handkerchief quilt

it's taken me a while to work out the best way to piece my hanky quilts but after weeks of deliberation i have made a decision..i bought the backing fabric today and i've started making a quilt with white hankies although some have a bit of coloured embroidery..i have two hankies i'm using in this quilt that are particularly special to me..one, my mother had at her debut, and the other i bought 10 years ago from the all women monastery of saint stephen at meteora in greece..

this hanky is a bit fiddly to applique because of the irregular lacework

the applique stitching on the back won't be seen

some of the hankies are a bit irregular in shape so it's not possible to get them perfectly square on the backing fabric

my piecing method

~ i measured the largest hanky and i then added enough for a small border and a 1 cm seam allowance which gave a measurement of 36.5 cms square..because i want the quilt to be about 170-180 cms square i'll need 25 hankies and pieces of backing fabric
~ i centred the hanky on the backing fabric, pinned and basted it and using a fine white cotton thread i'm appliqueing the hanky to the backing fabric using small stitches
~ once all 25 are completed i'll join the squares either by hand or machine, add batting and a backing fabric and then quilt it by hand although i haven't quite decided what design i'll use
~ once the quilting is done the binding then needs to be added

i plan to make another two by the way..one with children's vintage hankies, that i mentioned in an earlier post, and the other with vintage floral ones..should keep me busy for a while especially as i have three others on the go as well!

lemon and yoghurt cake

i needed a short reprieve today from the hand quilting i'd been doing so i decided to make a cake..my recipe choice was influenced by a large past it's use by date container of yoghurt sitting idle in my fridge and which i felt could only now be used in cooking..

i settled on this recipe after looking at several lemon and yoghurt cake recipes because i liked the sound of the ingredients..a lot of the recipes i looked at had a lemon and sugar syrup poured on the cake after cooking but, as much as i like that type of cake, i wanted to avoid a very sweet cake..

i didn't make any changes to the recipe but i did process my own almond meal from unblanched almonds and i left some pieces unprocessed so occasionally when eating a slice there's a nice little almond surprise..i cooked the cake in a slightly bigger tin than specified too so mine isn't quite as high as the one in the site photo but it cooked in the specified time given in the recipe..

after a few cups of tea and a slice of what turned out to be a delicious cake i returned to quilting my daughter's patchwork quilt..

the backing fabric

quilt guilt

in the last couple of weeks i've put all my projects on hold..my vegetable garden, cupboard and door stripping, sanding and painting, vintage sheet and spare room quilts, shed rearranging, card and tea towel making and so on..except for a quilt that i've been making for my daughter alexandra that was due to be completed for her 30th birthday in may..i didn't finish it because i found it tedious..for one thing i made the mistake of starting it too soon..what happened was that i started one for my eldest daughter katerina for her 30th in 2009 and i got so carried away with how much fun it was choosing the fabric with her that i thought i might be fun to get alex's fabric too and then i thought it might be nice to do just a little bit of alex's so that we could sort of see what the finished product would look like..i think there was too much of the not right sort of thinking going on!

by the time i finished katerina's quilt for her birthday, with the completion date and my initials embroidered on it and all, i had a few (understatement) quilty ideas that needed expression so i started three more..one called 'kitchen scraps' (photo below) made mainly with vintage aprons that i'd been collecting for years, one made with vintage embroidered table linen (photo below) and one with vintage sheets (photo below)..and i got carried away with them at the expense of alex's quilt..i mentioned earlier that i found alex's quilt tedious because i started it too early but it was also tedious because she'd chosen the same design as katerina who'd chosen the same design as one i'd made for myself (photo below)..so by the time i was due to get seriously stuck into alex's quilt i found myself struggling to get excited by the design because i was now making it for the third time..and while i didn't find the fabric she'd chosen particularly inspiring either it was when she commented that she might have liked one like the vintage sheet quilt that she saw me making that i lost the alex quilt plot completely..

anyway i had a bit of a talk with myself recently and what i had to say to myself convinced me that a loving mother puts her daughter's quilt ahead of all other projects and, as well, she overcomes mental roadblocks in the form of excuses..i have to report that the talk i had with myself went well because i've only got two more rows of hexagons left before i finish piecing the main part of the quilt top (photo below)..then all i need to do is make half hexagons to fill in two sides of the quilt, hand sew the border on to the pieced top, sandwich the top, batting and backing fabric together and then i can get onto the hand quilting followed by the binding and the embroidery of my initials and date of completion..and i'm determined, above all else, to have it done before the end of the year..

and just as well i had that chat because my son nicholas turns 30 in two years and i have a brother who turns 50 in 3 years and they both want and have been promised quilts..

