What kind of a quilting blog is this?!

When there’s no quilting going on! I have to wear this torture device for an hour and then rest my hand for another hour all day to try to fix my hand injury.  It makes sewing very difficult but I think I could have managed it if I’d been in the mood!

My youngest son, Alex, was 21 this week.  I made this mess making him a card.  Don’t look too closely because I’ve left the rotary cutter open.  Ssh don’t tell Judy!

I’m not a good at drawing and I’m not a keen card maker but we started making cards for family members because it means more than bought.  They’re mostly joke cards these days.  Alex’s always feature elephants.

And the pop out design is a nod to him having to make a pop up card at University recently.

My sewing room doubles up as the party room so it all had to be cleared out for Alex’s party last weekend.  I definitely have a great excuse not to be sewing now!

 

I did do some sewing though.  Well actually I performed surgery in fact! This little fellow needed a few stitches in his head.

Ta da! He’s feeling much better now.

The hand is still being fixed and the sewing room hasn’t been put back together so there’s very little chance of me doing any sewing for a while.  But…there’s a Quilt shop bus trip planned for this weekend woo! How exciting!

Saturday Sit n Sew

 Kay and a few of her fellow lifestyle villagers hosted a sit n sew at their village in Wollert today.  There was lots of chatting, laughing and eating and whilst lots of people sewed other people did more of the eating part!  You might work out who that was once you've seen the pictures of what we got up to!

Debbie worked on a project for her granddaughter and then started sewing this cute quilt.  In this picture she's playing with the layout. 

And here is a sewn row.

Jill made a star block for her Gorgeous Georgia quilt.  Everyone I know that has made this quilt agrees that it is indeed gorgeous but the pattern is terrible! Jill is a beginner quilter and has completed a few rows already and is doing a great job!

Gail did a bit of knitting and then brought her felt project out to embroider.  She started this table topper at an all day workshop we went to quite a few years ago. Gail couldn't find an effective marking tool to transfer the embroidery markings onto the dark felt and then she thought she'd try drawing the design onto baking paper and sewing through the paper.  It worked!

Judy hates hand sewing but loves doing EPP.  The shape she has here will act as a frame for a toile fabric centre.

Heather is embroidering details onto this Lynette Anderson pattern. It's going to be a lovely wall hanging once completed.

Marie has Christmas on her mind!  Ooh 126 days until Christmas!

Kay was stitching down the back on the binding on this baby quilt.

Ta Da! All done!  I'm very surprised that Kate didn't sneak that sloth quilt out with her when she left!

Mary is learning how to sew a glasses case.  This simple pattern is very versatile and can also be used as a phone case.  Marie said she uses hers to store crochet hooks!

     

I bought this adorable pattern at a quilt shop for $7.  What a bargain!  The problem is that the instructions are written in Japanese and, although there are a billion very clear pictures to go with it, I'm struggling to get my head around it so progress is very slow.  And I kind of get distracted by the snack table!  I stitched the house shaped pentagons into a strip during our last sit n sew session so all I sewed all day was the circle.  Oops!  I may try sewing the pattern onto scrap fabric to see if I can work out how to do it for next time.

We all had a great day and plans are afoot for a quilt shop hop next time!  Friendship AND fabric shopping woo!

1 hour

 Cryptic title hey?

I started cleaning and sorting my studio (sewing room) back in April and I was doing really well until I injured my hand so I was unable to finish.  As a consequence, anything I'd shoved into a pile or a box has remained there.  I'm a very messy person so there were a lot of boxes and piles!  My youngest son, Alex, is celebrating his 21st birthday soon with a party on the studio deck which means I have to empty one of my sewing spaces into the other.  And that means I have to finish tidying!  Arghh!  So, I set my alarm for 1 hour to see what I could get done in that time.

I decided to tackle this area first as it's the most common dumping ground and is where I'm likely to put my sewing things from the "party room" so that Judy can still have access to her quilting frame if she needs to come and use it.

This is typically what you'll find shoved into piles and boxes.

The worst part is that I do actually have a great storage system.  But I'm too messy to actually use it!

I found these fat quarters I'd bought at The Retreat, Gisborne last time I was there. I'll be going again next month.  The question is, will I do something with the fabric before then or will I buy more fabric to add to my stash?  Silly question?

Then I found this lovely yardage I bought at retreat in Ballarat this month that I hadn't found a home for.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with it but I just loved the range the moment I saw it!

After an hour (and ten minutes to dust and hoover!) here is the space.  The pile of things left there are to go to the charity shop whenever I get around to going. There are mostly embroidery threads and fabrics I don't use so someone will be happy to get them I'm sure.

It's amazing what you can get done in an hour!  Perhaps I should go and do another...

Diamond Pop Wedding Quilt

When my niece, Alice, announced that she was getting married to Phil the first thing I thought was "Quilt!".  Oh, um, I mean "Congratulations!".  Yeah, who am I kidding, it was "Quilt!"

I thought I had plenty of time to plan a quilt because my niece lives in the UK but in the end the moment Australia allowed international travel my husband had booked to go back to visit his family so I had a quilt to make in a hurry!  

