WIP Wednesday

I thought we had a big stall for Handmade Love at the end of the month but the powers that be within the group decided we wouldn't go to that particular market. I had made a big effort to get  all the hand towels I had sitting in my box made into hanging kitchen towels but now it turns out I need not have worried. Still they will go into the suitcase of goodies we are making for the next market stall they are having. I haven't finished them quite... still sewing on press studs and decorative buttons but that doesn't take long. The photo isn't all that flash... but the finished ones that I could have hung up to show are in the suitcase with the co-ordinator!!n(I've finished 6 of 12)

I also finished off a clutch bag for Handmade Love as well. It too was just waiting on a press stud and a decorative button. I forgot to photograph it. Oops

I have been working on my Playing with Nine Patches quilt as well. I made a border for it using more 2.5" squares from my scraps and from the background fabric. I think its called a checker board border. For the corner stones I used nine patches in all bright colours. The only 2.5" squares in this entire quilt that I had to cut, besides the ones from the background fabric, was a few bright ones for these corner stones. The rest of them I pulled from my stash of cut 2.5" squares - all 1000 of them!! I can't believe I had that many of them in the shoebox but... I've even got some left!!

I was thinking about what I would piece for a backing of the quilt but I found that I had a piece of backing fabric that is big enough so I don't have to piece one. That is quite a relief. I do like a pieced backing but sometimes they take me as long to make as the top. I fiddle around fitting various bits and pieces in. 

This quilt is probably going to be given to a friend who lost much of her home to a fire a month or so ago. I do want to get it finished sooner rather than later. I got it pinned out at Patchwork today and will stipple it myself soon. I've decided to call it "Playing in Sunshine".

Today at Patchwork I also made a backing for Newspaper Mama. I had forgotten to measure it, and I had left it up on the board at our patchwork rooms as it is a group quilt.  I sorted through my stash and found several pieces that would work in for a backing. In the end I used one large piece of black and white checker board in a checker board which I joined down the middle to make it wide enough and then cut through the other way to insert a piece of solid black to make it long enough. We off centred the black strip so that it won't be noticeable if the quilt backing isn't quite centred when it goes together. I didn't take a photo of it either. Its a backing so not that exciting.

Speaking of Newspaper Mama... its name came from the fact that its Black and White and Red all over... newspaper That brings the song Newspaper Mama to mind. This song was written and performed by the Australian Children's singer Peter Coombs. My kids had several of his tapes when they were little and loved him. His Christmas CD is still a favourite of ours. I found this clip on You Tube and thought I would share it with you.

I've been working on the 2 POD blocks that I need to get done. I got the tea cup one finished yesterday. I love it. (Block 27)



For block 28 we had a range of choices for the 5" pieced block but I went with Trevor the Toad. I have Trevor together as I write this but still have to make the books in the block and put it together. The next one should be released tomorrow and after that there will only be one more official block. Like many others doing this block though I intend to make the broom stick to lean against the book case and perhaps something else to go on top. Fangirl has laid claim to this quilt and I am thinking it will be her Christmas present.

The other thing I have worked on this week has been another Sarah's Choice block so we will have 9 of those to make into another donation quilt for our group. I am hoping this one will come together more quickly than the last two group ones I have put together. We have some left over half square triangles from this as well that have been made into pinwheels to go into the border. I don't think I will even sash the blocks, just sew them together in 3 rows of 3 and then do the border with the pinwheel and perhaps another narrow border. Its all pink and white and I am hoping that we will give it to the someone who is having a fundraiser for breast cancer and they can raffle it.

I forgot to take a photo of my block and the quilt as a work in progress today but this is how it was looking before today's efforts. I was able to make extra pinwheels from some more hst leftover from other blocks. There is enough for one more pinwheel in the centre of each row and one for the back. Pieced  back coming up obviously!

The link  to this block on Quilters Cache is here

Linking up with

 

WIP Wednesday

Beanie

Having finished off Boyo's beanie (which has barely been off his head since I made it. As I write this he is wearing it) I started work on one for Beast. He wanted black. I found a tutorial on the net for one using a different stitch. 

