Alliance Nine Patch

Last night I finished the quilting and the binding on my little 'Alliance Nine Patch' quilt, and I have to say I'm entirely thrilled with it!

Because I'm home alone right now, it's totally fine for me to stitch into the night. So I didn't feel at all naughty when I popped the finished item into the washer for a quick rinse and spin at 1am!

I really wanted my little project to get a head start on drying overnight. I laid it out on towels on the dining room floor - I really think giving it a rinse gives all the elements of the quilt a chance to settle and the quilting really 'pops'.

This morning I plan to pin another quilt and get busy. I shall have myself a little quilting marathon and see how many I can get thru before my home gets populated again!

Show us your Stash

Judy has bravely shared her stash, and has also asked us all to share our own, with a view to tidying and shrinking it during 2010. I'm always up for a challenge, so here are my pictures. We aren't allowed to tidy up, but for those of you who know me - my stash is usually fairly neat anyway. The scraps - they're my bug-bear.

This is my stash closet. There are no surprises here, and you've all seen it before. I don't really mind if I don't make a dent in the supply in this closet - and given that I'm heading back to the US in April/May next year, it is quite likely that you'll see in increase in this area. These fabrics are generally my favourites, and sometimes I have a hard time using them. I'll try and work on that :-)

These boxes live on the top of the closets in the sewing room. They contain my scrap strips (inspired by Bonnie's Scrap Users System),charm squares, 10.5" backing squares, 6" squares etc, orphan blocks, my works in progress, and also some works in very slow progress (think Dear Jane). I REALLY want to use up more of the scraps. I do love scrap quilts, but don't want to be making them until the end of time ... somehow though I think I'll always be scrapping in some respect.

And here is my dirty little secret. Two bins of assorted scrappage, hidden under some of my favourite quilts. My particular goal is to eliminate these entirely. If I can't get rid of both, I'd be really happy to have one gone. About two years ago, I had four of these - I just can't believe it!

So there you go - my stash, as glorious and also shameful as it can be. If only I could buy a block of free time so I could get busy sewing and tidying it all up. Thank you for the challenge Judy :-)

Fridge Magnets

The family has spoken. They like the clean look of the new fridge without my precious magnets all over it.

So, a compromise was reached. I have moved my magnets on to the side of the fridge, where they're not seen unless you're actually working in the kitchen.

I couldn't just give them up after all - they're precious mementos of my/our travels, and they make me happy.

And I'll confess ... the kitchen does look a lot less cluttered ... but I'll just keep that to myself :-)

Prue's Quilt

Well now, will you look at those tumbleweeds blowing through my blog - it's like a little ghost-blog :-) I've thought of you all often, but really haven't had anything to share. It has been work, work and more work - and nothing the slightest bit interesting.

But today, at the shop, I insisted that Prue allow me to take a picture of her with her lovely quilt. That's her on the left, and Carol from Maine on the right. I quilted on her top during the week, and handed it back to her today. Isn't it so pretty? She made it up from a really cute jelly roll, and the border fabric she selected is just to die for. You can't see it, but the back is pieced from coordinating fabrics, and is just sensational too.

The picture isn't the best quality, it's from my phone-camera - but let's face it, no matter what camera I'm using, photography isn't one of my finest skills :-)

Marty is away with work tonite, so once Camo is in bed, I plan to stitch into the night as late as I can manage (while still being able to get up in the morning). It's just the two of us at the moment. Yesterday, Amy (the very lucky girl) flew off to Vanuatu with my parents. My goodness, what a wonderful school holiday she'll be having. Camo will be off at some point spending some quality time with Marty during the holidays, and I'm going to spend some solo time catching up on a million quilting projects and just generally recharging. Bring it on!

Alliance

A new range of fabric came into the shop recently, it's Moda's Alliance.

I so love reproduction fabrics, so this week I've been putting together a little sample based on the quilt pattern that came with the fabric.

I've made all the blocks, and I've started putting the rows together. I hope to have the top finished quite quickly after I get home from work, and it would be really nice to be able to start quilting on it tonight too.

You could call me an ADD quilter right now, I seem to have had a LOT of starts on new projects, but very few finishes. It would be so nice if I could reverse that trend and finish something up before the end of the month. I have my fingers crossed.

Out Damn Cupboard

It seemed like it would be so easy. We needed a new dishwasher, and we'd talked about getting a new fridge, so why not get both at the same time?

Goodness me. Easier said than done. We wanted the side-by side kind, and only two would fit in the space height wise and width wise. All the research we did - and the fridge we ended up getting has this odd plastic bit at the back which made it too tall!

So, today Marty got busy taking out the cabinets above the fridge. We are so lucky one of his besties is a cabinet maker and is going to shrink the cabinets down for us.

I had no idea this was going to be such a tricky exercise!

Absent

There has not been much interenet surfing or blogging here. Our internet service has been slowed to a crawl as we have exceeded our download allocation - so we clearly surfed and downloaded up a storm earlier in the month (billing month). It's really a drag waiting for pages to load, so I'm just doing the bare minimum until Thursday when all returns to normal.

In much more important news, Amy had surgery yesterday to remove her wisdom teeth and two other teeth that were slowing progress towards her braces. Poor love, she looks like she's been in a fight, but I'm assured by the surgeon that all went well and she'll be back to normal in no time.

So, on Thursday or Friday I'll check in with you all. Happy stitching :-)

Fabric ... yum!

At work today, I simply could not resist these two fabrics any longer - they'd been calling to me softly, and so far, I'd been strong.

I love love love the border print in front, it just speaks to me. One thing disappoints me though, there are three border repeats across the width, and a half repeat at each selvedge edge. The manufacturer really could have put the four repeats across the fabric if they wanted to. Just bunnies like me fall in love with the stuff and have to own it regardless.

And the fabric in the background is a back for a special quilt. I will have quite a bit leftover, and I can really see myself using it in a lot of scrap quilts. Super fun.

I will have to show some restraint for a little while - we have some big ouchy expenditure coming up in the next few weeks. Appliances growing old and all that. Ouch.

Also, I had a couple of questions asked of me recently - from people with no-reply on their email addresses. Some about the thread I shared recently (and thank you to Emma for the email update!) - they wanted to know where to get it. I get mine at Quiltaholics here in South Australia. Emma updated me to let me know that she had found it in multi-packs at Spotlight - and it's called QA Embroidery Thread.

There were also several questions about the size to cut the triangles for the cross blocks. I have been cutting 6.5" squares and then cutting them apart diagonally twice. You can then use any size strips and squares to add the crosses. Works really well.

I know we've all heard this before, but it really helps to have your email address selected in your profile. It means that when you ask a direct question, it's easy to give you the answer you're looking for.

Well that's it from me - a little more quilting to do before making tomorrow's lunches and then bed - can't believe it's September already ... where is the year going??