Hungry Caterpillar Quilt

Soooo exciting! I'm really on the home stretch with Camo's Hungry Caterpillar Quilt. All I have to do now is hand stitch the binding on the reverse side and it's done.

The quilting is just very simple and done with a monofilament thread as I really wanted the lovely fabrics to shine. Camo is thrilled, so I hope I can finish it up tonight.

Since this project first appeared on my blog, I've had a lot of comments and emails regarding the pattern. I purchased this as a kit from Fons and Porter in 2008. I don't think you can get the kit any more, but they seem to still have the pattern, it's located here.

I'll finish up here, and get busy hand stitching :-)

Still scrapping ...

Even though I haven't spent as much time as I'd like to in the sewing room, I've made some progress sewing the scrappy bowtie blocks I mentioned in my last post.

I'm really enjoying these blocks SO much! It feels great to cut into these brighter scrap fabrics - they're usually overlooked when I'm scrapping, in favour of my reproduction prints.

I'll keep working at these as I have the chance, until tomorrow when I'll have to pack things away to begin quilting on a customer quilt. And should I get that done in time, I'm really ready to quilt up Camo's Hungry Caterpillar quilt. It'll be great to progress another UFO toward a finish.

Bonnie's Bowdacious

After machine quilting four quilts in a row, I was just exhausted and itching for some mindless piecing. And because I had a recent finish, I could allow myself to start something new.

In Bonnie's 'Adventures with Leaders and Enders' book, there is a project I've been checking out - it's called Bowdacious. It used scraps from the 1.5" bin, a size I don't use often, so I thought it would be fun to mindlessly cut and sew.

These little four patches are jewel like, and even though this will eventually be put to use as a leader and ender project, I'm having fun sewing away right now. And when I'm in the right frame of mind, I'm going to get busy with my Nearly Insane blocks again. I'm really looking forward to playing with them :-)

A WISP finished!

Did you think I'd fallen from the earth? It felt like I had - at least fallen out of touch with everyone. We had internet issues. First of all we had run out of allocation for the month (an issue we will be remedying) and had dial up speed for six days, and then on the day we were back off line, a storm knocked us out completely for two and a half days.

I realised how much we rely on the internet while we were offline, and also found a lot of free time! Time that I used by finishing up a work in slow progress - one that I've been working on for about five years or so.

This is my hand quilted Holiday Wholecloth project. My plan was to finish this table topper and use it for a Christmas centerpiece. It has taken such a long time to be completed it seems such a shame to use it only at Christmas time. This is a close up of the centre section.

I really love to hand quilt, but since I've learned to machine quilt, I've allocated less and less time to it. I have some small wholecloth pillow kits that I picked up in Paducah, I'm thinking I really need to make time for hand quilting - it really is so relaxing.

And here is the finished article. Last night I put it through the wash to remove the blue lines, and then laid it out flat on towels to dry overnight. I may yet wash it again though, after being dragged around for such a long time, there are a few stubborn little marks, and of course the project could not be laundered while in progress, as all those important blue lines would disappear forever!

I have always thought I'd like to quilt queen size wholecloths as wedding gifts for my kids in the future. Not so sure how I feel about that now - at least I hope they give me plenty of notice!!

Kaffe Prints

While I was in the USA recently, my wonderful friend Linda gave me a fabulous gift , it was a kit she'd made up. It included the most vibrant Kaffe Fassett fabrics, two black and white prints and a pattern by Artichoke Collection called Urban Chic.

Yesterday I started putting the blocks together, and I'm simply loving my progress. It's super easy piecing, and the simple design allows the wonderful fabrics to shine.

I just have to stitch the blocks into rows, and then the rows together and I can start working on the borders. I think I'll make up a different border treatment for this quilt, but it's gone together so quickly to this point that I can have fun playing and not feel that I'm wasting precious sewing time. Happy days!!