However it didn't work out properly and was ugly so just before I finished off the ball of wool I decided to unravel it all and start again. I'm making up a pattern now and like it better. My attempt didn't look at all like this. Not sure what I did wrong but I'll have another go at it...perhaps using a thinner wool

Kombi Boy wants a beanie too. He's asked for dark grey which I don't have any of so his will have to wait till I get to a wool shop, hopefully tomorrow when we are in Rockhampton

POD Block Challenge

I am up to date with my blocks from this having made this week's one. There are only 4 blocks to go in this challenge. I have at least one I want to redo because when I wrote the name on the books I had the block upside down at the time. Doh. I regret writing the names on the books. It is so time consuming to stitch the names on and I have often been in a rush when writing the names on to embroider over and my printing isn't as good as I would like it. I am not going to do any more and hope that the ones that I have done won't make the rest look out of place

 New one released tomorrow which I won't be able to work on till after the weekend as we head out tomorrow lunchtime for a Chrysalis Flight.



I finished a banner for church this week... so its not a work in progress. I got it made between WIP reports. I wrote about it in my last blog (here) Today I took it up to the church and hung it. 

Unfortunately its hard to get a good photo of the banner in situ but the light streaming through the banner gives a rather special affect and I am starting to think about doing a sort of stained glass banner utilising this light... stay tuned.

Playing with Nine Patches quilt - a pattern by Charlotte from Scrapitude. I've got the top together. I put a golden yellow border on it and I think that will be all I will put on it. However I am still thinking about it. I might yet do something more spectacular with it.



 My friend Tina has finished her quilt She pieced the back completely from squares. Isn't this cool? She's upped the ante on this one. I am going to have to do something special for the back even if I don't do anything crazy special with the borders.

  

My friend Kym has finished quilting both the quilts I sent her last week - That's Scrap in a Box which I reckon looks like a lattice so am calling it Lovely Lattice and Crop Circles. She is posting them back to me tomorrow so should be here early next week.

Speaking of Crop Circles. It was a mystery quilt from the Patch n Peace weekend I went to at the beginning of June. Another lady, Vivienne, has finished hers and put photos on our Facebook page. Hasn't she done a lovely job. I love her border and have already warned her that I might be appropriating it for one of mine. Perhaps this is what I can do on Nine Patch

Black, White and Red Charity Quilt

My friend Lindy and I are working on putting together blocks made by our group in a block of the month challenge we had going earlier on in the year. As well as the 9 blocks that we put into the centre of the quilt in a basic 9 patch configuration, we had some 5" and 2.5" black and white half square triangle blocks and some 2.5" and 2" black and red hst that we are working into a lovely border. We haven't finished the border yet but made good progress on it today.

 This was the photo I took today to show Lindy (who was sick today) how far I had gotten with it. Also we were trying to decide whether to use red (as in the bottom left corner) or white (top right) to fill in the spaces. We've decided on the red. Might call this quilt Newspaper Mama (Its Black and White and Red (read) all over)

 

WIP Wednesday

This week I have been working on my Black and White Trip (with a touch of red) Trip Around the World. First of all it now has a name. Gretchen commented that the name of the quilt reminded her of the kids joke "What's black and white and red/read all over?" to which the answer can be a newspaper or (her more favoured) a sunburned zebra. It had reminded me of the joke too and so I decided that I would call it Sunburnt Zebra.

So Sunburnt Zebra has been my quilting project this week. Having ironed all the pieces at patchwork group last week I got to start playing with layouts on my design board. My first attempt I didn't have the centre block centred on my design wall so didn't get very far.

Then I rearranged it, realising I would have to squish things up to get most of it on to get an idea of the pattern. In the above picture I had white on the inside and black on the outside. I decided it looked more balanced to have the same on both sides.

I redid the pattern starting from one side and working my way across the board. The board was neither high enough nor wide enough to fit the whole design on. I was able to widen the board by unrolling a bolt of batting, balancing it on the shelf that ran along the wall the design wall was on, and letting the batting hang beside the wall. The two rows that didn't fit on the bottom of the design could go on the floor.

First two rows sewn together. Looking at the photos helped me decide to make the centre red triangles all the same fabric

I was pretty sure I was going to have to do lots of unpicking with this quilt - I was sure I would put blocks on the wrong way, have them upside down, or sew the wrong side but I managed to get the whole thing together without problem. 

I got it finished today - yay

Now I am working out borders. 

Originally I had planned to use red for the borders and binding and had bought the fabric for this but now think it might be a bit much. I might loose the dramatic affect of the red rows if there is too much other red. Now thinking of perhaps a narrow black border - half the width of the hst blocks and then bind it in red. I have a few different ones to choose from. What do you think? 

