Not much more than last week ...

This week there has not been much to report on the quilting front. I'm plugging away at the mats, and I've made the second Marti Michell 'Free Block Friday' block - so I guess I haven't been idle!

These Marti Michell blocks are really quite fun, and the templates make construction so easy. It's a wonder I don't use them more often. It's easy to get into habits and stick with favourite techniques. The white background fabric is very unforgiving, so next time I'll try and remember to have a light background that won't show through when I take photos.

And here's where I'm currently at with the mats:

I'm all done with the fabric I'm not crazy about - just some of the red and white fabrics with the stars left, and I think I'll give those away. Going forward I'll use the more traditional fabrics like the ones I used in the top two mats in the picture.

I also finally got the binding stitched on the reverse side of the little placemat top right in the picture. It had been sitting around waiting for a few minutes of attention.

After I'm done with my computer work tonight I'm going to begin baking a cake for my little brother's birthday tomorrow. I'm going to attempt this one: Anna Olson Chocolate Layer Cake. I'm sure it'll be great, I trust her recipes ... but I don't trust myself to remember to take a picture. Let's see how I go!

That's it from me for today, hopefully I'll be able to come up with a more newsy post really soon! xox

In production ...

This week in every spare moment I did something toward putting the quilted mats together. I've made three complete mats, partially quilted another one, and almost finished piecing a fifth. This weekend I plan to get a bunch more made.

I kind of like the fabric somewhat now that I'm looking at a completed item, but I still much prefer a more traditional colour palette.

And to that end I purchased some additional Christmas prints. One of them is quite bright, but I have a particular project in mind for that one:

We all knew I'd look for extra yardage of the Christmas Tree fabric, and I felt like I needed the taupe spots, as it works well for a background. The three fabrics on the left will be used for making mats, and I'm looking forward to putting them into use soon.

And because I really don't have any free time, I thought this past week was the perfect time to start another new project! Hahaha! I subscribe to Marti Michell's emails and she advertised a 'Free Block Friday' project. A block each week sounded so tempting, so before long I'd decided to play along, and I've encouraged some of my quilting friends to join too. Click here if you'd like more information.

I thought it would be fun to use my much neglected 30's prints, and here is my first block:

I'm not going to fuss about which fabrics I put where, it's going to be fun to piece in a footloose and fancy free way! The next block should be out tonight sometime, so I'll be watching my email to see what's next!

Well, I'll be heading back into the sewing room now, I'm looking forward to spending some time with my sewing machine. Chatter soon! xox

I accidentally filled my schedule!

Have you ever been to a meeting and put your hand up for a task without really thinking about the size and scope of the project? I have more than once, and I did it again this week. Oops, haha!

I offered to donate a little quilted something for our tennis association's end of season Christmas luncheon, and somehow ended up with a task to make a table topper type of decoration for each of the tables which will ultimately become part of the table prize. We have well over 100 ladies coming to the luncheon, and at this stage it's not clear how many tables that will be. So, with all my other commitments and end of year projects etc, I decided I better get busy right away!

I started working on them yesterday, and so far I've made three, quilted one completely, and half quilted two. 

I'll try and get a really good start making as many as I can, I really don't want to be lazy about it and get into a panic as the deadline draws nearer. Eeeek!

I think I'll only be able to make six or so using the fabric in the pictures - so weird, I'm really not excited about this fabric line. I'm not even sure what inspired me to buy it. Not like me at all! I'll head to the fabric store tomorrow and pick up some more Christmasy bits and pieces and keep plugging along - but for the rest of this evening I'll do a little hand quilting. I'm absolutely worn out from working at the machine today.

I'll check back in soon and let you know how things are going. Chatter soon! xox

Happiness!

With huge thanks to my DH (not that he's likely to read this) I am now up and running on the new lappy. I can't even believe how much faster it is - I had gotten used to my old laptop taking ages to load things, and it wasn't really that old - it just wasn't coping well with what I was asking of it. Anyway, this one should last me a good while, and I'm thrilled!

I promised to check in again, so I'll share a little of what I've been working on:

I've been quilting on my sweet friend Betty's quilt. I don't quilt for others very often, and when I do I'm very specific about what I'll take on. The main criteria is that can't be very big - my days of wrestling with large quilts are done - it's much harder work on a sit down machine. I have a darling friend with a longarm machine, so I'm super happy to send work her way.

Betty used up a bunch of her scraps for this project and even raided some of my 2.5" squares to add to the variety. Don't we all have so many scraps? We'll never be able to get them under control, I'm sure of it!

