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

Although the actual number of hours spent sewing or working on projects wasn't very high this week, I concentrated on trying to finish something......anything. So I have a finish, finally, happy dance. The happy dance is for finishing this quilt, the happy dance is not for the actual quilt. I've decided I don't like it,
don't you hate that.

I started it because I loved the fabrics and the colours. I had an idea of where I wanted to go with the design, and  around eight or nine months later, nyuh, it's just not doing it for me. I'd give it away except that the quilting stitches tension is rubbish in places.  I might put it away in the cupboard for a few months and if it still doesn't make my heart sing I'll give it away.
So here it is, I couldn't even get nice photos either. I was trying for some arty ones and they just didn't happen.

Spice Boxes

The back

Next on my to do list was to finish the Christmas quilt top. It now has a name "McFlurry".  Kat from  Diary of a Flutter.Kat came up with the perfect name, the actual pattern is Flurry, because it was designed for the fabric line Flurry but I used 12 Days of Christmas instead, and my last name starts with Mc.  Pssst, I think Kat really named it McFlurry after the McDonalds McFlurry but it suits me just fine.

It needs a good press, again.

Finally, I completed the plaits for the fillers in the Mystery Quilt and sewed these blocks together.

I was starting to have second thoughts on the background fabric, but now these are sewn together I really really like it.

I still have one block that has some paper piecing in it from a couple of weeks ago and now I have to make another 7, yes that's right, 7 star blocks for the latest instalment. Sheila is a hard taskmaster, lucky for her, she lives over the other side of the world.

The statistics this week:

Worked On This Week

Spice Boxes - finished

McFlurry - finished the top

Mystery Quilt 

Sitting On The Sidelines

Floral Bouquet Quilt

French Roses

English Paper Piecing

Circle Game BOM

Waiting Patiently For Me To Show Some Interest

Same as the last few weeks (How long is it before they are officially UFO's?)

Tiggly Winks

Plume quilt - backing

Jacobean Flower - quilting

Don't Look Now cushion - quilting

Monochromatic Block

Weeks Statistics

New Projects - 0

Completed - 1  yipppeeeeeeee

Worked On - 3

Hyperventilating Over -  only 4 this week (5 last week)

Ignoring - still the same 4

I think I deserve a gold medal for not starting any new projects over the last few weeks. I think that's the longest ever I have been disciplined enough not to start anything. I'm not sure I can last much longer.

I'm linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

Blogger is playing hard to get again, it won't load any HTML codes so I haven't been able to link my photos directly to Flickr or load Lee's WIP Wednesday button, grrrr.  Oh well, at least I was able to get around most of it.

Pyjama Party Sunday

I hope everyone has had/is having a great weekend. Of course mine has been pretty fabulous as my birthday celebrations continued.  I was given THE most beautiful necklace by girlfriends yesterday.

I didn't have much of a chance to stay in pyjamas this weekend. Yesterday I had to go to the supermarket in the morning, and today we were up nice and early to go to the local farmers markets to pick up some supplies. Of course I couldn't go in my pyjamas, hmmm, I suppose I could have but I'm not much of a rebel.

A little bit of sewing has been happening at Chez Sunshine, working on the Flurry quilt yesterday and today.

I've changed the corner blocks, as this quilt design is for use with the Kate Spain fabric Flurry, which has a panel as part of it's line. The panel is supposed to be fussy cut for the corner blocks and some of the cornerstones in the main part of the quilt.  

I used my very limited mathematical skills to work out that I could make a 4 patch block in place of the corner block, and guess what

it worked.

I still need to add the sashing strips to either side of the pieced side borders and then add the outer borders, but it's almost finished.  I had to  cut ✂ 23589875944759284297455  2 1/2 inch squares for the borders. An easier way would be to cut 2 1/2 inch wide strips WOF, sew them together then cross cut them, BUT I always do things the difficult way and as I am using a layer cake and have used part of most of the layers already I had to cut very short lengths 2 1/2 inches wide and then sub cut them, so basically cut all those squares and then chain pieced them together again. That was fun................☹

French Roses

I think the 1/4 inch seam will work.

