I still love it!

We've been so busy all day, cleaning up the office and its still only half done. But every time I had a reason, well alright, an excuse to go downstairs, I saw Maria's lovely quilt on the coffee table and every time I had to stop and stroke it and marvel! I can't believe she was able to give it away. And not only the quilt, she also sent some fabric, thread, applique circles all ready to iron on and a lovely scissors fob made by her daughter. I'm so lucky!

Now you know its Terry's 60th birthday soon and we are having a big family reunion and a big party next weekend. All four of our children are coming, most of their children and some partners too. My sister and brother-in-law, Terry's mother and brother - all coming to stay! Of course we haven't got room for them all to stay with us, various friends have offered to billet some of them but the young children and their parents are staying here. Nadeeka and her boys are allergic to dust which is the reason for spring cleaning the office as Nadeeka has volunteered to sleep on an air mattress in there. And it needed it anyway! So the whole place is being damp dusted and all the piles of papers are being sorted and most, apart from financial stuff, thrown out - we don't need it all now, everything can be found on the internet! I don't know what will happen if it ever falls over though...

its come! its come!

Terry and I are spring cleaning the office - to get rid of the dust of years and we stopped for morning tea and to get the mail from the gate. Look what has arrived, all the way from Brazil!! Isn't it fabulous! Oh, I'm so excited - its just wonderful - and something I would never in a million years attempt! Thank You, Maria, thank you!! All those tiny pieces, all those sharp points! I can't get over it! And such pretty colours. Its just mind boggling! Doesn't it look gorgeous on my coffee table?

An Apology

I have a confession and an apology to make. And a story to tell. I misled you but it was for the best of intentions and now that Margaret has received my Four Seasons Spring Swap quilt I will tell you the full story.

The Four Seasons Swap is run by Margaret and she organises the lists of people, assigning someone to make a quilt for every participant and a person for everyone to make a quilt for. It is not a direct swap so the person who will receive the quilt I make is not the person who will be making a quilt for me. It is run this way so that we can blog about the quilts we are making and the recipient will not know if it is the quilt they are to receive or not. And a lot of the fun in the swap is reading all the blogs and wondering if that lovely quilt is the one you will receive - or maybe this one or that other one! So because Margaret is the Swap Mama, she obviously knew who would be making her a quilt but she promised me she wouldn't look at my blog so I could tease you all with the quilt I was making. BUT the very first blog entry I made on the Spring Quilt, she was the very first person to comment. So I engaged in a little misdirection. Well a lot actually. I carried on making this quilt for Margaret but I blogged about something different entirely.

I had designed the vase of flower quilt in EQ6 and decided against making it but when I put the design on the blog as one of my red herrings it garnered a fairly enthusiastic response so I started making it and pretended that it was the quilt I was making for my swapee. I apologise for misleading you all. However, I get to keep this quilt AND the one that someone will be sending me!

Spring Mini Finished

Here it is - and I'm pretty pleased with the quilting. Judy Potts did a demonstration on free motion quilting at quilt club this Saturday and she had some samples to show us. I saw this pretty background stippling flower which I thought would be perfect. Then I found a lovely continuous leaf pattern in a library book and adapted it a bit for the border by doing an echo around each leaf - all in one continuous line. I've suggested that the vase is sitting on a table by quilting wood grain on the lower part of the background.

I'm going to hang this on my wall for a bit and then I'll be packing up the Four Seasons Spring Swap to send to my swappee. And when it has reached its home I have a story and a secret to tell you!

Its a Funny Thing

I think I'm allergic to my sewing room. For the last few weeks whenever I've spent an afternoon sewing I've got an itchy throat, sinus pain and shortness of breath. I wasn't sure until I took a week long break, lost the symptoms and then got them all back after another sewing session. So then I wondered if it was dust (I've tested positive to dust mite allergy) or the fumes from the unwashed fabric. It is hard to properly dust the sewing room with all the piles of fabric that I have in open wire mesh drawers and open baskets so I invested in some closed bins and put most of the fabric away. I still haven't dusted but the symptoms were much less severe after this afternoon's work on the Spring Swap Quilt so it may be that the fumes from all the unwashed fabric have been contained in the bins and you know what that means? I'm going to have to wash all my fabric. And that's not the hard part - its the Ironing Of It that will cost me so much lost Sewing Time that I resent!

