A year of Finishes?

What would happen if we spent the next year only getting things finished that we started an age back?  Would you be able to resist the temptation of a new project, and gain satisfaction?  I hope to see, as that is my thoughts right now.

I saw that Hilda at Every Stitch got some older Baltimore style blocks out and decided to make them into a small quilt.  Well, I have a HEAP of those!  The first to come to mind are the Mary Mannakee blocks. If you put Mary Mannakee  into Google, you will see heaps of images.  I even saw some of my own blocks come up.

 I found these 7 blocks.  I could make a quilt with 4 (6 does not look right) or make 2 more and have a nice sized 9 block quilt.

This one is almost finished...it just has the slit through the centre of one of the large leaves, plus some swirls on the bottom stems to go.  I can do 2 more blocks, and have already chosen which one to do.  I still have heaps of the background fabric, and some of the blue, and I guess any greens/reds/golds would fit the bill

 What a performance it was to find the pattern!  Being bright red and I knew I had seen it "some place" and after tearing the place apart.....(I am going to have a major clean up soon)....I found it stacked with quilt books in one of my timber trunks.

.This one I am doing next.  Love the swirls of this block.  My DH John is feeling well after his disastrous winter, and planning a week away soon (yeah!) and I will be able to get stuck into a few things, and get these two extra blocks done.

In the mean time, I have to have this card trick finished by the end of November.  I machine quilted around all the "Cards" and going to do some Big Stitch hand quilting in the open parts of the blocks.  I got some variegated Valdani Perle 8 thread from Hettie's Patch (my fav shop in Adelaide) and plan to do some simple stitches.

 I used 1" masking tape to make a window for my stitches, stitching along the edge of the tape

remove the tape and you can almost see the stitches.

 Make another window and stitch inside that one tool.  You can save all these bits of tape for the next couple of windows.  They stay sticky for quite a few applications

This is what I end up with.  Not easy to see on this fabric, but if I have time I will do it within the Card shapes as well.  Took me about 10 minutes to do one, so I recon it is pretty fast going.

How about some more Hollyhock photos?  I love these flowers!!

 

I can't ever remember seeing this one before, so it has blown in from some other place.  Last year in this spot I had a dark burgandy.  They are full of surprises!