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

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!