Nursery Rhymes & Collection 6

Collection 6	Just a few more blocks from the Nursery Rhyme quilt. These blocks were taken from collection 6. Funny how we take a liking to a design and use it time and again.  Crystal Dreams has featured in three quilts so far.
Firstly in the original Raconteur quilt, where the colour choice was so terrible that you couldn't see it unless looking for it. Next I used it in Snippets, which is a collection of seven blocks that I taught at various retreats where people wished to start on their own Raconteur. Finally it is here in Nursery Rhymes. I know I will use it again as I have seen it made using a variety of colours in the one block and it looked good enough to try ..yet again :)	C6 Crystal Dreams
C6 Disappearing Hope	Disappearing Hope what a strange name and no idea where it came from but I do like the effect here with the blue outer border making your eyes lose the white design and focus on the blue.

Charlene & Snippets

C2 I Love Lucy

Early last year I was fortunate to teach Raconteur at the South Coast biannual retreat. For this retreat I chose seven blocks from various collections and combined them into one collection, called Snippets. This was so that I could cover the different techniques in the one class and so cover what I felt might be some of the pitfalls people might encounter. 

C3 Burning Bright

Surprisingly, to me at least, after spending several years making Raconteur I had forgotten how long it actually took me to make those first few blocks. 

C4 Blackberry Freedom

These days I generally make a block in a couple of hours but when I first started it took me the better part of a day and for some blocks even longer. 
 I thought that the students would be able to finish a hand pieced block on the first day, perhaps two if they were experienced and two machine pieced on the second.... oops. 

C6 Crystal Dreams

Most of the students were similar to what I had been at the beginning and so finished one block the first day....because they were good students and went home and worked on it that night. 

C6 Enter With Care

I could definitely do with a few of those conscientious bones some days. Everyone found the second day a lot easier and finished at least one block. One student was even onto her third by the time we had to pack up. I found it a great bunch of students and learn a lot about teaching something so complicated... students will amaze. 
Charlene was in that class and has sent me photos of her finished blocks. She had not made miniatures before and hasn't she made some amazing blocks.

C2 The Rice Pickers

C5 Baby Blue

Scrumbles & Collection 9

Collection 9

Never let it be said that Carol is one dimensional. Not only does she sew but she also knits and crochets as evidenced by the photos here. On the left we have Collection 9. I think that is here fourth or fifth collection finished so far. Aren't the colours dramatic?

To the right is one of the scrumbles which she made. I love the whole idea of scrumbles & attempted to teach Mum how to make these when her dementia was impacting on her crafts. Mum's work in earlier years was exquisite & though her eyesight was failing it had not deteriorated so she couldn't see the change in her work.  She saw the scrumbles as something I would do, but not as something a 'good' craftsperson would do. Oh how wrong. Wouldn't you love one of these?

Scrumble by Carol

Collection 10 - Where Did That Name Come From?

Collection 10	Collection 10 contains mainly early blocks ... and how can I tell this? Well simply by the colours of the fabrics used.  Raconteur was to be a pastel quilt. After about 100 blocks I discovered that I wasn't a pastel girl and if I didn't extend my palette then I would never finish. Funny to think that it took me so long to work out pastels weren't my thing ... I'd had to scrounge many of the fabrics for my early blocks from my friend Margaret :)	C10 Twenty One
Fiesta was obviously named because of the colour and pattern in the fabric, very similar to what one would expect to see when ribbons are twirling in the air at the parades of a South American party.  I just had a thought I hope fiesta means party as I never bothered to look it up just thought it did.	C10 Fiesta	As I said in my BOM post Twenty-One was named because that was the name that popped into my head at the time.... surprisingly it is also the number of pieces of feature fabric that was used... I only discovered this when writing the previous post.
C10 Rainbow Writing	What do children in kindergarden spend an unbelievable amount of time doing? Rainbow Writing, writing words over the top of themselves using as many different colours as possible. Looks pretty ..takes time.	C10  Sweet September
I don't think there is actually an airport called US International but travelling through the USA it never ceased to amaze me how busy and full their airports always were. Few places of peace, or places to relax between flights.	C10 US International	September is spring and that is when the lavendar blossoms. I love when the lilac blosoms tumble to the ground... Sweet September
C10 Salmon Run	Salmon Run, the young fish are washed into the sea andspread afar. Yet years later return to waters they never knew. Some make it back others are not so fortunate. Who didn't grow up watching The Mouscateers? I still remember the Xmas I received my own mouse ears hat. Never see them these days.  Yes Mickey was My Hero.	C10 My Hero

