January Photo Challenge

Hi

Happy New Year- Don't think that I will get much crafting done this month so instead I decided that I would do the Fat Mum Slim photo challenge: http://www.fatmumslim.com.au/2011/12/photo-day-challenge-january-2012.html


Here are day's one and two:

Day One: Me

Day Two : Breakfast- had to wait till 10.30am for this; but a lovely morning

Quilt show

Last week was the Craft and Quilt show in Brisbane, wow  what an amazing array of beautiful quilts. I feel quite inspired as I head off to a craft retreat this weekend. Here are some quilts to share,

 

I have to admire the 1800 leaves, I have no patience with needle turn applique, and my efforts are not very neat, this quilt was just stunning and possibly my favourite.

I also made quilt which I started in the Bundy floods last Christmas, strangely it was also a half square triangle quilt.

 

Above is a collage of some of my favourites, the beautiful log cabin won best in show. 

Finally this Baltimore quilt was exquisite, the piecing, quilting and border were amazing. I've done a border like this (badly) in clay on the edge of a bowl and never thought about something so detailed on a quilt.

Hope you enjoyed a few pics

Christmas quilt update

Progress is being made on my block of the month project that I started too long ago now, I think it's been on the go for about 18 months with the original plan to have it completed for last christmas. Well that didn't happen, though I did take it with me to Bundaberg last year and worked on it whilst I was stranded by the flooding, couldn't get any further as i'd left the borders in Brissie. Finally picked it up again a couple of weekends ago when I had a lovely sewing weekend trip to visit Crafty Mummy and family. It was a rainy yucky day, and I even missed the turning to the highway and ended up on the wrong road. Ooops! I arrived a little late, and after lunch we got some serious sewing done. CM posted on her blog ages ago, I'm not so organised...........

I pieced the Hopscotch quilt first and then finished the borders on my xmas quilt. It is incredibly busy close up but this does not show up in the photographs. The pattern called for adding 5 borders to the quilt. I couldn't stand the idea of going round and round adding borders so opted to strip piece the borders together and then join them to the quilt with mitred corners. They are really quite easy to do, and this tut shows the method I use, as was taught my my first teacher Lyn. 

By ironing the seams out for one side and in for the neighbour they nested really neatly together when mitre'ing (?) and gave a lovely crisp result.

Now for some serious quilting.

I'll share my other sewing soon- a roman blind and some curtains.

Return to the sewing machine

Hello

It's been a long time between posts, but I am back behind the sewing machine again. I really felt like doing a quick project, so picked up a kit that I bought a while back.

It's a pretty pretty girls quilt from Michelle Crawford at Flowerbox Quilts from Spokane in Washington, USA. I'd seen it in the Quilter magazine. I'd made one of Michelle's quilts before and the patterns are well written, easy to follow and produce a beautiful quilt. I love the way that the white tone on tone makes the very pretty fabric just pop.

There were only 9 blocks and they took no time to cut out and piece. There were quite a number of bias cut edges but they did not stretch too much when piecing. I've pieced a backing with some pale yellow fabric on one side and a white fabric with small pink and green dots on the other, between these fabrics is a row of rectangles of fabric from the front of the quilt to carry the theme through. I'll show some pics once the quilt is finished. The quilt is now pinned and awaiting some quilting. I think that that will be some loopy free motion quilting and I have some pale pink and green variegated thread to use.

Hope you like the pictures.

Happy sewing

Bed runner

Finally I post some pictures of the bed runner I made for mum for her birthday. It's a simple construction using a jelly roll from a batik range. I used linen to set the blocks- a fair bit stretchier than cotton and bordered it in my favourite dragonfly japanese fabric. It was my first go at a runner, so it worked in that regard. Pretty pretty would not work for my family so a simple colour scheme works for them. Hope you like.