A Tale Completed...

When last we left an incomplete tale of a quilt, (yes it was a while ago, last year in fact, but in my defence...OK I have no defence, moving on...) perle threads had auditioned and were nervously awaiting the maker's decision...

The contenders for thread colour narrowed to pastel blue or green...but given the maker had failed in her quest for backing fabric having discovered the intended had been used something else and only scraps remained and, having the attention span of a goldfish, she promptly moved on to something else (or maybe a dozen other something else's but let's not go down that track shall we)…

Then from a magic fabric warehouse in another location came fabric for the backing…

The fabric looked for in vain was green with white daisies, which was unbeknown to the elf who lives in the magic warehouse, so the offer from the elf for the puppies to play in daisies was serendipitous indeed…thread basting took place and ditches were quilted to provide stability...finally the quilting began... 

Big stitch perle echo quilting around each puppy shape…

Bones in the white space...

...and then what? So it sat for a while as further options were considered and discarded...even started and nope, that is not going to work...what to do? what to do?...P-faff beckoned...come here little quilt and let me stitch on you some more...and so the quilt acquiesced and let P-faff play with the borders, quilting contoured lines through the border shapes...

And for the binding?...the backing fabric waved so hard to be chosen it almost did itself an injury and with that much enthusiasm for the job it won...

A combination of some fun favs...30's repros...puppies...apple core (or as it is known between me and the magic elf - dog bone) shapes...scallopy edges...happy :)

Happy Stitching...

Prairie Point Doll Quilt Progress...

To wind down after the hectic bus trip shopping day on Saturday I prepped the prairie points for the Prairie Point Doll Quilt (that is the quilt pattern name in the book)...very origami and zen...take square, fold, press, fold again, press again, take next square, repeat...which meant that yesterday it was a simple case of stitch them on, put on the borders and tah dah!...the quilt top is done!!...

The next challenge of course was backing...I thought at first to just go with either the red or another colourway of the stripe fabric that I have so much of, but looking at the rest of the scraps of the fabric range on the table decided instead to make a scrappy binding and then square up the rest of the scraps and start piecing a randomly scrappy piece for backing...pretty much use it all up as much as possible...

I bought a lovely variegated YLI hand quilting cotton for this quilt on Saturday...won't be totally finished before month end and the release of the group's May Challenge but it's a whole lot further down the road than the March challenge which isn't even started so I'm counting that as a plus...

Right, gotta get out of here and on the road, that work stuff is yelling loudly at me (sniff, sniff, wanna sew)...

Happy Stitching...

With So Many UFOs...Start Something New!...

The Small Quilt Talk (Kathleen Tracy's yahoo group) challenge for the month of April comes from Kathy's "Remembering Adelia" book.

So far I've managed to get the centre together...

Those three seemingly random pieces of fabric hanging off the sides were auditioning for the part of the border.  The red (at the top) has won the role.  Why the stripes? Because I have bolts of those three fabrics (seriously, not exaggerating for once, I bought bolt ends when I needed borders for the quilt the fabrics were originally used in) and not enough left of any of the others to make borders from, plus I need the bigger pieces of those other fabrics to make the element I was most excited about - prairie points, something that has been on my "get around to" list for a long time. This range is old, its the original Rocky Mountains Quilt Museum range by Judy Rothermel (well most of it, I didn't have pieces of all of it left).

It won't be finished today though because I'm off to play annual Bus Trip with the Monday group I used to be able to go to. We aren't venturing too far this time, just up the road to Bendigo/Maldon/Castlemaine, so all our day won't be taken up with travelling leaving more time for shopping! Wahoo!!!!

Happy Stitching...

In Honour - The Beginning

Well February sucked big time and it has taken me a couple of weeks into March to regain some sense of normality with work returning to it's normal schedule...Yes Folks, I started writing this post over a month ago *sigh*  It seems fitting to finally hit publish today...

So, last month in February local quilt group began a new Challenge. There had been many a private discussion in the last few months of last year with the instigator of the Challenge (hereinafter called Challenge Master "CM") about the theme and purpose.  I was soooo excited...I had my colour inspiration sorted months ago...ideas buzzing...sourcing fabric on the annual sojourn to Summer School meant the project box was packed and ready to go for the group start at the first Gathering this year...you know all this preparation is just going to end in tears...

