Strawberry hearts and orange pinwheels

A lot of recent activity in the sewing lounge has been for others.  Mainly making up kits for two charity quilt workshops I am running in March and April, which has taken up a lot of my time.  Mind you it has reduced my novelty stash and scrap bin considerably.  Then Mum gave me some of her scraps, so back to where I started LOL!

  These scrap triangles donated from a friend have been hanging around for a long time and a need to sew finally gave me the push I needed.  I was thinking of making a  mini but there were a WHOLE lot more HST to be trimmed so it might stretch to a doll quilt.  The HST finish at 1.5", so the pinwheels are 3" and its now 15" square.  Perhaps I will add a white border, not sure.  Lots of HST left over, but not four the same fabric, so need to use them up in a different way, perhaps the border?

While making something orange for February RSC was important to me....I really got fired up about these pretty strawberry reds and soft pinks in my stash.  I had written down a note on an easy method to make 1.5" HST I had seen online. So then when I started seeing cute images of heart blocks for St Valentines day I just started sewing.  THe blocks finish at 4" but no idea what I am going to do with them, perhaps another mini, just enjoyed the process of playing!

The weather has been hot and humid, too much to want a quilt on my lap for binding.  So now its a bit cooler I have finally finished a few of my binding jobs.

I made this out of the last scraps from my plus sign quilt. I had to piece and substitute some of the reds to get the last few rectangles.    I made it the right size for the scraps that I had left over, so is only big enough to be a dolls quilt.

This quilt is even smaller and will also be gifted as a dolls quilt.  I need to make some teddy bear sleeping bags to go with them!

Happy quilting Sue

Frolic flimsy finished

Frolic flimsy is finished!  

The border was fairly straight forward.  The addition of the solid white border stopped the stretch from bias edges and the HST behaved beautifully.  I have stitched right around the outer edge immediately and found some of the HST seams had started to pop open.  I am considering adding another skinny white border....but for now enjoying the quilt as it is.

I already had lots of blue HST made in my parts department.  So I have a lovely array of colour variations.  But my pinks follow the pink in the quilt fairly closely.  I like the combined effect of existing colour and new.  There are lots of fabrics in this top that I can point out and say, "that was a backing, or from Mums unwanted stash, or from a bag I made." It is a scrap quilt...except that I did have to buy some yardage in white and green, plus there was some bargin bin navy that was perfect to finish out the blues.  I might have purchased other colours before checking my stash adequately but they will be used eventually!!

Happy quilting Sue.

Traffic jam flimsy finish

I took the Frolic top to patchwork so I could trim the edges in company of friends - to boost my confidence!  But in order to carry all the bits and pieces I had to empty these mini quilts out of a bag.  When I got home I decided they deserved some attention NOW while they were out of the bag!

The navy mini just needed hanging corners added - quick unpick of already stitched down binding and that job took 10 minutes!  The colourful nine patch neonatal quilt needed binding - took another 15 minutes to find a cute orange stripe in my stash and get that sewn on.  Last but not least the aqua/red neonatal quilt needed quilting and binding.  So now I have some hand sewing for evenings and three little quilts are nearly finished - yippee!

My Traffic jam flimsy was next in line for some overdue attention. I found a rapidly dwindling collection of grey and black fabrics and cut up 4.5" strips and sewed the borders on.  The pattern has a pieced borders from 2.5 squares, but I had depleted my supply of pre cut squares in these colours and I am happy with the final look.  I am going to try and quilt this myself, but need to find a backing first.

A continuation of my experimentation of making very large HST I made a giant churn dash - this is currently 37 " square.  I am going to add a blue border to make it finish up at the size I want.  The idea is that it will make a good teen boy quilt fand a easy kit to cut and make for the charity workshops I am hosting.  However with all that "blank" space one really should try out some new quilting patterns ; ) we will see if that happens or not!

Happy quilting Sue. 

Quilted ladybird cot quilt and Frolic takes shape

The second ladybird lone star cot quilt has been ready for quilting for months.  Mum took pity on me and did the main stitch in the ditch then gave it back to me.  For some reason I went with heavy quilting, which looks great, but too way too long for a little quilt!  Oh well its all done now, just needs a trim and binding.

It took a few  before I got the rhythm of making the Frolic blocks.  Its great to have all the little fiddly units made, so I quickly got 12 blocks finished in a day and half - in between getting kids back to school and normal domestic duties.

Then I made the sashing and decided that I really needed to see it laid out on point.  

A friend called in and that gave me the motivation to crawl around on the floor to decide if I wanted the hassle of making the quilt on point.  We both quickly agreed, that on point rocked!  And I had already made one half block so the decision to progress was easy!

I kept motoring away until Frolic was completed!  Well I still have to add the borders.  I have the HST made, but not sure if I have enough (because this is only a half sized version of Bonnie's pattern), as I being lazy and not doing the maths.  

That's next weeks job!

Happy quilting Sue.

