Wednesday, 24 May 2017

Week 21 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

We're finally here! We've made it to the very centre of the Labyrinth and final week of official event patterns.


Of course the only way to finish off a 'Goblin King' event is to feature the Goblin King himself, Jareth, played in the movie by the late, great, David Bowie.

Friday, 19 May 2017

Week 20.3 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

Week 20 saw the release of my Humongous embroidery pattern as well as the assembly instructions for the left and right sections of the #LabyrinthQuilt on fandominstitches.com

Again the assembly instructions require adding sashing to each embroidered block before joining the sections together.

This week we work with Sir Didymus and Ambrosius, the Firey and the Four Guards.

I forgot to take pics of the individually sashed blocks, but the joined sections can be seen below.

Week 20.2 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

Continuing the assembly series - this is the second of 3 catch up posts.

Top and Bottom Section Assembly (from Week 19)


Week 19 was the start of actual sewing to put the quilt together.

A silly mistake

I was so excited to get to this part and get sewing, but when I pulled out all my completed blocks, I found several of them to be looking a little dingy. Sweaty hands + white fabric + embroidery hoop = not quite white fabric. It was irritating me. It was then that I made made a decision that I'm now seriously regretting...   I tried hand washing the unfinished blocks and of course some of the colours ran!
Wiseman's bird with reddish halo from the thread colours that have run.

Toby with some extra "shading and shadows" thanks to colour runs.
I've learnt my lesson. I'll use exclusively DMC embroidery thread from now on (only the non-DMC ones ran) and don't wash without colour catcher sheets in there (even hand washing).

Frustrated but still keen to move on to assembly I've left them as-is for now and pressed on. Hopefully a good wash once the quilt is finished and bound, with several colour catcher sheets in with it, will sort it out. It will be fabulous if that does work but as this is neither a gift or a show quilt I'll still enjoy the end product even if it doesn't.

So anyway... moving on...

Week 20.1 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

The posts on fandominstitches.com over the past three weeks for the #labyrinthquilt have included not just the character of the week, but also parts of the assembly instructions for the quilt.

As you know I'm doing 2x embroidered versions of the quilt. I am determined to have one of those finished with the quilt and stitch along; the other may need to wait a bit to be finished as I have a few other projects and deadlines coming up.

I've been a bit slack in posting my pics, so I'm about to make up for that with a series of 3 posts at once and lots of pics to catch up.

Wednesday, 17 May 2017

Week 20 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along


This week I'm pleased to be able to present another of my own embroidery designs for the Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along - Humongous!

I'm not sure whether he actually qualifies as a character in his own right, being essentially a metallic shell controlled like a giant puppet by a couple of goblins, but here he is.

In addition to my embroidery design, Angela Gross has also designed a fabulous paper-pieced version of Humongous.

Both patterns are available to download now from fandominstitches.com

Here are my two stitched versions of Humongous - he's designed to fit a 6 inch finished square and I've put quite a bit of detail in there so he's possibly just a little more intricate and time consuming to stitch up than some of the patterns in recent weeks.




If you're going to give my Humongous embroidery a go I suggest that you start with a larger piece of background fabric to allow for ease of hooping and trim it down to 6.5 inches when you're ready to assemble your quilt. I also strongly suggest not using more than about 2 strands of embroidery thread or the detail of the suit will be difficult to achieve.

That's it from me this week. I really should post about the assembly so far, but that will have to wait until next time.

K

Wednesday, 10 May 2017

Week 19 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

The babe with the power!


Toby, taken from his bed by the Goblin King, is the reason for Sarah's whole journey through the Labyrinth. This week he's the feature character in the Fandom in Stitches Quilt and Stitch Along

But Toby is not the only thing going on this week! With only three more weeks of scheduled pattern releases there is so much happening it's hard to keep up.


Monday, 8 May 2017

Continuing the NQC Quilt Block Challenge Quilt

Continuing from last week's post where I made a gaggle of flying geese to lengthen the NQC Quilt, this week is all about making the quilt wider.

The geese I made last week will be flying across the width of the quilt. But when I tried also laying out some geese flying up and down to widen the quilt it was clear that wasn't going to work. The geese going both side-to-side and up-and-down made it really hard to focus on any one element. It was as if the geese were trying to draw the eye both everywhere and nowhere at once.

Lots and Lots of Half Square Triangles - Trying the 'Magic 8" Method

The two NQC Quilt Block Challenge quilts I've been working on have seen me making lots and lots of Half Square Triangles (HSTs) over the past couple of months.

For the main blocks I used a traditional two-at-a-time method of making the HSTs. But I wanted to use lots of smaller HST blocks for the sashing and border on the blue/grey yellow version of the quilt.

The volume of HSTs I had in mind for the additional parts of the quilt meant that I either needed to spend weeks sewing, cutting and ironing blocks, or I needed to find another way to get them done more efficiently.


Friday, 5 May 2017

Week 11 - NQC Quilt Block Challenge

In my last post about the NQC Challenge quilts I mentioned  that I'm planning something different with my grey/blue/yellow version of the quilt.

I love how the Christmas version, completed as per the challenge instructions, turned out. But for this one I want something large enough for at least a queen size bed.


Wednesday, 3 May 2017

Week 18 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

We're getting so close to the end of the Labyrinth now - Week 18 and and only about a month to go until we're all done.

I still don't think we've seen enough of the Goblins of the Labyrinth yet, so I'm excited that this week we've got another couple to choose from.

This week's patterns have been designed by Kylie Pecarina (paper-pieced) and Jennifer Ofenstein (embroidery) and are available now on fandominstitches.com.

Here are my two versions of the embroidery pattern.

Week 18 - Goblin 4 (color version)
Designed by Jennifer Ofenstein, stitched by me
for the Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

Week 18 - Goblin 4 (mono version)
Designed by Jennifer Ofenstein, stitched by me
for the Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along


Monday, 1 May 2017

Week 10: NQC Quilt Block Challenge

All nine (18) blocks have now been completed and its time to put these quilts together.

The Christmas quilt top has come together really quickly - 3 inch sashing between the blocks, join the blocks into rows and then join the rows into a completed quilt top. Easy Peasy!

Here's the quilt top done - the breeze came up and fluttered the top around just as I took the pic, but you get the idea. All that's left to do with this one is to choose a backing fabric and quilt it.

NQC Quilt Block Challenge - Christmas Quilt
Made by Me
I've got some plans for additional stuff with the grey/blue/yellow quilt. That one is taking a bit longer to complete and I'll be sharing progress on that one over the next few weeks,

Until next time

K