Members were given the run down on theme/purpose at last year's Christmas Gathering. I'm not known for going to night Gatherings (until work intervened again I went day group) but this Challenge was the incentive to go and get back into it.  The morning of the Christmas Gathering I found I had to go to a CFA training session instead.  Not to worry, I knew the nitty gritty and probably more than would be discussed at the Gathering anyway...fabric still not sourced, only theory at this point...all good...

I very much looked forward to the first Gathering of this year for the reveal of the first blocks...project box ready so I could get start right out of the blocks with everyone else.  I didn't get to go, I was at work 120 kms away. Universe I am was getting really jack of your perverted sense of humour.  Told you all that preparation was ending in tears :(

Nice CM left the block patterns in my mail box, yay I was set to go. The weekend before the second Gathering (yes 3 1/2 weeks later) I finally got to the starting line and made the first four blocks...

Can you see the theme? What? No? OK, so the theme is the 100th Anniversary of the Landing at Gallipoli on 25 April, 1915. The aim is to have all quilt tops (not necessarily quilted and bound quilts just the tops) finished for the Anniversary. CM has done soooo much research and consulted with the local RSL* branch to obtain their approval to her idea before going ahead (it's only manners after all). The concept is a sampler quilt of 48 blocks each honouring a soldier from the district. CM has researched each individual man and provided a brief synoposis of his life/service/death with the quilt block pattern.

My colour inspiration was found months ago, on the Department of Defence website - a photo, the silhouette of a soldier at dawn, which grabbed my attention and refused to let go. That was it, that was my colour scheme. I printed out the photo and pinned it to the design wall (AKA the pin board).

Each month we are to be given four blocks to be made for Show and Tell at the next Gathering.  I actually made it to the March Gathering and no two colour schemes were the same, it will be a great display when all the tops are finished - honouring those Diggers** who fell a Century ago, the original ANZACs***.

LEST WE FORGET.

Happy Stitching...

*RSL - Returned Soldiers League
**Diggers - Australian soldiers
***ANZAC - Australian and New Zealand Army Corps

A Miniature Family in the Making...

A number of years ago (OK, so I don't actually know the number, and the timespan since lapsed may or may not have moved into double digits, but it was certainly this Century), I took a class with Virginia Enright at Threadbear in Castlemaine.  The quilt for the class was her Fairfax Sampler but primarily I wanted to learn her foundation piecing technique. Designed as five miniatures linked together as a non-traditional (as in not sashed blocks side by side) sampler, I intended to make the whole quilt, even though I wasn't keen on the finished design, preferring the miniatures that made it up.

Worked on very spasmodically over the years, I had stitched three of the miniature designs - the stars, grandmother's braid and flying geese - with a fourth, the log cabins, half stitched. Taking it off the shelf a few weeks ago I looked at the quilt design and made a decision, something I'd toyed with previously - finish the four components already worked on as individual miniature quilts, skip the fifth (it's just half square triangle strips) and ditch the project as a whole quilt that I was never going to really like.

And now, on the design wall, I have four thread basted ready to quilt miniature quilts and that makes me happy.  Each will finish up at about 10 inches square. I found a simple quilting design which I'm thinking will work for all four - a continuity along with the fabrics used, a miniature quilt family. Haven't yet decided whether to machine or hand quilt. I'll probably end up doing it by hand even with the extra layer of the vilene foundation and a quizzilion seams.  Somehow it seems wrong to machine quilt a hand pieced top (not that there is a right or wrong to these things) even though I'll happily machine the binding on - go figure that one out!

And, as a bonus...fabric is liberated back into the wild to play in other projects. Some has already made its way into a different project box for a group challenge quilt we are doing at local quilt group this year - but that is a story for another day.

Happy Stitching...

Attempting to Resume Normal Transmission...

