This week in pictures

Hmm, a week as gone by and I haven't posted, downloaded pictures from my camera or checked any of the blogs I follow!  Yes I have been a bit unwell this week, but also lost the fight for "the stick" to use the Internet with DH...well he does work from home, so gets first priority!  It took me two and half hours this morning to catch up on the blogs I follow, which might seems like a waste of time, but it did fill me with inspiration and block out the screaming fighting over the "new" toy we borrowed from the toy library...I am so going to cancel my membership!
So last Saturday I had a lovely time sewing with friends and managed to cross off a few things off my to do list.  And this is what my fellow quilters were up to...

 Stacy pinned and started quilting a quilt for her MIL.  I love the colours in this quilt, not sure that the photo does them justice.

 Brenda loves blue and started making log cabins.  I am not sure if these are from her stash, but I think she did a great job of sorting lights v darks....and collecting lights, I am hopeless at finding lights in any other colour then cream!  I cannot wait to see this finished, she isn't sure what pattern she is going to use yet eg barn raising.  Karen was also making log cabins but in batiks - sorry no picture because I didn't bring the camera out until late in the day.   

 Shez was making a table runner/table cloth out of this gorgeous print.  Nice and bright ready for a big dinner party tonight...hope nobody spills their red wine...or is that just me that manages to knock something over when you go out for tea?

Kylie popped in to join us for a few hours and managed lots of sewing.  This quilt top is one of two for her parents beds in their caravan.  She used left over bits of different jelly rolls and it makes for a nice scrappy quilt.

 

This is what I was sewing, the "Luck of the Irish" quilt.  I only brought two fabrics, this green and the light print - which is a pale green ...which was a big deal as its a floral print (don't like florals only leaf prints!) and a light!   BUT can you see the seam in the top left corner?  Yes I ran out of the light print and needed 10 more half square triangles, so spent alot of time piecing bits so I could finish the last two rows for the top.  I am hoping that once I finish the quilt they wont look too obvious as they are all in one corner of the quilt...not my preferred way of doing things, but I brought the fabric so long ago I knew I would never find any more.

Now I just need to add borders!  Its not as big as I would like so I am thinking I should add a light tone on tone skinny border and then add a pieced border? 

So according to my to do list I did get the binding machine sewn on my Wagga (Sat), then finished piecing the top of my Luck of the Irish quilt, but I didn't do too much damage to my diet (nice apple pie doesn't count because it has fruit in it so therefore is healthy!) and had loads of fun.

However I didn't get any more bias made for the Celtic quilt.  So on Sunday I did a heap of gardening (for me the brown thumb) and then retreated into my sewing room.  I had a big tidy up, threw out some stuff (not fabric), rearranged my books for easy of access and then decided that I had time to whip up this new cover for my mini ironing board.

 And then I still had some afternoon left over (don't ask me what the kids were doing!) and I got the bias made for that last bit of the last Celtic block. 

 AND THEN I had some time for navel gazing which resulted in a few more little projects that have again distracted me!  BUT I did hand sew the binding and rod sleeve on the Wagga and get it submitted to the Royal Adelaide Show (will post a picture next week), so I can strike that off my list!  Better go now late to take DS1 to sports, happy quilting Sue.

Just a peek

This is one of the quilts made by the charity group Quilts from the Heart, that I belong to.  The blocks were given to us by Alan, he said they were "left overs"!  Hmmm, wish my discards were so beautifully pieced!  You can view more HERE.

I have "All Day Sewing" tomorrow, so the plan is to;

a) put the binding on my Wagga

b) sew the extra 20 cm of bias I need for the last Celtic block

c) piece the last couple of rows on Luck of the Irish to "finish it" and then add a border, or at least work out what sort of border it needs.

d) eat food not included in any diet a dietitian would approve of

e) escape the kids, housework and thoughts of chores for a day

f) have some fun...!

Happy quilting, Sue SA.

Eastwood Stars Wedding quilt, finished!

In late 2004 we moved from country Victoria to Sydney and I attending the Hunters Hill Quilters.  Then I got a job and had to find a night group.   So I joined Eastwood Patchwork Quilters, who are sufficiently large enough to warrant one night and two day meetings, weekly!   We got married in 2005, so I hadn't been a member very long, but these generous ladies presented me with 50 blocks to help celebrate our wedding.   The four pointed starts are largely hand pieced (a specialty of many of the Eastwood quilters) and the theme was "country", so you can see some blocks have chooks and others houses, all very appropriate as DH had chooks before we moved! 

 I was so thrilled with the blocks that I went especially went to a hand quilting class, thinking that I would hand quilt the top.  But squeezing in a class BEFORE I got married was a bad idea, as I was so busy organising a wedding (in Victoria) from Sydney that I didn't even get started on the piecing.  And then I came home from our honeymoon pregnant!  When I was six months pregnant we got given notice to move out of our apartment, a blessing in the long run, but a double dose of stress at the time. So before DS1 was born I went on a sewing frenzy (he was late) and finished and started lots of projects.  I brought a red/beige print and pieced the top together on the diagonal.  It looked awful, so it went into the cupboard and waited.  It waited there while we moved to Adelaide, spent 12 months looking for a house to buy, got pregnant again and moved into our now home just a few months before the arrival of DS2.  Somewhere during this time I unpicked the blocks, brought another print (red again), started cutting out the blocks and again put it aside.  

 Needless to say its been a thrill to finally finish this quilt.  The journey of this quilt will always be dear to me, because it is a record of our first five and half years of marriage and the friendships I have made as a quilter.  All fifty of the stars are included in the quilt, with the 50th forming part of the label - because it was the only one with dark background, which worked out perfectly with the backing I choose. 

