I'm Back!

I bet your thought I was dead and buried, or won the lottery and moved to the moon, or some other exotic place.  No, I just got lazy, and sucked in by Facebook and Instagram.

It has been since November 2016....almost 2 years and I wonder what I have been up to.  Today I found this in my cupboard.  An old friend that I think I started....hmmm....15 years ago.  I started the quilting and for some reason decided it was not good enough, and I would have to unpick.  Today with a more experienced eye, I think it is ok, or at least fixable.  Will work on this as I renew my friendship with you all.  This is an opportunity I think.

a few ripples in this quilting, but if I wash and block when complete, it will be ok.

What else have I been up to?  Well it is the beginning of Spring in Australia, and in my part of the country, we have had plenty of rain, so the garden looks pretty good.  It is a bit later than usual, but maybe it will pick up.

 These trees I saw on my morning walk.

and the Jasmin on the fence.  Always flowers 1st of September.









In the sewing world I have been busy.  No more Block of the Months for quite some time, but I am thinking of something, I just have to get my Mojo working again.

I fell into a bit of a deep hole last year when my DH John, took sick while we were travelling in Burma.  Beautiful country, but horrible place to get sick.  It was a long way home, and he ended up with heart surgery at the end of November.

While he was convalescing I had a lot of time on my hands, and managed to make a quilt that really inspired me.   It is from the pattern by Susan Smith called Stevie's Garden.  I called mine Midnight in the Garden for obvious reasons.

 It was made entirely from my scrap bag, and the background and the border was in my stash.  The Blue Ribbon was special....I had never had one of these before!  Right now i am doing a lot of knitting, and looking at UFO's and hoping to find some inspiration.

I know it looks funny, but this is a shawl I am knitting by a talented German lady Martina Behm.  The yarn is silk and baby camel, and divine to knit.

I have run out of oomph today, so will find a few more things later in the week.

Thanks for stopping by,

Wendy

What have I been doing this week?

 I decided to finish my UFO "Hawaii Sunset".  Having decided not too many shortcut would do, I started to tackle the side half blocks.  I cut up and sewed the pinks and greens

 Adding the bright blue strips first

 then the dark blue strips

Finally, I got the 4 corner pieces done. These strips, squares and triangles are not the same size as those above, but they look like they are.

I had thought it would take me a day.....wrong!  Once cut, it took me about an hour to make them all,

Time to start the assembly, starting with the corners and working towards the centre.  This is where I came unstuck!

 These blocks are wrong.  The Flying Geese are flying in all sorts of directions

These FG are correct.  They start at the bottom, fly around the centre, upwards towards the top, where the points meet.  Almost half of my blocks were wrong!.


This may have been the reason they ended up in the "too hard"box 6 years ago.  Who does not hate unpicking?

Two hours back on this project, and I had the job of unpickin 2 FG strips on almost half of the blocks.  It took me half a day, but I did it.

Row number two added

Row number 3 added

Row number 4 added, and I am running out of space on my floor to take photos.

Finally, all the blocks are assembled, with the sashing.  Time to get those 4 patch blocks out and see what I can do with the borders.

I had to lay them down on the the passage floor to get a shot.  However, I did measure them against the quilt and, low and behold, they fit!  Even the the top and bottom borders fit......and that was pure luck.  I had turned this into a rectangle quilt rather than a square quilt, and had no idea if the top and bottom borders would be ok...half a 4 patch too short or too long?.....no .....they fit!  I had visions of having to slip in a skinny strip of fabric along the edges to make it all fit, but looks like it is not necessary.

This past week I have done very little else about the house, but it seems to be worth it to get this old beauty finished.

How am I going to quilt it?????  I am not skilled enough to machine quilt it myself, and hand quilting is my preference, but there are so many seams, I think it is going to be hard going.  Custom machine quilting I think might be the answer, and I will investigate the options there.  Any ideas?

One UFO that will get finished

When I was having de-clutter a few weeks ago, and I was looking for odd blocks to turn into "something",  I found a box of treasures.

I decided they were too good to go into the "odd block"quilt and put them back on the shelf "for another day (year?)".  This quilt was started in March 2010.  How do I know that?  I blogged about it HERE .

The blocks were completed in August of that year.  I have the photographic evidence! Right here

So what went wrong?  The darn edge pieces and the sashing!  It is fun making the blocks, then you have to make it into a quilt!

On the weekend I went to the hospital to visit my friend Sheila.  She has been in and out of hospital for the last month, and pretty well sick of the whole thing. She asked me to bring along some "show and tell".  I dug out the blocks I have been working on for the last few weeks.

Plus the quilt blocks I found while cleaning out.  There I was, supposing to cheer up a sick friend (and by all accounts it did), and she was the one who inspired me into getting this thing finished.

I counted up and had 18 blocks.  I can recall that I had decided not to do a square quilt, but a rectangular one instead.  Also, I recall thinking I would do a straight set and not a on-point set......but I had 18 bloocks, which is what I needed to do the on-point.  It was those tricky side half block pieces that must have made them all go into the "too hard box" and stay there for 6 years.

I also found that I had made heaps of the 4 patch border pieces.  I can't not do it!

After my visit to hospital, I got home and started cutting up the sashing (yes I had that too!) and the setting squares.  I had more or less decided to use a pretty print on the sides instead of the pieced units, but could not decide on the print.

So, it did worked.  the visit to hospital cheered me up no end!  (sorry Sheila)

Today I made the first of the side triangles.  And, they are not as bad as I thought.  I made one, and it took me 5 minutes to cut and 5 minutes to sew.  So, once I get them quick cut, and feed them through the sewing machine, I recon I will have them done in a day.

This is how they go with the blocks and sashing.  I am really going to give myself a target with this one, and see if I can get it done this year  -  hand quilted and all!

So while I was cleaning and de-cluttering..........

I have not even started on my sewing room, but managed to find a heap of homeless blocks.  Some short while ago I saw a facebook post, referring to Quilter Stew.  For a long time, in fact close to 20 years, I have had one of these quilts brewing in my brain.  However, I could not actually work out how to go about it.

 the design idea behind this, is that you get heaps of orphan blocks, and sew them together in a random fashion and they all fit together.

These 5 stars are 20

some of the 12"blocks

10"blocks

 I don't really do "random" very well, even though I do with my colours, the rest really need to be kind of planned.

9"blocks

 You can see by these photos that I have lots of different sizes, so wondered how I could make them go together so they kind of looked "random".  I love the maths of quilting making and started thinking about that part of the plan.

8"blocks

 I came up with the base size of 24".  If I make up sets of blocks into pieces that measure 24", then sew them together with bits of cut up blocks, and strips of fabric, I might get that elusive random effect.

6" blocks

 8"blocks are easy, as you need nine of these, or you could have 2x 4"to make up the number.  With 9" blocks you can have 2, then add in a 6' block.

4"blocks

4"pinwheels

3"blocks

This is today's effort so far.  Top RH corner is a 20"star surrounded by 4"blocks, then below are 4 9"blocks, with 6"blocks around them.  In the centre is a 12"block, with 6"blocks added.  The bottom is the same, 12"block with 6"blocks added.  Not sure yet about the 9 x 8"blocks at the top.

I am just going to work on putting 24"squares together, then wonder later on how they will all meet up.  If you have any ideas on this style of quilt I would be happy to hear from you.