Saturday 30 August 2014

Round the Year Quilt - Block Two -Evening at the Pond

The delay in posting the second block of the BOM quilt turned out to be much bigger than I thought!
The fabric requirement, templates and instructions for piecing and assembly are all up on my blog (links at the end of this post).
The original pattern for this block was tested for me by fellow Desi Quilter, Sobana Sundar, who blogged about it here! She suggested a number of changes in the block, which I incorporated in the final version.
Here is her test block.

Isn't it pretty -a winter evening at the pond!? What she finally did with the block is something truly creative - a stunner of a quilt.

Aren't you inspired to try out at least one block from this Block of the Month Quilt? You can build a whole quilt around a single block.
Like I said, I simplified the pattern - so that there was no curved piecing in the circle construction. Another Desi Quilter, Nikhat Arshia tested the pattern for me this time.
I also made the block in the rainbow colourway, the geese flying around the pond as the clouds clear to reveal a rainbow against the blue sky!
And here is a  really pretty block made by Vicki Trerotola in a purple colourway.


The next block is ready to be released on Monday, so one needs to get cracking on this now!
Here are the links-
Block 2 Evening at the Pond - Fabric Requirement, Cutting & Piecing Instructions and Paper PiecingTemplates
Block 2 Evening at the Pond  - Assembly Instructions

Thursday 21 August 2014

DQ March-April '14 Challenge - Winner

The DQ March-April '14 Challenge required the use of one or more 3-dimensional elements in the quilt. There were three lovely entries, and so, departing from our usual format of voting for top three favourite entries, this time we took a vote for just one. The winner, by a thumping majority, is Srividya's 'A tree in my garden'.



Congratulations DQ Srividya !

You win a Rs.1500 voucher from BERNINA India

and

Set of 4 coordinated FQs from The Square Inch

DQ July-Aug '14 Challenge

Rules for the DQ July-Aug 2014 Challenge:

Its that time of the year again..time for us to pull out and celebrate our tricolour. So yes, we have a repeat of one of the older challenges, but with a small twist this time. Like, literally !
1.Make a quilted item of any size, incorporating CURVED SEAMS (at least one), in the colours of the Indian flag. The tricolours need to be dominant and you may include other colours too.
2.Email 3 pics (1.of the full front, 2.of the full back, 3.close up of the quilting) of the finished item to desiquilters@gmail.com. Please do not send more than 3 pics as the admins do not want to have to choose. Or lesser. And please conform exactly to the pic requirements or you risk disqualification.
3.Please include title, dimensions and a short description of your entry.
4.Please mention if the entry is an original work or inspired. You can share your inspiration once the names are revealed after the voting.
5.Please send in your entries by the midnight of Aug 30th, 2014

We are still following the anonymous entries format, so do NOT post pics on the Desi Quilters group page. For more details on the format.. http://desi-quilters.blogspot.in/2013/01/jan-2013-challenge.html

The winner gets
Rs.1500 voucher from Bernina India
Set of 4 coordinated FQs from The Square Inch

Come on DQs, jump in. Look at it as a way to learn something new and sharpen your existing skills.

Best of luck !

Friday 15 August 2014

A Small Delay in Block Two and Lots of Eye Candy...

Happy Independence Day to all Indians across the globe!
Not very good news at my end this morning. My laptop is bothering me no end! It has a screen all stretched out – just looking at which is driving me crazy. And the wi-fi is not working.
To get back to the beginning, it crashed a week ago back and had a lot of “bad sectors”. I got it back from the service centre with a new hard drive this morning. Thankfully, they have managed to save all the data, which includes all the detailed designs and templates for the Round the Year Quilt. (All except the photos, which they are still extracting from the old drive! I have my fingers crossed – that drive has all my pictures from the last ten years!)
But it seems they put in the wrong ‘driver’ and the screen resolution is all wrong. And they can’t find the appropriate ‘driver’ for the broadband! They have connected it to the net through a cable, but that is painfully slow. I can take a short nap in the time it takes to move from one page to the next!
To cut a long story short, you are not going to get the pattern for the second block of the Round the Year quilt until I can get it in some kind of working order!
This is being posted from my iPad, by the way!
While you wait and I can master my ill temper and get working on that laptop again, here are some gorgeous dahlias and lotuses that some very talented ladies have made! Enjoy!
Tina Katwal's divine White Lotus
Sobana's 'Nilopatal'

Deepti Raut's gem - the Turquoise
Devi Nair's Purple Beauty
Prabha Mathew's Blue Dahlia
Anuradha Ramesh's purple with a pop of lime...
 And Jaya Parker's beautiful Pink Lotus

If you want to make your very own Dahlia/ Lotus, head straight to my blog , where we are making the Block of the Month quilt `Round the Year'! This was the first block of this quilt, so you can easily catch up if you want to make the whole quilt!