Long time - No see!

Did you look at the date of the last post? 1st August!  I can not believe that I have been absent for 2 months.  Mind you, it has been a hectic 2 months in one way or another.  There is a lot of catch up to do

In July, my friend Penny, opened her new shop at Victor Harbor, PennyLane Patchwork.  The opening was on the windiest coldest day this winter.  We all snuggled inside, and greeted the customers.  The photo above is the new Block of the Month I have started to make for the shop.  It is in Jen Kingwell "Lollies"fabric, and will be ready next year.  All the blocks are circles of one kind or another.  Some simple, some more complicated.

 Then in August, I went across to Melbourne, and stayed with my friend Janet O, and was the guest speaker at the Victorian Quilters Annual General meeting.  That was a bit of a treat for me, and I hope they enjoyed the quilt show and tell I had for them.  While in Melbourne, I visited the National Gallery of Victoria, to see the Making the Australian Quilt Exhibition.  A few of the quilts are shown above, but I think there are restrictions on showing them, so I had better be good :-) You can read about it on the link.  It is a must see exhibition if you are in Melbourne until 6th November.

 So, we get to September, and we have SPRING!!  Yay!!  we had the wettest spring on record, with gale force winds, and floods across the state.  It is still raining now, but we have been promised sunshine by the end of the week.

In preparation for Spring, I started to make these sunshiny blocks.  They are made from a Layer Cake, but I added a few other fabrics that I had picked up along the way.  The blocks are "Dresden Squared".  I am making about 20 of these, or more, as I think they would make a great workshop idea.  Simple cutting and sewing.  The trickiest part is appliqueing the centre circles.  This I am doing on the machine as well.

I got the Noughts and Crosses quilt finished.  I posted about the start of it back here .  It is all done, and hanging on the clothes line (along with the washing!) so I can take a photo.  I had it machine quilted with an all over Clamshell design, by Helen Campbell at the Quilting Room.

Also, forgot to mention, that during all this time, I had taken on a part time job!  It is finished now.....what was I thinking of???

Another one on the clothes line.  This one is our Spring into Summer workshop for 11th November.  It is a Jelly Roll quilt, or in my case, 2 1/2"strips from my stash.  I used only brown and brown prints, plus the solid blue, and I just love it!  It makes the brown look like gold.  It has gone off to be quilted as well.  There are spaces on the workshop if you are interested.  Email me for details.

 Last weekend we had the South Australian Quilters annual Festival of Quilts. I had a shop stand there, and can you believe, I did not take one single quilt photo!!  I was far too busy serving customers.  thanks to everyone who called by to buy some of my goodies, or just have a chat.  We will be back next year.

You know what happens at a quilt show, you get inspired to do new things.  Like I have not got enough UFO's to keep me busy for a while.......but I have had an Arabic Lattice quilt idea in my brain for a while.  This is a simple and tricky block, and it has danced with me for about 15 years.  Now it is about to get done.  I drew it up on EQ and this is the result.

 It starts with a 4 patch centre, and then you wrap triangles around that.  You can only partially sew the first triangle in place as show about.

 Then you can add the second triangle

 add the third triangle

 you are left with the first triangle, still flapping about

and finally you can sew that in place.  

I have made 3 of these this morning, and cut out a further 3.  The placement of the colours, will give you a number of different designs.  Wait a while and I will show you what they all look like sewn together.  I have made them 9" so I am thinking 20 blocks, plus a border, will give me a good size quilt.

Thanks for taking the time to read all my catch up news.  Sorry to have neglected all this time.