It's been a while since I've had the time/energy/motivation to do much else besides work, wobble head, sleep, rinse, repeat...my very own Groundhog Day without "I've Got You Babe" playing on the wireless alarm clock each morning (don't have a wireless clock so it just does the annoying buzzing thing, no singing)...every now and then the theme varied for a day or two but it didn't really stick for very long...there was a brief interlude when some stitching made it to the sewing room table...my friend E came to stay overnight about a month ago and furniture, machines, etc were pushed to the side to make enough space for the futon mattress so she had somewhere to sleep - took me two weeks to muster the will to roll it back up and reclaim the room. The weekend E was here 181 members from our CFA Group & District HQ were presented with the National Emergency Medal - Vic Fires 09 bar, so it was nice to have a visitor to share that afternoon with...

TAFE held Graduation...I wasn't going to go but my next door neighbour told me the Guest Speaker was really good (her son had his ceremony at a different campus a couple of weeks before) so I figured might as well go and pick up the piece of paper...or as it turned out the sheet that said along the lines of - if you haven't received your certificate please contact customer service!! Seriously??? Said Certificate turned up in the mail during the week with no effort on my part at all. The staff on stage who were making a show of giving the "right" folder to be presented were Oscar potential...they were all the same generic folder!!!!!!!!!!
 
The end of Daylight Savings (thank goodness, it went too long, I don't do still dark at 7.30 am very well when I am trying to get out the door to work sites) seems to have brought with it a return of some stitchy motivation.  For a while now I've had a print out of Blankets of Love information hanging on the design wall (which has more action as a pin board lately) to remind me that I wanted to make a quilt for the cause.  Last weekend I got to and had a fish through the stash box to find some bits with the result being...

a kind of I Spy top, quilted with simple diagonal lines finished 24 3/4" square (the instructions say around 24")...the binding is still pinned on the back, once it's stitched down I'll give it a bath and the way it feels it should wash up very cuddly.

There has been more stitchy stuff going on but as it seems the dam has broken on writing a blog post and I've started with a flood not a trickle that can be for another day...hope your Easter weekend has so far included stitchy goodness...

Happy Stitching...

Has It Only Been A Week?...

Apparently it's only a week since last Sunday but it feels more like a month...I've debated whether to blog about the week we've had here...it's not been a fun week by any stretch...Mother Nature threw the same stunt on our district as the same weekend in 2009 - just for the record Mother Nature, so not funny! Two of us were standing in the engine room last Sunday saying we had a really strong sense of deja vue and then it happened....again!...this time it roared up from the south, to the west and onwards north...I received two evacuation recommendations on my phone - I'd already come home and evacuated Jindi, she was with me being lead around in the fire station as part of the comms team - could really have done with some of that snow the other side of the world is having way too much of...it's still not declared "safe" but it is now considered "under control" so now the recovery begins, a long haul.

Today, vegging around at home, I looked to getting back to my Small Quilt Talk challenge for February...this month rather than one of Kathleen Tracy's quilts it is a sweet little spool/heart block from a group member to do with what we wanted.  When the pattern was announced I got to with pencil and paper and came up with a lovely little design I was very excited about and played about in the fabric boxes (although that part wasn't really chatting too loudly to me in the pick-me pick-me department). Well, you know the saying When Life Gives You Lemons Make Lemonade? In that spirit...When Blocks Go Wrong Make A Pincushion!...

After a couple of hours of non-inspiration with various fabric concepts I settled on scraps of Rocky Mountain (the first range).  Starting with one block as a tester, I ever so carefully cut and laid out my patches in accordance with the picture tutorial...only I didn't did I?...I didn't lay it out in accordance with the picture tutorial and when it came to putting on the sides, nope they didn't fit...and of course that was the last of that fabric which I'd used for the heart so tossing and remaking this block wasn't on the cards...so chuck the dud bits in the bin, chop out two rectangles to make sides, abandon the spool design of the block and make a pincushion.  For now I'm calling the February challenge done.  I don't know how much time I'll have for stitching in the next few weeks as I have to spend a lot of time at work including patches of staying in Shepparton (that's the 120km drive) to be close to that work site as we have to do long days with late finishes but having to come home on the days when I work 10 minutes away from home. Just another unscheduled thing to add into last week's mix, organising that!...Oh, I didn't mention the great endo debacle - destroyed my temporary filling right when the dentist couldn't get in to keep appointments, fabulous, that will be sorted Tuesday...has it really only been a week???

Here's to a better week with all fires in Victoria finally going out - enough already...

Happy Stitching...