Ooops I seem to have disappeared for almost three weeks

Sometimes time just flies.

As usual, not a lot to show, but I have had a finish and almost a finished quilt top.

What have I been doing? Not much really.  Life has been tootling on and I just don't seem to have the time or inclination to get into my freshly rearranged and tidied sewing room.

A bit of this

and Scooter is finished.

Scooter

I was inspired to make this quilt after seeing this. I don't enjoy copying, I like to put my own spin on things. This is one of those times that what I had in my head and what I made, is not the same. I don't hate it but I don't love it.

Quilting in progress

Backing and binding

It's backed with a cute flannel and I'm not sure of the name of the fabric for the binding. I wanted to use something from my stash, but was having trouble finding what I wanted,  J went through the fabrics she had brought up here to work on, found it and it was a good match.

Crinkly after washing

Speaking of J, she has started on a hand sewing project which is absolutely gorgeous.  Personally, I think she is crazy, but unlike me, J is disciplined and will finish her projects.

It's a design by Sue Cody called Gelato Rose. Quilt as you go, so at least after finishing each block, the batting and the backing is finished as well. All you need to do is sew them all together.

These are the first two blocks she has completed.  Only 18 to go!!!!!!!!!!!!

I also played with Kirsty a couple of weeks ago. We went to the  Brisbane Stitches and Craft Show, you can read all about it here.  I bought a few things, including these blues.

Wow, Kirsty is a great photographer, but she introduced me to Happy Street, a time sucking game that is addictive.  I want to curse her.  I have Angry Birds on my iPad and phone and hardly ever play it, so was delightfully, blissfully unaware of what would happen to me if I started playing Happy Street. Take my advice and don't play it, but if you do, I would love to be your friend so that I can move through the levels quicker, mwah ha haa.  It is addictive. Be warned.

A couple of weekends ago I pulled out this pile of fabric and started cutting.

Fabric pull

I was very smart. I planned to use some white charm squares for some of the triangles in the layout, to save having to cut a WOF strip. So off I went, and cut 5 inch WOF strips of all my blues and greens, then cut the triangles. Next step, to cut the triangles from the charm squares. Hmm, as usual, I didn't think it through before hand or do a test run. That's me, jumping in feet first and worrying about the details later.  It often kind of makes for some interesting design ideas/choices though.  I then realised that  even though the triangle was 5 inches high, it's more than 5 inches wide, so the charm squares weren't big enough.
I swore,
quite a bit,
took a breath,
and then had a play.
I used the off cuts from the WOF strips and added them to the charm squares to make them big enough to cut, and voila, an interesting addition to the layout.

Two pairs of rows ready to be sewn together

I became more creative with the cutting as I progressed.

That was a couple of weeks ago, and I still haven't finished the top. I've sewed the rows and even sewed pairs of rows together, and I'm crossing everything that I will have this project finished very soon, so that I can move on to something else.

Streamlining

I was pretty bummed on hearing Google Reader was closing, but after a teeny tiny bit of research, I found Bloglovin. I'm liking it so far, in fact I will go so far as to say after only one day of using it I like it better than Google Reader. So Google Reader can disappear and I don't care!!!!! because I think Bloglovin is the bomb (at the moment).  The positives so far - I receive an email each day letting me know who has posted in the last 24 hours.  I find it a nicer layout than Google Reader. The blogs I've subscribed too are in alphabetical order. (They were all over the place in Google Reader.) It's easier to check back through posts I've already read.  It's just as easy to go to the actual blog website. It's easy to comment.  The only negative so far - I can't find how to delete a feed from Bloglovin, but I've asked the question and I'm hoping for an answer soon.

I've added a linky thingy on my side bar and you can also use the link below to add my blog to your Bloglovin feed, if you wish.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin     

Most of the rest of my spare time has been taken up with socialising, and possibly a lot more drinking than normal, which I must say, has been lots of fun.  Not sure whether my time management skills have improved at all though.



