New

Christmas is over for another year so it is time for a different quilt in the header. As it's almost the New Year, I thought my new quilt would suit the occasion.

We spent Christmas with my DIL's family and had a lovely meal and great company. Melbourne suffered a tremendous storm in the afternoon with golf ball size hailstones and my car is peppered with dents. Others had windows smashed and homes flooded so I got off lightly.

Wishing all who visit my blog a Happy, Healthy and Safe New Year.

The Day before

Wishing you all a Very Merry Christmas.

I was lucky enough to win some of Sarah Fielke  St Ives fabric. It is certainly bright and bit out of my comfort zone but I'm thinking of making a quilt she has on her blog called 'made in cherry' with some yellow and green fabrics added. The pattern is available from here as a quilt along. I want to make mine much smaller, so we'll see what happens.

 

Preparation Day

but first I want to show you the quilt I have made for my Grand daughters. The first one is for Abbie.

and the 2nd one is for Grace.

Abbie's has still to be washed but with Grace's quilt having so much red in it I used the Color Catcher sheets when I washed it and they worked wonderfully. They were red when I removed them from the washing but I had no colour bleed on the quilt. I'm going to give a packet of them to her Mum for future washings.

 I am still working on my Antique Sampler. I'm about half way through sewing the middles of the small squares. Today I picked fabrics for the rest of them. They were all over my sewing table, ironing board and floor. Now I just have to prepare them for paper piecing and sewing.

I had the finished ones out to, so that I didn't repeat the same centre with the matching outer fabric. I could really do with a nice big bench to lay everything out.

Binding - A Very Pleasant Job.

Sewing on a binding means a finished quilt. I like to see my quilts all ready to hang or use. This one was so different. I had the pattern from an old AP&Q magazine for the centre rectangle and although I could see a picture of the entire quilt in the Fabrics of Society book by Annette Gero, I had to make up the pattern for the border if I wanted one on my quilt. I don't usually use bright fabrics but Purples just seemed to appear in the fabric shops all at once and when I saw the Colonial ll fabric range I knew I had to use them. I am delighted with how it looks and may go bright more often.

Today was a lunch and Kris Kringle with the Ruby Tuesday sewing ladies. We had decided beforehand what everyone would bring for lunch and had it at the patchwork shop, Needles & Pins, where we sew. We each brought a wrapped present and took a number. This is what I received. I love it.

and under the cosy

Isn't it beautiful and nobody knew I have a collection of teapots. One day I may even show you some.

Once a Year

Once a year the decorations come out and I get a chance to look at things I have made in years past. This little Christmas quilt I made last year just before Christmas and I had forgotten all about it so it was lovely to hang it up. I must try and get a hanging sleeve/tags on it this year before it gets packed away.

This one is a bit older, made when I went through my silk ribbon stage.The reindeer  and the tree are stitched with wool on a silk background.

This one has embroidery for the outlines, beard, ruff and stars and the rest is painted.

Christmas tree door hanger. This is Japanese pattern and is made from the bottom up so no seams show. It was fiddlely to make but worth the effort.

We are having some wonderful weather just now. Today was 31C. Sunny, bright blue skies does that mean Summer has arrived. I hope so.

December

It's time for the Christmas quilt to come out, hence the new header.


I've also been sewing with felted wool for a Swap.

English Paper Piecing

The Paper Piecing for the 4 larger blocks with this design are now finished. I changed the fabrics around quite a bit before I appliqued them to the background. Some fabrics work so much better than others when it comes to fussy cutting them.
The next 4 blocks have applique.

I've also started on my Antique Prairie Rose quilt. I finally found a green I liked.

It is Moda's Bella Solid - Fig Green and after a couple of days cutting  all the pieces out I have the 1st block ready to sew.  The yellow pieces in the three top flowers are reverse applique so they will finish with a lot less red showing. It measures 28" X 29". 

Progress

I've made a lot of progress on my Antique Sampler. The 9 large blocks have been reversed appliqued and I'm onto making the centres for them.

The 3rd one I'm working on.

These are the 64 small blocks waiting now for centres too. I made 2 of each fabric so the quilt will have every colour in it.

The fabric removed from the centres is used for the 'pennies' that are on the outer border. I got them cut and put the paper behind a few.  A good job to be doing when there's something I want to watch on the TV.

I had kept an old magazine with the page marked of this block made with this background fabric and knowing I had some thought I would make it one day. In the magazine it had been framed. I made the block up a while ago and using my fabric glue stick had stuck it up on the door of my cupboard in the sewing room to be able to see it while I thought what I was going to do with it.

Here is the result. I used every last scrap of the fabric I had and the handles have numerous seams to make them long enough.

ps. I won't tell you how many bags I have in every shape size and colour.

