Nearing the finish line ...

Just a quickie post this week - I have been obsessed with hand quilting on the wholecloth quilt, which though fun doesn't seem to be very blogworthy. No matter how many times I move the hoop, the photos really just look the same. I'll try and get a picture of how much I've done for next week.

I did get the quilting finished on the larger tree skirt, and got a little snap in the morning light in the sewing room:

My quilting isn't perfect, but I'm pretty happy with how it looks. And today I got busy with the binding:

I chose the red fabric as I didn't have enough of the green left, if I'm honest I would have preferred the green, but I feel it will look okay anyway. It's my plan to finish machining the binding tonight, and then I have the weekend to hand sew it down on the reverse side. I'm pretty excited to get this project finished now.

Well, that's all I have for now, hopefully next week I'll have a much more newsy post, so chatter soon! xox

Larger Tree Skirt

I'm sure it is no surprise that I've been working on another tree skirt - after all, I mentioned recently that I was going to make a larger one. And here it is:

I'm really happy with how it's come together. It measures 60" at the widest point. When I laid it out it seemed huge, but it's the size lovely people have been asking for, so I'm happy to oblige.

I'm in the middle of quilting at the moment, hopefully it won't be too long and I'll be ready to get busy binding. 

I realised I never did share a completed picture of the 21" mini-tree-skirt I made recently - so here it is. These little ones are super fun to make - I'm going to have fun making some more soon.

In stolen moments I'm also continuing to hand quilt on the wholecloth and finishing up the applique on my current Lily Rosenberry block - I will never run out of fun things to do in the sewing room! Chatter soon! xox

Projects - New and Super Old

This week I started putting another new project together - I have a few things on the go right now, and I'm not sad about it!

I am just loving those glitzy fabrics! The yellow/mustard one is also being used in the Lily Rosenberry quilt, and I'm super pleased I bought quite a bit of it. The Christmas fabrics are also recent purchases - I don't have many holiday prints, so it's fun to put them into use.

And this block is made with an adorable panel with floral wreaths - I bought way too many of them as I fell in love! Yum! Hopefully I can fill you in next week and share what I'm putting together.

This past week hasn't provided much stitching time, we had some super messy chores to take care of. Our ducted r/c air conditioning died a few days ago and we're getting ready to have a new system installed (ouch $$) so we needed to clean out the attic. I don't think either of us realised how much stuff we'd dragged up there to deal with another day. Wow!

Over last weekend, we hauled everything down, sorted/tossed out/donated and gifted a whole bunch of stuff, and now the attic is pretty much empty. The air conditioning techs can have free rein, and our new system will be installed before our weather starts getting too warm.

I don't know if I've ever told you about my first Baltimore applique quilt being half finished and stored up in the attic, well ... it was ... but it's gone now. I tossed it out. It's not a project I want to spend any time or $$ working on anymore, I'm way beyond it, and 20+ years in storage had done it no favours. It actually feels like a bit of a weight lifted from me.

I also found the original People Quilts up there. They are just trashed - filthy and fading, and all the lace that was around the edges has deteriorated away. I took a quick photo before I threw them out. They wouldn't last a wash, and they are too yukky to keep.

I can confidently say that my quiltmaking skills have improved in the last 26 years! Mary's quilt using the leftover fabric is much nicer - I have a little more experience under my belt now.

I'm going to leave off here - I still have so much I'd like to get through before I head to bed tonight. Wouldn't it be great if we could just find a few extra hours in each day - a couple of hours just to ourselves to get our own things done. A girl can dream! :-)

A Quilting Ninny ...

This week in the Ladies Lounge, I would define myself as a quilting ninny! I flitted from project to project and enjoyed all of them equally! It's so much fun when there are no looming quilting deadlines!

I made a quilted mat for one of our lovely friends using some of the waste triangles created when I made the table runners a few weeks ago. It came out really cute too.

Whoops, I've given you a couple of blurry pictures there - that will teach me to try and take pictures with my Ipad haha! Anyway, I wanted to share the quilting as it looked from the back, I was really happy with it and will definitely use that design again.

Because of my finish in the quilting hoop last week, I put the wholecloth back in place and got some hand quilting done in quiet moments:

This wholecloth is definitely not going to be finished anytime soon, but it's so nice to know at least I'm inching toward the finish line. I had always thought this would be a quilt I'd make for Amy's wedding, but I realised a few years ago that it wasn't really something that worked with her decorating plans, and it would be hard for her to look after, so instead ultimately it'll go on my bed. I know there are many other quilts that will work so much better for her, and not be so time consuming to make.

I also finished the small tree skirt/table topper I shared last week, and this weekend I'll get busy writing the pattern.

A couple of my quilting ladies are keen for the pattern, so it'll be fun to see others putting it together too. I'll love to see the different fabric combinations they come up with.

And last of all for today, I prepped my sixth applique block for the Lily Rosenberry quilt:

Quite a number of the green fabrics I used were from the lovely collection gifted to me by Pam Holland not so long ago. The dark green three leaf piece in the lower center was from one of the Smithsonian collections from the late 90's. I adored those fabrics and collected as many of them as I could at the time. They're like gold dust now!

Tonight I'm going to put a few more stitches in the wholecloth quilt and relax my way into the weekend. What do you all have planned? Chatter soon!