Sick and tired

Of being sick and tired!  Although I've started to get bored now so hopefully that means I'm on the mend!

I've done a little bit of the cross stitch Santa I've been working on for ages.  It might even be finished for this Christmas!

Although now that I'm looking at all that empty space on the back of the cross stitch perhaps I shouldn't be so hopeful of it being completed by Christmas!

I've been quilting.  Just one quilt for a friend.  The ones I made at my living room retreat have been shoved into a cupboard!

This poor quilt top has been sitting on my frame for almost 3 weeks because I've had a disaster after disaster with the tablets and programs I use to run the machine.  It's all sorted now, fingers crossed, and I've managed to finish the quilting.

I used a free pattern from Urban Elementz called Pansies which are nice and simple and I thought went well with the style of this quilt.  It's a sampler made up of a mixture of pieced blocks, appliqués and embroideries.  Peta will now be adding some details which had to be put on after the quilting was completed.

Here's the quilting design on the back.  I asked my husband to take the picture as I was holding it up so I wouldn't get dog hair all over it and the photo isn't the best.

        

I'm going to retreat in Ballarat in a couple of weeks time and I'm wondering what to take with me. I have so many projects to choose from!

All packed up

But not put away.  I came down with some kind of flu and I don't have the energy to put it all away.  The sewing machine was headed to my bedroom to encourage me to hem the curtains at last.  So I'm not sure if this flu has done me a favour haha!

In the last post I had some strips leftover that I wasn't sure what to do with.  I tried out a couple of options.  This one where I rotated each alternate block was what I had in my head to do but it just looked too messy.

So I tried just stacking the blocks and liked it.

Ta da!

I used up all the purple strips to make a baby quilt the same way as the pinks I'd previously made.

After all of that sewing I STILL had a pile of scraps!  There were a lot of pinks so I removed most of those.

And made this quilt which is bigger than the usual stillborn baby size but I figured there would be babies that need it anyway.

I did consider putting all the pinks into one quilt but they just didn't seem to match.

So I added white fabric and made five stillborn baby quilts.

It was a very productive living room retreat.  I made 10 quilt tops of different sizes, 11 stillborn baby quilt tops and two cushion panels.  Now I need to quilt it all but would you believe it?  My tablet that runs the quilting machine has died and I'm continually playing catch up with the US company because of the time zones between us which is very frustrating!

5 days left at living room retreat

 My furry four legged grandchildren left today.  It's going to be quieter, cleaner, more relaxing lonely without them.  But I got my design floor back!

I'm not sure what Debbie was going to do with these cats and they didn't come with any additional fabric which would have helped me think of a design.  In the end I kept it fairly simple and raided my stash for plain homespun.

I needed to make circles and this bowl was the perfect size.  The trouble with it is that I couldn't see through the bowl so I marked the quarters with masking tape.

Then when I put it on the fabric I wanted to mark the lines on the masking tape matched up with the quarter marked creases on my block and I managed to centre the circle perfectly.

I cut a hole 1/4 inch smaller than the marked circle and made small slits all around it before pressing on the marked circle line.  Ta da!  A perfect hole in the fabric.

I laid it out to check out the arrangement and then stitched the holes to the cat circles just along the very edge of the hole.  That sounds more confusing to read than it was to do.

I stitched it together and made binding.

I then used up all the pink rectangles from Debbie's box of rectangles to make this little pink and white quilt top.  I have some purple strips I might use to do the same design.

 

I sewed most of the rest of the strips into pairs.

      

The box is almost empty!  There's the purple strips I was just talking about, some strips not quite the right size and some batiks.  I'm not sure what to do with the batiks.  They might end up in my stash.  I haven't decided what to do with the paired strips yet but I don't really want to make another staggered brick quilt so watch this space!

Week two at my retreat!

 My son will be home on Thursday and he'll be taking my his dogs home and as Wellington's shoulder injury is healing well I'll be able to move back to the studio to sew.  But I've had so much fun!  Do I really want to?!  I guess I should if only to prevent my husband from having a heart attack when he sees the mess I've made of the living room when he comes home this weekend!

I enjoyed trimming these rectangles in front of the TV.

I finished another quilt top!  And binding!  I still have some rectangles left so I'll have to come up with something to use those up.  Hmm...

When I went to the studio for the fabric to make the binding for that top I spotted these cats.  It's a bit tricky to come up with a design because of the circles especially as they're very stiff because of the stabiliser but I'll give it some thought and hopefully I'll come up with something.

Living room retreat continues!

I have watched so many movies this week they're all becoming a blur! Mind you, I am watching silly little romances that I don't have to pay attention to while I'm sewing so it's no wonder I don't remember what I've actually watched.

