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.