MYSTERY QUILTS

Saturday started bright and early, lots to do today.    Went to vote, then my faithful assistant (DH) and I went for coffee.     After a brief coffee break, it was on to filling my car with everything bar the kitchen sink, and then I headed off to what was to be another action packed 10am to 10pm session at our local community house.    Being the executive in charge for the day, I had completed a couple of samples and given everyone written instructions on the necessary preparation for the day.      The mystery for this quilt was the Disappearing Nine Patch quilt.   Lunch and dinner are supplied on these days enabling everyone to just get on with art of quilt making.   Jan produced a spectacular Sticky Date cake complete with gallons of sauce and cream (notice how I concentrate on the healthy portion of the meals).

As you can see from the following photos, everybody had a different theme.

Carol chose a stunning colour palette.  Lots of mustard, pink and greens whilst Helen went with a black and white palette, charged with a shot of fluorescent green and orange.  Many of us wanted to covet Helen's black and white stash.

Jan is another die hard fabric collector - her stash of Kaffe Fasset fabric has to be seen to be believed.  

Jan got to the point of sashing, before calling it a night.    The lime green and white just added to the fresh look of the whole quilt centre.

Liz from over at Teddlywinks is gearing up for grandkid  quilts.  It had a bit of an "I Spy" arrangement going on.

Vrinda in a sewing marathon finished the entire quilt top.    We both spent some time working on the corners to get a good pattern match going.   We were successful on EVERY corner!!

Vrinda also bought along her finished quilt top from our previous Mystery Quilt day.

Vicky was the speediest in finishing the centre, not being able to spend the full amount of time with us, her centre was done and dusted by 5 o'clock.    It would be safe to say that Vicki spent more time sewing and less time talking!

Elizabeth chose a coffee, cream and chocolate theme.   

Here is some of it sewn together.

Whilst everybody was busy beavering away, I thought (just for a laugh) that I might cut some fabric for another quilt.  After all, where is the fun in not having 5 projects on the go at the same time.   So I cut these -notice how they are pinned to my "design wall".

There is so much going on in this fabric that I have now had to come up with an alternate way of putting them back together again, so it doesn't look like the original fabric.  We will see how it goes.

The following are the samples I did for the Disappearing Nine Patch.   The first  sample I made was from furnishing fabric - why? - because it was there and it cost $5.60 (and there were enough squares cut at 6 1/2 inches that you could have covered a house with it.

I embroidered a few flowers that I digitised as appliques and it doesn't look that bad.  I am thinking of just putting polar fleece on the back  - it weighs rather a lot.    

 The second sample is once again in the purple vein.    I am going to add a flower border to each end to make it long enough to cover the window seat.   The colours have turned out to be all wrong here so imagine it in a different green and purple flowers.    Lot of work for the cat to sit on!

Sunday saw us (faithful assistant and I) off to pick up my latest prize for the week that I "won" on eBay.   I have been momentarily banned from any further eBay purchases, you will see why later in the story......

as much as some will think it horrific that I would entertain such an idea, I am going to paint this white and distress it.   The yellow flowers are a bit faded and naff, but otherwise the cabinet is fantastic and is not the cheap pine I was expecting when I won the auction.   (Won being such a subjective term, it cost money to "win").   So stay tuned on that one.   I am working on the elf at the moment to see if I can con him into getting busy with the sander - I detest the sanding part - then I will drag it upstairs to paint - it is too cold and damp in my neck of the woods to paint outside - I envisage puddles of paint at my feet.   The plan is that this will house my computer, printer and embroidery cd's and such, and hide the dust - again - refer further down and you will ask - "Does this woman really worry about dust?"

Now just for a laugh and this is why I am banned from eBay for a moment, this is my room - panoramic style.   I think I have a little bit of work to do - soon!!