 I love the backing, it has a lovely small print in the same blue/grey as the top and it shows up MY quilting very nicely.  My machine quilting isn't fantastic, but I was determined to quilt it myself and I knew that any attempts at hand quilting  would drag out for another five and half years!

The final part to this story ... this quilt won me the Presidents Encouragement Award at the South Australian Quilters Guild meeting for show and tell last Thursday night - our president said that she could relate to the story of this quilt!   

Happy quilting Sue.

Quilts for Japan

 This was the easiest quilt to make, nine different transport fabrics, sew into a large nine patch.  Cut into four, turn blocks, sew back together and add borders!    As posted previously I had made the mistake of stippling it in dark colour which looked awful.  I pulled this out and re quilted it in straight lines in mono filament and I was much happier with the end result. 

 I was very happy with this quilt, Bright Stars, it is bright, cheerful, I got to practise my FMQ on it (LOL!) and I finally got over my fear of using white fabric!  You cannot tell but the white background actually has little black stars all over it. 

This is the cot quilt that started me on the long long journey of UFOs!  I had always intended this quilt to be for the child of one of my oldest friends, who resides in Japan, married a Japanese man and had her first baby 10 years ago!!  So when I finally finished it in February it was certainly my intention to send it to Japan to keep someones baby warm.  The scenes of the tsunami sweeping across landscape will haunt me for a long time.  It is those feelings of hopelessness that make me grateful I am a quilter, because I know that apart from donating money, I can make a quilt, which will in a small way enrich the life of someone else.   I found these words on the Internet, kindly translated into Japanese, which I printed out and included on the label of my three cot quilts;
"May this quilt keep you safe from harm,
may it be your good luck charm,
I do not know your name or the mountains you face,
what you hold in your arms is a quilters embrace."
Words by Cathy Miller, The Singing Quilter - who gave her permission for the words to be included labels of quilts for Japan. 
A special THANK YOU to Kristen who saved the day by taking these photos as I was on my way to the post office to meet the deadline to get these quilts to Japan. 
Happy quilting Sue.

Celtic Quilt, four down, one to go

This morning I got some time to play with the camera...I am a bit excited as I finished the fourth Celtic block last night.

So now I am wondering how to put the 12 blocks together...this would be nice but small (48" x 64").....

 But if I add some green sashing it makes the blocks "float" and will make the quilt bigger...

 But perhaps a blue sashing will make the indivdual blocks stand out more?

Or I could put them on point ... with blue or green setting triangles?

 OR the final and largest option - on point with plain blocks in between with some feature quilting?  I quite like this layout (not necessarily in the blue) but some of these blocks look a bit funny on point (last two on the right hand side)?

Food for thought... 

This afternoon DS2 had a nap (fell asleep playing on the floor!) so I got to make the bias I needed to make the LAST block!  Happy quilting Sue.

Catch up time

This past week DH has had an unsolvable Internet problem which only seems to affect me when I wanted to access my blog.  In desperation this morning I had to sneak in via my other blog... don't think I have told you about my other blog, but you can find it here - Quilts from the Heart SA  which is a pictorial record of the quilts our group make for charity.  I haven't spent much time on it lately, but hope to bring it up to date soon, when our IT issues are resolved! ANYWAY I wanted to update you on what I have been doing over the last month, so here we go...

 This Celtic block is half finished... a little bit more hand sewing to go!  I completed this one (underneath) while we were visiting family interstate.  Should have given it a press before taking a photo!  There is only one more block to make and then I will have them all finished.

This is the library bag I made DS1.  He came home (in the first week) with a notice Wednesday that they needed a library bag for Thursday...and of course he didn't want any of the fabric I had in my stash, so we had to fit in a quick trip to the shops.  I didn't know how big to make this bag, so just made it up as I went along.  I added drawstrings to the top, so the books wouldn't fall out.  But silly Mummy, the books are really really big when you are just starting school!

While we were interstate (during the school holidays) I nearly finished my first seven sisters block.  This is part of my hexagons/diamonds, no pattern/making it up as I go along WIP! I have discovered that glue works fairly well when piecing over papers and that has speed up my progress on this project.  That and being separated from my machine! 

 I have also started hand sewing the binding down on one of my UFO's.  While sewing in the ends I have found a few gaps in the machine quilting that I need to go back and fix before I show you the whole quilt.

 And finally I did lots of baking for two special birthdays.  I had largely given up on my aspirations to make fancy birthday cakes.  I don't know what to do with brightly iced cake left overs, because for some reason all the children we know just take one bite and leave the rest...and their parents decline to participate!  So the last few years we have had lamingtons with candles (easy to freeze left overs and more appealing to young and old) as birthday fare.  However when your nearly five you have an opinion on cake...had to be chocolate with vanilla icing.  OK I can do that...but looked a bit boring, so just spiced it up with DS1 favorite theme...roadworks! 
Happy Quilting Sue SA.

Busy busy

I have been busy, but not sewing, rather "unsewing"!  In an attempt to quickly finish this quilt I decided to stipple it and for reasons unknown I decided to use navy thread..duh!   After a lot of dramas involving printers, I finally got labels printed today (thank you Elaine and Dalice) for this quilt, the green/white QAYG log cabin and Bright Stars cot quilts.  They are all going in the mail to Japan, hopefully tommorow.  The deadline is end of July, and apparently it takes a week even by air mail.  I have just realised DH has the camera...and he is in NZ...(#*%$#!!

DS1 starts school on Monday, for the first time...yipee more sewing time for Mummy!  Yes I know I am supose to be sad, but I still have darling DS2 at home to keep me company.  Hmm, perhaps I wont be stitching up a storm after all, oh well!  Happy quilting Sue.