Kids quilt top

I have had a meter of dinosaur fabric in my stash for many years.  I found some coordinating brights in my stash and cut them into large half square triangles.  

I auditioned them like this.

But decided I liked this simple layout best.  I have since sewn them together and the top is now waiting for a backing.  

Happy quilting Sue.

Exercise in lights v dark

I needed a quiet distract from the worry of life.  I found some solace in the quiet hours of the early morning reading my quilt magazines.  In the October 2017 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine I found a pattern by Christia Watson for this simple block.

I hate not matching fabrics colours into some sort of theme. 

I really feel uncomfortable with "lights" that are not white or cream.

I love nine patches.  I love scrap quilts....just prefer they coordinate!  

This ugly duckling block looks so much better when you join it with three friends.

I am still cringing over the clashing combination of ugly fabrics used.  But I could not bring myself to throw the unloved 2.5" squares out, so decided they could live here.

These blocks will be leaders and enders and slowly grow over time.  And all that scrap and collection of fat quarters that I have fallen out of love with....its going to find a new home here.

Happy quilting, Sue.

Slow and quick stitching

In desperate need for some quilty gratification I spent the day adding sashing to these I Spy blocks we made back in March. 

That makes for a decent sized quilt for favorite kids charity group, so not adding a border.  Went to Spotty and brought some nice green fabric as backing on sale.  Then at 5 am this morning when I woke up and decided I was going to sort backings to quilts and deliver them to my long armer....I changed my mind.  So stripy backing it is!

The applique all got finished for the four corner blocks this week.  I made a couple of design changes, to these blocks, minor but just made life easier.  

The most obvious one is that I used a star centre on two flowers in pink and a yellow circle on the other two.  Just liked it more!

No motivation to work on this quilt further at present.  I dread squaring up blocks and that is what has to happen next.  So off to distract myself with backings for now.

Happy quilting Sue

Warm regards progress

I sewed more of the Italian Cross blocks for this quilt last week.  Trimming them was not fun, trying to line up the corners and centre.  They are not perfect, but neither am I and just focusing on having fun!

I have made reasonable progress on finishing the applique for these four blocks.  I am just auditioning berries for the tops.  I have two more stars in the centre of the purple flowers to applique on and considering leaving two pink and sewing the last two in yellow.

Raising baby budgies is obviously not as taxing as child rearing, as the mother has gone and laid more eggs, before all the current fledglings are out of the nest!  These are the first three, sorry about the quality of the photo, my phone doesn't cope with distance (the babies like sitting at top of the cage) and the wire causes it to focus on the wrong subject.

Two dozen bottles of Granny Smith apples grown by us have been preserved, with help from my parents.  Mum has all the canning equipment and a nifty apple peeling machine, which made the process quicker. 

Dad turned up the next day with boxes and buckets of Pink Lady apples from his trees at the farm. I have stored some in our second fridge, but giving the rest away.  I still have two buckets of Granny Smiths to decide what to do with.  I predict there is more apple peeling in my future!

Happy quilting Sue.