Let the Liberation Begin!

Well, I made it to the Festival of Quilts and yes, it was awesome and no, one day wasn't enough. But this year I prioritised seeing the exhibition quilts (I did take photos, but not sure of the copyright issues of putting them on the interwebs) over and above checking out all the stalls, so came home with a relatively modest amount of stuff:



Mostly some delicious Kona solids from the Simply Solids stall, plus a spotty Kaffe layer cake, and a charm pack...and yes, I succumbed to the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt book! I have been studying the blocks and a lot can be liberated by using corner cover triangles for HST and flying geese type units; or cut wonkily by stacking fabrics; and some could be made conventionally but oversized and then wonkified by recutting on the slant. It's going to be a fun project for sure :-)

And I made a start on it today. Here are my first two blocks. First up, Autumn Tints:



As you can maybe tell, I messed up with the placement of my four patches, but ho-hum, this is a liberated version and I like the way they look, so I won't be getting out the seam ripper!!

Second up is Big Dipper:



Love how it turned out :-)

I can't quite believe that I have managed to keep up with the ICAD challenge, although I admit some days it hasn't been easy:



and then the boys show me up with their creativity (first by Gman, second by Waif):



We will definitely keep going until the end of August. But after that, I think we will all be desperate to create something BIG!

Fencing in the Village

Phew, I aimed to finish Waif's quilt top by the end of February...and here it is! A complete village, all fenced in.

Forgive the cruddy photo, but I was too excited to wait for a sunny day!

I do love this quilt, but I think if I was to make it again I would leave a little more background on the houses, cos I don't think there's much of a place for the eye to rest. But hey, it's for a six year old boy and when do they rest?!

INTERNATIONAL TONYA RICUCCI DAY

OK, I peaked too early...yesterday's post should have been today (oops)

So today is the day to surf the Liberated Quilters webring and read all about the wonderful quilts people have made, all influenced by Tonya. You could start off by having a glass of champagne at Clare's blog...

Ode to Tonya

As all liberated quilters will know, today sees the release of Tonya "Lazy Gal" Ricucci's first book "Word Play Quilts". Aside from Gwen Marston herself, Tonya has got to be the most influential liberated quilter about. Certainly, if I hadn't stumbled across her wonky house tutorial, I never would have discovered liberated quilting, never would have joined and been inspired by the fabulous Liberated Quilters yahoo group, met the wonderful Clare, and made a start on my liberated village. So, if you are not familiar with Tonya's stuff, step on over to her blog, then order your copy of Word Play Quilts!

To complete my ode to Tonya, here are pics of all my Tonya-inspired wonky houses in all their glory:






I can't wait to get my sticky mitts on a copy of Word Play Quilts and I am sure you will be seeing some free pieced letters on this blog very soon :-)

Numbers

Three pinwheels:


Three liberated trees:


And the hexagon count is up to 56:


And that's it :-)

When did the village get so big?

I made this house.  It's kind of conventional compared to the others but if you look closely, the bottom half fabric is snakeskin so I guess someone quite wild might live here :-)



I have also been making wonky cross blocks for the border of this quilt.  I like the way they look, sort of a crazy picket fence:



While the boys played the Wii earlier, I made use of Gman's lovely big bedroom floor to lay out all of the blocks and wow, the village is getting pretty big :-).



Not sure how to sew them all together but thought I would add bits to the sides of each house block so I could have columns of equal width to sew together eg one column where everything is 12 inches wide, one 15 inches wide etc.  If I try and vary which side I add the bits to, this shouldn't look too uniform hopefully.  So, now to make some random bits to make blocks up to size :-).  I'm thinking half square triangles, little log cabin blocks, strippy bits...and maybe a few more trees and stars.  What fun!

All Hooped Up and Ready to Go (aka Thanks Mum!)

I have finally bitten the bullet and prepared my Jacob's Ladder quilt for hand quilting.  It took me and mum about four hours (thanks Mum, you're a star!)  to hand baste it but I think we did a good job, it seems very secure.  So "all" I have to do now is quilt it :-P



I have bought a selection of different coloured cotton quilting threads so I can keep with the multicoloured scrap vibe.  Am finding the thread damn slippery stuff, it keeps trying to escape from the spools.  Any tips on preventing this would be gratefully received!

I haven't made any more liberated houses this week, but have made four little liberated stars for  Gman's red and black quilt.  These are only three inches across so difficult to get them to lay flat for a photo but I think they look quite sweet.  I will probably make a few pinwheel blocks this size too and intersperse with plain black squares to make up the next border.  That way I can lop bits off or add bits on to make the borders the right size, without worrying about having to match anything up.  It's not lazy, it's liberated :-)

100 Bags, a Dotty House and a Star is Born

First of all, I have to share my latest liberated house.  It has to be my favourite so far and is also Waif's favourite:



I loved the door so much I made a matching tree :-)

In other news, I have made four more Morsbags which takes Snoozepod's grand total up to 100. Yes, I have made 100 bags.  Woohoo!



I have decided to take a new direction with Gman's black and red quilt.  Since discovering the joy of liberated quiltmaking, the conventional stuff seems, well, a bit boring...so I have sewn together some of the log cabins I have already made into a star formation and I am going to transform into a medallion quilt, taking inspiration from Gwen and Freddy.  I think my first border will have to contain some liberated stars, then who knows where it will go from there..?

11 Days Without Broadband

And yes, I have been sewing!

Bits for Waif's quilt:



More blocks for Gman's log cabin (now have 25)



And of course, a few Morsbags - these are my faves:



Morsbags total is now up to 97, so I think I may have to sew three more pretty soon.