Bye for now.    Sue xxx

CRAZY PATCHWORK

After working at a cracking pace, I have completed 48 half square triangle blocks of crazy patchwork. 39 blocks have been completed since Friday afternoon. I like to do quilts that aren't repetative, hence the rush to get this part done before I lost interest and had 20 metres of fabric kicking around my sewing room, cut up into pieces. Originally I had both machines set up - one for sewing and one for doing the decorative work, however I changed tack and decided to concentrate on the worst part!!

All the blocks have been sewn using tear away paper as the foundation. There will probably be a few days work trying to rip this out, but I need the paper under the blocks anyway to do the decorative embroidery stitches. I will also add a few butterflies and such with the embroidery machine - let's face it, I am on a roll now, and what was a going to be a strip quilt is now but a distant memory.

This tear away is the iron on type, this meant I could stick down the butterfly feature fabric, and then start adding the other fabrics.

For this type of crazy patchwork, the centre piece should have an uneven (in this case 5) number of sides. Because of the print of the fabric, a couple of mine did end up with 6 sides.

Crazy patchwork is achieved by simply sewing strips of fabric around your chosen centre. It is important to sew a seam, press back, then lay another strip of fabric across and sew, trim back any excess, press open and so on.

Just keep working around until the centre is filled and then work out to each corner. Something I did learn along the way - it is better just to cut your fabric into strips, rather than pieces. I had some small bits of fabric from the stash and I thought it would be a good idea to cut them up into 48 pieces - 1 for each block - but this made them difficult to use. Better to decide how far you think the fabric will go - say 12 out of 48 and then replace that fabric in the next 12 blocks, with something else. They can then all be mixed and matched at the end.

Just keep sewing, trimming and pressing until all the gaps are filled. These will now have the decorative stitching completed and then be trimmed up. At least during the construction phase I managed to empty 10 bobbins that had been half filled with assorted colour thread. It will never be seen.

Stay tuned!! Sue xxx

FABRIC LOVE

It's been a long day today, but look what was waiting on my arrival home. A large parcel from Hancocks. Lots of mermaids and sea creatures and suitably co-ordinating stripes and swirls. Oh and some batik, which comes at the right time, it goes perfectly with the purple stuff at the bottom of the page.



There are many days as the mother of a teenage boy, when the question "What the....?" is asked.

Here we have an example. The following is a small series of photo's that answers the question "Why are there small bits of toilet paper behind the door of the toilet" I think these photo's solve that age old mystery!!






This little game had been going on for quite some time.

At the quilt group last week, we were playing with "quilt as you go". I bought truckloads of fabric for the exercise, because I am keen to make a bedspread/quilt complete with pillow cover the works. I did 4 squares and hated them. I was going for girly and I got male geometric.

So I went through the elusive stash (you know, the pile of fabric that never, never, ever matches anything you need) and actually found a couple of bits and pieces and then I went back to the fabric shop and bought a couple more bits and so now I have done this.

Much more girly, and much more work. 4 squares done - 44 to go. It is big.

Here is Norman, sitting on some of the fabric selection, he is working out which colour will show up better when he sheds, white or black, black or white, decisions, decisions.



I was having a bit of a Masterchef moment last week, so I bought these. Two good things are immediately apparent. 1. I can't set fire to the handles and 2. The handles can't fall off, ever. This should minimise the chances of the great tomato soup spillage of Christmas 2009 from occuring again and questions like "what is that smell?"

And I made one of these -

In my quest to get some artwork up on the walls, I put this together.

It's a bus/tram roll for the uninitiated. They are the latest thing. I bought a canvas, I was going to do stencils and then I had a brain wave - the camera shop - one week later and no mess and best of all it is done.

The other domestic goddess moment I had was with this. I can't wait to see the possums balanced on this sucker. Should be a laugh a minute.

Whilst out in the garden, I spied these two beauties, certainly a great splash of colour on a cold Melbourne afternoon.

And just to give him some recognition, here's Harv.



Til next time. Sue xxx