Tag Archives: Patchwork and Quilting

Patchwork Quilts and working in the Garden!

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Now finally I have finished the sewing and quilting part of the grandsons’ superhero quilts I have to force myself to do the ‘finishing off’ – getting rid of all the pesky thread ends and tidying things up – boo – the worst bit for me.  Here is part of one of the quilts with Sonic – but can you make out what I have free-motioned in the blue space between Max and Sonic?

Patchwork quilt in blue and red with super heroes on it

The mine craft stay cool square!

The other thing I’ve been doing this week is wading through the workload of the e-course I mentioned last week, It’s very intense but it does focus your mind on your hobby/business very well. And the best bit about being unable to go out much? It means my ‘office’ and my admin work is wherever I choose to make it!

Garden scene with cup of tea

My workspace!

There’s a lovely feeling about drinking a cup o’ tea in the garden and working in the shade! Don’t think it’s going to last though as cold and rain will return

Penrose Tiling!

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Penrose tiling – what on earth has that got to do with crafting you may ask?!  Well DH recently bought me a quilting book called Geometrical Quilts by Pat Store which is full of quilts all based on – you guessed it! – geometrical patterns!  They are all beautiful but some are more complicated to make than others.  So while I am going to my weekly patchwork class but not able to carry heavy things like a cutting board and templates etc,  I thought I would try one of the quilts which is based on English Paper Piecing (EPP) method.

My choice was the Penrose Tiling quilt – the book describes this as “two differently shaped diamonds (36 and 72 degrees) to make tesselating shapes based on a regular pentagon or decadon which do not otherwise tessellate”  [Storey In practice this has meant drawing lots of paper diamonds and covering them with fabric in the traditional EPP technique

cutting out paper diamonds and covering them with fabric

covering the paper shapes

Of course before I started I had to choose my fabrics and plan out which colours would go where in the design.   I chose a fat quarter pack of various shades of purple as well as the lovely green batik fabric from my stash!   I chose these as there is a photograph in the book of a quilt which I really liked and so I have based my design on this.

pueple and green fabric diamonds

arranging the shapes to build up the layers

fabric and paper diamond shapes

trying to get the pattern right!

It’s quite hard working out how all the diamonds fit together and deciding which fabric to use for each round of shapes.  At each round I have to keep trying out the pattern!

purple and green fabric diamnonds

arranging all the layers

So although this Penrose tiling is quite complicated and tiring it is a good project for when you can’t walk/carry/machine sew any much at all. (Boo sciatica – how I loathe thee!)   This as far as I have got at the moment but I really  hope to show you the progress to a mini quilt over the next couple of weeks!

Now I am going to link up with Handmade Monday as usual but over on it’s new home at Lucy Blossom Crafts  Thank you to Vicky for taking over the hosting!