Thursday 9 February 2012

Dijanne Cevaal workshop - Tapa Quilt

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I was at the British Club as they had quilt teacher Dijanne Cevaal from Australia visiting to run some classes.  Her website is: http://origidij.blogspot.com/

Tuesdays class was "breaking all the rules" ....something I had never had much trouble doing.  It was great being able to cut freely and not have all the points match.

Wednesdays class was "Machine Applique and machine quilting" .  This too was a great day and she also showed us how to make 3d leaves, and leaves using soluble stabiliser.

Here is a photo of my quilt from the two days classes:
Tapa Quilt (not yet finished)

Tapa Quilt (detail)
This quilt still requires more quilting but am hoping to have it finished by the end of February in time for the exhibition in Chinatown.

A Big Thank you to the ladies from the British Club for organising this and inviting us ladies from the ANZA Quilt group!

Some time ago I inherited two antique sewing machines, a hand crank machine from my husbands grandmother and a treadle machine from my husbands aunt.  Both of these machines came from Holland.  Today my mother in law and I decided to clean them both up and put them to use.

We managed to wind the spool (a long shuttle) and with the help of some crc (or wd40) got it sewing again. The stitches came out beautifully.

We tried to wind the bobbin on the Alfa but couldn't figure out how to get the winding mechanism to work.  If you know how this works please email me!

Anyway we had a full spool and tried to sew with the machine.  That was a lot harder than it looks and it kept sewing backwards.  Then my mother in law tried (an ex spinning wheeler spinner) and she managed some beautiful stitches.  I can see I need some more practice at consistant peddling before I can get this to work!  I still love the machine anyway!

Thankfully parts for these types of machines are still available in Singapore as there are still a lot of tailors shops that use these types of machines.

Well thats all from me....

Happy Quilting!

2 comments:

scott said...

I was wondering if you ever did find out how the winding mechanism works on the alpha machine? I have a very similar machine which I have converted to treadle mechanism and I cant seem to get the bobbin winder to move at all! Thank you in advance, you have a lovely blog :)

Scott.

Marianne Bos said...

Sorry Scott,I never did get the answer. Let me know if you find out.

It seems like there is a piece missing.

Marianne