No title, because I can't think of one.

I've had a pretty productive week.

I can't believe that I am finding time to sew, enjoying it, and even finishing a WIP, hmm, let's face it, it's really a UFO.  Fingers crossed that this is the start of some crafty goodness at the all new Chez Sunshine.

I started this after doing the Kelly Wolfsohn workshop in Adelaide with Shay.

I really enjoy raw edge applique and think I'll have another try at it this year as this has turned out so well. Maybe next time I'll try some background quilting!

It could do with a good press. I suppose it wouldn't look like that if I had quilted it. It doesn't look so bad in real life.

Looking back through my Flickr photos, I see I started this at the end of April 2011. Almost 2 years ago. Why do I procrastinate so much? it didn't take me long to find a fat quarter for the backing and another for the binding, put it all together, make a hanging sleeve for it and hand sew the binding down.

I started a new quilt about a week ago as I desperately wanted something to hang on the walls. This is where I used the Lucy's Crab Shack charm pack.

When I'm piecing, I lay out the pieces on an old cutting mat covered with flannel. It's great for keeping the pieces in order and for carrying to and from the iron and my "design bed".

The pattern is from this book.

I spent part of the day basting and quilting it, in between having a swim in the pool as it's hot here today.

Evidence - me quilting in my swimsuit. The heart is to keep my modesty and to ensure this image is not burnt into your brain.  Hmm, swimming pool hair and a tan. Even though I slather on the sunscreen, don't go out in the middle of the day and try hard not to tan, it doesn't seem to be working.

I'm really really happy with how this has turned out. I think I might attempt another triangle quilt this year.  Now to finish the binding so I can tell you all about this quilt in another post.

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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.

Tuesday tidbits

I survived THE birthday.

I made a cake for THE birthday, which was absolutely scrumptious,  but I didn't exactly go all out on the presentation and I forgot to buy candles or decorations for it, so had to make do with what was on hand. I don't think I scored many points for chef of the year yesterday. She asked for "the" coconut cake, which is an Australian Women's Weekly recipe, at least it tasted really really good. I love how this photo turned out, even though the icing looks really awful. I think a couple of younger people may have sampled some of it as I'm sure it didn't look quite that bad earlier.

Here's a photo of me trying to look fabulous in the kitchen and trying to make the cake without clearing a nice big space on the bench/countertop beforehand, like most sensible sane people would do. 

Bitchypoo thought it would be good to have some overhead shots, a la TV cooking shows, lol.  They also show my new hair colour.  Much lighter!!!!!!

In other culinary news, Kirsten from  Kirsten's Cooking recently posted a recipe, Grilled Veggie Sandwiches.  I had lots of lovely veggies in the fridge so roasted them and made this for lunch the other day.  It was wonderful, and it's so versatile, I used purple carrots, zucchini, carrots, capsicum, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes basil pesto and mozzarella. Next time I'm going to try it with feta. If you click on the link above it will take you to the recipe.

That's purple carrot hanging out of the left side, on top of the normal colour carrot.

Unfortunately it's full of vegies, and they have to be cut up, so I know someone who won't be making it, he he he.

I have been occasionally attempting quilting the Strawberries and Champagne quilt.  I haven't made much head way with this, the pebble quilting takes me forever, but I'm very happy with how it's coming along.  Don't hold your breath for a quick finish on this one. I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to quilt the rest of it, between the circles. Sorry about the crappy photo, but it's really not that exciting yet and not particularly worthy of a lovely photo at this stage.

I've also been making a few pinwheels using two charm packs, one of Martinique and one of Oasis.  They are quite pretty but most of the prints are of similar value so it may or may not look great once I've put it all together. Individually the pinwheel blocks are cute, so we will just have to wait and see.

A couple of valuable lessons

Firstly, I learned last week I can't sew half square triangles using a 1/4 inch foot. Well, I can but they look like crap if I do.

I need to use the ordinary (is that the technical term?) foot. They aren't too bad in the above photo, but the "little miss perfect" side of me would have liked them to be more accurate than that.  However, the "I can't be bothered doing it again" side of me won out and this is how they're going to stay.

Do NOT click on the photo to enlarge, as you will probably find some more glaringly obvious spots where the seams didn't meet, but overall I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. The colour is a little too pastel/soft for me, but it was a good exercise to try half square triangles, and it will be a nice size baby quilt when it's all finished.
You did click on it, didn't you!

