Determination

I'm settling in for the night - a solid several hours with my sewing machine. I'm utterly determined to finish 'block 4' of Mrs Billings Coverlet. The double diamond border. It's a big job - and I'm just the girl to do it!

Tomorrow I hope to be able to check back in with the borders in place - I've made a good start, let's see if I can have a great finish. Send speedy thoughts my way friends :-)

Show-ing off :-)

My sweet friend Monica gave me a gentle nudge today - a little reminder that I hadn't visited with my blog for a while. Where does a week go? I swear they're spinning by faster and faster! Before I know it, it's going to be the middle of next year!

So, in recent days what have I done? Well, I visited with my quilt at the Royal Adelaide Show. I love gazing at the new ribbon:

And because I stood and stared for a good long while, I noticed that the light was really showing off the quilting. So, like any good quilt paparazzo would, I took more pictures:

And though it seems like little time has passed since you started reading this post ... here in the sewing room, my laptop has just recovered from a blue screen of death experience ... so I'll make the rest of this short and sweet ...

I was fascinated with the display of orchids, so many of them I'd never seen the likes of:

 One day I'll have some of my own ... but given my black thumb, maybe it'd be kinder not to ...

While visiting with the orchids, I noticed this maiden hair fern nestled in there. I have to admit I'm suffering fern-envy. My maiden hair fern experience is to have swap outs. Four in total ... three in a little green house at any one time - getting healthy again, and one in the house - which is dying a little each day. Some day I'll get it right :-)

Alrighty, I'm sure I have so much more to share, but I'm nervous about the state of the lappy, so I'll sign off now with a promise to check back in before too long ... chatter soon!

A big day out ... and news ...

Saturday just gone, some wonderful friends and I from the Quilters Guild of SA went on a shop hop bus trip. It was the perfect Spring day, sunshiny and warm - there was plenty of chatter and fun, and of course, we all participated in a little retail therapy.

Here we all are at one of the stops:

A big thank you to Gay MacLeman for the great picture :-)

And here are some of the goodies I brought home with me - stash enhancement is my specialty!

The fat quarters were such a great price I couldn't leave them behind - the William Morris print is for an upcoming project. Of course I always bring home a little French General with me. Other assorted prints for another Owl Ipad cover or two, and I'm slowly building up my collection of Aurifil threads and replacing what I'm running out of. Am I becoming a thread snob? Maybe so :-)

And last night at the monthly guild meeting the funniest thing happened. Lately there has been a fat quarter lottery. You bring along however many fat quarters you like, and for each fat quarter you get a raffle ticket. The winner of the raffle wins all the fat quarters (of if there are LOTS of them there may be two winners etc). This month's theme was Under the Sea. So I donated a couple of blue fq's. Really happy to have them out of my burgeoning stash - not really fussed if I get anything back. So of course, next thing I know, my number is called out as one of two winners! Oh my goodness, did my friends tease me! Need more fat quarters like a hole in the head was mentioned by one *lol*. I think my plan is to share them among my friends that can use them, and also to make up some charity quilts. I've seen a really nice blue Bricks and Stepping Stones quilt on Pinterest. Sounds like a plan right? Too funny :-)

More news this morning: My friend Victoria called me from the show to tell me that my quilt has won the second place ribbon in the quilt competition. I'm just THRILLED! And even better news is that my sweet friend Irene Carrig placed first in the category. A wonderful result. Amy is at the show today, so she may take a picture that I can share with you - otherwise I'll be there on Sunday and I'll get a pic to show off.

What a wonderful week it has been!! Chatter soon :-)

Fingers Crossed!

This morning I dropped my NI quilt off at the Royal Adelaide Show. It's entered into the quilt competition, so I have my fingers crossed ... and I really hope they look after it!

Wish me luck friends! xox

Binding

This is a fun job to check off today's to do list: Apply binding to Lizzy's quilt. Machine work done, and I'm now half way through the hand stitching.

And one of my less fun chores today was to rifle through the recycle bin to find an $800 health fund cheque - clearly I had tossed it out in a feng shui attack. Cheque found, problem solved.

A very productive day :-)

Almost done ...

I haven't got too much done this weekend - working on chores and stuff - mostly laundry. When it's so wet, it's easy to get behind - I seem to be running the dryer all the time which I don't like.

Not that I want to bore you with all that ... but this I do want to share:

I'm about as far as I can go by myself with my Owl iPad Cover. Isn't it adorable? I purchased the kit when I was at guild earlier this month, and Patchwork by Sea were the shop in situ. I HAD to have it :-)

I did have to use a different binding than the one in the pack. I don't know if I joined the binding up incorrectly, but I ran about an inch short to join it. Oh well - mine has a little stamp of 'my own' on it :-)

Because I'm not super experienced with things like zippers and stuff, I'm going to wait until I see the lovely Lyn at work for some guidance. If all goes well, I think I'll be pressing this pattern into service as Christmas gifts. Yay!

Owlicious!

I'm just loving this! Its going to be an iPad cover ultimately, and the owl appliqué is just darling. The perfect small project - a lovely diversion :-)

Uber Productive :-)

I had a great morning today, I got some things out of the way I had been wanting to do for a while.

First up, I tidied up a couple of seams that had been bugging me on my Farmers Wife Sampler quilt, and then I gave it a REALLY good press. I even cracked out the best press. Love that stuff :-) Here's the view from my ironing board:

They never look as good from the reverse side do they? But the great thing is because I had gotten the backing fabric last week, I was able to take the quilt down to Lizzy, where she'll be able to work her magic on it. It's very exciting :-)

And the next very fabulous thing is that I was able to put one more side on my Mrs Billings project. This border has been very labour intensive and time consuming to piece, and it (almost) kills me that I'm only half way through. But it's on, and I'm really happy with how it's looking:

It's draped over my ironing board in this picture, so it looks kind of wonky, but you can see the border I'm talking about on the top and the left. I have a lot of the strips pieced for the subsequent borders, so hopefully they'll go together quickly.

Of course I'd probably be much further ahead had I not concentrated so hard on getting the FWS top finished, but the payoff is that I can pretty much work on whatever I like for a good long while now. Yay!