I couldn't help myself

I started something new. I know you are all so surprised!

Awhile ago I won a Go Baby from Anorina at Samelia's Mum. I've been wanting to use it but didn't want to start anything new until I finished a couple of WIP's. That's why I've been madly trying to finish those quilts in the last couple of weeks. I was originally going to make something with circles in it, but as I've already made a couple of quilts with circles and curved pieces this year, I thought I'd give HST's a go. I thought of doing something arty but then decided to try something more traditional instead. Yesterday I started playing around with Quilt Pro. I found the Ohio Star #3 block, which is all HST's and came up with this. 

This is the design I settled on. There are a couple of mistakes in this copy and I've tweeked it a little since then but it will give you the general idea of the pattern. I had to take a screen shot to get this pic into here so it's  a bit weird around the borders.

I had some Hometown fat quarters and found some other fabrics in my stash, and cut lots and lots of HST's and it only took me about 40 mins to cut the strips of fabric and put them through the Go Baby. It would have taken less time if I was a little more organised, but boy, it is soooo much quicker than rotary cutting. The best thing is that the corners are already cut off so I don't have to do that once I've sewn them together. From memory, there are roughly 430 triangles.

                                     

The first block, 11 more to go. I'm hoping this will look fabulous on the sofa with my red/off white/black cushions. 

Last night I sewed together another starflower. I'm not in love with the centre of this one, but once they are all together in the quilt I think it will be fine.

I'm not sure whether I'll keep doing Pyjama Party Sunday. I've been thinking about stopping it the last few weeks. Will let you know if I decide to keep it going.

Thank you so much to all the new faces, waving and saying "Hi", welcome aboard and hope you enjoy the ride!

Tuesday trumpets, not just tidbits! (and tails)

I have to tell you that I am so very proud of my "baby" (Bitchypoo). She finished Year 12 last year and applied to a number of tertiary education providers to continue with her studies and she was accepted into her first choice. 

Woo hoo. Way to go !!!!!

Even though she was accepted, she has decided to take a gap year this year. I think it is a wise decision as it would have meant moving to Brisbane to study and I don't think she is quite ready to make the big move yet. There's also a complication with moving to Brisbane now, as due to the recent flooding, rental and share properties are in very short supply and it would have been insanely difficult to find accommodation. So she is going to be staying here for another year, working part time and doing some short courses of interest to her.

How time flies!

After my post on Saturday about finding it hard to be productive on the sewing front and spending way too much time enjoying all things bloggy, I woke up on Sunday aiming to spend the morning sewing. The weather helped, as it was cool, well cool for here anyway, (which probably means warm to very warm in the rest of the world), overcast and not too humid. A perfect sewing day.

I started off with a jelly roll of this from the Fat Quarter Shop

Some co-ordinating fabric picked up at one of my local quilting shops, Patchwork Angel.

I didn't use the fabric at the bottom as I thought it looked a bit too "dirty" once I had all the fabrics together, and found a clearer duck egg blue in my stash as an alternative. The chenille is for the back.


Add in some inspiration from here.

It quickly became this

which grew - aren't these just too cute

and grew to this

This part was the tricky bit. I have never done sashing before, or corner stones or blocks on point. 

Fortunately for me the Quilt Pro programme was very useful at this stage, even though I really didn't have a clue what I was doing. I mean that, I was flying by the seat of my pants. I made the block and designed the quilt in the programme by sheer luck, not genius, after I had already pieced and sewn a few blocks. 


I would show you the design here but I can't work out how to get it into blogger, grrrrrrrr.


Quilt Pro came in handy when I needed to find out if I had enough of the yellow It's a Hoot fabric for the sashing, and when it came to working out how to do the triangle thingy bits, (technical term), around the outside. I was originally going to do solid triangle thingy bits but as I had no idea how to use the programme I couldn't change the blocks that had already been placed in the quilt design. I also had no idea how to work out the template/size of the triangles to fit so I eventually decided to go with what I had accidentally designed and just followed the pic when making the triangles, and miraculously it worked.


So after all that, I finished it this morning and here it is

and I have to say I think it's pretty darn good for a first attempt at sashing, corner stones, and blocks on point. I was........ loving myself sick..........., this morning when I finished it. Woo hoo I'm on fire!!!!

If I was to do it again I think I would have attempted a more 3D look to it, but as I had already made a number of blocks before I worked out I could do that, and I hate unpicking unnecessarily I didn't go down that road this time.

Lulu doing what she loves, just hanging around!

Any screen door will do.

Tuesday tidbits (and tails)

Another two of my orders arrived this week. The first one, I had been looking for some yardage of Pashmina for some time and thanks to Shay who was so kind in helping me spend my money by directing me to Quiltshops.com where I found these gorgeous prints. I don't have a project in mind for these but I love the designs so will add them to my stash.

I also saw and ordered these fabulous brights before the end of the year, Sugar Pop these came from Pink Chalk Fabrics along with some solids, no photo of those! So these definitely don't count as fabric purchases for 2011!

Whilst I was emptying out my bank account to keep the world's economy kicking along I also bought this, on sale, yay. Quilt-Pro 5 for Macintosh.

It came in the mail today, I've yet to load it and play with it but expect fabulous designs from me in the future. On second thoughts don't expect anything, I'd be kidding myself if I thought this was going to make me any more productive.  At least it should be fun designing things, much better than scribbling on graph paper and trying to work out mathematical stuff in my head.

I've slowly been working on the crochet, no photos yet, and I finished the top of my dad's quilt.

Sorry the photos aren't the best i was planning to take them this afternoon but we had a thunderstorm and then drizzle for the next couple of hours so I had to take them late in the day and the light wasn't the best.

I'm really happy with this one. It's not fabric I would normally choose for my father but they asked for something to match this quilt I made for my mum. So here it is, now I just have to make the backing. I HATE making the backing for quilts. Yes that is a strong word to use but I really really don't like making them.

A slightly blurry shot of the boy, he wouldn't keep still for a photo, but I love that look on his face, look at those big sad eyes.  Every photo we took of him this week was either blurry or only part of him made it into the shot.

I woke him up, he wasn't happy, not that you can tell, and he has bed head fur.


Oh, and thanks very much RAF.