WIP Wednesday

It's been ages since I did a WIP wednesday - there's so much going on that I usually forget to post on the right day - but I got away from classes a little earlier today so thought I'd jump in quickly before going off to make dinner (laksa with chicken and prawns) - and before the evening classes start.

So, I had a finish, which I blogged about here and here's some close ups of the quilting...

intent was to do lovely tight spirals, but like my body, they got a little loose!

a little 3D action

looks like a ribbon

I put the 1st border on this one - and I think I'm christening it 'Ice Age' after a lovely comment...

According to my 'To Do' list there's at least 432 more things to be done and I will eventually (maybe) get to them.....

This next week I have 5 client quilts to quilt on the longarm, so best get into that, as well as starting a quilt I want to make up into a kit.....oh, and the do.good stitches blocks need to be made.....and I must finish the remaining blocks of the Farmers Wife........and.........bugger!

A FINISH!!!

I think I started this quilt about May last year - I didn't start to blog about it until August last year when I had nine of the centre hexagons completed - they're all done by hand so they did take a little while. 

My attempt at an arty shot (pegs and all!) given we have sunshine in Melbourne today - but it's also quite windy so this was the best of the outside ones.

Once I had what I deemed 'enough' hexagons (and had, in the process, gathered enough French General fabrics to start my own Empire) I machine stitched them together with little isoceles triangles.

A border was next - a plain one in the same triangle fabric, then a dotty one before the hexagon border (have to say this border was a right pain - it moved and wobbled and in the end I had to take off about 1/2" from each long edge to have it resemble a straight - enough line!)

Next came a wide border - this one the glorious rich turkey red and a fleur-de-lis pattern from the latest French General range.

Quilting was next - the back is a very large piece of French General backing from Hancocks - no pieceing in sight!.

I loaded it onto my longarm and quilting feathers in the large border along with a meander filler, stitched in the ditch around the remaining borders and inbetween the hexagons with a loopy filler I made up as I went along (truth be told I stuffed up the spiral I wanted to use and instead of unpicking, just went with the stuffed up version - I quite like it and will use it again).  Thread used was red or cream, depending on which bit I was quilting.

Off the long arm and onto hand quilting - some shadow quilting of the feathers with red perle and some hand quilting in the hexagons with a creamy beige perle - big stitches because I like them and minimum stitching because I didn't want to overwhelm the patterns.

Finally, a little more machine quilting - this time using my domestic machine - and creating crosses through the border hexagons and it was time to do the binding.  Apart from a small piece of contrast (which you can vaguely see on the top left in the photo above), the binding was the same as the last border and I stitched this down by hand.

I've yet to put on a label and then it'll be posted off to a very special person in the UK - I think  know I'm a bit sad this is going.  I've enjoyed making it and I'm a bit sad I won't see the special persons' face when she opens it - hmm, maybe I should make her wait until we're skyping??

It finished at 73" x 84"(185cms x 213cms)

Almost

Last week I spent chasing spiders and dust elephants (too big for dust bunnies!) around the house after housework had been temporarily suspended for a month or so due to school and a distinct lack of interest.

The house has never looked as good! Of course, the catalyst was a pending visit from my cousin (from Queensland) and her gorgeous daughter - Miss Poppie is staying at mine for the week while her mum attends to work here in Victoria.  Today we went to see Ice Age 4 - in 3D - it's fabulous having a 9 year old around the place - certainly keeping me on my toes.

In between girly stuff with Miss Poppie, I've been putting together a quilt top that has been on my list for, oh, about 100 years....it's not finished - I think it needs a border or 2 as it's currently about 44" x 55" and I'd like it to be a bit bigger - and it's mostly from a range called Tokyo Roccoco by Carol Van Zandt for Andover fabrics - the solids were a happy match from good old Spotlight.....so there's more to do, but I thought I'd show you any way.....

....and now I'm off to finish testing a pattern for a bloggy friend - it's all cut out and I'm starting to sew it together - and I best get my skates on as the recipient had her baby yesterday.....

Steppin' out with the Farmer

I pulled my book out today and saw that it's been 2 months since I made any of the Farmers blocks - I think I'd had enough of them and as the next few are either foundation pieced or involve a huge number of pieces, it seemed like a really good idea to put them in the shelf for a holiday.  Anyway, I did manage to complete 3 - Blocks 85 - 87.....

