Inspiration: Red and a bit of pink, and a little orange!

Because I don't have enough commitments (joke!) I have joined a bee...the 4x5 Modern Bee to bee precise!

What's a Bee? Well essentially it's a block swap... I will be put in a group with five other people (we will be a hive!), and we will swap blocks four times a year and by the end of the year I will end up with 20 unique blocks....that's all I know about how it works! But that sounds pretty good to me!

When enrolling in the bee I was asked to choose my favourite three colours and put together a mosiac of photos that inspire me. Can you guess my favourite colours? If you guessed Red, Pink and Orange...you would be correct!

This is the mosiac, made up of some of the projects on Flickr that caught my eye.

1. Pincushion, 2. Favorite little Quilt Swap- Mini Quilt Detail, 3. Waverunner Quilt, 4. Tillia's Quilt, 5. Block a Day Red, 6. Dollies Online Month 7, 7. Wonky Star Quilt - Pieced Together Bee, 8. Detail, 9. ** Double wedding ring I, 10. Log Cabin Patchwork Quilt top, 11. 008 Bouquet, 12. Farmer's Wife #59, "Night & Day"

I love this mosiac thing...so why not put a mosiac together of quilts that I have made over the last few years, and a couple of personal things that fit this colour theme!

1. Polka Dot Tree, 2. Impulse Purchase, 3. Inspired Georgia Tulips, 4. In Fabric Land, 5. Japanese X and + block, 6. Happy Birthday to me, 7. Hearting Pink, 8. Cherry Blossom, 9. Kim Diehl Blooming Vases

Mmm... lots of red and lots of pink...but I am not in a colour rut! Besides there is not much red left in my stash, but I have loads of pink, I hope someone in my "hive" wants pink blocks...maybe I need to make a couple of girly quilts.

Life is crazy busy for me right now, I am still quilting away for the exhibition at the end of July, it's school holidays, my sister is getting married in three weeks and I am Matron of Honour. I prefer to call myself "Best Bridesmaid", otherwise I feel a bit old! But it's all good crazy, not bad crazy!

What are your plans this weekend? I will be busy quilting...oh yes, and folding origami flowers for my sister's wedding :)

Bird Watching - Mini Quilt

Since finishing my So Tweet, there has been an itch in my fingers to do another mini quilt using my green and brown scraps...well it's my mother-in-law's birthday tomorrow, and she loves to spend time outside in her garden, sitting and watching birds, whilst having a cup of tea.

So obviously what she needed was a mini quilt called "Bird Watching", that could be used as a little placemat at morning tea time!

The feature birdie is a scrap of an older Joel Dewberry home decor range....and I just love the orange shot cotton...it adds a bit of spice.

Happy Birthday Jo! Enjoy the birds :)

Japanese + and x blocks...so addictive!

I couldn't help myself, this weekend just past, the goal of 25 blocks was reached! What has been been enjoyable about making these blocks has been the freedom able to play with lots of different fabrics...

Some scraps and some favourites out of the stash...

Blending the old with the new....

My design wall is non existent, so I used a photo mosaic tool to build a picture of what all the blocks might look like if they were randomly put together...

The blocks are 7" (finished) so I am just trying to decide how big I want this to be...if I was to make more blocks, I think I might need some more darker colours...what do you think?

Do you hate deadlines?

Deadline, smeadline that's what I say! Do deadlines make you hot and sweaty, anxious, stressed...yep me too! But guess what...a girl has to have fun too...

I know I have to finish my exhibition quilts...but there is 6 weeks to go...so maybe I could squeeze a few more of these japanese + and x blocks in...they are fun...

....and I do have some already cut...

Now I have 18 blocks made...but if I were to make another 7, I would have 25, which is a lovely number....nice and natural! Sorry maths pun...I just googled "the number 25" and it's a "natural number". Yep that's right I am a bit of a nerd as well as a quilter!

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In a perfect world, you should only work on one thing at a time...really you should! Then you could meet your deadlines without getting all hot and sweaty, anxious and stressed...but then life wouldn't be very real would it?

Update: Let's get quilting!

Well, I think I got in about 10 hours of quilting this weekend, if you don't include "crowd control" measures, such as stopping teenagers from shouting at each other, or the dog barking at neighbours, or a quick run to the shop for milk, and other miscellaneous distracting activities that happen when you live with four people and a dog!

After quilting for a while the invisible cone of silence descended, and most of the afore mentioned distractions were blocked out...so much so that the quilting thread has almost run out, yikes!

My quilt has a number of these little "butterfly bubbles" which I have free motion quilted a flower around them. It's quite enjoyable to do this small circular motion quilting, it's the larger areas that stress me out!

From the back of the quilt!

Whilst quilting this weekend, it occurred to me that there are another two items in my trusty machine quilting arsenal, the most obvious one is my Built-in Stitch Regulator (BSR) foot, I can't get over that you need to unplug the machine pedal for the foot to work, it's quite liberating only to have to concentrate on moving your hands in order to quilt.

The last item in the quilting arsenal is the self threading needle, for all those quilt threads to be pulled through and buried into the quilt. Some quilters like to run their stitch down to a small stitch and then snip the threads off, but I don't trust those threads not popping after the quilt is washed, so I prefer to knot and bury the threads...I have to say it is the least most interesting part of quilting!!!

I am off to start doing some more burying threads and quilting! Have a good week.

Let's get quilting!

Yeah, it's a three day weekend! Saturday I ran around like a mad thing, trying to get as many messages done as possible, and I am hoping to settle in for a big quilt-a-thon for the rest of the weekend. This is one of three quilts that need to be finished for my guild's exhibition in the beginning of August, I won't blog about this quilt until after it is exhibited.

I have organised myself with my favourite tricks of the "trade", my can of spray starch, and my all purpose gloves.

The spray starch is used to spray on the sewing machine bed to make it slippery, and the quilt glides more easily, especially important for free motion quilting, and the gloves have a non slip surface to help your fingertips grip the quilt as it is moved around while quilting.

I have started doing a little embellishment in the centre of the quilt, I am using a King Tut variegated blue thread, it's very pretty.

Now I just need to decide on how to do the rest of the quilt! Happy quilting this weekend.

So many quilt-a-longs!

Since starting blogging this year, I have been wasting spending time in blog land, I am quite fascinated with all the online quilt-a-longs you can participate in. Just this week, these QAL's (blogland speak!) have popped up:

And then there is the Farmer's Wife Quilt-a-long based the book by Laurie Aaron Hirt, I like the look of this book...(Mum, do we have the book?)

And then there is this one...Japanese + and x block, check out this tutorial, and this Flickr group and of course I just had to do this!

Great way to use scraps and I have a smallish collection of novelty and print fabric that this quilt-a-long really fits into nicely...

It's very addictive...hard to stop once you get started...and if you have three exhibition quilts to finish by the end of July and 412" of binding to stitch down by the end of the week, you really shouldn't start at all!!

But a girl's has to have some fun...right?

It's back.....

The Home Sweet Home quilt is back from the quilters....looking fabulous of course...and my sister and her fiance now have a move in date of the end of next week...yikes....check out all the binding that has to happen...112"... Guess what I am doing for the next week!

What's your sewing goal for the next week?