Sunday Stash Report - some big finishes

Very excited to be able to report that I have had 3 BIG finishes since I did my last stash report - which was at the end of June.

My First Finish was a banner for church. I had been sifting through ideas for a few weeks on this one but once I started I was able to get it finished in a couple of days and it is hanging in church now. I wrote about it here. It used up 5m of fabric that all came from my stash - how cool was that (straight profit I say)

My Second Finish was my Scrap in a Box mystery quilts (run by Charlotte Hawks of Scrapitude Quilts) I called mine Scrappy Lattice because it was scrappy and the sashing of the on point blocks reminded me so much of a latticed trellis. (I chose a vine inspired quilting motif for it based on that). I managed to finish it off this week after it returned from the long armer - bound and labelled. I used a lovely doily for the label when I couldn't find my commercial labels in my cupboard and I love how they ended up looking. I have heaps of doilies - some inherited from my aunty, some from my mum and others acquired through op shops. A lovely use for them I thought. This quilt used 7.73m of fabric. (all fabric for the top came from my stash. The backing was made from fabric bought off the silent auction at PnP - plus scraps from my stash)

The Third Finish was Crop Circles,  my other mystery quilt, from the quilting retreat Patch n Peace that I went to on the 2nd weekend in June. It too came back from the longarmer this week (Both quilts were in the same parcel. What an exciting opening that was. My friend Kym Colgrave of Professional Quilting Service does an amazing job. She has an excellent eye for quilting design and whilst she insists that I need to choose the pattern she is great at guiding my choices. For this quilt Kym and I chose a pattern called CircleSwirl and it looks great. This quilt used 7.96m of fabric. (again all fabric for the quilt top came from my stash and the backing was made from fabric bought at the silent auction at PnP plus scraps from my stash)

I am going to do a more extensive blog post about these two quilts -soon.

And I have had NO fabric purchases so its all straight profit for this past fortnight - SWEET

So my stats are

Weeks 27 and 28

         Fabric Used                     20.69m (I think this is a record for me)
         Fabric Added                   0.00m

Year To Date
         Fabric Used                    91.00m
         Fabric Added                  35.35m
         Net Used/Added             55.65m        

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times

Updating July Goals

We are one third through this month so time to have a look at this month's goals.

Finish Scrap in a Box: DONE. I stitched the label on yesterday

Finish Crop Circles: DONE I stitched the label on today

Finish Gold cross banner: DONE Its hanging at church now

Make towels for Handmade Love stall. Started making some. I've got 13 in various stages of completion

Make zipper pouches for Handmade Love Stall. Nothing started here yet. Hopefully will get a few made before the stall.

Finish Community Quilt. This red black and white quilt now has a name ... Newspaper Mama (cause its black and white and red all over. Newspaper mama is also a kids song by Peter Coombes that my kids loved when younger) The top has been assembled and now working out what to put on the back.

Amy Gibson blocks. Haven't looked at this. Was hoping to do 6 this month... hmmm might end up being 8 for next month.

POD Blocks 27 - 30. Have patterns for 27 and 28 printed out but haven't made them yet... today maybe - or tomorrow

Complete Beasts beanie. DONE 

Make beanie for Kombi Boy. DONE

So I've made a fair start for the month. Must get a photo of those beanies on heads and the completed quilts......

WIP on Thursday

Hey everyone

I've been rather quite this week. I went away on Thursday right after I wrote my last WIP post. I was away all weekend and rather busy with limited internet access and it wasn't really appropriate for me to be on the net anyway. We didn't get home till very late on Sunday night and we were really wiped. We slept in all morning and didn't do much at all the rest of the day.

Tuesday wasn't a lot better. Wednesday I got to my patchwork group in the morning and then in the afternoon I had some surgery on my shoulder. Nothing major. I had a lipoma cut off my shoulder... a lipoma is a fatty cyst. It was a fairly straight forward procedure and hasn't been as painful in the recovery as I thought but it has knocked me about far more than I expected. I was left feeling rather queasy afterwards and I have taken it really easy since. Being awake for the procedure meant I didn't have any residual anaesthetic in my system. But I did feel the pulling and pushing and the memory of the smell and sound left me feeling a bit off. 

