A day or two or three late.....Finishes

Did everyone have a lovely Australia Day long weekend.  We went camping with friends and had a great time.  At our peak we had 16 kids camping with us, the kids had a great time with plenty of friends to play with.

Over the past week I managed to finish another book.  I never finish a book this quickly, but I do like this author, Matthew Reilly. Matthew is an Australia and writes great action books with a good bit of history.  My son gave me this book for xmas and was waiting for me to read it, I read it very quickly staying up late some nights to finish "this bit, I have to know how this bit ends".

 

I prepped the flowers for the applique borders I showed last post.  The flowers started out as 4 patches.. drew circle and basted around the circle

 

I then pulled the basting thread around a mylar circle from Karen K Buckley, and spray starched and press the heck out of it.




Removed the mylar when the fabric had cooled, they are now ready to applique.

Here they are all stitched down. Now onto the 72 leaves and 48 berries still needed for the borders.

The summer school holidays ended and off to school the kids went, kind of happy, kind of not. Every year at the end of the first day the kids and I go get ice cream and chat about their teachers, classmates and the school.  The kids love the ice cream

And here they are on the beach, we always do this shot.... love them kiddos




















Not much Finished this week, but progress was made.  I did get some binding done and will show that in another post with lots of pictures.

Have a good week everyone

The past weeks Finishes

I  have had some success this week with crossing some jobs off "The List" and some others that were not even on "The List".

 

I did finish all the blocks for the Bonnie Hunter, Celtic Solstice. 

 

But first, I bought a White Xmas tree.  I have always wanted one and this one I got for $10, down from $69.99.... how could I not take it home with me, it is even a 6ft tall tree, not a tiny one.  Now I have a year to work out were it will go in the house..

 

I got some happy squishy mail this week. Several 19th Century squares in gorgeous colours, for now they are with the rest of them safe and sound in a pretty box waiting to be used, hopefully soon...



Now onto a finish or two.  The quilt below is my oldest UFO that is a Complete Top.  I have older UFO's but they are not complete as yet.  I made this top about 7 years ago, before I got my Longarm machine and was going to use this to practice on after a little while, but as you can see that didn't happen.  Two years ago I started to quilt it, but my machine played up badly and I had to take it off the frame, get a mechanic in to fix my machine. In the meantime I unpicked the quilting and by the time I got that finished I was well into customer quilts again and had no time to quilt it again.  Until this week, I was determined to get it done.  My machine played up again as I started to quilt, but I got it sorted and kept going and TADA done.



The curtains below were not on The List at all, they were only something I would like to do someday.  They are for the campervan, "Bluebell".  I made 8 very, very basic curtains, hoping to pretty up the van, for our next camping trip.



This is a picture of the inside of the van with the old curtains, very ugly, now it is pretty..


I got the vine and stems finished all 4 borders done, now onto the flowers and leaves, hoping to get them prepped and ready to sew shortly. But yay to getting the vines done !!!!


We had another Karting race day this past weekend, stinking hot day, my son got a 2nd place trophy for the day. I got these hexagons basted in the car, not many this time, but still some is better than none.



Last year I started the Scrappy Trip Around the World with the rest of the world.  What I did do was as I saw family and friends, adults and kids, I asked them to pick out strips for a block. It was interesting to see how each person picked colours.  Some were even a bit scared to, it helped me get the blocks done with out over thinking it all.  I even got my 2 year old niece to pick out 6 strips, it took me about and hour but we got there and she did very well.

Here it is all quilted and looking gorgeous. I love this quilt, the colours, the family and friends willingness to help me and be part of my passion.  I would make this again.



Here is the back, an orange on white print from Moda, perfect. I used a variegated thread on top and a solid orange on the back.  I have the binding, aqua, machined on waiting to be hand stitched down this week.




I finished reading "To Kill a Mockingbird".  I didn't read this in High School and had always wanted to read and have finally finished and enjoyed it.  I would now like to see the movie, the one with Gregory Peck in it, and see how it compares to the book. Has anyone seen the movie, is it close to the book ??????

 

School holidays are nearly over for the kids.  My daughter spent a whole day making these items for her dolls.  These are tiny items, I put a 10c coin in the middle there to get a size perspective.  Felicity's dolls are now ready for a new year at school, pens, books, laptop, calculator, school bag, so cool

 

 

These are some of the blocks I hope to work on throughout the year.  The blocks finish at 7", so some of the pieces are tiny and cut at odd sizes, this is going to be an exercise in accuracy and patience.

 

 

I found in my collection of rulers the Marsha McCloskey Feathered Star Ruler, it has increments for 1/8th's and 16th's and have found it very handy cutting fabric for the sampler blocks, still have to piece what I have cut so far, so fingers crossed all goes together nicely..

 

 

Well that is everything I got done this past week, how did you do???? Let me know.

 

 I will leave you with one last picture of my favourite quilt, can you tell I love this one.

 

 

have a good week, keep stitching, each finished step will get you closer to completing those UFO's

 

 

 

Celebrate the small finishes

Hi All

I have been working away on a few things and am calling the steps as Finishes.  Sometimes you need the small ones to keep you going towards the big Finishes.

 

This is block 7 of the 2013 Mystery BOM from Fat Quarter Shop.  There are 12 blocks in total, so half way through the blocks, but I have made all that I have received so far. 

 

This finish is actually a quilt I am teaching at The Patchwork Angel on Saturday 15th February.  I have called it Spring Picnic.  It is a big quilt, using 2 Jelly Rolls and white solid for the sashings, very easy to make it smaller.  I love this Finish.  Call the shop to book in..

Now don't think I have worked my butt off to get this to a completed top.  I had pieced the strips late last year and only needed to make the sashing and put together, done.  It still needs to be quilted, maybe this week, I would like to bind in a navy stripe, but am not finding something I like as yet.