Apart from Sunburnt Zebra the only other quilty thing I have done this week was to get my box of green fabrics out and to locate my cream tone on tones and put them together. That is the start of my Disappearing Hourglass quilt

I started a 31 Day decluttering challenge with Forever organised

I blogged about it here 

Hmm. Haven't been going so well cause the first few days there wasn't a lot for me to declutter. Honestly, all the things that she talked about I had basically done. I did clean off my desk instead and we got rid of a heap of stationary items. Today's item was Guilt Clutter. What is this? Jess from Forever Organised Explains it really well on the Facebook Group she has set up for this challenge. I think we crafters can apply this really well to our fabric too

Guilt Clutter 

 I have had lots of people ask what guilt clutter is so I am going to go into more detail here. 
Guilt Clutter is anything you are holding on to purely because you would feel guilty if you were to get rid of it.

Some examples:
- something you paid a lot of money for but no longer has any use
- a gift given to you by a friend or relative
- belongings of a friend or relative who has passed
- an item given to you by a friend or relative who has passed

Guilt clutter is different to sentimental clutter. Sentimental items are things that you love and have no desire to remove from your home. Guilt clutter is something you do not love and are only holding onto it because you feel bad giving it away.

Go through the typical decluttering questions:
- Do I love it?
- Do I need it?
- Do I use it?
- Does it enrich my life?

If you answered no to each of these questions but still can not bring yourself to get rid of it, it is guilt clutter!

Now, why should you get rid of it?

Everyone who is here in this group is here for a reason... We are all in pursuit of that elusive completely organised home. You don't feel happy with your home, you don't love your home, you can't stand looking at all the stuff any longer, your home is packed full of clutter.

I hate to break it to you but you can not organise clutter, it is impossible (and kind of silly). To get to the point where you are ready to organise your home, you need to declutter everything you no longer love or need or use.

A good portion of these items are going to be guilt clutter. Things you don't love but feel like you have to keep.

Every time you walk into your home, you are surrounded by things that make you feel guilty and probably a little resentful. By getting rid of those things, you are freeing up your home to be yours, to be filled with items you love.

Each of us has a finite amount of space in our homes, we don't have never ending space and most of us are not able to just buy a bigger home when this one gets too full. You need to remove the guilt clutter to make room for items that you and your family love (or simply to make room for your family). 

Linking up with 

and

WOW = WIPs On Wednesdays 

WIP Wednesday on Thursday

I am away from home this week so haven't been sewing at all. I have been working spasmodically on trimming up some blocks for my Trip Around the World H/S Triangle Black and White with a Touch of Red quilt. Man I am going to have to come up with a name for this quilt. That takes way to long to type. 

At one stage I did know how many of them I had made and had to trim but I have forgotten. I can say that I have trimmed all of the black and white h/s triangles (H/S stands for Half Square for my non-quilty friends who loyally read this blog even though they don't sew. Its a square unit made from 2 right angled triangles) 

I have been using my special Quilt-in-a Day ruler that I ordered a couple of months ago after reading about it of aDiary of a Quilter'sblog. 

It has been going really well. Haven't ironed any flat yet to check that all is honky dory but it seems to be going well so far. Just the red ones to go.

I have visited 2 fabric shops. Lincraft was having a 50% off all their fabric so I popped into their store in the Myer's centre and got some minky which will make a lovely backing for a quilt I am beginning to percolate. Also visited a quilt shop today. They had a beautiful range of Australian fabrics as well as Japanese and lots of modern lines too. I was pretty restrained and only bought a metre each of 2 fabrics on special. And a new blade for my cutter. The one I have with me is getting a little blunt.

Disappearing Into the Blue
Its been quilted. As I write it should be making its way back to me from my long armer the lovely Kym at Professional Quilting Service.

Apart from that - I really haven't done anything quilty or patchworky at all. I have instead been enjoying a wonderful get away with my darling Fixit Guy.

We left home on Saturday morning with the Boyo's stuff in our car too although he chose to ride in his brother Kombi Boy's car. KB also had his partner Gamer Girl and a mate in it. We drove to Toowoomba. It was a 9 hour trip. We did stop for lunch and for fuel but other than that just pushed through. Arriving in Toowoomba my lovely Sister in Law Christine (Of Bluebirds and Bumblebees blog) had a baked lamb dinner prepared for us. After making short work of that the other carload departed for their homes in Brisbane - another 1.5 hours or so away. FG and I stayed over with them. It was lovely to catch up, get to sticky beak at Christine's inumerable projects.

