Something Old, Something Blue

Not quite all of the saying but I don't have anything New at the moment. That will be next week and you'll have to wait. There is no Borrowed either, I can't remember the last time I borrowed.
Instead a couple of Oldies and both Blue, made about 2004. The first is a Blackbird design.

and a photo to show the quilting. The feather continues around the whole scalloped border.

The next quilt is called Love in the Mist

and a picture of the quilting. It was done with a variegated  blue thread and an overall pattern in the centre.

They are from my early quilting days with not a single piece of applique to be seen. How times change.

Decisions!

When one of my friends returned from London and the V & A quilt show she gave me this postcard of the Sundial Quilt. It has been sitting on view in my craft room ever since. I just love the colours that were used to make it and all the small designs.

Then last December I was given a V & A calendar and February was a close up picture of the Sundial quilt's centre.

 I have joined Karen Cunninham's Correspondence class online and the pattern I have chosen of hers is her Sampler quilt  which is similar to the Sundial quilt.  

I have been trying to decide on fabrics and colours and I've also changed the centre piece. Karen's is made  in a Dresden plate design of hearts. I'm not very fond of hearts. Below is what I've decided on. Pinks, turquoise/teal, cream and chocolate. I also love the block that has the initials and date and I have been working on them this week.

The brown floral in the 4 corners is a really nice fabric but I only had a Fat1/4 of it. How lucky am I, not only to have remembered where I bought it , but they still had plenty in stock, for me to buy more, a lot more. 

I am still working on my Trailing Vine and I have finished the first strip.This is a photo of Megan holding it up at Castlemaine on Saturday. It is a great project for taking out and about although I heard a few murmurs and groans.

A Wonderful Day at Castlemaine

Yesterday morning up early, very early for me. I'm not a morning person. No springing out of bed done here. Linda drove us up to Castlemaine with a stop at Woodend for a coffee. The Applique Society meeting had the lady from Aurifil threads to give a talk and we learned so much about weights and thicknesses of sewing threads including the Lana, wool thread on a reel which I use for hand and machine sewing of felted wool applique. On a large piece of wool applique using it on the sewing machine with a large eye needle and the tension turned down, the Lana thread makes a wonderful blanket stitch around the edge of the piece without biting into and flattening the edge of the wool. On smaller pieces I use it to whipstitch by hand.
The Show and Tell was wonderful. I showed my Aunty Green quilt, the one in my header. There are several people making it and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them in different colourways. Here are a few photos of what I saw.

The first is the Dancing Dollies quilt.

2nd was this small Clamshell quilt.

A version of the Ann Daggs quilt.

This is the centre of a large quilt which really caught my eye.

A small section of another large quilt. I took this photo to show the quilting.

A quilt centre in the making.

All the pieces shown were wonderful.

Keeping up to date

Back at the beginning of November I showed you my blocks from the Canton Village blog's BOM but I haven't shown you the ones I have made since. Here is a picture of the first 5months. The blocks are chosen each month by a different designer but they are all made, using the same 5 fabrics.I decided to use a Layer Cake of Rounneries fabric that I had. It has cream,beige, red and dark pink fabrics and I added a green. I have 5 colours instead of 5 fabrics. 

There is a BOM button on the left side that will take you to the BOM blog page.