Little Gems tombola - the final chapter

It's taking me a while to recover from the excitement of the Festival of Quilts, and especially from the amazing outcome of the Little Gems tombola. Yes, it was lots of work -- but well worth it, and so much fun too.

First of all, here's the stalwart team: Judy Fairless, me, Linda Bilsborrow, Hilary Gooding -- ready for action - but without our tiaras, yet. Before "start of business" on Thursday, 1600 or so Little Gems were on hand - and during FOQ, many more were brought in - quilters are generous people!Linda and I attended Chunghie Lee's workshop on Thursday (more of which later), and nipped out at lunchtime to see how things were going at the stand. We were thrilled to see the long queue for tickets -
and to see the delighted winners -
Of course not everyone won four LGs at once, and some people kept coming back again and again, determined to get lucky. In case you're wondering how a tombola works, numbered tickets go into a drum - £1 buys a ticket, and those ending in 0 or 5 are winners - so usually £5 will produce a lucky ticket. But not always.... We had three boxes in which the quilts were in random order - winners got to choose which box their prize came from.

At the end of the day, or rather at 2pm on Sunday, when we ran out of quilts in the boxes and people could choose from those on the wall, the takings amounted to over £9,500, to benefit the Quilt Museum in York. Thanks to everyone who contributed either by making quilts or by buying tickets - quilters ARE generous people!

If you've won a quilt, check via the Makers list on the website and leave a comment, please. Four people have contacted me, and I'm thrilled to know where my Little Gems have found homes.

My final Little Gems

"Yellow Quest" started out as stitchery on dyed paper, years ago -"Indian Gems" is a recycled indian-style top, and has motifs rescued and reapplied, as well as paisley motifs made of beads or french knots. Kantha-stitching through the thin silk was a delight -
"28. Tulipa" was finished on Sunday morning, and I happened to be on the Little Gems stand when a young lad won it -
The clusters of three backstitches are used on pojagi borders; the central panel is black print on calico, quilt-stitched here and there around the edges of the motifs.

And now - onto something a bit bigger - 60x60cm, perhaps ...

Collaboration

Jan handed over her applique picture of Glencoe for me to turn into two Little Gems. After binding the first, I realised we needed a "before" picture, so here's a reconstruction -The first one was straightforward: cut and bind -
But the part on the left needed "something more" - how about some fantastic flowers? Vivian suggested using the salvaged beads, and adding some red binding to pick up the colour.
And please overlook the carefully placed loose thread - I was in too much of a hurry to photograph this!

More fun with tinfoil

While Blogger is having a hissy fit and not letting me upload stuff, here are some images saved in a draft - a couple of my favourite "tinfoil" Little Gems. Both have handmade felt trapped under the sheer layer that goes over the cooking foil; the machining is of course added after that.Having "fabric" elements gives you somewhere to use pins to hold the thing together before machining -- otherwise you get pinholes in the foil.
There are now over 900 Little Gems submitted on the website - the tombola is only a week away!

Some of my favourite Little Gems

Because I'll be away until Festival of Quilts, all the Little Gems I've made since January are getting packed ready to go. These are some of my favourites. They're on the LG website if you want a closer look.Making all these little quiltlets was a great way to try different things, in different ways, and really improve doing things like bindings. It was such fun ... I'm not sure I'm ready for "big quilts" after this!

Make me into a clutch bag!

That's the name of this Little Gem - but you can do this with others, too. This one comes with a loop, if you want to add a nice button -Fold up the bottom third, and slipstitch the sides.
Fold down the top flap - add that button if you want - hey presto, you have a clutch bag!

Even faster narrow binding

A while back I posted how to do a narrow binding with mitred corners. After using this method on (quite) a few Little Gems, I've found something that makes it faster and easier.

At the corner you stop 1/4" (or the width of your presser foot) short of the edge, and then either reverse along the stitching line, or turn the fabric 90 degrees and sew off the edge.

Well, if you turn the fabric as if you're going to continue down the next side, but instead you reverse off the edge, you can make your mitre and be ready to sew without turning the fabric again!

