My boy loves big rigs

Our oldest son loves big rigs and look what I found in the patchwork shop in Maldon!  

I also got some trucking road sign fabric (who knew!) and this very cute koala and kookaburra fabric, and a Jo Morton print.  

The Jo Morton print is for this quilt.  Which is a wall hanging, that I want to be a quilt...well a lap quilt. So it has been hanging around in the UFO pile for a long time now.  A few weekends ago I managed to make two trial churn dash blocks, to contemplate what it would look like with a border of light or dark blue churn dash blocks.

Ann from Periwinkle Patchwork kindly worked out the yardage for me, and I think I have stuffed it up by cutting all the pieces half an inch too big.  This block is 15", I figured if I was going to dabble in the modern world, I was going to go BIG!

One of my goals this weekend is to make churn dash blocks, along with making the rest of these modern plus blocks from my modern fabric. Why the big plans?  I am actually interstate on retreat with some good stitching friends for a long weekend of fun! 

  I have a another WIP to get back on track, as well as a kids quilt all cut out.  I figure four projects is enough to keep me stitching all weekend...admittedly a long weekend!

I promise progress photos next week!

Happy quilting Sue.

Binding done, tick, what’s next?

This is the Monkey cot quilt, just large squares that were gifted to me, joined together and stippled.  The binding is a a very old print, but perfect for this simple but fun quilt.

The digger panel cot quilt all finished with the binding stitched down. 

And just to make sure I had really earned that callous in my finger, I stitched on a few bird wings.

It is fair to say that currently I am spending more time focusing on my day job and family responsibilities and less at sewing. Hopefully I can carve out some additional sewing time in March.

Happy quilting Sue.

Hand work accomplished

I had finished all the handwork (applique and embroidery) on this bag (Simply Sonja by Hugs n Kisses) awhile back, but it got tucked away  in a tidy up, unfinished.  I dragged it out on Sunday and honestly the hardest thing was going down the street to buy the fusible pellon and the zip....hard because I had brought two zips the day prior, but they were too short!

 The reason I feel in love with this bag was the pretty handwork on one side and the vinyl on the others, so you can SEE what is in the bag....because I loose things all the time!

The zip is supposed to be on of the lace type, which suit this method of putting the bag together.  My normal zip protested a bit (bit of puckering), but also likely to do with sewing it directly onto the vinyl.  I will be on the look out for some lace zips, because I would like to make a few more of these bags as gifts.

I also finished this wool cushion (previous weekend) by Stacy West of Buttermilk Basin that appeared in October 2017 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting.  It took way longer to make the tiny half square triangles then I thought.  But all along I knew that this was not going to be a wall hanging.  The original pattern has a nice wide border with more wool pumpkins stitched on, but I am about out of wall space and so a cushion it had to be.

Apologies for the terrible photo, but if anyone can tell me what the name of this fabric is I would be greatly appreciative.  I had a small piece in my stash, no selvage on it and I have used it all up except this piece and I want to buy more (like a metre!).  But without the name of designer or range I have had no luck. I would love to hear from you if you can help!

Happy quilting Sue

Fabric shopping spree

We had a long weekend camping trip to the beach in January and I managed to schedule some clothes shopping and more importantly fabric shopping!

My friend Ann owns Periwinkle Patchwork in Warrnambool and she has lots of lovely bright prints, but I hunted out a few reproductions and this gorgeous bird print...which I think it will become a bag.  I also got some bargains from her sale bin ($5 a metre if you brought the rest of the bolt!), which I don't have a photo of, but brought  a nice yellow and a blue tone on tone, which I will use in my charity quilts.  

Ann helped me pick out these modern prints, but I had to nominate the colours.  I was a bit stuck and so decided to stick to just two colours for my Plus quilt, along with some low volume backgrounds.  Bit excited about having some white/grey based low volumes as I have been admiring them from a distance in everyone else's quilt for a long time now!.   

Some of these French Generals came from Periwinkle and the others came from Elm Grove Patchwork  all of which will go towards finishing my Moonlight quilt - from the book Ann gifted me, A Cut Above by Gerri Robinson.

My long term love affair with reproductions has been tempered lately with the closing of two bricks and mortar stores.  I am not an online fabric shopper, I need to touch, feel and see in the daylight before I buy. So I had lots of fun at Elm Grove Patchwork, buying these bright reproductions for my Warm Regards quilt.    I will definitely be finding excuses to return to this shop, especially as she is not far from Warrnambool, which we love to visit anyway.

Happy quilting 

Warm Regards progress

A day stitching with friends enabled me to sew down all the berries for my Warm Regards centre, now I need to make the birds wings and sew on the leaves.  I always fall down with the preparation - finding time to sew is fine, but finding time to prep....hmmm its elusive at times!

This is the progress for the Warm Regards pieced blocks, total of 46 blocks made and I need 68, so only 22 left to make.  

I have spent part the weekend making jam and enjoying my St Valentines day flowers, both say Summer to me!  

The other part of my weekend has been quilting and sewing on bindings.  I have two kids charity quilts nearly finished, but I am going to save hand stitching the bindings down for weeknight TV viewing.

I am hoping today I can fit in some machine piecing, just not sure where to start!

Happy quilting Sue.

Using my stash

I needed and went looking for some mindless piecing over the weekend, making some more blue (January) Rainbow Scrap Challenge four patches.

Plus lots and lots of purple four patches for Febuary,  I managed to use up all the pre cut purple triangles, with three stars and one HST block.

I spent most of my sewing time quilting.  There is a limit to how much quilting my shoulder will handle.  So in stops and starts I free motioned quilted this cot quilt.  It started life as a panel, a friend had the perfect shade of blue for the border and then I had some digger & truck fabric for the border.  

Its a good feeling to be using up the stash. 

Its a fantastic, enlightening feeling to be writing my first post without any photo hassles!  I followed  Chooky Blue instructions posted on her blog, and emailed the photos off my phone to my blog - where they became this post :) .  That makes me so happy, you cannot imagine.  

My second source of joy over the weekend was buying myself a second hand desk, I have been using an old laminated table for years.  I had looked, but came to the conclusion needed to look second hand because I have a desktop PC, with a tower, so old fashion, and all the new desks are tiny little things (presumably for people with iPads or laptops) without any drawers to keep things in, so impractical!  So I can now blog in comfort, instead of being surrounded by piles of stuff, that did not have a home.  There was another purchase, from the local op shop - a little chest of draws, perfect for my sewing corner, but it needs sanding back.  A project for later....hubby is still working on the desk I brought our son. So he was relieved my desk didn't need any work on it ;) and so was I!

Happy quilting Sue.

Rainbow Scrappy Challenge Nine Patch Quilt

I assembled my assorted Rainbow Scrappy Challenge nine patches into a top in July 2017.  I then pinned it ready for quilting some months ago.  I had good intentions, but summer has been hotter then usual and the thought of quilting was not appealing.  However yesterday I wanted to sew, but it wasn't too hot and I thought "what the heck, just do it!"

Here is the finished quilt (60" x 60")with the scrappy binding machined on, ready to hand sew last night. I did hand stitch most of the binding, but not all last night.

I am normally really organized with pre loading my blog posts, but my computer is objecting to downloading photos off my digital camera....so I started using my phone.  Now it is playing funny #@#@ with downloading photos from my phone.  I have resorted to emailing photos to myself!

Hence my lack of  enthusiasm for blogging - just been too time consuming and Instagram is way easier!  

Still I wanted to link up to Rainbow Scrappy Chanelleng, because a scrappy rainbow finish is always worth celebrating...even if there is another hour of binding sewing left!

Happy quilting Sue.