So that is one reason why I haven't sewn much lately - but here is the result of today's hard work. I've vliesofixed the flowers on the Spring mini and have quilted around all the leaves and most of the flowers. There is still a lot more quilting to do but I'm happy with the arrangement.

Spring Mini Progress - yes!

Yayy! I've spent the morning sewing the Four Seasons Spring Swap quilt. As you can see from the picture I posted last, I couldn't find the right fabric to do the colours I had planned but I think its looking pretty good. I still have to sew the 2 in squares of the border and do the applique flowers and leaves. Still, its a good start.

And this afternoon we're taking time off to spend with our friends, playing catan, catching up on the goss and eating bad stuff.

Another rethink

I've been trying to get started on the fours seasons swap quilt design that I posted a week ago. But it wasn't going to work, I wasn't enthusiastic about it. Now I never intended to do "proper" applique for all those flowers and leaves, I was thinking of cutting flower and leaf motifs out of fabric and sticking them on and then just machine quilting around the raw edges, but it was still not a project I was looking forward to. So I revisited this morning and decided it was all those tiny 2" flying geese that were daunting me. So here is my re-design (and fourth start at a spring mini)! And I feel some enthusiasm so I might actually get started on this one today!

Spring Mini Progress?

miniaturequilter said...

Ok, the weekend is over, I've been checking your blog to see that background sewn together-whatcha doin???

This is what I'm doing! I'm not happy with the way the Spring mini is going. I'm having second thoughts - again... The fabric I chose for the broderie perse didn't really sing with the background fabrics. I might save that background for another project and make a fresh start. I've designed a Spring Flower Vase - more along the lines of the Autumn mini I made for the first part of this Four Season's Quilt Swap. What do you think of this?

Four Seasons Spring Progress

I've spent most of my spare time this weekend working on the Four Seasons Spring Mini. What do you think of the background? I've freehand cut rectangles, roughly 1.5" x 2" and all the scrappy rectangles are lightly stuck to iron-on interfacing.

I'm quite happy with it so far, of course it needs a lot more stitching. I'm wondering about forgetting the tulips and building a broderie perse garden with these flowers and the lovely New Zealand fantail. I don't think I'll be giving much away by saying the quilt will be travelling to a far away country and the New Zealand touch might be welcome. I'll search out some more flowers I think...

Four Seasons Swap - Spring

Well, even though I feel a bit overwhelmed with Stuff-To-Do, I signed up for another season in the Four Seasons Swap. I gave the Winter Season a miss because we were just coming into Summer and it was hard to get into a winter mood.

But Spring in Autumn doesn't seem so hard to imagine and I have some lovely photos Terry took a few years ago of our tulips flowering in Spring. I'll use these as the basis for my quilt. Just like last time, I will need to tweak the colours a little to fit in with my partner's preferences.

There are a number of different ways I design quilts - using EQ6, making blocks and putting them on a design wall, or drawing a picture. Sometimes I will use all these tools in one quilt. This time I will draw a picture from these photographs and make the centre before I decide on a border. I may at that stage, take a photo of the finished centre and bring it into EQ6 to help decide on a border. Or I might just put a plain border on and do some "fancy quiltin" on it.

A Day Filled with Treats!

Wednesday is sewing day - well, the morning anyway. And I enjoyed the morning with the rain pouring down so heavily at times that it was quite dark outside but I was warm and working well in my lovely sewing room with the lights as bright as daylight. I can't show you what I was doing as its the row by row challenge and who knows who might see their row quilt on my blog! But it went well and I'm happy with the finished row.

