It was all Go, Go, Cut, Cut..........

Time for some newsfromjude after a very busy and productive retreat. It has been "Go, Go", over the last few days and we have much to show for our time. The weather has been very cold, windy and wet here at Bordertown, but it has been nice and warm inside. We did look out the window when we heard the hail come down, and any visitors to call in told us how cold it was outside. Except for 2 quick walks out to the wood shed for a refill, I did not venture outside for 5 days.

Because I knew that sorting and cutting requires quite a lot of space, along with sewing machines, and the bags of scraps that came in the door, limited spaces were available for this retreat. Raylene had arrived mid morning on Thursday, Joy by mid afternoon, and Pat and Dione on Friday.

Joy had managed take up most of the space in one room, and Raylene and I in the other room on Thursday, and on Friday we all had to reduce our spaces. 

Joy and Dione are both bloggers and have "known" each other for a few years, and met for the first time here at Number 8 in June 2018. (Click on the names to go to their blogs.) Although they are in regular contact with each other, this was only their second meeting and they had lots of conversations about their blogs, and pattern designing and marketing. In my recent post about the Festival of Quilts, I showed photos of Dione's prize winning quilts in Adelaide, and we were fortunate to have a show and tell of some of these.

This is my collection of Go cutting dies, that I posted a few days ago............................

...............and this is Joy's rather substantial assortment.

Sorry I did not get a photo of Dione's collection of Dies, but she did have Cleopatra's fan, and a frog, which was very popular. There was quite a bit of swapping of dies to try each other's out.

This was how Joy's corner looked and was only some of the bags of scraps she had brought to sort.

Her first little pile of 2 1/2" strips cut.

                       Gradually the scraps were tamed into submission and the heaps got bigger.

These were waiting for the pressing fairy.

Joy decided that she had cut enough scraps at this stage,..............

.............so she decided to try out my 2" finished HST die and made these blocks.

Dione arrived on Friday afternoon, and unloaded a few projects. Her first priority was a Mystery quilt that she had started at a retreat "some time" ago and not touched since. This is what the case looked like 13 months later and progress was made over the next few days.

All her blocks were finally sewn, and laid out on the bed, with the border fabrics placed to see how they looked....................

..............and then "someone" came along and suggested another layout possibility.................( I look forward to see how Dione will decide to sew them together).

Dione has a purpose for this quilt, and it needs to be made larger, so a plan was made to add a top and bottom border to the quilt and fill it with applique flowers and critters. Good use was made of several dies to cut these out. And it is great that they already have the vliesofix attached, so they are ready to iron to the background and sew. This quilt was then packed up and will be sewn at home.

Dione then tried out her Cleopatra's Fan die and made a block like this.

You can see there was lots happening on this table.

Pat's first job was to sew a final border onto a quilt that needs to be finished for our local exhibition. Then it was onto EQ8 to work out the measurements for her next UFO...............

...............but when she saw Dione's fan block there was a detour to start another project!! Now we all know how that happens, don't we?

Not long before Pat had a show and tell of her bed runner with 4 fan blocks!! And then it was back to working on that other quilt, but sorry, forgot to take a photo of that.

Pat's daughter and granddaughter called in on Friday to catch up with her, and it was not long before Yasmin was put to work pressing Joy's scraps before they were cut. 

Yasmin (who lives in the city, but was staying with her grandma,) seemed to enjoy her day spent with us, and came back on Friday with some flannel fabric, that she had found in Pat's stash. She was keen to make a baby blanket for a new family arrival.

She loved the frog die, and is hoping to use these in a project........... I think she has the bug that is thinking of the next thing before you have finished what you are working on!! This frog die was in great demand by many, including a few local visitors. I look forward to seeing the results of all these frogs. And it is great to see some younger entrants to the quilting world.

This was Yasmin's next project, using lots of the stings that turned up after cutting the strips. Not a lot was thrown out.

The next few photos are of my scraps and the progress that Raylene has made for me. We had set up in the work room, next door to the other girls sewing room. Some of these scraps had come out of the drawers that had been cut awhile ago, but more were added over the last few days.

These are blue and yellow scraps that are going into a Mystery case for the next retreat.

We cut lots of gold stars, using Joy's die, for use in future quilts.

Edited - added Tuesday.............. another die I have is the 12" log cabin one and I wanted to try this out, so picked a few fabrics in a hurry and stitched one block, which is not photographed. But you can see the logs all lined up ready to sew. This is a very fast way of cutting a log cabin quilt with all the lengths cut of pieces that will finish at 1" wide.

We had 4 rubbish bins full of scraps, but this was reduced back to 2, after taking out the bigger bits, which went into the string bins. There is probably a fair amount of waste with the die cutting system, but this needs to be balanced with the shorter time to cut the same amount of pieces. I am not short of fabric, and consider it is probably a waste to have scraps not cut to size. I hope that I can reduce the time I spend on cutting kits for the Mystery retreats, by making better use of the Go cutters.

There was lots more that I could have taken photos of, but was too busy working with Raylene on projects on my list, as well as feeding the troops. A few locals called in and had frogs, critters, flowers and butterflies cut.

I found this in the freezer, and decided to use it for lunch one day. I noticed the label claimed that it was ICM! Apparently this means Integrated crop management farming!??? What exactly does this mean I wonder? There are so many labels on food products these days, Gluten free, Free Range, Organic, Vegan, Hallal, RSPCA Approved, Heart Tick, Go Green and many others. It makes shopping so complicated and you almost need a degree to go shopping.

