there's no such thing as too much fabric!
I can’t believe that the babies that set me on the quilting road, and prompted me to make my first quilt turned one on the 1st December 2016.
Ten quilts later, and I am totally addicted, always searching for that special piece of fabric, chatting with my new quilting friends about all things quilty.
I’ve now made a couple of mini quilts and am even entering the realms of Foundation Paper Piecing.
Rima
x
So firstly I want to apologize for my two week absence. It wasn’t deliberate. The first weekend I had a Counsellors Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. I hadn’t been to Kenya before and so was excited to go but the flight was at 01.45 which didn’t fill me with excitement, added to which I was only going to be there for 48 hours.
Anyway I went, learned a lot, drank some wine and had a generally nice time with my colleagues.
Then last weekend, which was a long weekend here I went down with a flu/bug which hit me like a bus!
I always wear a Fitbit and usually succeed in hitting my 10,000 steps. But not last week, on Friday I managed 800 steps, mind you I didn’t eat anything either so I suppose it balanced out. I was off work for two days and could barely sit up let alone do anything else.
Why is it whenever I am sick and have to take time off work, I am not the sort of sick where I still feel well enough to quilt?
Fortunately, I had already started to write about my current WIP and so now that I feel more like my usual self I thought I would let you see what I’ve been up to.
My recent success at the Zimbabwe Quilt Show left me with a dilemma as I had made the quilt as a gift for a friend of mine, Karen, who recently gave birth to her second child, a girl, Hannah. I decided that I didn’t want to part with my quilt, so I told Karen that I would make her another to replace it.
Fortunately she had recently decided on the design for the nursery and had chosen Harlequin’s What A Hoot in the colour range Pink, Aqua, Apple and Natural.
Armed with this information I decided to make her quilt with a nod to these colours and my variation of some appliquéd animals. I still went with the half square triangles and decided to put the appliquéd panel towards the bottom centre of the quilt.
On my original quilt I did a facing but decided to bind this one with pink fabric with white polka dots. Again I used straight line quilting but decided to practice my free motion quilting around the appliqué. Not brilliant but getting better C+!
I am seeing Karen on Monday and I know she is excited to see the finished quilt. I hope she enjoys using it as much as I’ve enjoyed making it.
Made with love ❤️.
Rima
x
It’s been a hectic week at school. Finished off by a Model United Nations Conference at a local school for the whole of yesterday afternoon, and today. But my students did very well, winning three of the four Best Delegate awards, resulting in our school winning, Best Delegation. So I returned home this evening really pleased with the outcome.
Upon arriving home I checked my phone, to see I had forty five What’s App messages! What’s App I think?
Then I see, the results of the Zimbabwe Patchwork and Quilting Show 2016 are in.
Our Community Wallhanging “The Wowls are coming” won Second Prize in that category.
My fellow Saturday Girl, Jayne Stack, also did very well winning Second Prize with her quilt “All That Jazz”.
My first ever show entry “I Love Colour” won two prizes, Best First Quilt and Best Small Quilt.
I am so excited. The quilt is meant to be a gift, but I might have to make another one and keep this one in a special place.
I will post better photos of all the winning quilts, when they go on display in Harare in the next couple of weeks.
Rima
x
It is almost a year since my visit to the Patchwork and Quilters Zimbabwe Show 2015. A year since I became addicted to quilting. In that year I have made a whole new group of friends, strong, creative, supportive women that I am honoured to be associated with.
The Show is hosted in Harare and in Bulawayo on alternate years and this year it is the turn of Bulawayo. I am a bit sad, because work commitments mean that I won’t be able to fly down and see it. But this hasn’t stopped me and I have decided to enter my first quilt for judging this year.
The design I have used is by Marie Joerger and I found it on Pinterest. I used a Riley Blake Charm Pack (For the non quilters a Charm Pack is a pack of five inch square precut squares). To this I added some off white Zimbabwean cotton. Then I had to add in a few other fabrics, some plains, some Kaffe Fassett, anything that I thought looked okay.
I cut the blocks into half square triangles and cut some two and a half inch squares for the middle of the heart motif.
