Friday Night Sew In…Red and Green Sampler

My plans for a Friday night of major preparation of some new projects, bit the dust early!

I’ve had 3 really early starts at work this week, and back to back meetings, so by Friday and a 7.00am start I was running on fumes.   Add to that a warmish, windy couple of days creating sinus problems, and a low grade headache that doesn’t want to go away, by the time I left for home last night I was a wreck.

So, instead of spending the night at the cutting mat and light box as planned, I curled up on the couch finishing off Season One of the X Files and did some work on a couple of blocks that I had back basted last year… these are for the Red and Green Sampler I started last year, you can see my other finished blocks on the Red and Green Sampler page. Each block is 10 inches finished.

I forgot how long some of these blocks take to needleturn, and as I haven’t done it for awhile, took me a while to get my groove thing happening, but I did manage to completely finish the one above, which is one of Di Ford’s blocks from the Morell Quilt pattern and I’m about half way around the papercut style block from Darlene C. Christopherson’s book – A Perfect Union – lots of curvy bits.

In between, I did a little bit of handpiecing on another of the Morell Quilt blocks, but not enough to really show for anything… need to prepare a few more of these blocks as it was nice to know I could just pick up the box and start stitching.

Plan was to get up today and make a start on the preparation weekend I planned, but the low grade headache kicked up a notch over night so I’ve spent most of the day curled up on the couch with the cats, flicking through magazines and dozing.   Have had a cool shower, and a bowl of spag bol and more painkillers and feeling semi-comatose so might try to get the 2nd block finished, as I wouldn’t trust myself with a rotary cut today!

Well, there’s always tomorrow!

Friday Flaunt… Morrell Quilt

Well, if I’m only going to flaunt items that I finish, I won’t be flaunting often!

So these are some of my Morrell Blocks already backbasted for me to applique.   There are a stack of others already started… and my finished blocks can be seen on the Morrell page.

Have been concentrating on cross-stitch lately, but as I received the 4th mini quilt of the month from The Quilters Crow, and I haven’t finished the 1st, am going to work on this project over the weekend

The Morrell Quilt … a tale of red and green

Last year, on our annual pilgrimage to The Parsonage we called into Threadbear, my absolutely favourite patchwork and quilting shop.   Actually, we almost lived there that weekend, calling in on the Saturday, and Corliss coming to visit us on the Sunday to show us some of her antique quilts and then calling back in on our way home on the Sunday!

On the Sunday we wandered into the backroom and clapped eyes on this thing of beauty!

This quilt designed by Di Ford (formerly of Primarily Patchwork) is based on a quilt by Sarah Morrell, and is made up of 60 blocks combining piecing, needleturn applique and broderie perse.

We all swooned, and when Corliss mentioned they were getting the quilt and kits ready to release this as a BOM at the Quilt Exhibition at Jeff’s Shed, my heart raced… do I sign up for it, or don’t I?

We talked about this almost all the way home, it’s gorgeous and it’s RED!   Di’s patterns are always fantastic, but I have a bucket load of fabric from this era at home already, should I wait and see if it is offered as a pattern after the BOM is finished.

Roll on- it’s now September, and in our conversation with Corliss she mentioned that Di Ford is teaching classes at Needles and Pins in Warrandyte, a quilt shop that we weren’t familar with.  And Jayne, who made her first quilt with Di at Primarily Patchwork and has made several other of her designs, decides to track down a class list and emails it to the group, saying “there’s a couple of quilts here that sound promising might try to track down photo”.   And I recognise one of those promising quilts as the Morrell Quilt!   So, 4 of us signed up to do the class, six classes over 6 months but with gaps between each class for us to work on the quilt.

I agonised over what colours I wanted to use.   While the quilt is stunning, I wanted to do something different… and so I sorted through my reproduction fabrics and decided I was going to use an ivory background and make my blocks predominantly red and green.

Took along my stash to class one, and  with guidance from Di, started on my centre block, which is still a work in progress… as I got a bit disheartened when it became obvious my centre is going to have a hole in it – yo-yo anyone?

But in prepping for some more blocks I realised my fabric, predominantly from the same range, includes a lot of the same prints, just in the two different colourways and if I wanted to jazz it up, I’d need to buy some more fabric, so a few weeks ago, Jayne and I headed over to Somerset Patchwork and I have now ended up with this little collection…

The large floral fabric is going to be used to broderie perse blocks (if I decide to do them!)   I need to do some serious piecing if I am going to keep up with this quilt!

But the day spent with Jayne, looking at her blocks and playing with my fabric has me motivated…

And I’ve discovered other people have either finished this quilt or are also on the journey, which also motivates me.

Links to other people’s Morrell Quilt projects:

• Jayne’s fabrics – if we ask her nicely she might post photo’s of her finished blocks
• Helen Hayes finished quilt as displayed at Australian Quilt Convention 2008
• The Quilting B’s block progress – interestingly using the same fabric for her broderie perse as I have