BIRTHDAYS AND MYSTERY QUILTS

Well I survived another birthday - finally - "The Husband" got the message about the flowers. This has been an ongoing problem - for our anniversary last year I even sent him an email with pictures of ideal bunches of the correct flowers - he always sends what I call funeral bouquets - I sent pictures listed in two columns - funeral - anniversary/birthday. I don't know what florist he uses, but good grief Charlie Brown. Florists out there - give some of these blokes a hand would ya!! I made my cake (happy birthday to me), my sister and I have been reminiscing about passionfruit sponge, so as a result of power of suggestion that is what the cake turned out to be.

Whilst working on a quilt project, I happened to notice what I thought was a bird, but wasn't sure. On further investigation it was a bird, a lovely little Frogmouth. It posed nicely for me, although a couple of times it looked like it might swoop, because I was taking too many pictures, but it ended up staying for the entire day. I think the heat was getting to it.

I have just finished this quilt - loosely named "the Ginja Ninja". The back has been done using polar fleece instead of the traditional three layers. This makes a nice soft quilt, ideal for snuggling under.

The back came up really well.

It was a lot of fun designing the different stances and faces. These are done on the embroidery machine as applique.

AND NOW A LITTLE TUTORIAL

I like to have things over the lines when I make quilts and sometimes this can make for little lumpy bits when you applique. Here's what I did to get rid of the seam lines in this quilt, perhaps it may work for you too. There is no reason why hand quilters couldn't use the same principles.

Stitch the first outline of the design. You can either baste the quilt top onto stabilizer that is hooped, or you can hoop the quilt top, but do use stabilizer.

Next, trim the fabric, leaving at least a 1/4inch seam, inside the stitching outline. DO NOT CUT THROUGH THE STABILIZER.

Restart the design, this time appliquing as usual. Trim applique fabric back before doing the zigzag stitches.

Saturday last week saw me running a Mystery Quilt Day. Liz over at Teddlywinks http://www.teddlywinksdesigns.blogspot.com/ was an enthusiastic participant and has covered most of it on her blog, so I'll send you there. The day went really well. I had every intention of knocking another quilt together and spent Friday buying fabric so that I could sew whilst everyone else did. Needless to say I didn't even get the thing cut out!! It was a lot of fun, but Sunday was spent complaining about how tired I was and how sore my feet were! I condensed a few of the quilts onto one page.
OK, so we all know about Where's Wally.......what about Where's Norman?

Till next time....

Sue