Toot toot

Judy, Kate, Kay and I had a lovely time at retreat.  We all met at Millrose quilt shop in Ballan and spent time sighing over the beautiful fabrics.  After that we had a hot drink before heading off to Ballarat.

First stop there was to Gail's Patchwork Emporium.  I could live at that shop!  It's full of wonders! Next stop was lunch and, because we had time, we popped into Spotlight before we grabbed snacks and wine before checking into our accommodation.

We stayed in a beautiful house in the centre of  Ballarat which was a short walk to some lovely cafés and restaurants so we took full advantage of this and ate out one night at a pizza place and had a Thai takeaway the following night.  As you can tell, there was a lot of eating during our stay!

Our house was next to the railway line and the trains toot tooted all the time.  It was quite cute in the day.  Not so much during the night!  Not that that would put me off staying at this house again, mind you.

On the Saturday we went to The Pickled Pig and I bought this metallics fabric to add to my Christmas fabric.  I'd like to make a Merry Christmas banner one day but who knows when that day will come!  I need to source some more metallics as I'm running short.

I took three projects to retreat.  I didn't take my greyhound cross stitch out of its bag.  Again.  But I did work on my camera quilt and managed to unpick all of the overlapping or excess quilting.

I used my favourite needle threader to bury the shortest threads.  But I have a billion threads to bury so I didn't finish this task.

I worked on this crochet shawl.  I unpicked probably more than I actually worked.  Apparently I can't count and chat at the same time.

There was cheese and wine.  Perfect.  This might also be why I unpicked a lot of my crochet...

Kate worked on these beauties.

Judy worked on a billion projects but didn't finish anything.  She went on to finish lots the moment she arrived home!

Kay used a bloc loc ruler to trim half square triangles and was so impressed with the easy and accuracy she immediately bought herself a set!  She sewed her half square triangles into this lovely quilt top.

When I came home I went to a new sewing group hoping to make new friends.  And I met old friends!  Here are Margaret, Annie and Rosie working away on their projects.  I've attended this sewing group a few times now and the ladies I didn't know are becoming more familiar and I'm sure one day I'll consider them friends.  I've been working on a small cross stitch at this sit n sew.  It's tiny and my eyes aren't as young as they used to be!

I haven't done a lot at home although my crochet shawl is growing.  It's amazing how much you can do without wine chatter.  I did hem a pair of pants for my son though.  That was fun sewing. YAWN.

Oh! And I've been tidying my studio!  It's amazing how much space there is now that I'm not storing all of my son's furniture and boxes for his house!

Gail is keeping me busy!

Gail started putting this disappearing nine patch quilt together while we were at our last retreat as a gift for her mum.  Gail was going to quilt it herself but life got in the way so she asked me to help.  Out of interest I recorded how long it took me to complete this project.

I reinforced the seams.

I pinned the backing to the frame and laid the wadding and quilt top on top.  I then had to decide what colour thread to use.  I thought grey would work but the best colour turned out to be a light brown.  So I filled a few bobbins, created the design in CAD and made sure the quilt was square before I started.

This all took me an hour.

This is the quilting pattern.  It's called Trillium and Judy chose it for me because I was having one of those days where I just couldn't decide what to use!

I enlarged it a fair bit because not only does it look great but it's quick to quilt.  And...ahem...it's also quick to unpick.  I played around too much with the automation and started quilting the last row on the first row.  I noticed fairly quickly but it still took me half an hour to unpick my silly error!

As you roll the quilt on to start the next row of quilting you then have to smooth out the wadding and quilt top and make sure everything is still square.  I added some basting lines as I went which helps keep everything straight and I'm always relieved when I get to the end of the quilting and the bottom edge is relatively nice and even.

And Ta Da! Here it is!

Look at the lovely texture of the quilting.  

My last job was removing the basting lines, which I did whilst watching TV and then I added up my timings and worked out that start to finish this little quilt took me five and a half hours to complete.  I had no idea it took that long!  Ha ha!

A few of us are going away for retreat at Ballarat soon.  I hear that Judy and Kate have been busy prepping so they can sew sew sew.  I'm still busy wondering what wine to take!  I'm thinking that I should crack on with burying threads in my camera quilt so I can get it back up on the frame to finish off.  I might even take my greyhound cross stitch.  Hopefully it makes it out of the bag this time!

Quilting! I bet you thought this was a crochet blog!

 

Gail asked me to quilt this Halloween quilt for her granddaughter.  Gail tried quilting it herself but her machine was playing up.  The top is very busy so I was going to do a simple meander or something but the backing Gail gave me to use was plain-ish so I decided to do a Halloween design.  

I didn't have any Halloween designs so I bought this digital design from Urban Elementz 

I noticed that one of Gail's seams was coming undone so I repaired that.

And all the seams along the edges were coming undone so I repaired those before sewing my usual 1/8th inch stay stitching around the whole quilt.

I'm going away for the weekend with my family and dogs so I have a billion things to do so, of course, I decided to quilt the quilt instead!  I was only going to get it up on the frame but I couldn't stop once I got started!