I'm making the most of my visitor who helped me rearrange my sewing room. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a before photo. I'm kind of glad in a way because it was bad, really bad. Really really bad.
Now however, I walk into my room and feel like bursting into song. It's not perfect, all the little things have to still find a permanent home, but the layout is much better than before, and it works. The fabric has just been jammed back into the shelves to get it out of the way. The next job will be to sort it and fold it nicely. The photos are not great, as they were taken very late afternoon as it was starting to get dark.







Today I've made the backing for McFlurry, hallelujah, that's only taken 20 months to get around to making the backing, after finishing the quilt top.

Not the best and most interesting backing I've ever made, but I wanted it to be quick and painless.

In other news. I quilted Scooter last week, I made the binding today and machine sewed it to the front.  I just have to hand sew it to the back. Lots of photos in my next post.


Now I need to cut out triangles for the next quilt, I can't wait to get back into my "brand new" sewing room.

A big thank you to Julie for helping me move everything around, and sorting through the huge pile of crap that was on the floor. I think we need to go out and celebrate..........again!

Squares, triangles and straight lines

Occasionally I have days like yesterday. Instead of faffing around procrastinating, I made an executive decision to just get in there and sew. No master plan, just an attitude of do it. Amazing what that attitude can do for me.

I started the day by searching for some batting for Scooter, the baby quilt. Eventually I found a bundle of batting all tied up. Once undone it was very very creased, not ideal for basting. I put that aside to unwrinkle and rather than the usual me, deciding that the quilting stars weren't in alignment, I instead, picked up some fabric I cut the other day, and made some four patch blocks.

That was easy so I thought while I was on a roll I'd cut some setting triangles for the four patches.

Wow, this is going well. So I sewed some triangles to the four patches. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. It actually worked!

Then I cut out some of the spotty fabric that's in the starflower diamonds, I need to applique the starflower panel to it.  Ready for the next border.

I was still feeling the quilting love, I straightened out the batting and started basting Scooter. It went without a hitch. I spray basted it, and then sparsely pinned just in case.  I've now quilted almost half of it. Woo hoo.

I'm anticipating that today won't be quite as productive, but then again, you never know!

Three for March

I hope I'm not getting over confident with my goals after last months finishes. I have a visitor staying with me for a week this month.  I can't wait to see her. We are going to have a great time catching up, but it may reduce the number of available sewing days. Fortunately she's a quilter too so there's a probability we may squeeze some sewing in between the talking, and the going out for coffee, lunch and dinner.  It's already a week into the month and I haven't even worked on any of the three projects I've listed. 

OK now I've made myself hyperventilate.

Keep all those appendages crossed for me, I'm going to need it.

1.
The scooter quilt will be basted, quilted and bound!


2.
A quilt top using this fabric bundle


3.
Make the backing for McFlurry




      

Wet weekend away

Some non quilting photos from my non quilting weekend on the Gold Coast.

The weather was wet. Surprise, surprise.
The view from our room. It was raining. My friends were staying in the green building.

The other direction, still raining.


The hotel pools. The weather was too cold, wet and windy for wimpy Queenslanders to swim.

The pool in the foreground has fish in it, you can swim with the fish, it's an awesome pool. It would have been great to go for a swim if we had normal summer weather instead of mutant weather. I think the kids that were in the pool must have come from somewhere very cold.

Despite the awful weather we had lots of fun meeting up with friends from Melbourne. They didn't mind the weather at all, it was just us locals whining about it.


Our room, at least that was very nice and it didn't matter if it rained or not.

I love the detail on this screen in our room.

Three for February Review

I just managed to squeeze in a couple of finishes before the end of the month.

I planned to go away for a long weekend, starting on the 28th February, so had to have these finished by the 27th.   I arrived back home today so this post is a little late, but better late than never.

Number 1

South Pacific Stars, with a peek of the gorgeous backing fabric which is from TradeWinds by Lily Ashbury.

