Butterfly quilt

This started when I saw a pattern in a magazine for a bold black and white quilt, with a spalsh of bright colour. After a lot of fabric browsing, I decided I liked the design, but I didn’t want to do it in plain colours. Then I found some William Morris prints that I liked. Half way through the project, I decided that:

the result was a bit bland, and
the blocks fell into clear groups, not all of which went together.

So I decided to split them into two groups, and make a smaller quilt with one group of blocks on each side.

So I’d got some fabric left over.

So I started to think about a scrappy sampler. I’ve got some other William Morris scraps that I’ve been hoarding for years, so it made sense. First of all, I made a series of blocks with a plain calico background, making sure the edges of the block were jagged, instead of having a solid band of colour round the edge.

Then I saw something online about Dresden butterflies. Now I’ve always liked the Dresden plate block, but the one I did for my sampler quilt 25 years ago put me off. Far too much faffing.

However, things have changed. Now you can cut the shape from strips with a rotary cutter, fold them in half and sew across the wide end, and you have a series of “self finished” segments for the block in no time at all.

My butterfly bodies took a bit of thought. There are various approaches online, but I wanted to keep it simple. I needed some slightly wider ones, to cover the raw edges that had ended up a little too far apart, because I didn’t measure before I sewed the wings onto the base fabric. And I liked the brown print for the bodies, but I didn’t have very much left.

But I managed to get a body for every butterfly.

Veils: the new norm?

In these interesting times, when many of us are sewing face masks, here is a reminder that we have worn face coverings before, as a fashion item.

One of my favourite museums, the Shetland Museum, has posted this article about veils, with some lovely examples from their archive.

Perhaps next year I’ll make it to Shetland Wool Week.

Needles of a Nation: Knitting at the Great Exhibition of 1851

Vintage Woodcut from 1871 – English Mechanic and World of Science – Antique Image

Here is a fascinating post about knitting at the Great Exhibition of 1851, with some interesting pictures!

An Indigo Story

Here is a nice, but short, video about traditional indigo processes. With some lovely photography. Just make sure you maximize it on your screen so you can see the subtitles.

But you won’t see the technique in this picture with the traditional techniques. This is done using bulldog clips.

Shetland lace blouses

This is following on with the theme of knitting from the Northern Isles.

When you see knitted lace, it is usually an edging for something, or a scarf or shawl.

But as these pictures show, that was not always the case. This post about lace blouses shows the potential for this technique.

Although given my history of wrecking shetland lace scarves by getting them caught in things, I don’t think I’ll be going in that direction.

And by the way, if you are ever in Shetland, you really must go to the Shetland Museum.

Spinning wheels

I’ve found a new game.

The National Trust have put photos of their collection online, and you can search it in all sorts of different ways. How about that for an excellent way of looking a interesting stuff? This link will take you to the collection of spinning wheels. When I did his search there were pictures of 70 of them. The variety is amazing. There is even a glass one.

The picture on this page is mine. and yes, it does get used. I turn the wheel most days, but haven’t been brave enough to spin with it yet!

Tassels

I love every part of this post about making beautiful tassels.

Apart from the tassels themselves, just look at those racks of thread. And there is the machinery, and…

Even if I could afford to go mad in a tassel shop like this I don’t think I would be able to make my mind up. There are limits to where you can put tassels.

Still, it is interesting, and much more exotic than mine!

The world’s largest pictorial carpet

Wow.

Well, if you are going to have something big on your wall, you might as well make it interesting.

Read about the world’s largest pictorial carpet.

The last of the Festival of Quilts 2019

This is my final selection of pictures from the Festival of Quilts 2019 at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. These are the ones that didn’t group together nicely with any of the others.

For example, this one on the left, which uses a simple design to show off a collection of printed fabrics.

Hexagons at the Festival of Quilts 2019

My very first experience of patchwork was with hexagons. I must have been about 6 or 7, and I made it with offcuts from my rag doll’s dresses. I still have the dresses, and Beth still watches over my desk in one of them.