BOM 10 - Twenty-One

Collection 10

Yikes! I just realised that tonight is the night I need to upload my next free BOM and I haven't done it yet. I had planned to get ahead with this as I am due to go into hospital tomorrow for an arthroscope to clean up a bit of torn cartilage in my knee. I had been having a lot of pain with it for ages but the doc couldn't find out what it was. At the same time it was collapsing now and then but I didn't think the two things were related.

Paul says I am very much like a guy as far as medical things are concerned... don't worry and hope the problem will go away. He says it's like a tornado hit the room when I go into the doc's with the speed I try to get out of the place:)

Anyway the Xray showed nothing and an ultrasound also showed nothing. Darling Paul suggested that perhaps I should mention the collapsing of the knee and viola off to see orthopaedic surgeon... MRI later and problem found. Tornado in and out tomorrow...thankfully only day surgery.

But back onto this month's BOM. This block is called Twenty-One, which you may think was named because there are 21 pieces of feature fabric. Sorry that's not the case. It was named Twenty-One because that was what popped into my head at the time. Until just now I had never counted how many pieces were in the block. This block will be tricky due to the large number of pieces but take it slowly and carefully and I am sure you will find it turns out beautifully.

Collection 9 - Where Did That Name Come From?

	Collection 9 - moving along the second row of the quilt..only a few more rows to go:) The origins of Sports Day was in my previous post	C9 Sports Day
Childish Tube - do you remember that old tractor tyre that you would take to the local swimming hole. Everyone would hang onto it or then you would play King of the Castle and see who could stay on the longest. Wrapping your legs as tight as possible around the tube was your only chance of staying on.	C9 Childish Tube	Accepted Few is a reminder of the nastiness of schools and the groups, who is in and who is not. School isn't always a happy place for one and all.
C9 Rabbits in the Light	Rabbits in the Light  yes I was a country kid and we did go rabbit hunting. When I was a child it was to provide food on the table and the way my mum prepared it was the best. Nothing as sweet as memories of childhood favourites.	C9 Accepted Few
Denali is a mountain in Alaska and although it is quite high the day we visited there was so much cloud cover that all that could be seen were a couple of smallish hills	C9 Portrait Pain	Portrait Pain we have all been there ..school photos.. stand straight look this way smile now..you all know the routine... My eldest always hated them and although he had the money to pay for the photos he would regularly skip out, particularly at high school. I think I only have two photos of him while there.
C9 Denali	When Two are One was made to represent how two people in love can develop as one each making the other complete.	C9 When Two are One

Margaret and Collection 8

What a perfect month to upload the rest of Margaret's blocks. Margaret's first collection is Collection 8. To see the rest of her individual blocks simply hit the label, Margaret McCaughey, on the left... Ok no need to be that picky just try the other left ... the one on that side >>>>>>>

Below you will see one of the other individual blocks. I like to include photos of both the individual blocks and the collections as they give different perspectives. The individual blocks allow people to see the lovely fabrics while the total collection shows you the overall appearance.

C8 King of Versailles

I had wondered how she was going to join the blocks as she had decided to do all of them in pink. The plan is to use different shirting to frame each collection. It should look superb.

Collection 8 - Where Did That Name Come From?