I finished the blanket stitch on my foster girl's cushion and I completed the boy's cushion too.  They'll be quilted as soon as I can do it.

My crochet friend was given a big pile of patchwork to do with what she pleased and she gave it to me.  I'll be honest, I thought it was a nice big pile of fabric when I gladly accepted it but it was two almost finished wonky log cabin quilts and a pile of blocks.

I laid them out on my design floor to see what was what.  Wellington loves them!

And he likes the finished quilt too!  I made binding!

This one had a couple of blocks missing and it needed all of the outside seams repaired. I also made binding!

 

I was left with lots of blocks and these went together ok except for that corner block which was too different.  I unpicked two other blocks to make a new complete one.  Wonky log stars are harder than I thought to make!

I trimmed it, and the other blocks, on my kitchen workbench turned cutting table.

I made binding!  Woo!  No dogs!

Oh.  I spoke too soon!  Mila decided she liked these blocks.  I'm going to wash them and turn them into stillborn baby quilts as there's not enough matching ones to make anything else with.  I'm beginning to see why I like my design wall in my studio so much now!

These quilts are going to be added to the "to be quilted" mountain.  I don't have any backing fabric for them and I'm loath to spend any money on them at the moment either.

I have another quilt top to quilt for a friend and she was happy with me using a sheet as backing.  I bought a sheet set because they didn't have flat sheets in the colour I wanted so I cut off the elastic part of the sheet and unpicked the corners and was left with this lovely cross shaped fabric.  There was enough fabric for my friend's backing and for another small quilt. Then I squared it up and used the strips I cut off for baby quilts.  That sheet set was very useful!

This has since been washed and dried and I've been putting off pressing it. 

I used some of that sheet for the background fabric for these tiny quilts.  It was a perfect colour match.

I have been hand sewing these at the Tuesday sewing sessions but I realised that once I quilt my friend's quilt there'll be enough backing to quilt these little ones at the same time.  I don't want my friend to have to wait too long for her quilt so I machine stitched a few blocks.

It was too dark to go outside to my studio to gather another project so I started sewing the colourful strips into pairs.  I don't know what I'll make with them but I enjoyed the mindless sewing!

Day 5 at my living room retreat

It's the start of day 5 and it looks pretty ordinary outside with grey skies and clouds so I'm glad to be indoors keeping warm.  My family is in Paris at the moment and I hear it's very hot over there!

Debbie made these blocks of colour and they came with white strips of fabric.

There's also a tube of neatly organised colour strips.

I added sashing.

Ta da!  It's finished!  I used some of those coloured strips to make binding.  I don't know what I'll make with the rest yet.

I take hand sewing to the social sewing group on Tuesdays and I've been working on Debbie's hexies.  I checked with her family and they're very happy for me to make stillborn baby quilts out of them to be donated so I've started putting them onto background squares.  They'll get quilted once I've any spare backing on any of the quilts I quilt or there are so many of them I could put them all onto their own backing.  But I don't get a lot done on Tuesdays so I suspect I'll be sewing these for quite some time.

Today I'll be working on my foster girl's cushion.  She's been very patient!  This is definitely a sewing session in front of the TV kind of day.

Retreat...in my living room!

My family has gone to the UK and I'm at home enjoying the peace and quiet dogsitting.  My one and only goal during this time was to sort out my sewing studio.  It's a terrible mess and I'd even purchased some extra boxes to make my life easier.  

Then this happened.

Wellington managed to tear a big hole in his shoulder whilst out in the garden so now he has to be kept quiet and calm.  Easy to do with three dogs in the house right?  Ha ha!  I'm currently letting them out in the garden one at a time so I've mostly been playing doorman so far.  The $1,000 stitches come out in 12 days.  It's going to be a loooong 12 days!

Anyway, the studio sorting is out of the question so instead I brought my retreat sewing gear into the living room and I've been sewing!

I've positioned myself right in front of the television!

This is one of Debbie's quilts I'm finishing off to give back to her family or to donate to charity.  This is how much I did the first day. My design floor is very handy.

The next day I was determined to finish the quilt so I sewed it together and I actually liked it as it was but before I started I had this idea of putting on a border...white, then more colourful patches then white.

I did the first white border. Then it seemed to take all day to trim the squares to make the second border but I got it done.

I decided against the last white border.  The quilt is big enough to be useful either as a lap quilt or as a child's quilt and if it's going to be donated this is probably what it would be used for.

I tried to take a picture.  Meet Midas!

       

Here is the quilt top all finished with binding.  I don't know when I'll get around to quilting it.

Today's plan is to work on these blocks which are also Debbie's.  I haven't had a chance to play with them yet but I think I can just add sashing to the blocks and it'll be good.