A Wonderful Day out

Today was the Castlemaine Applique Society's quarterly meeting and the show of quilts was magnificent. Here are a few of them.

A Sarah Morrel quilt

Megan's quilt was made with Dutch Chintz fabrics.

This was made with tiny bow tie blocks.

The English Basket quilt

Scrappy Clam Shells

Bev's Red & White quilt

We ate, we talked, we sewed, and I won one of the raffle prizes. Barb Adams and Alma Allen's book,  A Schoolgirl's Work. It has photographs and the history of Samplers from the Spencer Museum of Art and also contains projects to make that have been inspired by the samplers. The samplers were made in the 1700 - 1800's and I look forward to spending time reading all about them.

Something New

The buds on my Lily have opened to these spectacular flowers. They are 8" across and the stemens are the green of the stem.

I joined the BOM from Canton Village Quilt Works. The button on the left should take you there. Each month a different blog has the pattern but they have all used the same 5 fabrics. I had a  'layer cake' of the Rounneries fabric and decided to use them. These are the first 2 blocks.

I bought this pattern and have started making it. There is a lot of reverse applique which I have only ever done a little of but I have to say it is very quick and I'm enjoying the change.

The other quilt pattern I want to make is this one, I found it in an old Australian AP&Q. Look at the size of those stems! The quilt pattern was done by Kate Knight and she has told me the flower centres and the vases were yellow but have faded. I will be making mine with a yellow fabric. I have ordered Bella Solid Ivory for the background and I'm awaiting it's arrival.   

 

It's been a while

I've sewn a bit more of my Honeycomb. The length is where I want it but the sides need , I think, 2 more on each side. The hand piecing was supplemented by the sewing machine in the end. I can sit for hours and applique but stitching along a line - boring.

 

So with that said I've been back to the centre block of my Maltaville quilt and have sewn it all except for the berries and I've also stitched 2 of the smaller blocks so it's back under the heading of WIP and not a UFO.

I've been asked to look under the bottom of my plant pot and find the name of my friend. You see, she gave me this one, mine is flowering again and hers unfortunately is not.

Sorry,Bev I didn't find your name there.

 

Progress

The Honeycomb blocks are growing. It looks old in the browns and creams.
One more round of cream and then square off the corners with a few more
and I'll be finished.

In my Mary Mannakee quilt there is a fabric looking 'pink' but it is red flowers on a white background. I didn't even add the yellow fabric as I wanted a red, green and white quilt. I was going to change it for an upright photo of the quilt but it still looks 'pink' a colour rarely used by me.

New Header

I couldn't wait for the end of the month to change my header. Home Sweet Home is a lovely quilt but it looked rather lifeless in the header space.
I made the Mary Mannakee quilt in class over  3 1/2years doing 1 block per month.
I cut the blocks larger and stitched it together with French seams so it is a Summer Throw instead of a quilt. This was my first needleturn and when I got to the end, I went back and restitched the 1st block. It was really bad. I've loved needleturn stitching ever since.

Montsalvat

Today we went to Montsalvat to visit my daughter. She and Susan Buret are artists in residence for the month of October. This place was started in1937 and has wonderful old buildings, some of which are being restored. I have some photos I took today but see more of the place click here .

One of the houses.

The Stables where there is a guitar maker in residence.

Inside the stables.

The Great Hall there are 3 floors inside with the narrowest of stairs and wonderful woodwork. The doors on all the buildings are large and solid wood.

There are numerous peacocks around the grounds and they are tame enough that when you walk close to them they don't fly off. This was the largest tail of all.

This the family going up to inspect my daughters accommodation. My other son thought 'Rapunsal' was an apt name while she stayed there.

but the neighbours place looked better!

To see my daughters work here

It's finished

I trimmed all the blocks and they went together easily. When it's quilted and bound I get a proper photo of it taken with no sunshine coming through the trees and somewhere high enough to hang it straight.

The Four Corners

Here is a photo of the four corner blocks to finish the borders of my Homage to Mary Brown quilt. I went all out with my fabric choices for the birds and thoroughly enjoyed sewing them.

Now to trim, join all the blocks together and attach to the centre. 

Fabric Choices

I am still sewing the blocks that make up the border on my Mary Brown quilt.These have been wonderful to pick up and sew while my other projects have needed preparation and I always need something to do at my sewing groups.
I try to keep to reproduction fabrics but sometimes another fabric is so ideal I have to use it. For the petals of the sunflowers I have used a tone on tone silky Japanese fabric and I'm really pleased with the texture it has added.

The fabric for the pineapple is a reproduction fabric and looks just right.

The blue bells had to be blue.

I have continued to use the fabrics from the centre square. This block reminds me of the passionfruit, a vine with tendrils. 

The birds continue to be black with blue wings as they are in the rest of the blocks.

I am now working on the last 4 blocks that will fill the corners of the border.