We then had 2 days in Brisbane to complete some business before driving up to the Sunshine Coast Hinterland where we have booked into a lovely cottage. There are heaps of bnb's and get away venues in this area. When looking for a place to book we wanted a fire, a double spa and a view. Our choice was At Remingtons and we weren't disappointed. Our cottage has been everything that we wanted. We have enjoyed a number of walks through the rainforests hereabouts. We have had lovely meals out both lunch and dinner and generally relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. Its been a lovely few days. 

Tomorrow (Friday) we have to pack off and head north for 2 nights at a live in Presbytery. It will be church camp accommodation. I think we have a room with bunk beds and sleeping bags. A bit of a come down after the bliss of this place but guess its time to get back to reality.

Linking up with WOW=WIPs on Wednesday at Esthers Blog for the first time

Fabric Fasting

I've just been reading a few blogs about fabric fasting, going without buying fabric. This really appeals to me. I have never been one to just buy fabric because... just because... well not usually. When things were on a big special then I admit the temptation to buy up is always there. However over the last few years I have been striving to overcome that.

To be honest when I read about people's huge stashes... fabric which has taken over several rooms or storage sheds I am seldom, if ever impressed. Its like gluttony to me - having for the sake of having, not for a purpose or reason. I admit to getting the same reaction when I hear of people making quilt after quilt but not giving them away or using them so much themselves but instead putting them in a cupboard to keep because they are expensive and other people wouldn't appreciate them enough. I am a bit like "What the?"

I love making quilts. I love to give them away, to people I love who I know will appreciate them. I like owning quilts too but I have plenty of them and am happy to gift them to special people. 

So the linky party I found was for people to report in how they have gone with their fabric diets this month. Well April that is. Now usually this would be really easy. I would go to my excel spread sheet which I set up in order to track my fabric purchases and use for the year (using a terrific formula that Pam from Hip to be a Square podcast worked out) but.... my computer crashed on Friday night and is currently trundling/winging it... or somehow making its way to be mended (under extended warranty thankfully) so I can't go there. I am grateful that I have blogged about it all year so IF they can't save any of the data on it at least I will be able to resurrect the data from the blog (who am I kidding. I am hopeful that Fixit Guy and Fangirl will be able to do it for me)

By trawling back through my blog posts I have been able to ascertain that for April I have bought 3 metres of black and white fabric for the black and white half square triangle quilt I have been planning.  I am planning on making it in the Trip Around the World pattern and it will be next off the chopping block - cutting board I think once I finish my two other projects currently on the go... the last of my SOMB quilts - Shirt off my Back quilts - Not So Sombre Stars for Derek and Disappearing Into the Blue, my disappearing pinwheel quilt. 

The fabric I bought consisted of 7 lots of 30cm pieces which i bought from Spotlight, a large fabric/crafting/homewares chain

                              

and 4 fat quarters of black and white from Big W - a large chain store selling a huge range of goods

The reason it came to 3 metres is that the fat quarters were measured in inches so was a square yard which is 92cm. So total was 302cm close enough to call it 3 m

Even though I didn't sign up with this at the beginning of the year i am still Linking up with Rebecca at Making's Fabriholics Anonymous link up 

Sunday Stash Report - On Time this week

I haven't had any finishes this week. I have been working hard on Not So Sombre Stars but its a long way from done. I did a bit more work on my Disappearing into the Blue quilt but its not done either. I did contribute to the making of the Sunflower Wall hanging from our group and it is done but since nothing in it came from my stash...  it doesn't count. I do have some nice pictures of it. Dawn did a marvelous job on the quilting. I might have already shown you the pictures but whatever... nothing much else to show here so you get them again

 I was thinking that I had no additions this week either till I remembered a quick trip to Big W to buy a CD/radio player for our club rooms. I checked out their sewing stuff and found some black and white fat quarters... what was a girl to do... I got 4. Sigh. So that is .92m for the week. (They were only 46cm long.... as they had been cut 18". My stash report is in metres not inches as Australia is metric) I love the pineapple prints. One of the prints has a bit of red in it which is fine as I am going to have a few rows that include the touch of red. Thinking one of the borders or the binding (or both) might be red

Used this week 0
Added this week .92m


Year to Date Used       60.47
Year to Date added      38.31
Net Used                     22.16m

Linking up with Stash report on Patchwork Times

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

Linking in with Patchwork Times Stash reports