Not another new project!

Yep! Just as the UFO pile has just started to whisper "Finish me" instead of shouting "FINISH ME" I had the dreaded inspiration wave come over me, and before you could say "two and half inch strip" fabric had exploded out my scrap box, and stash cupboard, and away we went again....riding the wave...it all started with this book...

Making Quilts....the promise of joy by Kathy Doughty of Material Obsession....I have been waiting awhile for this to come out, and I love it....so many great ideas....21 patterns...so lots to drool over....and you really just want to start making a quilt straight away after reading it!

So that's what I did....and I started on Soul Searching....such a great pattern for an instant sewing fix....I got to tidy up my scraps and touch lots of my stash, and basically make a huge mess...but it made me happy :)

The idea with this pattern is to learn about contrast and tone, and not to focus so much on perfectly matching everything....so I really had to let go with the light strips and mix up the whites, creams and beiges....that was a bit of struggle for me....but overall the focus on tone has worked well :)

As an aside I thought I would share this other pattern Sunburst....

Beautiful use if Denyse Schmidt's Greenhill fabrics.....I may have the kit for this plus the templates!! Repeat after me....one thing at a time!

So all up....love this book....love that there is 21 patterns, something for everyone, the instructions are easy to follow, and as the book is printed by QuiltMania, the text is in French and English, but they have managed this in a clever way, by using the blue boxes for the english so you don't have to spend time trying to work out where the english bit on the page is...go buy it...you won't regret it!

Off to go and play with my pink scraps!

Pretty pink stash buster

I have been beavering away on getting my pink stash buster quilt top finished...blogged about here....

It has been great to see my pile of fabrics go from this...

to this...

to this...

It has turned out as a quite busy quilt top, and quite big 54"x 72"...

but I love it because of the raspberry pink, and these ladies....

I am a bit of a sucker for anything with a japanese girl on it.

Not sure what sewing I will get done this weekend, I have an 18th birthday party (my first born!) to help organise tomorrow....hopefully Sunday will find me at my machine for a while.

Back to Baby Quilts

Remember the last baby quilts that I made....blogged about here.....the mum recently sent me through a photo of the babies sleeping under the quilts....so cute....

I have been spending some time working on some new baby quilts recently....and I was finding it a bit of chore because my friend had said she had decorated her nursery in brown and yellow and she didn't like baby blue or pink....now as soon as someone says "don't use those colours", what are first colours you think about using? yep... baby pink or blue...and of course to compound my creative block, I am not good with brown, it's just not my colour way!

So what colour can go with brown and yellow? How about grey? So I dusted off a little charm pack of Moda's Hullabaloo, and used this Moda Bake Shop pattern, and came up with this....

Not too bad...but isn't that a bit pink?

Yes, it's a little pink, but it will go in a brown and yellow nusery!

But guess what? She had a boy! A lovely little boy, so of course my lack of confidence about the colour came back so I decided to have another crack at a "grey" baby quilt.

This time no pink!

This little quilt actually had a status of UFO, it has been in the cupboard for maybe two years, in little pieces, based on a pattern by Laura Knowles and Diana McClune....not sure if I can remember all the fabrics, the turtle is from Wendy Slotbottom....the bird and the flower fabrics is a part of an organic range.

So it has a lovely pastel feel to it, and a variegated blue thread for the quilting will look lovely....not sure if it really fulfils the brief, but I am not making a third quilt! Now to find a flat surface, and some time to pin the quilt!

P.S. Something unexpected happened after my last post...I put the photos up on Flickr, and the full size photo of my Crossed Block Quilt ended up in Explore, which is a selection of random shots from across Flickr from the last 7 days...so there is the photo of my little quilt, with all these awesome shots of animals, landscapes, and people...I have several comments on what a great photo it is....it's quite funny...'cos I always think I need a new camera so I can take better photos!

Crossed Block Quilt All Done

It's June already! In fact it's almost half way through June, May has completely passed me by, and so it would appear half of June! I have been getting bits and pieces of sewing done, but no big bursts :(

One of my bits and pieces is my Crossed Block Quilt, which I finished quilting in April, I was trying to get it done for the Bloggers Quilt Festival but missed the "boat"...boo hoo...now it has the binding on and has taken it's rightful place on my brand new red lounge...lookin' pretty good :)

Although, it might be a bit small, should I make something bigger? Or maybe some pillows... blue perhaps...or red and white...what a decision !

Very happy with how my quilt has come together...'specially luvin' my binding using the big red check from the Denyse Schmidt Picnic and Fairground range.