We had a little road trip this past Sunday and I got these hexagons basted in the car.



This is two more diamonds pieced together.  The above hexagons will be pieced into these units for this quilt.



I have a hand pieced quilt that needs applique borders to complete it, here is the vines and stems completed on 2 of them. The third is started, when all 4 have the vines then I will work on the flowers so I can get some balance to the colours.  I had put off doing this for about a year now, so very happy it is coming along. Oh look my toes made it into the photo



I have had a sampler pattern for ages and thought I would start it by cutting and piecing as I have fabric already out on my cutting table.  Block 1 done but will have to wait and see how well I stick to this plan...



And every project needs cute storage to keep it safe for when it gets forgotten....



and finally the Bonnie Hunter Celtic Solstice Mystery quilt.  Here is my pile of alternate blocks, I think there is 42 here


Still working on the Star Blocks, I have about 6 or 7 still to go, but have run out of the 4 patches



here I have played them the placement of the blocks.  I was a bit worried about my choices, but it is going to come very close to how I pictured it in my head, don't you like that when the finished quilt comes close to the vision...



NO quilt comes together perfectly, at some point you have to do some unpicking. This is the first time I will have to unpick, didn't even notice until after I ironed this block..

Now all of this has been worked on since about the start of the year, not all this week.  This is all about seeing the progress, you know yourself that some days you know you have been busy but feel you have nothing to show for it.  This is for me to look back at the end of the year and see what I have accomplished and remember what I did.

Thanks for making it to the end of another long post, I hope you enjoyed the pictures.. What small steps did you get FINISHED this week

lots of love and Finishing wishes to you all

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you all had a safe and enjoyable time with family and friends

I had a very busy time in the lead up to Christmas and so I really fell off the blog map... very sorry... so here is a summary of all that my family and I have done over the last weeks and weeks and weeks.

 

I finished this quilt for my daughter, it was a Christmas gift for her.  There was a few late nights stitching the binding after she had gone to bed. This is Felicity's quilt for the caravan.  She was very happy to find it under the tree.

 

 This little bag was made for an end of school year teacher gift.  We put lip balm, moisturiser and chocolates inside.  Felicity picked out the fabrics.

For my last customer quilt for the year I had a very large medallion style quilt that needed custom quilting on it.  Several days later it was finished and delivered. One of the many border had these 4 patches, so I did this cute little flower design that matched the applique shapes in the centre medallion.

 

Each year the local council organises a Christmas boat parade.  We took our dinner down to the park and sat and watched the pretty boats go by with many, many other people and shared and great night with friends.

 

With the kids on school holidays we drove to Brisbane and visited my sister.  The cousins had a great time playing together.  My sister makes glass beads for jewelry, this is Felicity learning how to melt the glass and create some beads.  I stepped out of the room and let Avril teach, I was making them nervous with my over protectiveness, that flame is very hot!!!!!  Felicity was so rapted with her creations.

The weekend before Christmas Hubby, kids and I spent the weekend in Brisbane doing the Christmas sights.  We looked at the window displays, they were not that exciting this year.  We walked to King George Square to see the Christmas parade followed by the Pantomime then the lights going on, on the tree. 

 

This year the City Council building was lit up by a new light show, this was a story being told by images moving all around the façade of the building but made to fit into the shapes of the building.  The story was a bit weird but the lighting was great.

 

 

This sparkly decoration was in one of the arcades in the city. I took a photo hoping my husband will make me something like this for next year..

 

 

 

The day after all the Christmas events we all went to the Queensland Art Gallery. The display was California Design, 1930-1965.  We all enjoyed it

 

An original Air Stream complete with wood panelling and chrome fittings inside.  Camping in this would have been very cozy.




This chair was part of the Design display, people were allowed to sit in the chair and invited to Instagram an image, Josh made himself comfy while there.

 

After the Art Gallery we went in search of a park to have lunch, we stopped at a set of lights, I looked out my window and saw this in a shop window.  Do you see the bead necklace, right hand side second row from the bottom, they are my sister Avril's beads and this is the shop she sells them from Artisan  So cool...

 

 

So then I had to do some last minute shopping and saw these snowmen hanging around.  I have confessed to you my THING for Snowmen, they looked so cool.  Well, last week I was in that shop and the snowmen had just been pulled down and were stacked up ready to be put in the bin.... well... I asked him nicely and was able to bring some of them home with me.... never too early to plan for next year...lol

 

 

This was my Prawn entrée creation for Christmas dinner, not much was left over, very yummy

 

 

My little sister, Heather, does the Ham each year and it is just heaven, again not much was leftover...

 

 

I think this was Boxing day or somewhere between Christmas and New Years.  The house was quiet early in the morning, so I did a little piecing. Do you see my polka dot pj's????

 

 

New Years eve was spent down at the beach, with friends, watching the fireworks going off.

 

 

New Years day was spent again doing a little piecing.  I have been working on Bonnie Hunter's Mystery quilt, Celtic Solstice.

 

 

 I found these in Woolworth's on the 2nd of January, and it looked like people had bought some already, OMG Easter is not until the middle of April.

 

 

A little more piecing was done, and still not finished....

 

 

The family went to see this movie and enjoyed it.  The Snowman made me laugh, but you are not surprised by that..

 

 

This year I have decided to find a word to follow for the year, I will let you know how it goes

 

 

Some cutting of fabric for more piecing >>>>>>>

 

 

And now that some of the verrrrry HOT days have passed I am able to get out walking again, in my new shoes. 

 

 

I got myself a Fitbit to help me stay on track, this is after that first days walk, nearly 5.5kms, happy with that.

 

So that is about all, geez that was a long post.

 

May the year bring you happiness, health and some time for stitching.