The binding is another print by Lily Ashbury.

I rarely make quilts using the one line these days, but I really love the bright colours and almost every print in TradeWInds.  I still have a few fat quarters left tucked away in my stash waiting for inspiration to strike.

Number 2
The starflowers, although I love them, the thought of continuing making them to make a full size quilt made me feel sick. I just couldn't face sewing any more flowers and diamonds together,  so instead of making a whole quilt with these shapes as I had originally planned I'm now using this as a central panel. The next stage is to add borders around the edge. This is square, although in the photo it looks kind of misshapen. A note on this EPP project. I love sewing hexies, they are easy. When basting hexies all the fabric at the back stays within the shape of the hexagon. The diamond and kite shapes have little tails that hang at the back. You can see this in the photos below. These make it really difficult when sewing the shapes together, they get in the way and make it a PITA when sewing the points of the stars where they meet.


It's all wrinkly at the moment. I pressed it once I took the papers out of the back but as it's about to be manhandled again while I applique the borders on I didn't think there was much point in pressing ti to within an inch of it's life.

As usual I didn't really think it through. I started to straighten up the edges. It was easy on two of the sides as I just needed a triangle shaped piece to fill in the gaps.


When it came to the other sides, it wasn't quite that easy. After a lot of muttering and more than a little  swearing, I decided to leave the other two sides as is, add the borders and maybe add some appliqued  shapes.  After I added the triangles I realised that I needn't have bothered with them as I'm going to appliqué this panel to the dot fabric I used for the diamond shapes, that's also partly why I've left the other sides and not made them straight/square.  Next step is to add the borders. Lets hope the vision in my head is doable.

Number 3
I also finished one more Amitie Circle Game block.


All in all I'm pleased that I achieved the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the month. Let's see how I'll do this month.

Sewing and keeping dry

 It's raining here, which seems to be more often than not these days. Now I think I know what it must be like to live in the UK with endless days of rain, grey skies and blah weather. The only upside with all this crappy weather is that with nothing better to do, I sat and hand sewed the binding on South Pacific Stars aka Hopscotch quilt.  I was determined to finish this before the end of the month. At least it was nice to work on something bright and cheerful instead of looking at the rain pelting against the windows.

Until the weather improves I won't be able to take some decent photos of the full quilt.

A close up of the front and my minimal quilting I used Aurifil thread for the first time and I'm very impressed with it. I will be purchasing more, I much prefer it to Rasant thread.

The back with a stray thread that I didn't see when I took the photo, sigh.

The binding, it just had to be stripey.

In  my ongoing quest to become more organised, (something that is highly unlikely to happen),  I found these containers, 12 inches square and about 1 1/2 inches deep.

They are the perfect size to store blocks I'm working on, especially the blocks for the Circle Game.

The A4 page pattern directions for the block doesn't quite fit flat in the container, but it does fit and  I can place all the pieces, the pattern, thread, needles and scissors together in there and it keeps the pieces nice and flat. Great for transporting hand piecing projects.

Last week in Brisbane I went to The Quilters Store and found some lovely flannel for the backing for the scooter baby quilt. I had already started to piece together a backing but when I saw this I just had to have it. I love flannel backing on baby quilts.

I like The Quilters Store, they have a huge range of fabric and they sell Aurifil thread too, yay.

On a final note, I mentioned the rain at the top of this post. As of today, since the 1st January we have had 1150mm (over 45 inches) of rain. That's over 1 metre in less than 2 months.  I live on the Sunshine Coast, ha, I think it should be renamed the Very Wet and Not Very Much Sunshine Coast. That's why I  originally named my blog Sunshine? Paradise? both words are questionable, especially this summer.

Edited to add: Can someone please tell me how facebook is the main referring website for this post? Can you let me know how by leaving a comment how you found this post please?  I have had more than triple the usual number of readers for this post.