Where do I begin?

I am still alive, all in one piece, and hopefully back to more regular blogging.  I can't believe my last post was in April.  I wrote a few posts on my other blog, about my very long vacation, but ran out of memory on my iPad so couldn't upload any more photos. I'm going to try to post more about my holiday on that blog, but I've been thinking about doing that for two months and it still hasn't happened!

It's been so long since my last post, and I've struggled with what to blog about.  There's so much that's happened over the last few months, it's been easier to ignore my blog rather than try to squeeze everything into the first post after such a long hiatus, or to even pick one thing to blog about.

However,  if I don't start somewhere I'm never going to start.  So here it is.

I've finally found my mojo.

It took months for it to return, but it's back, and I hope this time, for a very long time. I've also had to wait for my Quilt Holder Upperer to be home so that I could photograph the quilt and quilt top that I've finished.

Since I've been back from the vacation of a lifetime, I've finished McFlurry, and just in time for Christmas 2013.  Never mind that it was supposed to be finished for Christmas 2011.

The wonderful Fiona at Quilting Fairy, quilted it for me in an all over swirl pattern.

I used a panel, shock horror, in the backing as I didn't have enough backing fabric.

The back

I need to take some more close ups to show the binding and my favourite blocks.

I finished the Mystery Star BOM quilt top. Albeit with a few changes, as it was never going to be finished, if I tried to attempt all the blocks that the lovely Sheila designed for the BOM.

I'm really really happy with how this turned out, it's now about 60 inches square.  To finish it, I made an extra block, (the aqua/green/orange block in the top left quadrant), and whipped up some more braid strips to fill in gaps. I then made a narrow black and white border followed with a piano key border using lots of white and black fabrics, with the odd coloured key thrown in to give a bit of interest. The four corners are wonky stars finishing up as 3 inch blocks. More photos to come.


I've even basted a hundred or so of the 2 1/2 inch squares that I cut earlier in the year and I now have about 40 hexies sewn together. I changed my mind on the layout, of course, but it's starting to look good. (More photos coming soon.)

I started a Dresden quilt, finally, after three years of saying I was going to do it.   (Even more photos to come!!!)

I take a long time to get my a into g.

On top of all this my brain has finally gone full steam ahead and I keep thinking of ways to use my stash.  Why oh why does that happen a couple of days after I've just started a new project?  I spent weeks looking through my quilting books, Pinterest, Flickr, anywhere, trying to find inspiration and drew a complete blank.

It doesn't help when you live in paradise and all the days are like this.

WIP Wednesday

Last week I totally amazed myself and quite a few other people too!  I made the jelly roll race quilt top as the backing for a quilt top that I had made almost two years ago.

I finished the quilt in a day.  Yay!  It had been bothering me that the quilt top had been sitting there for so long, so it was good to finally finish it.


and the back

I quilted through the middle of the chocolate squares on the front horizontally and vertically.
Front

Back - and sometimes the quilting crossed through the chocolate squares on the back!

Pure for the binding.

It's not very big but it's the perfect size as a small lap quilt while sitting in a chair or wheel chair. I have someone in mind for this quilt, but I'm going to wait and see how the next quilt pans out before I make a decision.

Part of the pile of squares from last week has been made into HST's and trimmed to size. It's time consuming trimming them down, but at least I know they are all perfect 3 inch squares now. I much prefer making them a little bit bigger, and knowing I can trim them down, rather than hoping that my piecing is perfect and then finding it isn't and I have to make more because I wasn't accurate enough.  This is coming from a LOT of experience in my not so accurate piecing. The  #@!* snowballs especially, come to mind.  I'm slowly piecing the rows but I'm not 100% sure how it's going to turn out, as I think I may have stuffed up the value. I wasn't looking at the colour value when I started, more concentrating on the use of colour.  I'm reserving my judgement until I have more of it sewn together. I'm hoping that the fabrics and colours will produce a subtle pattern on the quilt top which will be great for a masculine quilt. Rather than a dogs breakfast of random grey and aqua blocks with a few HST's thrown in for good measure. Fingers crossed. I'm using a wonderful pattern from a fabulous person but I'm not going to say who or what yet, as I don't want to give her "credit" for a really crappy quilt top that is all my fault. If, however it turns out as beautifully as the original by ________ I will be shouting about it from the rooftops.

I'm going to need another burst of colour in my sewing soon, all these neutrals are pretty but you can't beat lots and lots of vibrant colour.  That reminds me, most of my hand sewing and quilting projects have lots of colour,  and I forgot to show the finished circle from a couple of weeks ago. It's not as colourful as some of the other BOM blocks but I really really love this one. I swapped out a couple of the fabrics from Amitie and slipped in my own. I'm really starting to enjoy the process of making the templates and then hand sewing these blocks.