I pieced the top and was happy with it apart from the heart.
The heart didn’t look precise enough. Too lumpy bumpy!
I took it to sewing group, thinking that it was one or two of the squares that were the problem. In the end I had to do a complete heart transplant, taking out the core of the heart and resewing. It is a horrible feeling, when you have a beautifully pieced top sitting on your lap with a huge hole in it. I was so worried that all the bits wouldn’t go back together nicely. But perseverance paid off and I am so happy that I did the extra work.
I knew that I wanted to straight line quilt and didn’t want to follow the regular chevron pattern. I also knew that I wanted to do a variation on the heart to make it stand out.
I quilted the bulk of the quilt using a walking foot with a seam guide, (kindly lent to me by my friend Ala) and the heart using the width of my walking foot.
I used a rainbow stripe flannel for the backing.
I decided face the quilt rather than bind it and found the tutorial on The Silly Boodilly website, helped reinforce what I had learned at Quilters Guild.
I made the required channel for the back of the quilt so that it can be displayed properly. I dare say the show organizers will probably thread a broomstick through the channel. We had covered this at a recent Quilter’s Guild workshop, but I found this tutorial on The Inquiring Quilter and it really helped.
I also printed off a cute label to meet the show requirements.
All I can do now is hope that the quilt is well received, that the judges are not too harsh and that the people viewing my work love it as much as I do.
The show is on at the end of September, so watch this space as I will let you in on any critique that I receive.
Rima
x
So I have reached the end of my lovely long school holidays and on Tuesday I will be returning to school ready for the long, cold winter term. So let me reflect on how I used my time over the past few weeks. I was determined to squeeze as much as possible into my free time.
Quilts: I have made two baby quilts
and Zoe the Zebra quilt.
Although I finished the top and have prepared the backing for “London’s Calling”, I had a fail of a weekend where I basted it,
but not tightly enough and when I started to sew it, it just looked awful.
So I have put that to one side and will re visit it in a week or so’s time. I have to finish it by the end of June so at least I now have a deadline.
Knitting: I have made three and a half jerseys for various small children in my life,
and found some lovely patterns which I shall be knitting up for some other small children in my life, now that the evenings are getting chillier.
Crafts: I went on the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint course (although I have yet to put it into practice)
and made a really cool picture frame out of recycled paper with my friends at the Creative Creatures craft group, that meet on a Tuesday at The Hive, here in Harare.
So all in all quite a productive few weeks work. I do hope I can still manage to keep some creativity bubbling away despite the return to work.
I shall just have to make sure I am super organized.
Rima
x
So Sarah and the lovely Emma will shortly be leaving the sticky heat of Harare and heading home to green and drizzly Oxford. Tucked inside their mound of luggage will be a quilt lovingly made my moi. You may remember Sarah had the choice of two quilts.
I gave them to her mum Jane so she could stroke them, squeeze them and generally get a feel for which one she preferred. I can now reveal that she chose drum roll………
ta da
The Puzzle Quilt – and here to model it is the lovely Emma.
Bon voyage Sarah, Anthony and the lovely Emma, see you next time and enjoy your quilt.
Rima
x
Crafting can be a funny thing. I can knit a jersey or crochet a square and it is a very solitary exercise or I can meet up with my other creative friends as I do once a week and we chat and compare projects and it is really sociable.
Quilting can be a bit of both.
I recently attended the end of year Christmas party for the Harare Quilters Guild and Martjie, our chairperson, touched on the quilting books that tell you a quilt can be made in a weekend. “It’s a myth” she said, and it wasn’t that I was trying to prove her wrong, but a situation arose this week that resulted in me putting time constraints to the test.
I have been invited to the blessing of the grandaughter of one of my friends on Tuesday of next week. I was pondering what to get as a gift and have had such a positive response to my recent quilts that I thought, why not make her a quilt. I had planned to make a simple strip quilt that I had seen in a book of quilts that can be made in a weekend. Then Ala (quilting friend) suggested I try Falling Charms from Jenny Doan at Missouri Star Quilt Company.
