2010

I am declaring this year to be the year of finishing projects.

I am currently in the process of moving house, a process I hate and have done 6 times in the past 7 years. But this time is a little different. This time I have had to pack all my stuff up and move it myself which is how I have come to realise, I have a hell of a lot of fabric!

Now this picture, doesn't even actually contain a smidgen of my actual fabric stash. In fact, it only contains my 1930's and my Kaffe Fassett fabrics. The rest of those boxes? UnFinished Objects or Work In Progress'. If you don't believe me, and thinks its not possible someone so young can have so many things in progress, click through to the flickr page where I have added notes to all those boxes.

The scariest part? This isn't even all of my ufo's...

2010 here I come!

Setback

Well, I have worked out how many blocks I need to make it as large as I like, have the majority of them made, and a good proportion of the blocks up on my design wall. Then disaster struck. Today during the horribly dust storm, the design wall came down!

So this is what it was looking like, just to give you a teaser, as it wont look like this again for a while...

Growing Slowly

This is only just the start. The blocks are going to be 4 inches square when finished, and I'm thinking the layout will be 20 by 20. And I will still have left over blocks, eeik!

It's Enormous

In my quest to finish things off, I made the last 4 blocks I needed so I could start piecing a quilt made entirely from Kaffe Fassett fabrics. I started this at the beginning of the year in Melbourne, in a class with Brenda Gael Smith.

This is all the blocks laying on the floor of my lounge room. As you can see, it doesn't quite fit between the tv cabinet (top) and the lounge chair (bottom) because there is actually another row missing from the bottom there - because it was sitting in the sewing machine being sewn together. A conservative estimate has me thinking this will be 2.2m by 2.5m, or, the perfect size for my queen size bed.

I'm excited..

Oh I like...

42 down (only 12 behind!) and 28 to go. I might try getting some more reds...

9 Patching all over again

I had almost 50 blocks made for the Block a Day Quilt Along when disaster stuck - I hated them all! But all is ok, after looking at some other people's blocks I decided that I would do something completely different with them. Out came the unpicker!
And now I have this lovely box full of 2.5" squares.

So to catch up with everyone else, I started making these (which I am liking a whole lot more than the last lot). I have used 18 different yarn dyed woven plaids and checks and I have 36 already assembled and the makings for about another 50. So I am still a little behind but I will be catching up shortly!

Freshcut

Well I promised pictures and here you go.

Yesterday this was all still a bunch of 4.5 inch squares, now here it is up on my design wall waiting for the blocks to be sewn together.



I'm hoping to get it done later tonight, but at the moment I have started thinking about borders and started piecing the back. I would have liked to have used either the pink or peach coloured flower for the border, but it seems to be the only one I don't have any more of! So it's going to have to be green/blue.

Basting away

Just a little update. I plan on entering this one in a quilt show (if I ever get it finished) so this will probably be the last you see of it for a while. I finally got the top together and in a way I like it after a fair bit of unpicking to straighten it up.

This photo shows it getting basted. I have bought some beautiful silk threads to quilt this in so I can't wait to get started. I just need to decide on the design I'm going to quilt on it!

Moving on

So I finally got this all together.


Not sure what to do with it now though - its too small for a lap quilt meaning that it will probably end up being something that just goes over the back of a lounge. You can see the first of probably many fabrics to be auditioned for a border though I have changed my mind about this one.

Pile 'o' Blocks

Finally finished all the blocks for this quilt - all 180 of them. This is going to be a HUGE quilt.

Choqua?

This will be a gift for a friend who was crazy enough to abandon me and move to Melbourne, where I am told it can get 'cold'.


Would you describe it as blue, mocha and coffee? I already have a border picked out from Denyse Schmidt's Katie Jump Rope range.

And just to show I haven't given up on the hand piecing here is a little preview of Block 3. Gnomes!

I'm going to have to be a bit more careful where I put it though, it got splattered with soup during dinner tonight!

Scrap Queen!

I started this in my Scrap Queen Odyssey Class with Brenda Geal Smith at AQC a couple of weeks ago. This was a very very enjoyable and relaxing class, and over the course of the day I had pieced a lot of scraps together. I was piecing them all into long strips about 20 to 24 inches long (as thats how long my cutting mat and ruler are) And this entire thing is scraps. Even the colourful Kaffe Fassett fabrics came from the previous days class.