I asked my sister in law, Helen, for colour inspiration and once I knew the colours were going to be jewel tones I looked through all my UK Love Patchwork & Quilting magazines and knew that Diamond Pop by Lynne Goldsworthy was the perfect quilt.  

We were in lockdown when I needed to start this project and I was unable to go to a fabric store so I purchased 6 different coloured Ombre Fairy Dust Metallic Stars range fabrics online from The Oz Material Girls . The great thing about this fabric range was that it had the light, medium and dark tones I needed for my diamonds in each coloured fabric.  I received fantastic service from the store and they cut and dispatched my fabric immediately but I didn't receive it for another month because of postal issues!  Arghh! At the same time, I bought many metres of white Kona cotton from Hugs 'n Kisses in Tasmania and, ironically, it arrived within a few days.

I loved the quilt I saw, of course, but I like quilts to be as square as possible rather than rectangular so I immediately had to draft my own version on graph paper. The original version was nice and neat and logical and mine left me with lots of puzzling out and partial seams to sew.  But I find that quite fun and interesting!

I couldn't work out how to make the half rectangle triangles even after I googled it so I ended up foundation paper piecing them and I was much happier with the end result.

Here are my diamond blocks going up on the design wall.  

Once the diamonds had been arranged and sewn to the white background pieces this top went onto Judy's Q'nique quilting frame which conveniently, for me, lives at my house! I can't remember what the name of the quilting design is but I wanted to go for something that looked like wind so the diamond kites looked like they were being blown around.

Here I am at retreat in Gisborne hand stitching the binding down.  Those are Judy's feet!

I embroidered the label.

TaDa!  Here's the finished quilt!  Finished just in time for its trip to the UK.

The wedding ceremony wasn't for ages after it landed in the UK so it was a while before they unwrapped the gift but here are Alice and Phil with their new quilt!

And here's a pic of the happy couple on their special day!  Congratulations both!

Retreat!

I'm home after a fantastic weekend away.  My car is still full of my sewing things but I'm sure I'll get around to emptying it soon.  Maybe.

Judy, Kate, Kay and I stayed at a lovely Airbnb in Ballarat.  We're spoiled when we go to The Retreat, Gisborne as all the cutting boards and ironing things are there ready for us to use so it's tricky if we go to sew somewhere else.  The Airbnb had a table we could eat at in the kitchen and a separate table in the living/dining room so we could use that table to sew on and not have to remove everything to eat.  The kitchen was also big enough for us to lay out our cutting boards on one of the workbenches so they were at a nice height for ease of use.

We all met at Millrose Quilting and Gallery in Ballan on Thursday morning and had a lovely time looking at their fabric ranges and we then went to their little café for hot chocolates before driving on to Ballarat.  We stopped at Beechworth bakery for lunch and then checked out Gail's Patchwork Emporium while we waited for check in time at the Airbnb.  

The other ladies did a lot of sewing over the weekend.  I hardly did any which I found amusing because I was raring to sew my Rugby Stars!  Here's Kate sewing flying geese and half looking at me suspiciously!

She's putting her flying geese together to make this quilt block.

Judy made a couple of baby quilts.  She started off with this bear panel.

And here's the quilt top complete!  She also did another with navy blues instead of the bear panel. In this picture Judy is holding her quilt top, Kate is sewing away industriously, Kay is laying out bonus half square triangles to make a table runner and I was sat watching them! 

Both Kay and Judy sewed some binding to quilts they brought with them.  Here's Judy displaying the one she made out of a ghastly jelly roll.  It looked great in the end!  Look at Judy's cute little slippered feet!

In this picture Kay is sewing stems on this flower appliqué using a satin stitch on her sewing machine.

Here are the busy little bees!  Oh but look, you can see some of my sewing!

Kay put bonus square scraps together to make this table runner and whipped up a couple of bags for a  birthday gift.

The Airbnb is conveniently across from an IGA supermarket, fish n chip shop and bakery so we didn't have far to go when we fancied a snack.  Or ANOTHER bottle of wine ;-)

I didn't get any pictures of me or my sewing so this is what I took when I came home.  I managed to sew *drumroll please* two stars! So I have three with the one I made before I went. Ha ha! 

But quite a few pinwheels with my bonus half square triangles.

Although I didn't get as much done as I had been anticipating, it was just so nice to go quilt shopping and to hang out with my fantastic friends!  I can't wait for the next retreat!

One sleep!

I’m going to retreat tomorrow with Judy, Kate and Kay woo!  We’ll be staying in an Airbnb in Ballarat.  I’m so excited!  When I started this blog I decided to post on Wednesdays and Saturdays but I’ve been so busy packing today I forgot all about planning a post!  Not that anyone is reading this yet!  Ha ha!  

So the one picture I have to show my imaginary readers is this one.  Minnie came on holiday with our family for the first time back in January and every time she sees an open boot she jumps in just in case! Not this time Minnie!  Besides, there was no room after I loaded  my retreat  things inside!

My next blog post should be more exciting!