Quilting has continued on the wholecloth, I'm still hopelessly addicted:

I really want to work on it some more now, it's calling to me from the ladies lounge! I don't think I can resist!!

A little more fabric may or may not have come into my life last week also ... can't prove anything!

Though it may not seem like it, I'm trying to shop a little more mindfully. Thinking of projects I want to make in the not too distant future, and trying to fill gaps in my stash. I have very little purple or yellow yardage. Also not a lot of red given how much I love it and tend to use it. And apparently I love to shop for neutrals! Obviously this isn't all my fabric - I have FQ storage, scrap storage, and containers of strips and squares. The pieces that live in my fabric closet are minimum half a yard/metre.

And I wanted to share something I've been admiring next to my cutting table:

This is the block I received in the Christmas exchange with the sweet ladies from the Quilt Batts in CA. I'm an honourary member of their group, and love participating each year. Deb made this sweet snowman for me, and I just love it! Thank you! xox

I don't remember if I shared, but I was allocated to make a block for Karen, and this is what I made her:

I enlarged one of Teresa from Fabric Therapy's Little Treasures blocks, and I was so happy with how it came out. There was a whole story about my Christmas block and it's journey, but that's a story for another day!

Last of all for today, I'm terrible at promoting myself, so please indulge me. I've finally got the larger Christmas Tree Skirt on to my Etsy store, and for those that are interested, I'm offering my blog buddies a discount for this month. Click the button below and 10% discount will be applied automatically.

Well, that's it from me for today, I'll check back in with you all on Friday as scheduled. Happy stitching! xox

Quickie Post

I’m just dropping in to keep up my Friday commitment tonight, but I promise to post again before the weekend is over. I picked up my new laptop today and Marty is mid-file-transfer, so I’ll leave him be and work from my iPad for now.

This week in addition to other things, I’ve been putting a few stitches in the Lily Rosenberry appliqué blocks. I didn’t want anyone to think I’d abandoned it, it’s humming along slowly in the background while I’ve been distracted with other things:

It makes me so happy that some of these fabrics were gifts from our lovely Pam Holland.

I don’t usually show the back of my appliqué blocks, but you can see where I’ve stitched and where I still need to secure the pieces. 

Tonight I have some machine quilting to do for a lovely friend, and hopefully once that’s done I’ll be able to start working with my new toy! Chatter soon xox

Welcome to October!

OMG, can you believe it's October already? I surely can't, it seems like this year is flashing by! And I'm not certain exactly what I've managed to achieve?

Anyway, this week I've tried to work in as much stitching time as possible, even though we've had tradies buzzing about, and there are more to come. We had solar installed last week, and this week we replaced our ducted heating/cooling - ouch$$! Once we've recovered a little from that I'll get the kitchen refresh underway and hopefully we won't have any more large expenditures for a little while (fingers crossed).

So for the quilting related content:

I finished the larger tree skirt - unfortunately the days have been dark and damp, so I haven't managed to get any good light to take a nice photo. I'm super happy with how it came out though. I'm writing the pattern at the moment - which is something I have to force myself to do. For some reason I'd rather be actually sewing than tapping away on the computer ;-)

I also put this little doodad together - it's destined to be a gift, I just need to hand stitch the binding on the reverse side. I fell in love with the sweet pine tree fabric when I was at Spotlight not so long ago, and I'm actually wishing I got more. That may still happen!

And I had to pop into Spotlight again today as in addition to other things, they had 50% off Wiltshire and Decor products - I had wanted to get some cake forks and noticed they had our cutlery pattern there, so I picked those up. And a new lunchbox for Camo - how he manages to destroy them so fast I'll never know. And it's never a bad idea to pick up a few cute fabrics when they're on sale. Because of our sweet Grandbaby Mary, I am finding that my stash collecting is taking a new turn. I have another quilt in mind for her when I finish working on these holiday projects, and I'll be able to use the pretty pinks and purples in it. And the yellow was just because I hardly have any yellow in my stash, and I'm determined to slowly fix that.

Last of all, I promised last week I'd try and share a progress picture on my wholecloth quilt - because it's just white on white it's hard to capture, and also difficult to share the scale, but here we go:

For some reason I am absolutely obsessed with quilting on this at the moment, even though hours of work doesn't really add up to much in the 'show and tell' department. Maybe this quilt is closer to being finished than I think?

Anyway - that's my update for this week - I'm looking forward to seeing what I managed to get done in the coming week. Chatter soon! xox