So I've been a bit out of it today too.

So I haven't actually got on with a whole heap done this week.

I was able to do some knitting whilst I was in the car and while home in bed. I finished off beanies for Beast and Kombi Boy as well as two rainbow themed ones for friends involved with Emmaus.

On Tuesday I got a parcel. My quilts I had sent to the long armer  arrived back. I have trimmed the excess off and now have to make the binding for them. I had thought I would have them done by now but my lethargy has taken all my enthusiasm... and I thought I should let my shoulder heal a little first.

Yesterday at patchwork I finished off Newspaper Mumma, the red, white and black themed quilt made from BOM our quilt group did at the beginning of the year. I was just a bit short of the red I wanted and so had to patch in some white which is a bit of a shame... bit disappointed in that but on the whole it looks good. The finished quilt will be donated to a charity of some kind. I still have to make up a backing. I could buy some backing fabric and the group would pay for it but if I can make it from my stash I am happy to donate it. I donated the half square triangles that make up most of the border and the red fabric used in it as well. 



I now have 2 POD blocks to do. The new one was released last night. Sigh. Hopefully I'll get my oomph back this weekend and I'll get it all done.

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)

 

Growing in Christ - a banner is finished

I love to make banners for our church. It adds beauty to the worship space and can inspire the worshippers. It began a few years ago when our then minister admired one of my wall hangings and asked if we could hang it at church.

This led onto me making wall hangings or banners specifically for church. Suzy, our then minister was a bit of a stickler for following the colours of the church liturgical calendar and so she wanted me to make banners in the appropriate colours. 



Purple is for Easter and Advent, White for Christmas and Easter, Red for Pentecost. There are a few special Sundays scattered in there as well that are white or red but for the rest of the year - ordinary time the colour is green. Thats about 30+ Sundays that the colour is green. At the moment we have 3 green banners. (see here for a more detailed break up of the colours of the church year)

Now we have some other banners that we can use but they aren't specifically green. 

I know that after a few weeks people stop noticing things that are there all the time. Its not very  long and so I want to be able to change things around a bit to keep people aware.

So - I have been mulling over what banners I can make to add to the worship space.

I have a Pinterest board that I collect pictures of banners. They come up as suggestions in my feed. A little while ago the most beautiful banner came up. Its by an artist called James Spurgin and I just loved it.



I decided to make a new banner based upon his design. I altered it substantially but the idea of the gold cross with the vine growing over it was the heart of my design.

Being a patchworker instead of an appliqued cross I patched a cross. At first I wanted to do crazy patch but I didn't have enough gold fabric to do that.

 I was going to patch the background as well but I had a lovely green floaty fabric and I used it instead and pieced the cross to the this fabric. Another reason I didn't applique was that the fabric wouldn't take heat (I damaged it a little pressing seams so knew that it would take the heat of fusible applique and that's the only sort I do)

For the vine I thought about ribbon but didn't have enough. Then I remembered a batik skirt of my mum's that had already been cut into for another church banner. It was a circular skirt so already cut on the bias. I just followed the circular hem line and cut 2" strips. I folded both edges of the strips into the middle and shaped the vine over the cross and stitched it down along the side seams.

Originally when I had been going to piece the background I had cut a stack of 6.5" squares from a piece of fabric that was somewhat sun damaged. It had faded in various places. The gold cross didn't show up enough against the green and so I had gone instead to the forest green of the polyester fabric. I was worried that these squares would be wasted but then realised I could use them as the leaves.

I found a leaf shape on the net and printed it out and used it as a template to cut out the 72 leaves. The squares were folded in half and I was able to get at 1 or 2 leaves out of each square. I used some other green fabrics as well in order to get a bit of variety in the leaves. I cut leaf shapes from batting scraps too to give each leaf some body. 

