Thangles...

 Have you come across the wonders of Thangles yet?

If you have, I'm guessing I'm preaching to the converted.

My lovely sponsor Kate of M is for Make sent me a pack to try. Kate is well aware of my love for HSTs and having recently got into these herself knew I would love them.

And how right was she! Have you tried them? Have you??

 To be honest, I wasn't wholly sure that they'd offer me something that I needed. 

How wrong was I???

I absolutely love making HST quilts and to be honest they aren't the most complicated block on the block (see what I did there?!) but what Thangles do do is make a relatively easy block downright pips, cutting out all that boring mindless trimming after you have pieced them all. I mean, how tedious is that stage? 

 Thangles work by cutting the right strip pieces to begin with and then simply sewing along the dotted line and cutting along the solid lines.

THAT IS IT...perfect HSTs every time.

Honestly, to do just these 8 little HSTs trimmed in all their perfection would take unnecessary and tedious trimming time.

With Thangles there is none of that. 

The trickiest thing about working with Thangles is stopping! I've been at it for 2 minutes and already got 2 projects on the go. I started with piecing some LV with reds and secondly with greens. Greens? I don't do greens, but am rather finding that I do.

Anyway enough from me and the wonders of Thangles. Go see them for yourself. In fact go check out Kate's beautiful HST quilt she made for a wedding gift. Not only is it stunning, but I'm betting Kate enjoyed every second of creating it, thanks to Thangles.

Kate has packs to make HSTs from anything from 1" up to 4".

 I'm using 2.5" for these 2 projects but am thinking I'd like to make a larger quilt with 4" HSTs...

**pops off to purchase a couple of packs before Kate sells out...**

Oh and did I mention Kate is very kindly offering 10% off all purchases of Thangles before the end of November. Simply quote "thangle" at the checkout.

And one final thing...if you aren't signed up to Kate's Newsletter, then you must. She regularly has things you need to know about...including announcing her Black Friday Sale this weekend...you don't want to miss out on hearing about that! 
Go sign up at the bottom here!

the changing of minds...

 So, the Low Volume quilt for our bed has had various transformations while I searched for just the right block design.

You may remember it started life as a Log Cabin on Sunday...

 Early yesterday morning it had morphed into HSTs...

 And before the day was even out it had changed again into straight line piecing cut within an inch of its life. 

I woke up dreaming (yes, literally dreaming) of wonky windmill blocks, having gone to bed wowing at this beauty and finding this ace tutorial.

My Tuesday running buddy was coming round at 8.30 so I was hard pushed to do a trial block before then....I am seriously my own worst enemy.

That said, I am now 100% sure (yeah, right, until the next change of plan) that this is the block I am going to use. 

The log cabin would have been too busy, even if it is Low Volume...

the HST gorgeous, but too full-on for a king sized bed (yes, Charlotte, you were right...I do listen)...

as for the straight line piecing, I have no idea where that one was going.

I'm hoping the wonky windmills will be easy on the eye, be as asymmetric and random as I like and still be the one I love when it eventually gets onto the bed.

Now I have made a decision this will now have to be put on a shelf high up out of temptations way. I have a lot on. And I mean a lot. And if I'm good I'll let myself bring it down and do a few blocks for a while.

Ooh I'm so strict.

Summer of the Simpatico...

September already? Wow where did the summer go?

Amazingly for once I actually got a summer project finished. Well, if you exclude the fact that it isn't actually made into anything, but a completed thing none-the-less.

Summer 2012 will definitely be remembered as Summer of the Simpatico. I did a tutorial of my fold-over pouches for The Daily Stitch - Annie of The Village Haberdashery's blog in Simpatico and I had such a summery, fresh making time with them that I decided that I was going to use the collection for my summer of hexie fun. We spent a lot of time in the car this summer - London for the Olympics, Bristol for family birthdays, mid France via London (again) and Paris. I was in need of a good hand stitching project that could be done on the move as well as picked up in a shady place.

Perfect!

 I am not 100% sure what it will become - possibly a wall hanging, possibly a cushion, but definitely not a quilt! I really really loved sewing these little hexies (just over 1" across!) and loved sewing them together too, but the reality of now the summer is over that it will stay in a corner with all the other "i've-started-but-goodness-knows-when-i'll-ever-finish-it" projects is making me realise that I need to stop here.

Also, to be honest, I'm a tad disappointed with how I've pieced it. The flowers (top pic)  were so lovely when sewn individually but when I began piecing together they all got lost together and looks rather random instead. If I wasn't away and impatient about not wanting to wait to come home and finish (besides, we had a 600 mile journey - I needed some hexie-ness) I would probably have pieced the flowers with solids between so they would show up better. I may trying embroidering in coordinating floss around each flower. They may stand out a little clearer.

Either way Summer of the Simpatico was a very enjoyable one.

