Broderie Perse

This week I am feeling so proud of my accomplishments! I finished all the piecing on the centre square of the Morrell Quilt. And rather than work on the applique in the corner of the block from the pattern, I thought I'd give some broderie perse a try:

I'm super happy with how it looks, though it wasn't without tribulations. The fabric is not tightly woven, so it frayed easily as I was appliqueing it down - kind of nail biting actually. So I'll have to psych myself up to get the other three motifs put in place. I've started working on an updated tree skirt this week, and I just know that my brain made me work on that as a bit of an applique avoidance tactic. My justification is that it's July tomorrow, and I should have something ready for Christmas in July. Haha!

In other news, today Amy and I dashed to a local charity store - they were having a sale, and I spied something on the shelf in one of their Facebook photos, I needed to make sure I got them!

These milk glass dishes are very much prized among quilters - they're great for storing tools in the dish part, and for hanging scissors and other whatnots in the holes around the edge. So I bought all they had. Please don't think I'm being greedy, I definitely have a plan for them - one which I won't be able to reveal for a while now. But please trust me on that. If any of my local friends have some they don't need, or know where there are some for sale, please let me know, as I could use a few more!

And last of all for today - this is something I cannot believe, but our Camo turned 21 last week! Long time readers will remember him being quite small, and now he is so very big! Friday evening last week we had a party for him, and it was such a nice time. We don't seem to get as socially busy as we did before Covid, so it was so nice to be out and about with lovely family and friends.

We're so proud of Camo, he is doing so very well at work and following his dreams. I couldn't be happier for him!

That has been my week up to now - I'll chatter with you next week - the second half of this year. Hope you all have a lovely weekend xox

Almost there!

I've almost finished the centre square for the Morrell quilt. I just need to make up the pieced corner sections, and then I can decide what applique I'd like in the corners of the background fabric. I'm thinking a little broderie perse could look nice. Let's see how brave I feel when I get there. I still find broderie perse a little intimidating if I'm honest!

It's so nice to spend time working on the sewing machine, I've done so little of it in a while, and I hope to get more piecing finished this weekend. 

One of the lovely things keeping me from spending time in the sewing room is our Rowley pup, he's a delightful distraction. He's doubled in size now since we got him. He was 6kg when we first got him, and when we weighed in at the vet last weekend he was just short of 12kg (26lbs) He's going to be a big boy I think, as he's only four months old.

He has such a sweet personality, but still tends to be a bit timid and doesn't love to go on walks. Hopefully that will improve when we leave this puppy stage behind.

I don't have a lot to share tonight, but I do want to send an apology out into the world. During the week I remembered to have a look and see if there were any comments that were waiting on moderation. I dug a little deeper than normal and found that I had A LOT of them, and some were at least ten years old. There were many comments from long time readers and friends, and I hadn't seen them. At some stage I elected to moderate comments that were made more than two weeks after the original post had gone up, as most of the odd spammy comments seem to be on older posts. But sometimes people do comment on older posts, and they are all the ones I've missed. So, if you've commented and I haven't gotten back to you, that is most likely why. I'm so sorry if I didn't see your message.

And this is a recent one on an old post:

I don't have any way of responding personally, as I didn't get an email address or a name, but I appreciate the visit and I'm happy to answer questions. The questions relate to this post:

I made the quilt quite a long time ago, so I don't really remember how I constructed the border, but I imagine I probably did make up a bunch of four patches and sewed them all together to form the border. I most likely had leftovers from when I made the blocks in the main body of the quilt and then made extras.

And the little inner border would have also been 2" cut (1.5" finished) that way all the maths works out for adding the 1.5" squares for the blue and white part of the border.

I hope the original commenter will see this info, and I hope it helps.

That's it from me for now, it's getting late here, and I'm super tired as we've come home from being out to dinner. It was a big fun night out, and I'll share about it next week. Chatter soon friends! xox

Almost finished with the centre block

I  have one image only for you this week. I've been fiddling away with the centre block of the Morrell quilt, and I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along.

I've fussed a lot over details that won't matter to anyone else. The gold paisley print in the outside ring of the block was in my scrap drawer, and I had just enough to eke out the pieces I needed. It's a little bit directional, and I was hoping to have the paisley print always facing in the same direction, but I didn't have quite enough fabric, and had to alternate them. Will anyone but me notice? Probably not. And I realised that the background fabric is directional too, so the bottom of the block is on the left of the photo. Which made me want to take the little flower in the centre off and rotate it slightly, I know it's OCD, but I don't want to have to regret later on that I didn't do it. 