I also forgot to show the Grey Skies and Sunshine quilt in it's new home.

I was relieved to see, the greys, taupes and browns worked perfectly in T's new home. Look at the fabulous coloured glass on the kitchen wall in the background.

Finally, a tiny bit of hand quilting has started on this.



Worked On This Week
Pure Quilt
Modern Chevrons
Charm Pack Mini Quilt


Sitting On The Sidelines
Material Obsession BOM
Amitie BOM
Starflowers
Paper Piecing For The Terrified

Ignoring/Possibly Given Up
McFlurry
Mystery Quilt

Statistics
Finished - 1 and it wash't even a WIP it had been a UFO
Worked On - 2
Waiting Patiently For Me To Show Interest -  still 7
New - 1

Pop on over to Lee's blog, Freshly Pieced to see all the lovely talented people who are working on WIP's this week.

WIP Wednesday

I haven't had a chance to link up with WIP Wednesday for a couple of weeks.
This week I've been hand sewing as my sewing room has been out of action for almost 10 days.  See my previous post.
Before I had to surrender my sewing room, I played some more with the A Stitch In Color charm squares.

The centre was made using Elizabeth's stamp collection tutorial, the rest developed with improv piecing.
I thought it needed a little something to cover up the wonky but not wonky enough points on the triangles, so these will be added, along with some hand quilting.

I was hoping to baste it and start hand quilting but unfortunately all my stash was under drop sheets and surrounded by furniture etc so I couldn't access it to find a suitable backing. Hopefully I'll be able to start on that this week.


I finally finished another Circle Game block!

After ignoring them for months because I thought they were difficult, I really enjoyed putting this one together. Straight seams...easy. I've already cut out the pieces for the next one.


A little more progress on the starflowers.  I'm kind of falling out of love with these and  not sure whether I will keep interested long enough to make a full quilt with them. I like making the starflowers but loathe sewing it all together. Here's hoping I will hang in there long enough to make it big enough for a lap size quilt. So far it measures approx 24" x 35" It does look better in real life, I think it looks very busy in this photo.

I'm not sure whether I should/could make this a centre panel and put a wide border around the outside. Any suggestions? The original idea was for no borders.

Worked On This Week
Amitie - Circle Game BOM
Starflowers

Sitting On The Sidelines
Material Obsession BOM
Paper Piecing For The Terrified - no sewing machine
Charm Pack Squares

Ignoring/Possibly Given Up
McFlurry
Mystery Quilt

Statistics
Finished - 0
Worked On - 2
Waiting Patiently For Me To Show Interest - 5
New - 0

Hop on over to Lee's and look at all the other WIPs happening this week.

Renovating

This week hasn't been the funnest week.  We've had the weather from hell. Well that's assuming that the weather in hell when it isn't hot, is grey and very very humid and has buckets and buckets of water raining down on you incessantly. So much so that everything starts smelling suspect, mouldy and damp. Not pleasant. To top off this lovely weather I've had painters in to paint part of the outside of the house and the bedrooms so that it will be all nice and lovely when I put the house on the market to sell. Because the weather has been so bad, it's taken twice as long as it should have so far.

This is my sewing room and it will be like this until probably Wednesday, hopefully no longer than that.

My sewing table and sewing machine are somewhere under there. It's lucky that I enjoy hand sewing and have a number of projects I can work on while my sewing room is out of action.

This is Bithcypoo's room.  Fortunately she is in Brisbane, she doesn't need to sleep in her bed.
My bedroom was tackled first, it's not finished but I can sleep in my bed and have access to my chest of drawers.

This is was my dining table, now it's a makeshift cutting table. It's also covered in lots of other stuff as well, so I can only work in one corner.

I'd show you photos of the rest of the house but it's too embarrassing, there's piles of stuff everywhere. If I showed photos, The Hoarders would be on to me and want me to star in a new show!
I started working on the next block of the Circle Game BOM and remembered to get everything out of the room that was needed for the week.  Except for this.

See that tiny metal circle with the hole in it. I use that to add a quarter inch seam to the templates curved edges when I'm tracing onto the fabric. When I started to trace the templates I remembered after I used it last time I'd put it back in the drawer of the table my sewing machine sits on. Arrrgggghhhhhh.

Fortunately, I found the table, and the drawer was accessible under all the drop sheets, phew. Crisis averted.

