stash report Sunday on Monday. A finish at last

I am late making my report today because I have been trying very hard to get Sombrero Stars finished. I got it pinned on Wednesday but didn't get to start quilting it till Saturday afternoon. I then lost 4 hours on it as I had play rehearsals Sunday afternoon. Fangirl is directing a play and I agreed (or did I offer?) to be the prompt. Sunday was my first time at rehearsal as they aren't really scripts down yet so not so much work for the prompt to do. However one of the actors is away this week and next and in a 3 person play that is pretty significant absence so I am reading his lines 



Anyway - I finally got the quilting done this morning and the binding on as well. Had a few hold ups... ran out of the thread I was quilting with and had to substitute another; hadn't made the binding long enough, and had to add another strip; wanted to do machine binding but forgot and sewed the binding to the front as you do when you are going to hand stitch it down. Decided stuff it and did the machine binding from the back hoping it would be ok. I think it worked out alright. Ran out of the thread I was using to stitch the fancy binding on with so had to keep changing the top thread... interesting rainbow affect now. However I did manage to get it finished today. And photographed. Wooo Hooo. Have been very busy since I finished so the blog is even later.

Finished Sombrero Stars. Have to admit that I love it

Close up to show the chain of stars I did in the sashing

The back of Sombrero Stars

I echo quilted around the star and the 9 patch in the middle of each block

I have had one other finish this week. Last year I made a banner for use in our church. It features a vine or thin tree stem going the length of the quilt and has appliqued leaves on it, some three dimensional so they hang off the tree. Its in green and so can be hung for most of the year - for all the ordinary Sundays in the ecclesiastical year. Lent is purple though so I made a purple banner to hang out the front for Lent. The green banner doesn't get put away though... we hang it up the back of the church and after the first week or two of Lent I attach some grubs to the leaves. (I made some of the leaves with bite marks out of them) This year, to change it up a bit I made some chrysalis to go up when I take the grubs off. That is what I made this week. I couldn't think how to really make them and in the end I used some hessian (burlap) that was from an old camping stretcher. It was already stitched into cylinders down the sides where the bars fed through. I just cut along close to the stitching line, then cut the strip into 3 or 4 bits, sewed the bottom closed, stuffed it with wadding scraps and tied string around the top. 

Not the most successful attempt

They looked pretty bad so I removed the stuffing, rounded off the bottoms a bit, trimmed them up, restuffed them and decided that they would do. They just had to be symbolic, not be too scientifically accurate. I took the grubs down and replaced them with the chrysalis on Saturday ready for church Sunday. I didn't get any reaction to them so not sure if no one noticed or if they are being polite (If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all) Unfortunately I couldn't get decent photos of them because where the banner hangs there are lots of windows so the dark banner doesn't show up very well... and my camera isn't fancy enough to handle it

with the rounded bottoms they looked a bit better

So that's two finishes for the week.

We had a trip to Rockhampton this week and whilst there visited Spotlight. I bought 30 cm of 7 different black and white fabrics to add to my stash of fabrics I am gathering to use in a half square triangle black on white and white on black quilt I am planning.

7 more black and white fabrics for my planned quilt

I have checked over my figures and I think that I have made some mistakes in my earlier calculations

However as it stands by my reckoning

Used this week
              Sombrero Stars - 6.9m
              7 Chyrsalis           .51
 Total for week                 7.41m

Purchases
   Black and white fabric    2.1m

Net used for the week       5.31


Year to Date Used       60.47
Year to Date added      37.39
Net Used                     23.08m

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