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 !

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! 

Of Curves and Pins - Assembling the Dahlia Block

Okay ladies! The fun and games are over! You have the Dahlia arcs pieced? Now let us get down to some serious business!

Gather your tools - a small pair of scissors to trim the arcs to size, a box of pins to pin the arcs in pairs before you start sewing,  your (eyebrow?!) tweezers to help ease out the paper. Where is the Master Template? Refer to it to arrange your arcs.

Change the machine foot the ¼” piecing foot, set the stitch length at 1.5, set speed to “low” and needle position to “down” if you have the option. 

 Before you begin, it is reassuring to remember that all curves are straight as they go under the needle a stitch at a time! And that the slow and steady master the curves!

If you want more hints and tips on assembling the Dahlia, click here - the link takes you to my blog, where I have step by step instructions on pinning and sewing curves.

Looking forward to seeing your version of the yin and yang!

The Dahlia Block - A Modern Twist!

The traditional Dahlia Block acquires a decidedly modern face-over with a geometric / graphic black and white print to set off solids in neon bright colours!

Before you head to my blog to download the instructions, here is a look at some fun I had with the the versatile Dahlia Block!

This is another option for the Rainbow modern block! The same block in just two colours coming up now!

I loved DQ Vidya Vartak Joshi,s profile pic - a pink lotus; so played around with the pattern to come up with this.

And here is a totally different looking dahlia, inspired by shape-moth.blogspot.com. ( Hers is much prettier!) I love this, and am going to make this into a table topper!

The best part - these can all be stand alone blocks!
This will be all, till we are ready to assemble the pieced templates on July 22nd...

Round the Year Quilt - Block One DAHLIA

I hope you have your fabric ready, for the pattern for the Dahlia Block has been posted today, with complete instructions for piecing!

This traditional “DAHLIA” block is the first in the Round the Year Quilt; it is paper foundation pieced . We are chain piecing strips to construct the block. The best part of this technique is that you are not handicapped if you do not have a rotary cutter or cutting mat. And believe you me, it takes just two-three hours to piece it from fabric to this stage!

You can download the pattern and instructions from my blog. There are a lot of pictures to guide you at every step of the piecing process. If you are attempting paper piecing for the first time, an introduction to the mysterious world of  templates, colour codes, `piece by number' et al is also available here.

Some of us ( including me!) are making the Rainbow version of the quilt -  please do check my blog tomorrow for a post with suggestions for more colour ways.

So, let the magic begin!!!

 

Round the year Block of the Month Quilt - Fabric Requirement Update

No, no don't worry, there is no change in the fabric requirement! It is just that I have now worked out the fabric requirement for the more `modern' colourway of the 'Rainbow' Round the Year quilt - where the colours of the rainbow peep out from the midst of grey clouds against a bright blue sky!
I so love this, that I have decided to make both the quilts.

You can download the PDF file containing the fabric requirements here! Remember you need Adobe Reader on your laptop to be able to view the file.