Pat lives near an Olive Farm, and regularly gets bulk olive oil and bottles it into smaller quantities. I needed another bottle of Olive oil for cooking, and she offered to bring in a bottle for me. I did wonder who had bought a bottle of Chardonnay for the weekend when I saw it on the cupboard in the kitchen. Then I found out it was really olive oil in a dark bottle, and still with the original label. Does this look like the cook has an occasional sip of wine while she is cooking?????

It was such a busy, productive weekend, and all Go, Go, and more Go. Lots and lots of laughter, and stories, and many local visitors coming and going. I forgot to get the visitors book out to be signed before the first ladies left, and even forgot to get a group photo taken. This is the best I can do for a group, although should have taken one with Yasmin in as well.

The girls (except for Raylene) have returned to their homes and the beds stripped and washing done. The sewing room floor is still a mess, with scraps of fabric abounding. Raylene is staying for some time and will continue helping get some organisation into this place and attend out local group patchwork days. Max needs to get some attention tomorrow and my time "off" is over!!

That's all the newsfromjude for now, it is almost time for bed. Raylene tells me there are Owls and Fowls, meaning the owls are those who stay up late, and the Fowls are those who got to bed early. I am usually a Fowl, but this weekend have turned into an Owl. So there is a bit of catchup sleep needed I think.

Blessings, From Jude

A quick checkin............

I had grand ideas of posting this last night, but after sitting in the lounge with the laptop on my knee, I decided that the brain was too tired, so here I am this morning instead. Breakfast is done, the wood box filled and lots is happening in the work room already.

It was angels day yesterday, and we started with morning tea of scones, after the arrival of our city angel.

Val finished sewing the scrappy trips blocks for another quilt.

Yesterday was also the start of another retreat. This will be a time of getting some organisation into the scrap stash and using the Go cutters. Another lady arrived during the afternoon and unloaded her LARGE bag of scraps to cut and all her Go dies. I expect some more arrivals today and much action over the next few days, when I will have more to report on.

Just one photo from last night, and you can see that the 2" square pile is being colour co-ordinated.

Hopefully there will be a lot more cutting happening today, and then some time putting the pieces into quilt kits, ready to sew. Watch this space. Max is taking a few days from duty while this is in process.

Blessings, From Jude

A custom quilt, a confession, and cutting...........................

Here we are and another week has flown by, so it must be time to blog the happenings here at Number 8. There does not seem to be many photos in the files to remind me of what has happened, and no quilts have been finished either.

I have spent a little time on this quilt, but progress has been slow, and it will be on for some time yet.

It's probably true confession time now, as I admit that a lot of time has been spent sitting in front of the screen, watching DVD's. I received this Series for my birthday back in May, and had only watched a small part of it until the last couple of weeks. I would watch a bit in the evenings, and gradually the nights got later, and I got "addicted", absorbed!. Then I started finishing work earlier, the weather was so cold, and the fire was enticing. This set contains 19 discs, 67 episodes and many, many hours of viewing. This series was set in the early 1950's in Australia, a time when I was born, and deals with a lot of social issues. It was like reading a good book that you don't want to put down. I love to read, but have not been game to start anything recently because of the time factor and I read until it's finished. Probably wasn't a good idea to have started this series, but I had, so the only thing to do now, was to finish it. So that is what I did, by doing very little work until it was finished!

 

It was late Wednesday afternoon when I got to the end and sent a text to a friend to say "It is finished"! She mistakenly thought I meant I had finished that quilt, and sent me back a good on you message. I did confess that it was not the quilt, but the videos!! 

But it is out of my system now, and I am back to working on that quilt. Perhaps I will count that time as my holiday for the year??!

Friday there was another trip up the highway to attend the bimonthly Appraisal Panel day, and then Saturday was a day to spent with Max, making some progress on that quilt.

Today has been a day of reflection, and reminiscing as it is 46 years ago that I married the love of my life. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since that day, and who could have forseen the way it all turned out. A testament to the fact that God can turn all things around for good and I can rest and know peace in the midst of all as I anticipate what God is planning for my life ahead. We have a new pastor for our church, and I attended a Praise night this week, that was a special time of song and prayer.

Today also has been a play day with a little used piece of equipment that I have had for years, my Accucquilt Go Cutter. There are a few ladies coming next weekend for a retreat, and are bringing their own Go Cutters, and their collection of Dies, so I thought it was time to get mine out and use it. I do a lot of cutting for the Mystery Cases, and hope to make better use of what I already have.

This is my collection of dies, some of which have never been used. Time for that to change.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to make them a quilt. This consists of 128 x 4 patches and 128 half square triangles, and I had started on the 4 patch units earlier.

 Today I decided to try out the 4" finished half square triangle die. I need 128 hst unit for this quilt. When I finally got my head around the amount of fabric I needed to put on the die, it was amazing how quick they were cut. 

By placing the fabrics right sides together, and placing 8 layers of fabric on the die, the result was 16 hst units for each cut. It did not take long before I had a nice pile of 192 ready to sew hst units. (I know I only needed 128!)

 And it was lovely that they turned out to be exactly 4 1/2" square, and needed no trimming.

There is some waste with this cutting system, but I am more than happy with the time saved in cutting.

Some of the hst units have been sewn.........

.......................and a few blocks sewn just to see how it will look. 

There is still a long way to go yet, but I am happy for today's effort. I have ideas floating around in my head, for using more of the dies. Hopefully next week there will be more progress, and there are plans to get my scrap stash organised.

Meanwhile there will be more progress on that quilt above, and organisation to happen for next weekends retreat. There is also another UFO retreat 2 weeks after that, as well as more quilts to be quilted ready for our group's exhibition in October. No more DVD watching here for the immediate future.

Be back when I have more newsfromjude in a few days.

Blessings, From Jude