I sewed the veins on the leaves and around the outside in straight stitch and then attached them to the vine in bunches of three. Where the fabric had puckered a bit when I had sewn the vine down I put some leaves to cover up the faults.

The banner itself didn't have any wadding - just a back lining. I did outline the cross but there was no quilting as such, just the stitching where the leaves were attached. (I put the vine on before the back lining which was a mistake on my part. I think there would have been less puckering if I had put the backing there) I bound the edges of the quilt in the same fabric as the background. I stitched it to the back, folded it over and then stitched it down on the front using a decorative, vine stitch.

I put rod pockets top and bottom. I find a bottom rod helps the larger quilts to hang straight,

The finished quilt, which I have called Growing in Christ is 194cm x 115 cms ( 76" x 45" approx). Whilst it was in the planning for a month or more I constructed it over just 2.5 days. You can see by the close ups that I haven't done beautiful stitches. Banners go on the wall and are viewed from a distance. They won't get washed so its not as carefully stitched as it might be if it were a quilt or even going on the wall of a home where people might examine it up close and personal. This certainly isn't show quality but I got it done and I am really really happy and excited by it

July Goals

Its the start of a new month and for me that means setting some new goals for this month.

Finish Scrap in a Box: This is currently at the long armer (my friend Kym from Professional Quilting Service) and is due to be posted back to me this week. When it gets here I have to make and attach the binding and label it.

Finish Crop Circles: This too is currently at the long armer and when it gets home it has to be bound and labelled. It will be great to have 2 big finishes one on top of the other

Finish Gold cross banner: Oh boy - this is already done. I started to write this list Monday and I got it finished off on Tuesday but hey... it gets to go on the list. I hope to hang it in church for Sunday. I've named it Growing in Christ. I really love it and hope it adds to the worship of our congregation.

Make towels for Handmade Love stall. We have a stall at the end of the month and I want to get a stack made. I have a lot of towels in the box ready to have the handles put on them

Make zipper pouches for Handmade Love Stall. I have a heap of zippers and the pouches have proved popular. I have some plastic backed curtaining that I am going to try for a lining on some to make them more suitable as toiletry bags.

Finish Community Quilt. This is my Wednesday project for when I am at Patchwork. The quilt centre is together and we have started work on the borders. We want to add a narrow red border and then the black and white square in a square border and then.... another narrow red border and bind it in red as well.

Amy Gibson blocks. Haven't made any of these for a couple of months. I would like to do 6 this month to catch up

POD Blocks 27 - 30. This will be the finish of the blocks.... then to put it together. I have decided to not do labels on the books. Some have them on already but it wasn't really adding to them so I'm going to stop

Complete Beasts beanie. Its on the ring. With several hours in the car coming up I am hoping to get it finished by the end of the weekend.

Make beanie for Kombi Boy. He's asked for a dark grey beanie. I have to buy the wool... this weekend hopefully I will be able to get some.

If I get all this done I shall be really pleased. There may well be a couple of extra projects sprung on me as well but for the moment that will do!!

June Goal update

Its the end of the month so time for update on my goals. At the beginning of the month I set the following goals

Make beanies for my three boys - I have made one for Boyo and have started one for Beast. Kombi Boys hasn't been started

Complete 2 zipper pouches for Hand Made Love's stall. I have made 6

Complete POD Blocks 21-25. These have all been completed

Work on Community Quilt at Patchwork. Lindy and I have been working away on this. The centre is together and we have most of the first border done

Complete Scrapitude- Scrap in a Box. This quilt too is off to the longarmers. We were messaging each other today about it and chose the quilting pattern for it. I won't get it finished by the end of the month as I had planned but should be done within a week or so

Work on Patch n Peace Mystery Quilt. This quilt top has been completed and is currently at the longarmers. I've called it Crop Circles. Kym and I were talking about this one today on facebook and chose a nice pattern for it too. We are continuing on with the circle theme but with some swirls as well.

Sew 2 Amy Gibson blocks. For the second month in a row I haven't worked on these. Hopefully next month!!!