Lessons learnt from making this quilt:

1) Don't sew your cream blocks together with a neutral bone, which is darker than the cream...but you knew that right?

2) When using a light background be extra diligent on trimming back dangly threads...other wise you get to quilting the last row and notice that there is a big long clump of dark threads that you have successfully quilted through, and now can't get out without masses of unpicking (no, I didn't...too slack!)...but you probably knew that too :)

Essential details again:

Yield: 50x50" quilt
Fabric: Denyse Schmidt fabrics from a variety of ranges, Background Kona Natural
Tutorial: Crossed Block The LongThread

Retreat report

What a great time we all had at Mount Bundy, there was lots of laughs, lots of food, and most importantly lots of sewing... but no horse riding!!

Despite spending months planning what I was going take, including cutting out two projects, I changed my mind at the last minute (go figure) and took the Piece O'Cake project from my last post...

I managed to move it along from having one block ironed down, to getting all four blocks ironed down, each block is about 18"... the final quilt will have a flower/star in the center to cover where the stems meet, and there will be a border as well.

I had brought the right threads to start button-hole stitching, such great planning :) So I have all the brown stems button holed, and the button hole stitch on the pink flowers has been started, it is coming along very nicely! The thread used is King Tut, I like the way it defines the stitch.

But of course I couldn't stay working on just one project, I had to start on something else...maybe I have a Quilters version of ADD....well as mentioned earlier I had spent a lot of preparation time cutting....I starting sewing together another project....I will tell you more about this one in another post!

All the ladies were very productive and kindly stopped sewing to say a big hello to you all...

Judy and Jenny

Deb, Belinda, Judy and Judy

Jan, Colleen,  Robyn and Robyn

Jane, Lyn, Bernadette and Jackie

Chris, Barbara, and Kaye

And Christina in the colour corner...you almost can't see her! Christina's quilt is the one on the left of the screen, it's an eye spy quilt with a twist....Christina has carefully chosen and collected all the pictures to begin with a different letter of the alphabet...this is a quilt for her grandchild, and she will embroider a square for the centre with the child's name on it....a lovely quilt for a young child.

The other two quilts on the wall belong to Lyn, who cleverly avoided having her photo taken by me! No, not really...she is behind this quilt!

This is another version of the stash buster quilt I blogged about a couple of posts ago, they do come up nicely, must get mine together!

So there you have it, we had a lovely time, aided by the lovely food cooked by Jenny, Judy and Jane, and the good organisation from Jan, and her helpers.

And I just had to include this sunset shot of the billabong....Can you feel the serenity...

Happy quilting this weekend :)

Goin' on a Quilt Retreat

Woot...Woot...Every year the Darwin Patchworkers and Quilter's plan a quilt retreat to Mount Bundy. This is a working cattle station about 150 kms south of Darwin, about 25 ladies take the opportunity to get out of town for three days and sew and sew and sew! And it is happening this weekend, and I am excited!

I didn't get to go last year as my youngest brother 's wedding clashed with the retreat, but this year I have been able to organise myself to go...there is never a right time to go away for three nights when you are a mother of three...so I have pushed through the pain barrier, and I am GOING!

I am taking way too many projects so goodness knows what I will actually get done, and in fact looking for photos for this post I found this photo of the project I started two years ago, that is yet to be completed!

I had forgotten how gorgeous it is...it's a project from the Piece O'Cake designs book...Applique Outside the Lines, so maybe I will do that!

Or maybe I could go horse riding...

or just wander around and soak up the serenity!

But most likely I will be SEWING.....Happy quilting..P.S. And it is a long weekend here in the Northern Territory :)

It's Pink time again!

The local club was meeting a couple of Saturday's ago, to do a Fat Quarter Stash Buster quilt....as you would expect I have plenty of Fat Quarters....so how to choose where to start...I have a lot of pink, so it seemed obvious to use up some of my pink stash...this piece was my inspiration piece...

So pretty, it's an Alexander Henry that's been in the cupboard for too many years.

Matching pinks? Too much pink? I only needed 12 fat quarters, but I threw some extras...just in case :)

Now cut up and sewn up into a 18.5 inch block! So much cutting!!! So much sewing...I have made 12 of these blocks. (P.S. Do you like my new vinyl plank flooring?)

All laid out....but I didn't use much of my japanese ladies :( Enough left for another pink quilt :) This last photo is taken with my iPhone....so I will take some better shots when it is all sewn up...

I am just trying to decided whether to put some sashing in between the blocks, or just go for the rich pink/raspberry look...any suggestions?