So I had a nice time cutting out and sewing together this block, which I finished last night. I'm really enjoying making these now. I've already started cutting out, the next block this morning. I'm swapping out an occasional scrap from the BOM and adding the odd scrap from my stash here and there in these blocks.

The starflowers have come out of hiding too, and I work on them when I need a break from concentrating hard on which bit to add where.

WIP Wednesday

First off, a finish. This quilt has been sitting in on my WIP posts since I first joined in the WIP Wednesday linky party.

Sorry it's not a great pic, bad lighting and I had to improvise and find something tall enough to hang it on, it's still dragging on the ground.  This quilt started life as the Floral Bouquet quilt from one of the Jelly Roll books.  I renamed it Lily Quilt as I think the flowers look like waterlilies. At least to me they do. I used left over jelly roll strips to make a scrappy binding. All the details and stats in my next post.



After my trip to Melbourne last week and visiting Amitie, I was inspired to try another Circle Game block.

This is the second one. I'm enjoying the hand sewing part, the cutting out templates, tracing and cutting pieces.....not so much!


When I was cleaning out a cupboard I found this box that I had kept "just in case" and it is the perfect size to store the Circle Game blocks.


I also made the second block in Foundation Paper Piecing For The Terrified (FPPFTT).
I'm really enjoying these and now I'm not quite so terrified of FPP, hmm I may yet have to eat my words when the blocks become more complicated. I'll have  a few orphan blocks when I've finished that I might be able to use for projects down the track.


For the second block I used scraps from this quilt, that I made back in 2010.


As usual I had a million things in my head thatI've been wanting to make, but rather than start on one of those, I had to start something else. Do you ever have those moments?  Today the tutorial from Elizabeth at Oh Frannson was calling my name. I pulled out two charm packs, a Kona solids and "A Stitch In Color" .




I only made this block 8 x 8 squares as I want to try making a mini quilt with this as the centre. It's not wonky, it's just my bad photography skills.


Oh and for those that remember I was working on a mini quilt for a swap but I couldn't reveal the finished piece, I believe my partner has received it.
So here it is.


Worked On This Week
Paper Piecing For The Terrified
Lily Quilt
Amitie - Circle Game BOM
Charm pack squares

Sitting On The Sidelines
Material Obsession BOM
Starflowers

Ignoring
McFlurry
Mystery Quilt - to be fair, I did get it out of the bag and contemplate trying a block after my paper piecing successes, but put it back in the bag after about 30 15 seconds.


Statistics
Finished - 1
Worked On - 4
Waiting Patiently For Me To Show Interest - 2
New - 1

Pop on over to Freshly Pieced and see lots of other WIP's and inspiration this week.

WIP Wednesday

Another Wednesday and it's been two weeks since I joined in last time.  I was away last week and took lots of hand sewing with me.  I finished the binding on a quilt, worked on a Material Obsession BOM block and finished another three starflowers, not as much as I was hoping to achieve but not bad either.

Firstly, a finish. A housewarming gift for my wonderful friends. I can't believe I already have a finish for 2012, this is a good start for me and I hope it is a sign of things to come.

As usual, I took my camera and then completely forgot to take any photos of it at it's new home.

This was taken before it was washed and tumble dried.

And after, all crinkly. Fortunately I did remember to take photos once it was washed and dried but before I took it to it's new home. I'm so happy with this one, even though they are not my usual colours. All the stats on this quilt will be in my next post.

It looked great in the house, even if I do say so myself. It goes perfectly with their sofa and cushions.

I finished the piecing on the MO BOM block and was doing the happy dance as I didn't have to seam rip a single seam, it's flat and looks like it should, phew.

Now I just need to applique it to the background.

Finally three more starflowers.


I've also been busy stalking partners in two swaps, Mouthy Stitches and the Name Game. That has been taking up a lot of my time this week.

The Lily quilt has come back from the longarmers today so I'm hoping I can work on the binding over the next couple of days and maybe even have it finished before the end of the month!


Worked On This Week
Circles Quilt
Material Obsession BOM
Starflowers

Sitting Patiently On The Sidelines
Lily Quilt
Tiggly Winks
McFlurry

Ignoring
Amitie Circle BOM

The Weeks Statistics
Finished - 1 YAY!!!!!
Worked On - 3
Ignored - 4
New - 0 - I think it's a record for me. It's been weeks since I started a new project.

Thanks again Lee for hosting the linky party.

Tomorrow, Thursday, is Australia Day, we've had lots of rain and flooding here in south east Queensland again, fortunately nowhere near as bad as last year, but most of the planned official celebrations in this area have been cancelled. I hope everyone has a great day regardless!