So Thursday of last week I cut out the squares and the white strips, sewed them into 6″ squares and laid them out on the bed to get a feel for the design.
On Friday I sewed them together, and then pressed the quilt but was nervous about squaring it off. So on Saturday I went to my sewing ladies for a bit of guidance and I got more than I bargained for. Not only did they advise me against squaring it off until I had quilted it, but when they heard that I needed to finish it by Tuesday they brought out the spray baste which is a tacky glue, like spray mount, that can be used to temporarily glue the fabric layers and batting together and basted the quilt for me.
So when I got home yesterday I quilted, then squared then bound and abracadabra the quilt is finished.
So although I am claiming the making of this quilt there were really lots of people involved. Ala, for encouraging me to try a different pattern on the quilt. Jenny Doan for making an easy to follow You Tube video. Genevieve for giving me some inspiring fabric that I used in the quilt. All the ladies on our table at the Guild Christmas Party, who were so quick that we won the crossword competition, thereby winning the lovely lime material that I have used in the quilt. Gillian and Paula for basting the quilt and Jayne for bringing the most amazing chocolate eclairs for sustenance.
I have the most lovely book, The American Quilt, by Roderick Kiracofe and in the introduction he states,
“Although quilts were without question practical and functional items, there was a far more crucial reason for their popularity: the process of making them provided a sanctioned channel for creativity and in many cases, simultaneously afford an opportunity for socialising. By their very nature, quilts perfectly met the innate human needs to express oneself artistically and to enjoy the companionship of friends. The piecing of the quilt top, that process of putting together snippets of fabric into a predetermined design, is a creative skill that can be performed on any level, from utilitarian to artisanal. the actual sewing together of the three layers of the quilt (top, batting and backing) in the process known as quilting is also accessible to every skill level. Furthermore, unlike most other handicrafts such as knitting and embroidery, several people can work together harmoniously on one quilt”.
So, it took me three days to make the quilt, which I suppose means that Martjie is right about not being able to sew it in a weekend. But one thing I know for sure I would not have finished it so quickly without a little help from my friends.
Rima
x
Do you remember this cardi and hat set that I made a few months ago?
Well I made it for my friend Jane’s granddaughter who was nearly born on my birthday, but then dilly dallied, and arrived on my Auntie Pearl’s birthday, the next day, instead. The lovely Emma and her equally lovely mum Sarah arrived here for an extended holiday a couple of months ago. During that time the weather has been unseasonably cold and unseasonably hot ( sometimes in the same week!). So Emma got to wear her navy cardi and hat and what a model she is, hitting all the poses.
As you know I am new to quilting, new, but enthusiastic. Some would say I’m becoming a quilting bore but let’s hope they don’t say it in my earshot!
So my first quilt featured in an earlier blog, a baby quilt for my friend Julie who safely delivered twin girls Niamh Robyn and Natalie Rose earlier in December.
So what to do for quilt number two? I thought why not make a quilt for Emma to take back to the UK in January, after all she only has a hundredweight of luggage already!
I decided to make a spotty quilt using applique, which I had never used before and doing a mitred corner, also a first for me.
In fact there were so many firsts in this quilt that it took quite a bit of time. I made an attempt at free motion quilting on the green border of the quilt, doing what is known as meandering, my attempt looks like meandering on acid.
But you have to start somewhere. So there I am with this lovely black and white quilt feeling quite pleased with myself, when my quilting friend Ala shows me a puzzle quilt from PiecesbyPolly.com.
It looked really difficult but after I had studied the pattern for a while I realized it wasn’t so hard after all ( in principle at least). So I thought why not start quilt number three and give Sarah a choice of two quilts ( you can tell it’s the holidays, too much time on my hands!)
I went to my fabric stash and the colours just jumped out at me. That was last week and I’ve finished the quilt already, so I think it was meant to be. Now all that is left is for Sarah to choose between the two quilts “Spots and Stripes” or “Polly’s Puzzle No 1”.
Which one would you choose? I’ll let you know what Sarah chose next time.