Collection 8 - can you believe we have come so far already? This collection contains a few of my favourite blocks, many of which were made early on as can be told by the soft pastel fabrics that were used.	C8 Spring Surprise	Spring Surprise was given its name because of the soft fabrics reminded me of the pansies that were blooming at the time.
C8 Too Many Thorns	Too Many Thorns - Just like our roses so many points and so many thorns. Banana Custard - this must have been made in winter. With my sweet tooth banana custard is one of my many favourites.	C8 Banana Custard
C8 City Living	City Living - the tightness of this design suggested what I see as life in the city - Too much! Too close! The dream of distant open spaces. Rising Mist - Umbrellas within a sea of blue. What better name?	C8 Rising Mist
C8 Summer Picnic	Summer Picnic - Doesn't the floral fabric remind you of those frocks we all wore when we were younger. King of Versailles - yes this was made during one of our visits to our son who was studying in Paris at the time. A beautiful city and so suited to us. We loved the early morning walks where many streets were empty as the city didn't wake up until 10:00.	C8 King of Versailles

BOM 8 - Rising Mist

Before I tell you about this month's BOM I need to let everyone know that there is no BOM 7. Collection 7 is a corner collection and the blocks in the corner collections are elongate hexagons. These are only used in layouts and are not needed for the wall hanging or table centres.
This month's free BOM is called Rising Mist and it was given this name because of the fabrics that were used. don't you just love the 1930's umbrellas. I think one of the enjoyable things with Raconteur is the fact that it suits all fabrics ... well those with not too big prints and Raconteur 141 is perfect for large scale prints.
The BOM  and featured collection are available here.

Collection 6 - Where did that name come from?

 This collection contains one of my favourite blocks Crystal Dreams, the fabrics do nothing to showcase the design but I still love it.

Short Changed was one of the first blocks that were based on a smaller grid with an extra border. The original aim was to leave space for highlighting quilting, but my skills were too poor, atrocious is a more apt description for my machine quilting. Anyway due to my level of quilting skills I  ended up leaving the area still plain.. Would like to see someone do something with their skills.	C6 Short Changed	Crystal Dreams was designed to show some flowers in a crystal vase. The diamond cut that is common on many of the crystal vases inspired the design. Isn't it surprising that two fabrics that looked good together in strips don't come up so well when sewn...and then top it off with my being too lazy to resew the block...viola!
C6 Disappearing Hope	Disappearing Hope was made at a time when things were going pretty badly within my family after an argument with my father. Many things weren't too good at that time, but the block still looks good.	C6 Crystal Dreams
Fake Hands was made around the same time as Disappearing Hope. People pretend to care but spite and jealousy cause a lot of harm..and then they walk away, leaving much damage.	C6 Fake hands	Enter With Care - my eldest son worked for a while at Lucas Heights nuclear reactor and he would joke about consequences of a nuclear mishap. Youth knows no fear.
C6 With Care	The title With Care came from the fact that care needed to be taken when fussy cutting this block.	C6 Enter With Care
Strung Out was made about the same time as Disappearing Hope and Fake Hands. Gorgeous blocks for not such a nice time:)	C6 Strung Out	Links Links to blocks by Carol -  Short Changed,  Crystal Dreams, Disappearing Hope, Strung Out, Enter With Care and Fake Hands, With Care

So where are your photos?

Snippets from Delma

C2 I Love Lucy

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to teach at the South Coast Quilters Retreat, which is held biannually at Cobargo. Delma was one of the ladies in my class and a short while ago she brought the blocks which she had finished to our sewing day at Nowra Quilters. Don't you just love her fabrics?

C3 Burning Bright

Delma usually prefers applique or machine piecing but decided to try the miniature Raconteur blocks. She has now finished the five hand pieced blocks and only has left the two foundation pieced blocks.

In the class we did a collection that I call Snippets as it is a taste of the different techniques and structures that are used throughout Raconteur. The seven blocks are taken from different collections and slowly build from easy to rather difficult. Unfortunately after having made so many of the blocks my idea of simple/easy and a beginner's idea of this are vastly different. It was one of the women at this retreat who first prompted me to enlarge the blocks and showed me what a difference this small change can make to not only the final number of blocks that someone needs for a quilt, but also to the success that different people can achieve.
Teaching is a great opportunity for people to learn from others, not just for the students but also the teacher.

C6 Crystal Dreams

C4 BlackBerry Freedom

C6 Enter With Care