Reverse off the fabric -Make the mitre, laying the raw edge against the edge of your quilt and laying the folded edge against the top edge (already sewn) -
Then start at the top edge and sew down along the binding strip -
I find that it's secure and makes a crisp mitre, without any stitches coming loose.

And there's no need to trim off that bit of thread - it gets lost in the seam.

"But what can you DO with these Little Gems?"

What to DO with Little Gems - this is the burning question in the minds of everyone who's hoping to get lucky and win a Little Gem at the tombola at the Festival of Quilts.

The LG team has been thinking about this, and the results of their cogitations will be shown at FOQ and will be put on the LG website. So, be patient.... (or if you have an idea, send it along to me!)

Of course you might want to display your LG in a frame, or by hanging it up on a rod (or even just pinning it on to the wall) - or use it as a table mat - or as a pocket on a shopping bag.

Or you could easily make it into a useful container, like I did with this rather nondescript one made especially for this demonstration.I folded the long sides in half and, from the inside, whipped them together. (At this stage you can add a loop and button, and you have a nice pouch bag -- but we're going a stage further here.)

To make this pouch into a cube, I folded the sides in so that the seams lay over each other, then used the bound edges as a guide for sewing across the seams, forming triangles. (You can make smaller triangles to get a more rectangular shape, but do make both the same size!)
Turn it inside out, lift up the triangles so you can see the bottom, catch the points of the triangles onto the seam, and take a few stitches at each corner to keep the top edge nice and square.
This will be useful beside the sewing machine or on a desktop.

More wicked ways with Little Gems

OK you've read how to make a nice square basket. After a bit of experimentation, I can offer other ways to make "useful containers".

This Little Gem is nice and firm throughout. Fold in half, right sides together and stitch the long edge till it meets itself in a nice point - do not break off the thread when you get to the end, though -Simply turn up the point - make as crisp as fold as you can - and catch it to the seam with several stitches. (Now you can cut that thread.)
Do the same with the other side - measure down the same distance for placing the second point, so your container will be symmetrical. And, hey presto, there it is -
The bottom has a nice "spread" to it - for stability -
What if the edge isn't bound but is satin stitched? I've used a figure-8 stitch to join these -
(By the way, a little permanent felt pen, red or orange in this case, will hide those bits of white peeking through the satin stitch.)

You can turn the point up on the outside - and choose how far up it comes -
And here we have a variety of "useful containers". The dark red one has the point turned up just a little, so it's more rectangular -

Crisp borders

I've been turning some of the samples from the Karina Thompson workshop at this year's Contemporary Quilt summer school into Little Gems.

To get a crisp edge, I used lengths of firm cord. The photo shows them "betwixt and between" - I started by pinning an A4-sized piece of paper onto the fabric, then placing a cord along an edge and zigzagging it with a narrow, open stitch. Leave at least 2" ends - these are for grabbing onto later. When I got to the corner I left the needle in the fabric, turned the cloth, and added a cord along the next edge - till all edges were done. Remove the paper and carefully trim the excess fabric. Then change the stitch to a wide, close stitch, and go round all the edges. The ends of the cord will help you do those tricky, bulky corners. Cut off the cords once the edge has been stitched.Here are three of the finished "layer and slash" Little Gems -
Recognise the fabric in the middle one?

Mostly making quiltlets, still

These Little Gems are very simply made - strips of solid fabric, as you can see, heavily machine quilted in close rows - and the centre left unquilted to show off the beaded chain - a Christmas tree decoration, I think, found lying around the house -
This one is also on the Little Gems website (somewhere) - it's called Pond Life and is pieced "over papers" - that English method usually used for hexagons. I cut the whole thing out of freezer paper, marked what went where, and ironed it onto appropriate fabrics. Despite the marking, I nearly went wrong quite a few times. But eventually it all fit, sewn with those tiny stitches that sometimes are a pleasure to make. But it looked rather bare, so the pondweed embroidery appeared....
The green fabrics were screen printed in a class or on a play-day with a friend, I can't remember - it was a long time ago!

What a difference a day makes

All those Little Gems in the heap on the left are now tidied up and have labels - and it only took a few hours. Leaving about two dozen in the heap on the right that need binding or other slightly more time-consuming operations. The finished ones have been photographed - now, the task of putting them on the website! But while the sun shines, I'll take a few along to the park and sit in the sun and sew.