The second thing I learned last week is,  if you want to feed a kookaburra on the verandah don't leave the door open.

If you feed the kookaburra, and if you leave the sliding door open after you have gone inside, the kookaburra will follow you inside to see what else you have for it. This will cause the fur baby that is the most quiet easy going of all your fur babies, Karma (Mr Innocent), to turn into a crazed, I want to kill a Kookaburra maniac. He was worse than the cats.

Mr Innocent, he does look slightly possessed doesn't he, (or possibly spaced out).

Try wrangling two cats that are still finding it hard to believe that all their Christmases have come at once in the shape of a large feathered three course meal, a dog that has gone absolutely berserk, whilst running around the house opening as many doors as possible so that the kookaburra can find it's way out, hoping that you won't frighten it even more.

The good news, the kookaburra found it's way out of the house, intact and without leaving any deposits behind, phew, in fact double phew, as it flew over the dining table covered by all my fabric a number of times. It didn't seem to be too traumatised by the whole adventure, as it came back the next day for some more food.

A great weekend

Well I had a pretty good great weekend this weekend.

I won tickets to the Brisbane Wine and Food Festival for next weekend, thanks to  Kerry.  I very rarely if ever win anything so I was very pleasantly surprised to receive an email from Kerry to tell me that I had not only won tickets to the Festival but also tickets to the cupcake making class that is being held there.

I also got tickets, (I didn't win these), to Wicked,  they are as scarce as hen's teeth now, so I am very pleased with myself.

Working on the quilting of the wonky owls quilt. It's slow going and hard work, I'm working up a sweat, man-handling it around right angle corners, but it is going well. No photos as yet.

Last night I went to a Halloween party, very spooky and an interesting crowd.  Again no photos, I forgot to take my camera. How am I ever going to remember to take it anywhere!!!!! I like the idea of Halloween, it is only just starting to become more popular here, and this is the first time in about 5 years that I haven't held a Halloween party at my house. It was good to be able to go somewhere else and not have to worry about being the hostess, (and the tidying up afterwards).

I started a small HST quilt too this weekend, to practice, as I love the way there are so many patterns/ layouts you can make with them.  So far so good. I have used two and a bit charm packs of Fandango and used all of the charms that had either greens, blues or yellow. I left out all the warm colours,  -oranges, pinks, apricots. I've paired them with Bella solids Snow. The Bella Snow has quite a yellowish tinge which doesn't show in the photos, and I wanted to use it up as it doesn't go with much else in my stash.

A (small) pile ready to go

Another (small) pile ready to be cut to size.

I was am planning to do a small quilt, as after all this is a test run to see if I can cope and I don't spit the dummy like I did with the infamous snowball blocks. I had planned on 81 blocks - 9 x 9. I placed them all on some flannel on my "design cabinet".  Stood back, checked them all, rearranged a couple and then took them off row by row, keeping them in their rows by putting a numbered piece of paper from 1 to 9 on top of each pile, all looking good everything going ok, and............ I had one pile left over.  What the?  I counted again, although it was very obvious I did actually have 10 piles of blocks and I hadn't stuffed up my numbering. Apparently when I counted 81 blocks there were 91 blocks. I have absolutely no idea how I did it, but I did, and it wasn't the after affects of the Halloween party, thank you. At least I had more and not less, that would have been annoying. So now I am making a quilt with 90 blocks - 9 x 10.

This is the initial layout, it has pretty much stayed the same, just a couple of tweaks to fix some that were bothering me. 

They are all ready to be sewn together, but my machine didn't want to play nicely this morning, so I had to put the blocks aside. I'm going to speak nicely to it later and hope that it will be feeling more helpful. Maybe if I name my sewing machine it might just be a little more inclined to play nice. Now I have to think of a name that goes with Pfaff, that will be easy, HA!

I'm off now to come up with a short list of names, and go back to crocheting until it behaves.

I hope everyone else had a good weekend.

Picnic in Provence Quilt

Here are some more pics of the quilt. Normally I don't call my quilts a name but this one is going to be "Picnic in Provence". The front made from a layer cake and a couple of charm packs of Breath of Avignon by American Jane.

A view of part of the pieced back

I just realised I don't have a full photo of the back so you will have to wait for that.

The next couple of days I'm going to try and finish the crochet squares for the throw.