Retreat is the best place for binding!

Six of us went to retreat in Gisborne last weekend and I took two quilts to bind.  There is so much going on at retreat that, although the quilts appear to be twenty miles square while you're hand sewing the bindings, they aren't boring to do.  Here I am in my pyjamas sewing the binding onto Debbie's quilt.

Here's her finished quilt.

The back turned out okay too.  I think it's the photo that makes those lines look wonky!

I also finished binding my Sunflower Farm quilt and I added the label.  It's amazing what holding up quilts in photos can do to disguise a double chin and wobbly belly!  So, that quilt will be flying off to the UK next month.  Yeah!

Here's the quilt you got a sneak peak of in the last photo.  Judy made this one.  She just has a few small strips to go on those gaps along the edges.  Knowing Judy, it's already done, quilted and bound by now!

Barb was sat next to me while I did all that binding and she started working on this English paper pieced quilt.

I helped Rosie add borders to this quilt.  There were six of them so 24 strips to sew!  The borders didn't end up particularly flat so Rosie and I must have made mistakes along the way but I won't be quilting it.  Sorry future quilter!  Rosie has some more detail to sew in the borders.  We tried to persuade her that the quilt was great without them but Rosie has already sewn them together and doesn't want to waste all that work!

We went to quite a few shops and I bought lots with my birthday gift money. I also bought two more fabrics but they were in the washing machine when I took this picture.  They're going to be turned into a circular quilt topper for my lazy Susan and match the Easter fabrics I previously made table linen with.  The charm pack will also go well with those fabrics but I have no plans for it yet.  The Tilda fat quarters were a bargain that I couldn't resist and the pink and white fabric is for my new bedroom quilts which I haven't started even thinking about.  The yarn jumped into my basket while I was buying milk.  Ahem.

Retreat was great AND I booked the next Ballarat one while I was there so that's something to look forward to!

More of nothing

But I finished quilting two quilts so my crystal ball tells me I have a lot of binding to do at retreat!  I wonder if I can palm one of the quilt binding off on to some other unsuspecting soul while I'm there? Ha ha!

This quilt was another made by Debbie.  It's a Leesa Chandler design that's brilliant for showcasing fabrics.  The quilt came to me sandwiched but not quilted.  Debbie used to quilt using her domestic machine and the quilt top and wadding fit perfectly fine on this wonky pieced backing but it wouldn't work on my quilting frame so I had to fix it.

I needed to make it a bit bigger and I found some of the green in my stash so I just added a four inch strip of that inside the chunk of cream.  I only had to unpick one of the lengths of fabric so it wasn't too bad and then the rest was sewing and straightening up.

Because I needed the backing to be much larger than the quilt top I added borders of scraps of blue fabric around the backing.  You can see in this picture that the clamps holding the sides go onto the blue borders leaving the green free for quilting.  With all of those seams I was expecting to have trouble putting the backing onto the frame but it went on fairly smoothly.  I was reminded, however, of the reason why I like to use sheets as my backings!

I was on a roll so I loaded the quilt top...and started quilting!  It didn't exactly go as quickly as that and I did have to have stern words with my laptop that was misbehaving.

I chose to do this simple leaf design. 

It was very difficult keeping this quilt square but I was fairly happy with the (wonky) bottom edge when I got to that part.  

Ta da!  All quilted and ready for binding.  I had some of the purple fabric in my stash but it was handkerchief sized so that was no good.  I asked Barb if she had some and she did...a few small scraps of it but she did have a slightly darker purple so I'm going to use that if there's enough.  That purple must have been a popular colour ten years ago!

I blanket stitched around some more circles.

Embroidered a label for the baby quilt.

Cute hey?

Stitches some more squares.

And celebrated Mother's Day with breakfast.  My Easter tableware came in handy!

Two sleeps until retreat!  Woo!!

Busy finishing nothing

My friend, Debbie, passed away recently and I have several of her projects to finish.  They'll probably be charity quilts because Debbie loved donating her work and I think her family will want to honour her by doing the same.  This is one of her projects.  It's a lot of squares sewn into pairs and there is one, I'm guessing, finished block.

I just wanted to do some mindless chain piecing so I grabbed this project and started sewing the paired squares together.  Unfortunately, the squares aren't square so I soon ran into some trouble!  I decided to trim the squares so they were better and instead of unpicking all the work Debbie has already done I folded the paired squares in half so they became one square and trimmed them both together.  It's not ideal because Debbie and I have different seam allowances but it's a lot better than it was.  