As it's quilt as you go, and you sew the blocks together so that the seam is at the front.

1/4 inch seam

Pressed to the front

Then add bias binding

Bias binding added to cover the seam

Voila, it should be ok.............

I think

The bias binding pic is from when I made the first few blocks, I haven't go that far with these yet.

My birthday present - front

Back

This is the absolutely beautiful necklace my girlfriends gave me. I just love it. I'm so lucky. 

We had a great evening, laughed - a lot. So much so that I think we may have scared off some of the other patrons, lol. 

The waiters were..............young, 

too young, but cute!


PJ PS will be taking a break next week as I'm visiting Melbourne (again) and will be going to the Craft and Quilt Fair while I'm there. (I'll be the one limping/hobbling around  like the hunchback of Notre Dame). I really hope my knee has improved a lot by then or I might need one of those motorised scooters, lol, I'll be able to run everyone over push everyone out of the way to get to the good stuff first, lol.

If you want to join in on Pyjama Party Sunday please link your post below with the Mr Linky widget. Thank you to everyone who linked last week.

Grab the code for this button from the side bar on the right.




Remember pyjamas are optional!

Friday Night Sew In

Last night  as usual I had grand plans to get lots and lots done. I don't know why I keep on thinking that is going to happen, it never does. Maybe one day I'll surprise myself with lots of progress instead of being surprised that I don't achieve much.

I started early, in hindsight that was good, otherwise I would have absolutely nothing to show. At all.

I started sewing the extra blocks for French Roses as I could see the finish line for this project, admittedly on the horizon, a long long way away but it was looking feasible for a finish this week. Until I realised I had cut 10 blocks  1/2 inch too small. That's 10 blocks - background, backing and batting.  Really great when I don't have enough fabric to cut another 10, I don't even think I have enough to cut another 4. Anyway, as it's a quilt as you go, and was originally using a 1/2 inch seam, I'm going to fudge it and use a 1/4 inch seam and cross fingers toes and eyes and hope it works.

After doing one of those blocks I decided it was too depressing to continue so I changed projects and worked on the Flurry Quilt.

By this time I was starting to fade. I was a little very tired after  being woken up at 3.45am by a wet nose in my face,  not the best way to start the day.

Owner of the wet nose.

I sewed the sashing between the blocks and one row of sashing below the first row of boxes.

All laid out on my "design bed" as my temporary design wall fell down a week or two ago and I haven't put it back up again.

I'm enjoying making this one so will hopefully get much more done over the rest of the weekend.

This is where I finished on Friday night.

I really do hope everyone else was far more productive than I was.

Take a look over  here and see where people actually were productive last night.

WIP Wednesday

This week a couple of projects are one step closer to being finished.
I finished all 39 of the flower blocks in the jelly roll quilt. I still need to cut the setting triangles and then sew it together. To sew it together I need to put up my temporary design wall, which fell down last week. Painters masking tape just doesn't hold for long enough and is not necessarily cat proof!

A pic that I took when I was half way through. I'm really happy with these, such pretty colours. I started off with a Leanika roll and added other fabrics, some from other Dena Design ranges and also a couple of Joel Dewberry's, a Kaffe print and some other scraps in my stash.
I would like some ideas on how to quilt this one. I don't want to do stippling/meandering and I haven't been quilting long enough to do any fancy patterns. If I was to straight line quilt, where should I quilt? The alternative is to hand quilt around each block in perle thread, or I could do a combination of the two. Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.

Yay, I finished sewing in the ends of the Spice Boxes quilting threads, despite my cat trying to stop me ( see last post). It's now all squared up and ready for binding.  Not a great pic.

I also pieced the boxes in the Flurry quilt, not without problems. I cut two of the box pieces and a couple of pieces for the ribbon too small. Fortunately I had lots of left over fabric so I was able to make a couple more boxes to replace those. It was a little frustrating as the pieces that I cut too small were two of the prettier fabrics, sigh!

Lastly I finished two more star blocks for Sheila's Mystery Quilt QAL. I'm slowly catching up, which isn't bad as I started roughly a month after every one else.