'kitchen scraps' quilt

vintage embroidered linen quilt

vintage sheets quilt

my 'sweet cherry dreams' quilt

alexandra's quilt

there's still time for making bread..

welcome

the sign says welcome in greek

to my house..

24 little bottles with a sweetly scented lily in each 

where there's bread in the larder

a sourdough loaf with sesame, linseed and sunflower seeds

and a new spare room

pure wool blanket ($4) and
ralph lauren quilt cover and pillow case ($5)
from op shop

with a view

spring and the camellia is in full bloom

and with an early australian hand carved

 children's chair next to the bed

it wasn't until i had stripped several layers of paint
off this chair that the carving was revealed

and a cupboard being prepared for the

spare room..

i'm using paint stripper to remove the wallpaper
 before i paint it!

which will be ready soon..

the wallpaper on the top came off easily and revealed
 this green finish which i'm leaving unpainted..

and a patchwork quilt for the bed

 i paper pieced hexagons of vintage embroidered fabric
 taken from doilies and table linen.. some was
embroidered by my great grand mother

which is nearly finished

each junction is being hand quilted with a little circle

and that i will show you when it's completed..

it was a sweet weekend..

because my eldest daughter came over on saturday and we had afternoon tea and and then we spent about 4 hours doing patchwork..my daughter is making a large paper pieced hexagon patchwork quilt using woollen fabric that my mother had..some of which are pieces left over from clothing she made for herself so it is going to be very special to my daughter because of the provenance of the fabric..

for afternoon tea we had macaroons because i had two egg whites left over from a custard i made a few days ago and because i am trying to make an effort to reduce the fat in our diets..macaroons are easy to make but they seem to have lost favour unlike macarons which are very popular.. i find macaroons quite sweet so in order to tone down the sugar blast i added very finely grated orange rind and i put a small piece of my candied orange on top..and just for fun i added some pink food colouring..

because they were a bit of an experiment i wasn't sure how they would taste but they were surprisingly good especially with 'vanilla and earl' tea..next time though i will tweak the recipe a bit and add extra coconut to offset the effect of the addition of the colouring in loosening the mixture..

i hope you had a sweet weekend too..jane

find it, wash it, sew it

i love to search out all sorts of cotton only vintage fabrics and todays finds are of the sheet and pillow case variety..but i also collect vintage aprons, tablecloths and embroidered linen and i use them all in quilts..

todays op shop finds hanging out to dry

i like to leave washed and folded piles of recent finds on my work table for a few days  for visual pleasure before i store them for future use..

this weeks earlier finds washed and folded

and because i love the process i make all of my quilts using the english paper piecing method even for a quilt of this type made with 10cm squares..the finished quilt below will measure 170cm x 170cm and it is close to that size now..

quilt pieced with vintage sheets, pillow cases and a couple of aprons

and then when that's done i will start hand quilting but i first need to baste the quilted top, the cotton batting and the backing fabric together..

vintage sheet backing fabric

when the quilting is done i will then bind the quilt but i want to wait until it's quilted before i make my final binding fabric choice..jane

i need a rest..

and a cup of tea! all up it has taken me about 8 hours of tenacity to set up my mobile phone to send photos to my computer with phone calls yesterday and today to my telephone service provider, my mobile phone service centre and to my computer service centre as well as a couple of visits to the mobile phone retail outlet..i cannot believe how difficult it's been..i wonder how many of you have had similar problems.

 i found this child's chair in an op shop for $10

this one cost $2 at an op shop and i painted it this happy colour.. 

anyway i am very happy that in future i can adorn my posts with photos..now i am going to make a big pot of tea and have a rest on something more comfortable than these chairs and read the magazine with my 'colour me happy' patchwork over me because it's really cold today..next on my blog to do list is to buy a camera..i am optimistic that becoming conversant with it's idiosyncrasies will present no such problems as those i've just experienced..jane