Square dance

Squash blossom

Star gardener - this one finished 1/4" bigger than expected!

I also noted that's it's been almost a year since I started this quilt - and given the disparate sizes of the blocks it'll likely be a few more years before I can muster the enthusiasm to put it together : \

24 to go..........................

WIP Wednesday - well it would be, but now it's Thursday and the link is closed :(

omg - I knew it had been a while since linking up with WIP Wednesday at Lee's, but just saw that the last time was 9th Feb - definately a long time between drinks!

So obviously there's a little bit of creativity going on in the meantime - most of which relates to the Textiles course I'm doing, but I got a few things done outside of that too :)

I have a finish which started about here....

Totally inspired by this

Here's the back........

there's actual sunshine in Melbourne today!

I finished up another quilt...

I'm in the process of adding hand quilting to this next one...

Completed some farmers wife and projects for school, sewing bees and my teaching classes...

I also managed to complete a few quilting commissions on the long-arm too - I'm sure there's more but it's been so long I think I'd be here forever finding all the photos!

Anyway - pop on over to Lee's and check out everyone else's awesome WIP's - huge amount of inspiration out there :)

Stitching day

Busy weekend just gone - I spent Saturday in the company of new friends, Sunday morning in the company of old friends at a Christening - and Sunday afternoon on the couch having a nanna nap in front of the fire....

Cathy, of Cabbage Quilts, had a sewing day at her house (I missed the first one) so I got to put a couple of faces to names and meet some more lovely people....

Miriam of Yellow Roses, Chris of A little bit of Chris, a little bit of....., Michelle of The Quilted Tortoise, Kathy, Deb and we were joined later by Bronwyn of Whippet Good and Emma from Treehouse Textiles.

We had a wonderful day - much show and tell (no photos of anyone elses work - forgot my camera but Miriam has some photos on her blog...), much chat and eating sublime meringues and macaroons and before we knew it, it was 5.30pm and time to go home....the intent is to meet regularly to spread a little quilty/crafty love - so looking forward to it - it's fantastic to have more quilty friends close to home to share our collective passion about our craft.

I finished a quilt.....this will go into either Etsy or Madeit just as soon as I've priced it....

mix of fabrics from dear stella, lark, amy butler, michale miller, etc etc - must take another photo as this one doesn't do it justice...organic machine quilted straight lines

the back - it's a decent size - 62" x 72" and there's a few hand stitched lines too, in grey perle thread

I've also finished the machine quilting on this next one (this one is a gift for a very special person) and have started the hand quilting - its going to take me a while....

Now, must go and create the Project of the Month handout for my classes - it's Quilt Labels this month so I've made a few using different methods......everyone should put a label on their quilts :)

WIP Wednesday and being just a little slack...

Not slack in the sense of sitting on my duff doing nothing, but slack in that I haven't done a lot of blog reading nor commenting this week.  Mostly this was because Telstra and I had a little contretemps - they insist that I exceeded my quota re broadband (which is horrendously expensive and SLOW in Oz) and reduced my connection speed to 64 bits per minute (or whatever the damned thing is) - a consequence of this is that the internet takes 10 mins to open pages and it completely gives up the ghost on my mailbox - a new billing month started yesterday so it's back up to speed - but I had a full day of teaching yesterday too (classes in the morning, afternoon and evening - BIG wednesdays during term times) so didn't get round to anything internet related....ooh, sound like a moan but really, just stating what's happened - and then the dog ate my homework....

Today, it's off to the sewing centre to find out why my new machine is giving me conniptions about FMQing, out for drinks tonight with friends and then tomorrow my course starts - phew!

So this is a very quick post of WIP's, a link to Lee's WIP Wednesday on Freshley Pieced, then it's off to the shower, get the laundry out and jump in the car..

This week I finished my Mouthy Stitches pouch..

Did some dyeing...

Made a couple of blocks for Quilts of Hope...

Made the February block for the Quilt Australia Bee..

Got one FWQA block done - Rainbow Flowers..

Started a new quilt (on my Winter/Summer Stitching list) which started out as a garden path block quilt, morphed into a Sanctuary Squares and then when I didn't like the look of either using the fabrics I have (the quilts I've linked are totally gorgeous - their colour and pattern combos totally work), morphed into this...

