stitch is embroidered, the whole piece is already assembled.  A really fun product.  In this post you can read about how I used Mrs Claus's pattern to embroider a granny for my kitchen.

This was the only piece I was able to finish when my Brother Innovis 4000 decided that it had enough and needed some rest.  Parts were ordered from the USA, so the machine should be up and running at the start of 2025 and I could embroider Mrs Claus as well.

Scrap to Art Quilt

Another one of the classes I did at the Voices-in-cloth quilt festival in Pietermaritzburg was how to turn your scrap fabric pieces into an art quilt with a very simple technique under the guidance of Mari Strydom using adding machine tape as illustrated in this video by Karen Brown of Just get it done quilts.

It was such a calming experience just adding pieces to the tape without thinking or having to worry about seam allowances, corners matching etc. and with me struggling with insomnia, after 2 days and nights, I had 40 strips done and ready to be compiled into a background which will become an art quilt in 2025.

This is also the kind of stitching where all those little bits of thread on various bobbins could be used without anyone be the wiser that different colors of threads were used.

Whilst stitching all the memories flooded back of the quilts that were made of these fabrics, such a satisfying journey.

I used 1" sasching strips of a neutral beige check fabric which enabled the rather thick seam allowances to flat lay against each other at the back rather than stitching the individual strips together thereby reducing the bulk significantly.  With all the seams, the quilt is not so surprisingly quite heavy.

After all the stitching, all that remained was to remove all those adding machine tape at the back, but with another sleepless night, I got that tedious task done as well.

With that, the scrappy part is finished whilst the art portion of the quilt will have to wait until 2025 after our upcoming trip to England visiting our daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons.

Miniature Storm at Sea quilt

During the  Voices-in-cloth quilt festival 2024 I signed up for the Miniature Storm at Sea quilt presented by teacher Annie du Toit.  It was really an informative class with Annie showing us how easy it in fact is to do miniature quilt blocks using foundation paper piecing.

The completed quilt consist of 9 blocks containing 9 miniature blocks each, totaling 81 petite individual blocks smaller than the palm of one's hand.  With borders attached the completed quilt measures 43 x 43cm (17 x 17").

This is one of the 9 blocks constructed with the 9 miniature blocks.

Looking at the measurements you can see how small they are.

It was a real lovely experience from start to end.  Didn't had problems aligning the points, everything just fitted.  And it takes a fraction of the time of a big quilt. I really enjoyed this challenge.

Applique heart designs

The previous set of hearts was released for applique as well.  Buy them here. 

New embroidery designs for sale

It's been a month since my last blog post and sadly, not much happened since then as my Brother Innovis 4000 broke down and parts isn't available locally anymore.  13 years and 30 million stitches later, the machine is now considered obsolete.  So, although I have my Bernina 830 of 1981 to use, I just couldn't find the inspiration.  I am so sad and so utterly disappointed in Brother...  I was able to find the parts in the USA, but after buying and paying for all, I was informed that they however don't have all the parts in stock.  My friend's fiancé would have brought it with the end of November, but now, who knows? 

I was however able to digitize a new set of 12 heart designs for smaller hoops, as I currently can't continue with the Bohemian set which require the extra-large hoop of the NV4000.  They are available here from my shop at Oregon Patchworks.

Four Patch Posy Completed

After hours and hours of quilting, the Four Patch Posy quilt are finally finished.

 As usual I combined free motion quilting with machine embroidery.

Feathers was done using the walking foot for the shaft which was filled with pebbles.

Quilting designs from Stitchdelight was used in the triangles.

These designs are part of The Patchwork Star and can be found here.

The narrow green border was done with the walking foot.  

For the black grid, I used this Generic Red Line Sewing Presser Foot that I bought from Fabric8.

The outside green border as well as the binding was done with some decorative stitches.

The posies were quilted with stippling (meandering).