I put masking tape on the measurement I wanted so that it was easier to see.

Because of all the trimming I didn't get to do much of the mindless chain sewing I'd been planning but I made two blocks and at some point I'm going to have to decide what to do with them.

Will I sew them all together?

Or add sashing?

I didn't do much because I wasn't in the mood for trimming so I started blanket stitching around the circle appliqués for the foster girl's cushion.

I got distracted looking for lilac thread so went back to the house where I did some crochet.  This will be a serviceable poncho.  It probably won't look great but it should be warm!

I think I did two rows and then I was back in the studio sewing binding onto my baby quilt.  I sewed half of it and gave up.  It really was one of those days!!

Another year older

There wasn't much to celebrate but there was wine!  And a delicious Italian dinner.

Back to the Sunflower Farm quilt!  I did rather messy knots for the eyes and whatever those things are called on top of those stick things.

Bzzzz...

I finished all the appliqué and checked it at least seven times.  If I find anything I didn't blanket stitch after I've quilted it I am going to scream!

I decided not to do the border suggested by the designer even though it is pretty.  I just wanted something simple.  I decided to sew it all on in rows rather than the traditional way of sewing borders.

Almost done...

Ta da!

Quilting next.  I couldn't work out which thread to use.  It's difficult when you have so many colours in a quilt but the beige one stood out the least so I went for that.

It didn't take me long to attach it to the frame.  

I chose a simple wavy line.

This is what it was supposed to look like but I had giant gaps in the quilting and I thought I'd messed up by making my pattern too large. But it turned out to be a fault of the computerised system and once I'd finished quilting the whole top with the missing lines I rolled the quilt back up and quilted it again.  It was a quick design and it hardly used any thread.  I think the prep needed for each row took more time than the actual quilting on this quilt.

I finished it!  Yeah!

I managed to sew through my laser light cord.  Very annoying but it made a pleasant change from sewing my finger! 

I've cut my binding and attaching that will be a job for another day.  It'll be good to do the hand sewing part at retreat in just over a week's time.  I had been considering taking the blocks to finish off the appliqué at retreat so I'm very happy that I'm much closer to the finish than that!

Back at it

I was putting off finishing the appliqué because they were too small ha ha.  Those noses probably took 30 seconds to sew. I'm my own worst enemy sometimes!

I finished the appliqué and sewed the rows together.  Now I have to fill in the empty spots.

These are what's left to do.

I'm on track to getting it done before June!

Yarn about turtles and renovations

I finished painting my bedroom ceiling.  I did three coats and thought it looked ok until I saw it at night time under artificial lights!  Still, by then I'd moved on to the walls so the patchy ceiling will stay there forever!  I later discovered that this particular ceiling paint has 1.5 stars because it's rubbish.  Ah well.

I also did three coats on the walls and they came out lovely.  Just as I was heaving a sigh of relief that I'd finished the decorating I looked at my windows...and ended up sanding and varnishing those!  Which means I now know that all of my windows need the same treatment and there are 19 of them!  They're huge too!  Deep breaths.

So I'm all finished and guess what?  I looked at the blue mosaic tile on my bathroom floor and it had to go!  My husband has taken over this job.  Phew!  But I guess I'll be doing that window!

I might move back into my bedroom one day.

I quilted a very lovely small turtle quilt for Marie from my Tuesday sewing group this week.  Marie machine stitched the appliqué shapes onto the top which made quilting very difficult for me as my machine's foot catches in anything that's not smooth and it has a tendency to rip holes in things.

So I covered the quilting area in tracing paper and quilted over the top of it with no problems.

I love the part when I unroll the quilt once I've finished quilting but this time there wasn't much to see!

Bree, my youngest son's girlfriend, helped me tear off the paper.  It's nice and thin so it's easy to remove.

Here is the lovely quilt.  Cute isn't it?!

Jim and I went to Bendigo for the weekend and I dragged him to the Bendigo Woollen Mills.  He followed me around the store for a short while then found himself a seat and left me too it.  All they needed was a coffee machine and he's have been quite comfortable all day!

Here he is carrying my stash back to our accommodation.

And here's my stash woo!  The yellow is to make another poncho.  The blue is a shawl.  The variegated is a wrap.  The pink was purchased for a friend.  I'm going to be very busy!

 

No, I haven't finished the sunflower baby quilt Annie!