I love a finish!

This week I finished hand quilting Mary's quilt, and I'm super happy with it!

It's so very soft and snuggly, and I hope it will be a treasure to my sweet grandbaby. Right now it's in the wash, I'm rinsing away the last of the blue marking lines. 

Last week I showed you the feedsack print I was thinking of using for the binding - I certainly did make use of it, and I think it looks quite pretty. My feedsacks are precious to me, and I could never seem to cut into them, but I figured if a quilt for a granddaughter wasn't a good enough reason to start using them, there never would be a better one.

So today I got back to some things I started earlier in the year and then put aside. I often have people contact me via my Etsy store to see if my tree skirt pattern comes in different sizes - so I'm making some smaller and some larger and getting ready to work on the patterns. Here is the one I started today:

This one finishes at 21" from point to point, and next I'll make a smaller one. These are destined to be table toppers, but could easily be tree skirts for little trees too. I'll bind this topper with a stripe fabric from the green and blue fabric collection. It's from deep stash - Hooty Hoot and the Kangaroo. I have a bunch of it, so it's nice to have it out of the fabric closet for a bit :-)

Last of all, I just got some super backing fabric, it's for an upcoming project:

Kaffe Fassett's Millefiore pattern - isn't it just lovely? Not sure when I'll get to the project it's destined for, but it's on the list. After all ... you just can't rush art!

Well, that's it from me for now - I'll chatter really soon! xox

Getting close!

This week I've been driving myself crazy checking out benchtop samples/visiting tile stores/checking in with our cabinetmaker trying to make decisions about what I'd like to do in my kitchen. It's actually really hard for me to make these relatively permanent decisions - but I'm slowly getting there. I won't bore you with photos yet, but I promise I'll share when I have something interesting.

What this has meant however, is that I didn't allow myself much quilting time, but I'm getting close to a finish on the hand quilting. I feel sure I'll have it done by Friday next week.

I think I have about one third of the final pieced border to go. Yay!

This afternoon I did some rummaging in my feedsack collection, and this is the piece that I'm considering using for the binding:

I'll have to be careful cutting the strips, this piece has quite a few stains and tears. But the stripe is so pretty and I just love plaids and stripes for bindings. 

The feedsacks have such a lovely soft texture and they're just delightful to work with. My collection is very small, so it's my plan to buy more when I'm able to travel to the USA again sometime.

Well, that's all I have to report for this week, hopefully I'll have a much more newsy and interesting post next week. Thank you for stopping by! xox

Thank you!

A big thank you to Maxine for her inspired help toward a quilting design for little Miss Mary's quilt. It was like a little lightbulb switched on in my brain. I had already looked at a heart template but dismissed it as too small, so I drew up a larger heart on Corel Draw and continued the grid behind it and presto, I'm happy. I have the best visitors to my blog, thank you so much!

I'm on the home stretch now with the borders, I'm looking forward to getting the binding on this quilt and putting it in use.

I also finished the second of the twisted hearts blocks, still the same machine quilting design, but I'm getting so much more comfortable with my machine:

Lovely Janet asked about the quilting design I used on the tangled hearts, whether there is a stencil or a name for the design. I don't know about a stencil, but I an tell you that the little circles are generally called pebbles, and the circles with shadows - I call them peacock feathers, but they may also be called paisley or something like that. I think there would be lots of online tutorials about how to quilt them, they are super fun to do and great for filling spaces. Hope this helps!

Last of all for today, in baking adventures for the week, I made a lemon ricotta tart for the sweet ladies that come to quilting:

Ohhh nom nom nom. It was good! I pinned the recipe to my Pinterest board. It was actually an orange tart, but I changed it to suit my abundance of lemons right now. There is a little sliver left over, so I may just indulge and have it with coffee for afternoon tea today.

Thank you all for stopping by, and I'll chatter again next week! xox

Yellow is such a joyful colour!

A couple of weeks ago I quilted a really happy scrap project for one of the lovely ladies that comes to quilting. I don't quilt much for others anymore, only relatively small projects for close friends. I didn't remember to take a picture at the time, but grabbed a couple of happy snaps when it came out for show and tell yesterday:

Isn't that yellow such a happy colour, and looking at all the different scrap fabrics kept me interested the whole time. I would love to make up this quilt myself someday. I'll add it to my ever growing list!

The moment I saw the plain yellow fabric, I knew I was going to put feathers in there. There was no debating it :-)

It's funny that I was so decisive with that project, because progress on Mary's cot quilt has stalled completely:

I have no inspiration whatsoever about how to quilt that plain white border. I've put stitches in there and pulled them out. I've also drawn quilting designs three times and spritzed them away. Ugh, hopefully I'll have a lightbulb moment soon.

I'm currently machine quilting on the second tangled hearts block I finished appliqueing:

My machine is behaving itself, and if I'm lucky I'll get it finished tonight. Tomorrow I can bury the threads and bind it.

I do have some chores to do tomorrow though, we're getting ready to do a kitchen 'refresh' and I'm organising new benchtops, tiles and handles for the cabinets. I've been tile shopping today, and it's so overwhelming. I'll check out some other stores, and see what feels right. There's nothing to show at the moment, but I promise I'll share photos when I can!

Thank you for all the lovely comments you've been leaving, it's super fun to read them. Hope you all have a great weekend, I'll chatter soon! xox