It has been 2 weeks since I posted, and I wondered what I had been doing in that time.  I has been school holidays here, so I had my DGD Skylar, for a visit twice.  We had a long weekend in there as well, and I spent the 3 days working at Hettie's Patch stand at the Australian Machine Quilting Festival in Adelaide.  I was doing some "demos" of the Hedgehog Needle Puller while doing hand quilting.  Yes, I know it was a  "Machine" quilting thing, but the hand quilting was a fascination for many people.

I also spent the time getting 2 quilts finished to enter into the Adelaide Quilt show in November.  The baskets and rose blocks are all put together, quilted and bound!

 Many of you have been on this long journey with me, and I am happy to say it is FINISHED!  I chose to do "big stitch" hand quilting on this quilt.  I used a pink perle cotton number 8.  Must say, I am getting a bit hooked on this quilting.  It is so much faster than traditional hand quilting, and suits the situation where you think you might machine quilt it.

 I did parallel lines 1" apart in the border triangles, and 1/4" in the sashing, and straight down 1" apart on the blocks......no outlining, just straight over the top!

I used the same blue fabric for the binding.

Another one finished for the Adelaide show is the "Summertime" quilt I showed you a few months back.  I had this one professionally machine quilted, with an all over Baptist Fan design. and chose a black directional fabric for the binding.

You can see the binding better in this one

 You can see the quilting lines on this one

Some really way out fabrics.  My friends call them "uglies"!

People often ask me about how I choose my fabrics. Not a lot of thought goes into it.  I like to just "wing it", but a little like......I start with the centre fabric, and find something that contrasts with it using the Light/Dark principle, pick out one of the colours from the centre (in this case red) and use that again.  I love directional fabrics and zig zags.

Another one I am working is the 4 Card Trick.  I showed this to you last post, and it is now taking shape.  All the blocks are together, and I had enough "mistakes" to make a scrappy border.  Not sure what I will do after this pieced border, but I am thinking either a red and black border fabric, about the same width as the pieced border.......or just binding in red or black.  I plan to hand quilt this one in variegated perle cotton as well.  I like the way you can set these blocks square, but get an "on point" look about it.

I really want to get back to my applique, but "have to" get these jobs done first.