I had a lunch appointment with Jennifer and Terry decided he could be in town at that time too and would join us. So he popped up to the shed to collect the mail as I got ready to go out. And look what he brought back down to the house! My Four Seasons Swap Quilt! isn't it lovely? The colours and fabrics are wonderful and it is perfectly at home on my coffee table. I can look at it and smile whenever I pass the table (which is often as its on the way to the stairs and going up and down the stairs because I've forgotten something is what keeps me fit!) The quilt is beautifully finished and I think the pattern was a good choice for the fabric. There was also a parcel of goodies - two bag patterns, some ink jet fabric sheets and some fabric! What a fabulous package. I wonder if she knew that one of the other Challenges we have for the quilt show in April next year is "My Best Bag"? I'll enjoy making a bag from a pattern instead of guessing and fudging it which is my usual method. I'm going to make the one with the gathered side pockets. And you can see the box it was sent in in the background - she has even put a map of Australia and New Zealand on the box! I tried to open the box without ripping the map but I was too excited to be careful enough and it tore itself apart.

Well, I just had a few minutes before I had to leave to put a comment on my partner's blog to let her know it had arrived safely. Follow the link to her blog - she since posted about the quilt and tells of the problems she had making the quilt and why it was late arriving. I really didn't mind and there was no need to add the extra goodies - but it was wonderful to receive them!

After that excitement we carefully drove into town, still lots of rain about but thankfully, none as we walked from car to cafe. It was hosing down at the time we intended to leave so we all sat back down and had another cup of coffee and a gluten free biscuit. Then Jennifer and I spent a happy couple of hours shopping - clothes from "The Mill", and then a look at the $2.00 shop! Another drink and show and tell and then I dropped Jennifer off and came home.

And now the rain has stopped and the sun is pretending to shine. Terry is out planting nasturtium seeds in the orchard and I'm thinking about what to cook for dinner.

So - how about that for a perfect day? Sewing, shopping, a wonderful parcel from abroad and lunch with two of my favourite people?

Nearly Finished

I've only got the label to do now. I've used a very thin batting as I wanted it to be suitable for use as a table centrepiece. I won't attach any hanging system but I will include three little rings that could be sewn to the back for hanging if my partner wishes. I'm quite pleased with it. The colours work and, even though I changed the right-hand border from the original design, its still balanced. Want to know why I changed it? Well, I cut the strips, sewed them together, cut the 45 deg angle for three of the border pieces that make up the bottom and right hand borders - and then cut the fourth border piece out of one of the others! I pieced two more borders and made two more mistakes (in size and then in colour)! So I gave up trying to make the border as designed and started fresh. The quilting is fairly basic, just a meander in variegated thread that suggests air flow or a windy day.

Fabric Sorted

Here are my fabric choices for the Four Seasons Quilt Swap and you can also see the roll of embroidery thread that Helen gave me as a thank you for letting her use my quilting frame while I was away. Its a lovely maroon with a slight brown mottle - perfect for the autumn colouring I'm aiming for.

And you can see that I also intend to use some orphan blocks left over from making my daughter's Plenty-o-Pockets bag shown in the making here (I didn't get a photo of it finished). When you make snowball blocks using this method you get two triangles cut off each corner. And I'm sure you all know that if you sew them together BEFORE cutting them off the snowball while its easy, you get a bonus bunch of small squares made from half square triangles. That's what I'm using for the Tree of Life block in the middle of this Four Seasons Quilt.

Four Seasons Swap

I've entered my first internet quilt swap - this one here. I've to make a small quilt and send it to my designated giftee and I will be sent a quilt by another participant. We can freely blog about the quilts we make as no-one knows whose quilt they will receive. We also have our partner's preferences as guidelines.

Here is a pic of the quilt I have decided to make, which I designed in EQ6. I have chosen to challenge myself by making it all pieced (which I don't like to do generally) and the pieces will be pretty small as its going to be 18" square. I will starch the fabric to heck before making it and then wash it when its finished. The finished colours will be slightly different to the pic as I received my partner's preferences after finishing the design.