Now we are back I have started on the next project. This one may take a while. I have been wanting to make a quilt for our bed for a couple of years. I even started some blocks last year but I was never that enamoured and now I've gone right off them - too much yellow. Yes, you did here correctly. The wallpaper in our room is rather bold and I think what is needed is something a little more easy on the eye. I've been drawn to all the Low Volume creating going on at the moment and thought this was the way to go here. I am also tying my hands behind my back and not including any yellow but a little splash of red. You may remember the gorgeous pillow my lovely friend Kylie sent me at the beginning of this year. The splash of coral red works so beautifully in the room. I am not entirely sure where this quilt is going or where it will end up, but here is the start of Block 1.

I hope you have had a good creative summer (month for you Southern hemisphere peeps) and do link up to Lynne's Fresh sewing Day if you want to see what other people have been up to.

Today was the last day of my Screen Printing Course. Ordinarily it would be sad at the thought of a course being over, but not this one. Having completed the course I am now able to screen print whenever I want. You can not believe how much joy this is giving me (although if you've been reading my posts on screen printing over the last few weeks, you've probably got a pretty good idea).

I was a little bit nervous about this week's lesson. Remember my disasters of last week? And then everyone was telling me how much harder it is to print on fabric. Printing on fabric is obviously my main raison d'être for screen printing and if I'm having problems before I even get to the fabric stage, what chances do I have of succeeding?

Needless to say, all worries and concerns immediately evaporated as soon as I got going. Maybe it was the anticipation of disaster. Maybe it was the fact that I knew i needed full concentration today. Maybe it was the fact that some of the processes (making screen, printing technique) were becoming a bit more natural, leaving me able to concentrate on today's new aspect.

I'm not going to worry too much about what made it feel right, but enjoy the fact that it did.

I brought with a variety of fabrics to get a feel for how printing worked on the different textures. I wasn't sure I'd make a good print on linen, being causer and less smooth than cotton, but the linen I'm using at the moment is fairly close weaved, so this didn't seem to be as problematic as I'd envisaged.

The shirting worked a treat. It's very smooth and takes the ink beautifully. I'll be using these fabrics quite a bit.

The Klona cottons worked a treat too. I'm going to need to play around with colours however as even thought the pale blue took beautifully on the brown, the pink came out a little bit murky. Whereas on the white the pink was lovely and vivid.

I chose designs today that I could experiment various styles to see how they come out on the fabric. I wanted to play around with the font stamps I have, so included both of those. I also wanted to see how intricate detailing would show.

I think because I had such little expectations today, the results have thrilled me even more. I'm learning what works and what needs changing. I've booked to go in again on Monday and looking forward to playing around and experimenting some more and then, my friends, I'll start to get my mind ordered as to producing pieces that will actually be used.

This is just the beginning...

Screen Printing Course Lesson 3...

For the first time since starting the course, I initially came away from today's session feeling despondent. Fortunately I quickly put the nail on the head as to why this was. Each lesson is just 2 hours but we pack so much into it. In the previous 2 weeks we focussed on learning and using one skill and for the first time today, we had to use what we had learnt in those sessions whilst learning a new skill.

I'm really pleased that (yet again) I have quickly learnt that it is such early days (impatient? moi?) and it is going to take so much time to master and be able to perform all these skills naturally.

Since last week's lesson I knew I wanted to experiment with photographs and also text, so I have spent most of the week photographing flowers and then cutting around them. I had no idea what the effects of these were going to be, but hey, it's all about the process isn't it? (I learnt that last week). Again, with the text, it didn't matter too much what was written, more seeing the effects when turned into a screen-print. (Go to the top of the class, Karen.) I used a couple of the different font stamps that I have, as I wanted to see the effects of these and found a quote from my favourite children's book...I'm sure you know where it's from...

When we got to class, the focus of the lesson was Paper Stencils. As well as producing a screen with photo emulsion, you can produce a crude screen from cutting shapes from paper and fixing this to the screen. This method is great for block colours as a base for printing something else over.

As usual I was astounded by the effects of something so simple. Here's Gina's example below. A simple rectangle was cut out and then with the use of 2 or 3 colours an amazing background to use in a design has been produced.

I forgot to take a photo of my paper stencil print, but from the screen above, you can see what I set out to do. I cut a large rectangle for the flowers to sit on and then cut 2 smaller 'windows' to highlight the larger text. First print was of the yellow (the one I forgot to take) and then when that had dried I printed over with my screen with the text and photos.

I should at this point tell you that whilst all this was going on we had to prepare our screen, the photo emulsion way, to use for the second layer. And this is where I started to take my eye off the boil. This process is one that we have done for the past 2 weeks, but in isolation, focussing on just that. This week it was a by-product within the lessons objectives. I didn't have any problems with the actual screen, but where I did fall into difficulties and realise was an area I need to focus on, was the actual printing motion. I'm quite relieved to know that this is all very natural and next week, whilst learning yet another new technique, we are going to put emphasis on the actual printing. Hurrah!

Whilst I'm not overly happy with how the flowers have turned out (the bottom left didn't take at all) I love the effects of using this idea and particularly love the use of stamped text. And even more so with the paper stencil block printing highlighting areas. This is definitely something that I will be pursuing.

Lots done already and still HEAPS to learn and do...