Here's the quilting on the top.  Totally wasted!

Minnie inspected the quilt!

Here's the backing that Gail pieced.  I didn't manage to get the quilt top centred on the backing (which is why I make my backings deliberately off centre ha ha!) 

Here's the quilting on the back.

It was good to get a quilting project done for a change!

Not much to see…

 I went to retreat and all I have is this picture!  It's a shame because the other ladies did lovely work and I have no pictures!   I didn't want to spoil my reputation of doing nothing at retreat so I did nothing ha ha!  Actually, I did do all the cooking so that was enough work I guess.  And I didn't poison anyone.  Win win!

A while back I bought a value pack of yarn from Spotlight that I wanted to use to learn with before buying decent yarn.  It was horrible to work with so I ended up buying decent wool after all!  But now that I've had a bit of practice I went back to the value stuff and found it easier to use.  I did have plans to do some kind of large granny square blanket but I'm not a fan of granny squares so that idea went out the window and I'm now looking for smaller projects to do so that I can learn new techniques whilst getting rid of this horrible yarn!  It is pretty though!

Wellington loves this value yarn!

I made this Linked Heart Blanket and used up a fair bit of the yarn.  I'm umming and ahhing over a couple of different projects to use up the rest.  But then again, I've since purchased some decent yarn so I'm tempted to start something else!  Who would have thought I'd get so "hooked" on crochet?! It is the perfect craft to do in front of the fire in winter!

I haven't forgotten my quilting!  I'm busy working on my camera quilt unpicking the thread that ended up in the wrong places and burying threads.  There are hundreds of threads so I suspect it'll take a bit of time.  Once they're done it can go back on the frame to be finished.

I had a procedure the other day which meant having IV sedation.  I begged the anaesthetist to put the IV in my already ruined left hand just in case but he wouldn't listen claiming I was paranoid and scared of a teeny tiny needle and put the IV in my right hand.

And this is how that ended up.  I need to find a better way of articulating my wishes so these "I know better" doctors don't railroad me into doing things I know are bad for me.

I'm left with numb fingertips but the numbness is wearing off so hopefully I'll have the full use of this hand soon.  The procedure went well otherwise.

I don't have any plans to do any quilting other than burying the threads on the camera quilt so I may be quiet for a while.  But I'll be back!

Phew! Finished!

I finished the borders and put the quilt on the frame.

I did consider using my gum leaves quilting pattern but felt it wasn't childlike enough so I did bubbles.  I love the bubbles! It's very exciting when you get to the bottom row of your quilting and everything has lined up.

My favourite part is unrolling the quilt and seeing it finished.

I'm not quite so keen on the binding part!

Ever get the feeling you're being watched?

I hand stitched the binding and my sons helped me design a label which looks like the sun in the corner of the quilt.

Ta da!  This was the quilt before I washed it.  The animals aren't as dark as they look in this picture but I was leaning over whilst standing on the sofa which was very wobbly and I wasn't going to attempt to do another picture!

After I washed the quilt it crinkled up which is fine but it's always nice to give gifts when they're at the new looking stage.  I just don't like gifting unwashed quilts.  What if the colours run???  The two colour catchers I used came out purple so some colour came off it.  The quilt is now drying flat on my dining table.  

Yeah!  I got it finished in time!  I'm going to retreat next week.  What shall I take to work on?

Fly away geese!

I'm over making you!  And I'm definitely over trying not to cut the points off them!  Why didn't I do a simple border??

Well it's coming along.  I have made the top and bottom borders so I just need to sew those on and then there's a simple rectangle border to finish it off.  It's my birthday on Sunday and my birthday is in May so that means the May deadline is approaching very quickly!  Yikes!

We had our Easter Sunday dinner yesterday.  My morning started off with this mess to clean up.  The culprit looks quite innocent doesn't he?

Here's my table all set up.  My oldest son kept turning the cutlery because he thinks he's funny.  He won't be laughing when he's hosting next year.  But I will!

I couldn't get a good shot from above without standing on the table and I didn't think that was a good idea!  I put chocolate eggs in the bowl in the centre.

Hopefully my next post will be of the finished baby quilt!

Well the table will look nice

It's just a shame there's no one around to see it!  There wasn't a day we could all get together because of work or other plans.  I bet they'll all still want chocolate eggs though won't they?!  We'll have our dinner whenever we can squeeze it in.  Christmastime at this rate ha ha!

                                                                    I made tablemats.

I made decorations.

I've still got fabric so I'll keep on making things.  Perhaps they'll make an appearance next year!

I went to my crochet class and was encouraged to make granny square blocks so I've bought Granny Square Academy Digital – Shelley Husband Crochet and made a start.  I can now vaguely read a pattern now so that was useful.  I'm not a fan of granny squares.  I'd rather make something I can use but I'll finish these and see what I can do with them. 

I haven't touched the Land Down Under baby quilt.  I am going to be very busy panicking very soon!