Frolic first block finished

The reveal of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt Frolic has occurred  and I was able to lay out the pieces I had finished.  However I had to quickly make a set of flying geese with pink and blue wings.  The last set of instructions includes cutting white squares and piecing the corners, but the blocks are set on point.

Then progress stalled as I wrote three job applications and packed to go on holidays.  I did pack my hand sewing but did not get it out of the bag once!

So I was keen to sew when we got home, hence one block got made up.  And now I have to suck it up and piece and trim parts before I cam make pretty blocks!  The heatwave weather is perfect for piecing, but we will see how far I get.

We had a lovely family holiday in Robe, a small beachside town in South Australia.  It was a lovely social relaxing time, but the weather was not what you would call hot...barely warm on the good days.

Hubby and I might look wind swept, here but let me assure you it was a heck of a lot windier at times!  Some of the tenting campers packed up and went home early - we have a pop up (the beds slide out under canvas) caravan and it did ratting a few nights, but it stayed up and kept us dry when it rained!

My two boys, two years apart and now about 2 cm height difference....fingers crossed Mr 13 has a growth spurt this year or Mr 11 is going to overtake him and squash his big brothers ego!

In order to make sure the boys could actually get in the water for more than 15 minutes, we purchased wetsuits so they could boogie board in comfort!  The two days it did rain were spent playing card games, reading, playing on the flying fox and jumping pillow and in the indoor pool in the caravan park - the kids had a ball!  I had a surfing lesson on one of the "bad" weather days and in a full wet suit it was surprisingly comfortable.  Trying to get up on the surfing board was not comfortable but it was good fun!  So now I can tick that experience off my bucket list, LOL!  

Back home and back to a heatwave, but rest assured in a very small caravan that qualifies as a glorified tent I was secretly pleased we had more bad weather than heat!

Happy quilting, Sue.

Green four patches and other RSC blocks

I made a resolution that in 2020 I would return to Rainbow Scrap Challenge - I really missed it last year!  Januarys colour is green.

To kick things off I have continued making four patches from 2.5" scraps in all shades of green.

Then I started making four patches of Half Squared Triangles in coordinated fabrics.  This got a bit tricky so I used similar toned fabrics to make up the numbers. I was hoping to make these the sails of sail boat blocks.  I have loads of brown scraps and thought I could use them as boat hulls.

Then I went looking for the previously made 4 patches that I had  made into Irish chain (??) blocks...not sure of name? And realised I had nearly enough to start making a charity quilt, if I could find some more white sashing fabric in my stash.  The bonus with this layout is all the single 2.5"squares that I cannot find a mate for, get to be cornerstones!  

After a marathon day sewing I thought I  was winning the war on reducing my scraps.  And then Mum decided to gift me some fabric (scraps of course) to "help" me out, LOL!  I spent another marathon day cutting it up into useable squares.  I am kitting up quilts for a charity sewing day and this will help....so long as all of it gets used up!

I started making these mini Dresden blocks a few years ago as part of my RSC, but only made seven.  The last block was orange and it turns out I cut them too small to use.  I lost interest then, but this year decided to resurrect this as my hand sewing project.  I loved making the leaves and berries in my Warm Regards quilt last year, so have appliqued cherries in the centre of each Dresden.  This has been a fun way to use my reproduction fabric scraps.  We will see how far I get this year.

Happy quilting Sue.

New bikes, bulbs and some sewing progress.

We brought our boys new bikes for Christmas.  I took them on a  ride New Years eve day...it was a long ride and they sailed along, while I struggled behind to catch up!  So more exercise required in 2020, if I am going to keep up and stay healthy!  

Sadly I didn't get a photo of both blooms on my gifted hellebore, but I am delighted it flowered at all.  My maternal grandmother had potted Hellebores on her porch and I always admired them.  In the last few years I have been adding the plants I admired from both grandmothers gardens into my garden.  This was a gift from the garden of a lady who lived in the retirement village I used to manage.  A very generous gift, as the bulbs are expensive.

I have been slowly stitching along with Frolic, Bonnie Hunters mystery.  I put off sewing one clue because it required cutting quarter square triangles - but when I did using Bonnies speciality ruler I was delighted how easy it was and that I got perfect flying geese.  I have never used a method for flying geese that gave me great results, so I am very pleased.  I will be saving that clue to live with the ruler, as the detailed instructions (including ironing directions) were very helpful.  I am really glad that I decided to only make half the quantity, I have struggled to find enough matching fabric and last week thought I had run out of blue...which has never occured in this house!  Luckily I found a meter each of two different navy prints in the backings box.
I thought I had no aqua scraps but it turns out I have heaps....but I had already given  into temptation and purchased some aqua, raspberry, white and bright green (in flying geese) ....so far only needed to use the green! I am definitely low on neutrals.  Over the last week I have kitted up about five charity quilts, but dont have neutrals for them all, so will have to go shopping...oh such hardships!
Happy quilting, Sue.