So now you know how OCD I can sometimes be, but not always - thank goodness. It can be paralysing!

I'm in two minds about what I'd like to work on tonight after I shut off the laptop. I'm really keen to foundation piece the triangle outside border of this block, and make some decisions about the applique for the corners. Or I might like to print out some Solvy sheets and work on some mmmCrafts projects to get a head start for the end of the year. I suspect that the foundation piecing will win out, I've hardly used my sewing machine since we've been back from our holiday, and I really miss using it.

In other Morrell quilt news, I'm probably going to upset some of the purists that have worked on this project. I'm fairly certain I will change the layout of the quilt, and maybe make up a couple of the blocks differently. From a layout perspective, I want to give my quilt a little more symmetry, and the blocks I make differently will depend on how that all comes together. I've made no big decisions, and I promise to keep you posted as I go. I hope you've all had a great week, this week has flashed by here, I can't believe we're almost done with Friday already! Chatter soon lovelies!

Ohhh, and quick edit - I've had a hard time commenting on some blogs lately, I haven't paid good attention, but have some changes to blog settings been made recently?

It's getting easier!

I can finally say we're starting to get used to our new puppy family member. Or maybe he's getting used to us? But anyway, we're working our way into a routine, he's starting to become calmer - and happy days, I'm finding a little more time to spend on crafty pursuits.

I'm so grateful that lovely people have been purchasing more of my painted bead heads for mmmCrafts projects from my Etsy store. This week past they've gone to destinations in the USA and Australia, and for the first time to New Zealand. It makes me to happy to help people out with their own craft projects, thank you all!

And I've had some more time to stitch a couple of my own things. A few hand quilting stitches in Lily Rosenberry, and I've begun to tackle the centre block for the Morrell quilt. It's just a start so far, and as is my whim, I've changed it a little:

Next I need to select some fabrics for the triangles that surrond this centre circle, and also settle on which background fabric this will sit on. Decisions decisions!

I also located and finished the other applique block I had worked on somewhat while we were away. It's a combination of applique and reverse applique, so I included a picture of the back for you too.

It's always fun when I'm working on scrappy projects to remember where I've used the fabrics before. The fabric in the block above was one of the major border fabrics in my Phebe quilt. I don't remember buying such a huge amount of it, but I have a lot left still!

The Morrell quilt has so many blocks that feature lovely Broderie Perse, and pretty toiles, so I've been collecting fabric that suit that purpose for a little while with varying degrees of success. This one I found at L'ucello and it arrived this week:

Isn't it darling? I'll look forward to finding the perfect block to use it in (and maybe others too!) That's all I've had time for this week. I'm hoping to have the centre block finished to share with you all next week, and it's my plan to catch up with some blog reading over the weekend, I've been a diabolical slacker! Chatter soon lovely friends xox

Edited to add: A big thank you to Elsie Montgomery for your message regarding last week's post, your email address didn't come to me, so I wasn't able to message you personally, but I wanted to send you my thanks for stopping by! xox

One Block!

I don't have much to share with you this evening, there hasn't been much time for stitching - and at the moment I'm painting bead heads for my sweet customers working on mmmCrafts projects. It's such a fun thing to do, and I love to see the finished ornaments people create.

But back to stitching - I've only made one block this week. I cut it out before we left for travel stitching, but never got to it. On Sunday afternoon Amy babysat the puppy so I could have some time to myself, and I was able to spend some precious time at the sewing machine. This is the result:

I love this block so much! It would be a really fun block for a whole quilt, using different corner fabrics and border strips would make such fun secondary patterns.

I'm not sure what my count for Sarah Morrell quilt blocks is now, but surely I'm in double digits?

Another fun (and slightly stressful) thing I did this past week was to decorate a cake for a friend who was celebrating a school milestone with a bunch of friends.

Norma baked the cakes and distracted the doggo while I did my thing with icing. I'm so glad she was happy with the cake, I feel like I could have done so much better - every cake is a learning experience.

I'm super hopeful that this coming week will be less hectic - I'm still adjusting to life being a puppy Mum. This week has included a trip to the emergency vet, which not only isn't great for the stress levels, but the bank balance too. My tactic now is to simply relax into the fact that it's going to be messy for a bit here, and this little (well, not so little each day) fluffball is going to take up a lot of my time for a while.

I'll be trying to get back to your messages when you leave them as soon as I can, please don't give up on me. Your notes mean so much, so I'll chatter soon! xox