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

Peonies applique block

This is your new block for this month.  It is called Peonies.  I quite like these cross over kind of blocks with a bit of red and green.  If you go to the RHS of this page, and click on the photo it should take you straight to the spot where you can print out the drawing.  Set your printer so that it does not scale and just prints to actual size.  It is an 8"block, but you can increase the size if you want.  I made it 8"then I know it prints on one page only.

It is still terribly hot here, and I have not had much inclination to do any more of my cleaning out and decluttering.  I did get a few cool-ish days and evening, and was able to start on the hand applique of the Birdy quilt. 

 As usual, I had no clue as to how I was going to quilt this quilt.  My usual approach is to quilt around all the shapes, and in the ditch, if there is any pieced parts (like borders) and while I am doing that, I start to get a feel for what might suit.

I settled on doing echo stitch in all the background of the centre part of the quilt.  It takes a while to get into the swing of it.  Best part is that you do not have to mark the lines!  saves heaps of time.

 I did start on one of the borders as well, which I did have to mark.  My favourite marking pen for this kind of fabric is the wash out blue pen.   There are lots of brands on the market, and they have never let me down.  They have never "not come out" or never "reappeared" or never left any marks, so I keep using them.  The ceramic pencils are very popular now, but I find with hand quilting, and handling the fabric all the time, they tend to rub out.  Also, the new iron out pens - Frixxon - are a bit scary in my opnion.  Anyway, I don't want to iron my quilt once it is quilted.

The design is pretty simple, and I can use my long ruler for this.  It is just 3 parallel diagonal lines 1/2"apart then a gap of 1"before I start the next set.  I started in one corner with the marking,  and worked down one side and back the other.  They all seemed to meet ok.  I read that this design was quite traditional for the time in which the original quilt was made.

With the echo quilting, you just go around everything until you come to a spot where you are kind of boxed in, and then fill in that part with the same stitches, at your chosen width apart. 

I guess mine are somewhere less than 1/2" wide and greater than 1/4".  I just "eye-ball" the width and it seems to work out.

I got a fair bit of my de-cluttering scrappy quilt put together last week.  So far I have made 9 20"blocks, and I want to make 4 more.......and I have enough left overs!  it is on the list for a cooler day this week.