Favourite thing Friday

There's a very serendipitous air wafting about the place, so it's not too hard to think about favourite things on this friday....so thought I'd share them with Shay at Quilting in my Pyjamas

• I sold a pouch - on Madeit - my very first sale - very excited!  I sent it on its way to NSW this morning.
• My fabulous Kate Spain fabric, won at the Bloggers Quilt Festival, arrived in the mail today too
• I have been confirmed to teach 2 more patchwork groups next semester, with a possibility of another one to be discussed next friday
• We met my new great-neice yesterday - she lives about 3 hours away so it was a long day - but so worth it - the only thing though, the little minx would not wake up for her aunties, despite our surreptitious efforts, so we left without seeing her baby blues - next time!
• A family get together tonight to farewell a fairly recent addition who is going back to Canada until her visa can be renewed (there's storms predicted - not because the family is getting together of course, although that is entirely possible too - but because there's a cool change due in after our stinky hot weather today - should be fun!)
• Our cat, who has been missing for about 2 months, turned up last night, a little moth eaten, skinny and beaten up - and after a feed and a snooze, wandered off again into the night - haven't seen her today but thinking she may just have come home for good

So a great week all up - hope yours was good to you too.

WIP Wednesday #11

I'm linking with Lee's WIP Wednesday

A mixed bag this week, and not a lot of crossings off on the UFO list, but some progress on current projects:

FWQA - blocks 57 (Morning) and 58 (Mother's Dream)

One hexie - and I played around with the setting of this quilt and I think I'm going to cut lots of equilateral triangles to join mine together - I've seen a few on Flickr and I like the look.

if you squint, it looks like 3 boxes

Some pouches (prototypes, plus a couple of others that have gone into my Madeit shop)

Two do.good stitches blocks, shown here

One client quilt quilted on the long-arm - it was a biggun too!

So, to summarise:

Finished:

Client long-arm quilting
5  pouches
do. good stitches blocks for november

New:

2 client quilts for long-arm quilting
1 charity quilt for long-arm quilting

Quilts in Progress:

Blanket Box Hexies - total made, 27

 FWQA - total made, 58

No action at all:

Class Sampler quilt - all blocks completed

UFOUFN's:

Psychedelic tartan - who knows??
Double diamonds - still needs something......
Which way to go - needs quilting
Dancing with the stars - needs quilting
Kimono mini - needs binding
Sashiko qayg - needs finishing!
Red and white challenge - needs properly starting

Please click on Lee's "Freshley Pieced WIP wednesday" button on the right to see what others are up to .....

Stuff and nonesense

Had a funny sort of day today - it took me ALL day to make 2 pouches - mostly due to the fact I spent an inordinate amount of time staring into space - and it was such a lovely day outside (well, before the cool change) that I could have been out there soaking up some Vitamin D - but, there you go.  I do have some stuff to show though - quite a disparate group to be sure.....

edge to edge quilting (shown from the back) for a client - finished on the long arm on friday

After I finished the client quilt, I had a scathingly good idea about sewing the heavy interfacing onto the fabrics I'm using for pouches etc. - I pinned on a long piece of interfacing onto the quilting machine, laid the fabrics on top and simply 'quilted' them to attach (no photo of that because I forgot!) - obviously iron-on interfacing would be so much easier - but I have a big roll of heavy duty stuff without the iron-on option (I got it at a really good price).  So I made some prototypes for a different shape of pouch I'm contemplating...

these can be buttoned down to keep your mug safe if you take it to class etc, your hairbrush, 3pm pick-me-ups......

....or the top rolled down for easy access - the shape means they can stand up by themselves.  My neice has already pinched taken the one on the right - it's an Echino print - good taste!

the two pouches that took me ALL day - that dog alone took at least 3 hours! - these will be listed in my Madeit shop

...and to finish off, a few pictures of the vegie patch - you know, I planted so many tomato seeds in the greenhouse back here, some sprouted, but then they carked it - I don't seem to have much luck raising tom seeds - same thing happened last year, so about a month ago, I went off to Bunnings for heirloom tomato plants - and today, what do I see popping up all over the place in the vegie patch - you guessed it - tomato plants!

Back - rhubarb and pumpkin (you can't see the pumpkin yet)
Middle - asparagus, bok choy and pak choy (we're already eating the choys)
Foreground - tiny capsicum seedlings and rogue tomato plants

Back - snow peas, sugar snap peas and beans
Middle - leeks
Foreground - carrots

Back - sweet corn
Middle - lettuce, which you can't see, and we're already harvesting
Foreground - heirloom tomatoes



The far bed - sorry, rotten photo
Back - zucchini, pumpkin
Middle - eggplant, cucumber
Foreground - spring onions and leeks

Right then - have to write my lesson plan for tomorrow nights' class and list the two pouches on Madeit - and maybe tomorrow will be a little more productive!





'Cherish' circle do. Good stitches for November

We had great instructions from Jenna (this month's quilter) - any block we like, as long as it finishes at 12" square and uses an orange/aqua/white/grey colour palette - and luckily I had just added oranges and aquas to my stash (still no grey though - I really will have to remedy that)

So first up I made 'Circle of geese' - foundation pieced and pretty easy.....

it's little more vibrant than this photo shows

The second block I decided to do a star - and originally I thought a carefully pieced star, with quarter square triangles and precise points - but then I remembered I really like the look of wonky stars so I gave that a go - and created a little Aussie Sunshine block (thongs in the middle are a dead giveaway!)