Rima
x
I just don’t know where this term has gone, scratch that , I don’t know where this year has gone! It seemed like yesterday that my friend Julie announced that she was expecting twin girls. Now today it is her baby shower and last day at school. Her nursery colour scheme is pale pink and grey so I offered to make her some bunting to decorate the room with.
At the suggestion of my quilt buddy Ala, I watched the YouTube video on making bunting that features Jenny from Missouri Star Quilt Company. There are lots of videos like this on YouTube but I really do think that Jenny does it best. The flags are quick to make and they are a nice thickness when finished.
I had some of the fabric already in my stash and then purchased a metre of both of the paisley fabrics.
I took some photos of my work but I would strongly suggest that if you want to make the bunting you watch Jenny’s tutorial.
I cut the fabric into 20cm squares using pinking shears. In the States you can buy the fabric already cut in pinked squares, in Zimbabwe we have to make our own!
Put two adjacent right sides of one square together to form a triangle and stitch the quarter inch seam from top to bottom. Then trim the seam at what will be the point of the flag close to the stitching line.
Turn the flag to the right side out and press the flag making sure that the seam lies in the middle of the flag. and press down the top flap.
Get some half inch wide tape and insert it along the top of the flag but underneath the flap.
Ta da! we have bunting.
I also managed to make a nappy cake as well using some ideas from Pinterest. All in all a great success.
I even got an order for more bunting from one of the other teachers at the baby shower.
Oh I nearly forgot, I finished the quilt. Gorejena means “Silver Lining” in Shona and Ala’s quilt is Gorejena 1.
Till next time,
Rima
x
Life is often fun in Zimbabwe, but not at the moment.
We are currently experiencing power cuts on a massive scale. For most people the power is off by six in the morning and if you’re lucky back on by ten at night. This makes the sewing part of my life pretty difficult as although my generator will power my sewing machine it can’t cope with appliances like irons & kettles both of which I need in order to be able to sew effectively.
Of course these power cuts are not the governments fault for not having invested in the infrastructure, (they apparently need $10bn to build and repair power stations to meet our needs). Rather they are the fault of everyone who owns an electric geyser for daring to heat water using said method. So now a new load shedding timetable has been issued where power goes off at 4am (just before we wake up) and comes back on at 10pm (just as we go to bed!) according to a ZESA spokesperson this has been organized so that power is available when people are sleeping, how convenient, not!
DId you know that ZESA stands for Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Company an oxymoron if ever I heard one. So one way that the government have decided we can manage the situation is to ban electric geysers http://www.herald.co.zw/govt-to-ban-geysers/ call me a cynic if you will, but something tells me Dr Mbiriri may have interests in a solar geyser company!
Anyway this gives me a chance to cut out some squares for my first baby quilt, and finish off that darn green flower cardigan that has been nestling in my knitting basket during the recent heatwave. But what is this 7.09am on a Sunday morning and I still have power? Quick sewing machines to the ready it’s action time.
9.23am and the topper is finished. It’s amazing how fast you can work with a power cut looming.
This quilt is for a friend of mine at school, Julie, who is expecting twin girls. My friend Ala has been quilting for about a year and she also knows Julie as her daughters were at school at the same time. So we decided that we would make the babies a present of a quilt each. The novice and the nearly expert!
I am going to back my quilt and bind it with the fuschia pink/white dot fabric. Ala and I have used the same squares and colourway but done our own thing regarding the layout and binding. Ala is backing her quilt with a really cute elephant fabric and the fuschia pink/white dot binding.
I’ve got to say I really enjoyed piecing together my first quilt, but I have yet to actually quilt it. Hopefully power permitting I shall do that next weekend.
Just to update you on the green cardigan, which is now becoming my nemesis. I finished the final sleeve and then realised I had made a mistake and so have to undo it. This is fine except that I have to make sure I put the markers in the right place as it is knitted in the round! I am so glad that I decided to make Clemmie the age 4 version, as I reckon by the time I finish it she will be four.
Anyway our power woes continue, I am at school now and the generator has overheated and my laptop battery is on its last dregs of battery life. But the sun is shining and the Jacarandas are in full bloom, as Zimbabweans are so fond of saying “we’ll make a plan”.
Rima
x
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