Heaps of Little Gems

On the left, completely ready. Centre, need labels or minor things like binding sewing down on the back. On the right, "in progress".

Elsewhere in the room, two bags bulging with Little Gems --contributed by London Quilters, thanks to the "chair's challenge", which was to make one or more LGs, and others handed to me at the June regional day by quilters in the London region; there is some overlap of course. Together those amount to 71 quilts!

Tulip Little Gems

These come from a remnant of curtain fabric, and are simply free-machined around the areas of colour (each one with a different colour of thread). It was going to take too long to completely and closely quilt the background, so I didn't! The edges are finished by facing each one with a strip and hemming it round the back.

The Little Gems website now has over 600 contributions! That's a lot of eye candy....

Little Gem kits

Most of the Little Gem kits have been snapped up at London Quilters and the June regional day, but there are still 14 left, in the colourways show above - blue, purple, green and the one with the dark fabric.

The kits include wadding, backing (batik fabric) and two smaller pieces of "inspirational fabric", also batik, that co-ordinates with the backing, either a binding strip or some tulle, a label for the quilt, a label for sending it in -- and a sew-on gem. You'll need to add some of your own fabric, and use your own design or one of those that are on the website (http://littlegemquilts.wordpress.com).

If you'd like me to send you one, leave a comment, or email me via the profile page (click on "View my complete profile" in the sidebar). The cost is £3, including UK postage.

Regional Day, London

Our speaker in the morning, Helen Deighan (she wrote "dyeing in plastic bags") kept use amused and imparted a lot of information about dyeing. Here she is showing where to store all that fabric -- she came up with this idea before Ikea did!

Jane and Philip Steward show off the next raffle quilt, which will be launched at the Knitting and Stitching show in October -

Cathy Corbishley Michel told us about sunprinting (cyanotypes), using her new data projector. It's so good when the technology just gets on with the job and lets the speaker concentrate on the talk.

The afternoon had demonstrations of all sorts - and a table with free patterns for Little Gems. The Little Gem kits were selling briskly, too; profits from those will be added to the takings from the tombola.And here's the display of some of the Little Gems made by members of Region 1 and brought along to the day. You can see one of Cathy's cyanotypes on the right -- she also left 15 more - what a great contribution! Quite a few members are making more than just one or two - those at the top left are from Carole Thompson, and the white ones are some of Linda Seward's contributions. Some are already on the Little Gems website, and others will be added soon.

Sewing at the weekend

Having noticed that the sellotape used on gold wrapping paper picked up the gold colour, I decided to use this in a plastic quiltlet. The bits of gold tape are covered with a sheer layer of fabric, and the wadding is bubble wrap. The back is plastic, and it machined just fine. The stars are added by hand. Whoever wins this "little gem" is in for a surprise!Because the back is plastic, I added the label into the binding - and will be using this method in future!

The BQL challenge this month is trapunto - I was aiming for feathers but got these strange leaves instead -And the spirals, though nice and puffy, are a teeny bit boring ... and odd ...
Some hand embroidery might improve this one?

Shop till you drop

A new series of Little Gem Quilts, using plastic bags. In the first one, I covered the bits of plastic with net and stitched around them. Didn't want to pin into the plastic and leave holes, so the net was useful for helping hold everything in place. At first I merely stitched the handles (see middle of top row) but it looked a bit bare - the 3D handles make a big difference. And yes, that's a John Lewis bag round the edge. 

After that I got bolder and stitched through the plastic. The background was quilted afterwards (in wavy lines). Another possibility is to  quilt the backing-wadding-top sandwich first, then add the bags, and also applique the handles.

A few more Little Gems

"In and Out" - circles cut out of bondawebbed fabric, using the "negative spaces" as well - and a couple of appliqued circles that may yet get a bit of embellishment before reaching the Little Gems website .... "Dark Star" includes a chunk of a Christmas ornament -

"Making Waves" started as a warm-up piece for machine quilting (silk dupion from a thrift-shop find) -