I think it needs a couple of more rows on the bottom - which will necessitate a trip to the shop for more grey solid (damn!!) and a bit more cutting out and sewing - any suggestions regarding layout etc will be gratefully received.

Then go and have a look at the other linkees - again, some seriously wonderful WIP's being whipped into shape out there (sorry about the lame joke!)

Wednesday, again??? - and it's now Thursday even...

These weeks are sneaking up on me - can't believe it's WIP wednesday again - which was actually yesterday - so 'Thought it was Wednesday Thursday' then?

I haven't even redone my WIP list, so it's going to be a bit of mish-mash til I can get myself organised.

I had a couple of finishes...

from the UFO bin - gift for a friend who will faint when it's presented!

I finished my mouthy stitches pouch but I can't show it as it's a secret - but I can show a detail of it...

...and a I wrote a tutorial as to how to do the twists - it's my previous post

I did some more on my hexy quilt border..

I made a couple of blocks for the Cherish do.good stitches February quilter...

love this - might have to make a quilt myself!

I made another little mug bag to show my wednesday ladies that you can make the little bag with whatever scraps you have leftover...

and forgive me, I stitched a little counted cross stitch teacup...

I finished one sock and started the next...

and I've just spent 4 hours in front of the computer reading and commenting on blogs - Gordon Bennett, must do something about that - but I love reading and seeing what others are up to - so check out other Wednesday WIPpers - and Lily's Fresh sewing day - and Lily's small blog meet...whew

TGIFF - a finish - woo hoo!!

On Wednesday I loaded a quilt top that has been languishing in my UFO tub for over 2 years.  One of the reasons, (the main one really) was because it needed specific custom quilting rather than an edge-to-edge pattern and I'm afraid my skills just weren't up to it 2 years ago....and while I won't win a prize at any time soon, I've custom quilted the top, made and just finished sewing on the binding - this was after a bit of a disaster which saw my bff and I unpicking some seriously embarrassing quilting lines from a row of flying geese (what a bff - comes over for a barby for Oz day and spends an hour or so helping me unpick!).

So here is 'Which way to go'

The photo doesn't really do justice to the richness of the colours

The centre mariners compass is foundation pieced and came from a 2nd hand magazine given to me by my bff's mum - from the 1970's.  I also foundation pieced the flying geese as 2 years ago, my geese results where less than satisfactory - in fact, they were so bad the poor geese would have had no chance setting off on their migration nor escaping the hunter's gun, so seriously were they deformed!

Just about all the batiks came from Bali - my husband and I (Queenly wave) went to Bali for a wedding a couple of years ago and I came home with about 50 metres for around $2 a metre - so even though this quilt fnished at around 80" square, there's still quite a lot of batik left in my stash - and I'm not a huge fan of it anymore - well, not of quilts made exclusively of batik fabrics - I do like to add them to quilts made from patterned quilters cottons - they don't stop the eye as solids sometimes do.

I got a bit excited in the centre and quilted pebbling - this is one of my most favourite finishes..

This quilt was in my Winter/Summer sewing list so that's another job jobbed..woo hoo to that too!

I'm linking up with Lynn of What a hoot who is hosting TGIFF today so go and see what other Friday finishes have finished..

WIP Wednesday #12

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshley Pieced - thanks Lee - this weekly summary really helps in identifying what I've actually done (and still to do) - although the last time I linked up was 16th November last year..............so there's some progress to report!

I also love having a look at what others are doing - it provides so much inspiration - there is a seriously large group of very clever people out there.

I did some sewing for Christmas..

pj's x 3, boardies, a pincushion, a cushion cover, 2 stuffed dollies, a matching bag, journal cover and a little drawstring bag, and a frock for my ma-in-law

Made a skirt for me..

7 bags and pouches (other than christmas ones)

2 do.Good stitches blocks...

a Quilting Australia Bee block...

2 baby quilts with matching soft baskets...

14 Farmers wife blocks....

total finished is now 72, so 39 to go

put the hexy quilt together and am now working on the 2nd border...

loaded and started quilting the batik medallion...

made a journal cover for me...

started knitting a pair of socks..

and completed the first 4 of the QAYGFMQQA blocks...

I've decided to review my list of stuff I'm reporting on to keep it more in line with the winter/summer stitching lit - but not tonight - I'll do that when I post my progress against that list, maybe tomorrow...

Jump into Lee's blog (button on the right) and see what everyone else is up to...