This quilt will be a stunner I'm sure - the colours alone will see to that - great choice Jenna.

I'm a WINNER!!!! (fantastic friday anyone?)

I received a very exciting email from Amy (the Bloggers Quilt Festival) to tell me that my linky number was randomly picked for a PRIZE - so my Jewelled Promise (I won't bore you again with another picture - but here's a link JUST IN CASE you want another look) has delivered a Promised Jewel (or it will, when the Postal Services of 2 countries have done their thing).

I won 12 - yes, 12 - fat quarters of Kate Spain's 'Terrain' from the very generous Ronnie of The Quilted Garden

I pinched this picture from Ronnie's shop

I am absolutely stoked - I have seen this range all over the place and have been secretly coveting it - and now it's coming to ME - yay team!!

Ronnie sent me an email straight after I confirmed my email address and has been so helpful, so I'll have to work out how to add Ronnie's shop on my sidebar because I said I would.....I have absolutely no issue promoting fantastic service - having been in the service industry for most of my career and being a receiver of service as a consumer, it's soooo refreshing to get great service - and I didn't even buy the fabric! 

Well, winners are grinners and that's exactly what I've been doing since that email arrived....hope you have a fantastic friday.

WIP Wednesday #10

It's that time of the week again and although I don't always make it, I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced - it's her 1 year anniversary of WIP Linky posts - thanks Lee - a sterling job!!

We have had the mother of electrical and rain storms today - flash flooding, hail and lightning all over the place - it flooded the local community centre where I teach patchwork on wednesday evenings, so those who braved the rain came to my house to sew instead - it's still raining and the pool looks like it's about to overflow - and given the pool pump has seized (the man is coming out on Friday to either fix or replace it), we may be swimming in our beds!!  I'm also just a little concerned about my vegie patch - I was very happy about how things are growing out there, but the hail may have decimated it - I'll have a look tomorrow.

But, onwards and upwards....since the last time I reported on a WIP Wednesday, there has been some progress:

I made more hexies and cut out some 'plain' ones, so now I have 26 - I think another 14 or so and I can start putting them together with sashing - then a couple of borders and the top will be ready.  The hexies are hand pieced, but everything else will be done by machine.

I started and completely finished a quilt that will go into my shop (either at Etsy or Madeit)

Made a few more FWQA blocks (blogged about here)

I'm now over half way on these so that feels pretty good.

I finished a UFO (now in my Etsy shop)

I lined some pouches with my hand dyed fabric, and listed those in my Etsy shop

...and on the Long-arm side, I've quilted one very large charity quilt, a lap size client quilt and loaded a queen size client quilt ready for quuilting tomorrow.

Phew!!

To summarise:

Finished:

Whirleygig II quilt
Nest quilt
3 pouches

Quilts in Progress:

Blanket Box Hexies - total made, 26

4 FWQA - total made, 56

No action at all:

Class Sampler quilt - all blocks completed

UFOUFN's:

Psychedelic tartan - who knows??
Double diamonds - still needs something......
Which way to go - needs quilting
Dancing with the stars - needs quilting
Kimono mini - needs binding
Sashiko qayg - needs finishing!
Red and white challenge - needs properly starting

Please click on Lee's "Freshley Pieced WIP wednesday" button on the right to see what others are up to .....

On days like this....

So last night I loaded a commission quilt on the beast and given my son and his girlfriend now sleep next to the room I have the beast in, I thought to myself that I'd get it quilted in the morning - so as not to disturb them, you understand - and then I can be a bit domesticated in the afternoon - maybe hoover up the dust wombats (they're waaaaaay past bunnies).

My client wanted an all over meander, avoiding the appliqued train - so, started quilting this morning and it's going really well....I'm meandering like a good thing and avoiding the applique...then I thought I could maybe quilt a line about 1/4" from the train to really make it pop......so started to do that and unfortunately my 1/4" line became anywhere between 1/8" - 1" from the train....oh oh, stop doing that, unpick.  Start meandering again.....

I finished a pass and noticed that the top thread was running really well, a bit too well really, and when I went to cut the threads, I put my hand underneath the quilt and it didn't feel right - felt a bit fuzzy - so eased off the tension on the quilt so I could take a good look underneath......and here's what I saw..

OMG -  the correct terms for this sort of happening is 'eyelashes' - and these eyelashes belong on the main characters in 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert', not on the back of my clients' quilt.  When I was unpicking my sort of 1/4" line, I must have inadvertently knocked the top thread out of the tension spring - aaaagh.

It was pretty easy to unpick, thank goodness, and it left a nice little pile of thread

Retensioned the top thread and off I went again - without incident this time...

gordon bennett i take a rotten photo!

here's the back - plain red and while it's not obvious, the thread i've used is variegated blues, through purple to red

 - but it totally put me off hoovering those wombats.  Instead, I gave the beast a thorough clean and oil, put in a new needle and loaded another quilt - this one is going in my Etsy shop.  Once this one's done, I have another commission quilting job, so looks like those wombats may become cows before I get to them.

Top and backing loaded and just waiting for me to attach the batting before I can pull the top up and start quilting.

I'll blog about this quilt once I've got it quilted.