These are all the blocks I've made so far and I'm very pleased with them. Very bright and tropical and I still haven't been struck by lightning for mixing batik and Kaffe prints.    I'm not going overboard with the batik as the Kaffe prints need to stand out, but I think they are really working well together.

I haven't started the block for The Circle Game BOM yet. I'm psyching myself up to do it, lol!

Linking up again with Lee at Freshly Pieced, click on the button below,  for WIP Wednesday.

Worked On This Week
Floral bouquet blocks - finished piecing
Spice Boxes - finished quilting
Xmas Flurry Quilt - boxes pieced
Mystery Quilt - 2 blocks
Picked out the fabrics for the blue Monochromatic block this month.

Sitting on the Sidelines
English paper piecing
Circle Game  BOM block 1

Still Procrastinating
Tiggly Winks - applique
Plume Quilt - make backing
Jacobean Flower mini quilt - quilt
Don't Look Now cushion/mini quilt - quilt this is getting close to being a UFO

Weeks Statistics
New Project - 0
Completed - 0
Working On - (or pretending to work on but really ignoring them) - 10ish
Really Worked On - 5

WIP Wednesday - Roller Coaster Ride

Surprisingly, considering I had visitors staying for the weekend and I didn't do anything at all before Monday I achieved a lot more than I thought I would.

The Mystery Quilt block from week 2 is finished.  It took me 4 1/2 hours to make and it made me cry. Not much, but it's a long long time since sewing made me cry.  I have never tried foundation paper piecing before and probably definitely should have practiced first. Let's just say I was on a very steep learning curve and I probably won't attempt making that block again for a very very very long time.  Having said that, it looks pretty good, and it didn't become an art installation *, you can't see the bit that is a bit too small, but it's nothing a good shot of steam and some olympic ironing won't fix, because I AM NOT re-doing it.

A miracle happened and I finished quilting Spice Boxes, a happy dance is happening here right now.  Fanny Pfaff stayed on her best behaviour and I didn't have any more crazy dramas with it. I do think that unless I'm just piecing, the machine doesn't like being on for hours at a time and shows it by playing with the tension.

I now have to sew all the ends in by hand, which I can do in the evenings, cut off the feet, lol, I forgot to crop it before adding it to flickr, and then bind it. I'm going to have to order some fabric for the binding, as the print I had originally set aside for it doesn't look great, and there's nothing else in my stash that is big enough. I thought about a scrappy binding but I think that will be too busy.

Because I'm totally crazy, I've jumped in on a Christmas QAL. Shay at Quilting in my Pyajamas and Larri at Seams Inspired have started a Christmas QAL and of course, as I had a Kate Spain layer cake lying around I said I'd do it too.

I have all the pieces cut and ready to go to sew the boxes, now I have to cut the background fabric.


And just to prove that I'm totally out of my mind, this arrived in the mail today.

Yep, I'm going to be starting another project.

"Why?" You ask.

Good question. Hmmmmm..........................



Joining in to Lee's WIP Wednesday posts is really helping me keep a record of what I'm working on, and hopefully will make me finish some of these WIP's that have been hanging around for way too long.

Worked On this Week
Mystery Quilt -1 block  -  3 finished now, still have to catch up
Spice Boxes quilting - finished, yay, need to sew in the ends
Xmas Quilt QAL - cut fabric

Sitting on the Sidelines

Floral Bouquet

Monochromatic Block - blue for July

Still Procrastinating
Tiggly Winks  - applique

Plume quilt - make backing

French Roses quilt - first border (sorry have no idea why the font is different - Blogger!)


Still To Finish
Spice Boxes - cut to size and bind
Jacobean Flower mini quilt - quilt
Don't look Now cushion/mini quilt - quilt........ I think this probably should be in the UFO pile by now




Weeks Statistics
New Project -1
Completed - 0
Working On (or pretending to work on but really ignoring them) - ummmm, maybe 10 or more, uh oh I'm into double figures.


* Art Installation - referring to previous posts, where something I was making was quite possibly going to be burnt, stabbed, run over, or all three, these didn't make me cry though. If you go searching, be warned, one of them has lots of swearing.  I'm not angelic all the time!