And despite the bad photographs appearence, it isnt curving in, thats just poor photography skills. What this photo may point out to you though is that the left side is about an inch higher than the left side, so I need to do some unpicking to get the right side up a bit. And there is still a little bit to add on the right but I am pretty proud of this considering what I started with!

Leftovers

I was cleaning up my stash trying to find 'scraps' for a class I am going to in Melbourne next week and came across some left over squares from a project from way back (if projects were measured by the house they were made it, this one was two houses ago...)

So its high time they got put to better use. I made some extra's to make it a little bigger and hopefully a little more useful however I am still not sure what it will be, and I still need 7 more blocks.


And this little pile of fabric is going towards another class in Melbourne. What do you think? The requirements ask for 'high contrast with no large prints' and I would say only the spots and the stripes fall into that contrast but oh well, I like the look they will hopefully give.

Moving on

So I might at least get two things finished before going to Melbourne at the end of the month where I will start 4 more new things. First on the list is this little baby


It is all quilted, and patiently waiting binding.

Then there is another old one which is already quilted, but has waited a couple of months to have the threads woven in. I have it sitting on the arm of the lounge chair so that when I watch tv I sit there weaving them in. I am 1/3 done, yay! and have no new picture of it yet. I have even pulled out the fabric to start thinking about the binding for it, so I am getting there slowly. The one thing holding up the binding process for both of these quilts is that I haven't got a space to set up my cutting mat until I clean up a bit...

And lastly, there is this one which will definitely not be finished before the end of February, I started doing a bit more quilting on it (the white lines) and boy do they take a lot of time! I am not marking where to quilt on this one, just eyeballing it so that I get some wonky lines here and there and so far I am really liking it.

Ziggin and Zaggin

A little sneak peak of something I've been working on.

Bad Blogger make for a Good Quilter

While I'm frantically trying not to start anything new, it makes for bad blogging. For the past week I have been working on the quilt in the background of this post, and as I speak, only have 3 rows of quilting to go. Sorry, I though I had posted a photo of this before, but as it is under the machine at this moment I am not pulling it out to take a photo! You'll just have to wait for the binding to go on...

I'm going on a mini holiday on Thursday, and was hoping to take it with me to weave in all the ends, and sew down the binding, so we will see if it makes it to the beach with me!

Bleh

I'm feeling bogged down by all my unfinished quilts stashed around here, so I have decided its finally time to keep my little fingers away from new fabric (which can be very hard as I work in a fabric store) and to start finishing some things!

So, today I cut and sewed my binding together, using this wonderful tutorial to match all my stripes ( I was on the right track so when I saw this tutorial it was like a lightning bolt!) Then decided to do things out of order, I attached the binding THEN decided that it needed more quilting so then I did all the extra quilting on it!

So now it just patiently waits for some nibbler than mine hands to sew the binding down (nudge nudge Mum!)
(These are bad photo's too by the way. Its getting late, I'm very tired and blogger stuffed up the first time I tried to post this!)

Quilting Day 1

I have to have the basic quilting completed on this by Monday night. hmm...

The Skirt.

This is it.
So, I carefully made the pattern, cut it out, used my sewing machine to finish all the edges, then sewed the two pieces together and put the zipper in. I tried it on - and it just fell straight off me. So I took the seam in by about 1.5 inches, then it was a bit too tight. I let the seam out twice, and still to tight - I kept getting bunching across the front of it. I call my Mum, who suggested I let out the seam (again) and add darts, and she tells me how to do them. I unpick the right hand side seam for the third time then carefully measure half, and then a quarter and then sew in the darts and try it on again. Hmm... I accidently put them on the back instead of the front... I decide to leave them there as they seem to have mostly solved the bunching problem, but I needed to make them a little longer, and then voila! It sorta fits.

I did a very very shotty job of adding a facing, but I think its ready to go to work with me. Things that will still need to be done (sometime after I have worn it to work tomorrow) - hem the bottom, topstitch over the facing - but this can only be done once I have unpicked my first origonal seam and cut it down to the new seam! I also need to fix up the top of the zip in one spot - this is the first time I have ever put a zip in an item of clothing so I think I did alright. The facing also needs to be cut to size - I have a little bit overhanging, I think I'll just safety pin it out of the way for tomorrow and then finally, I need to hand sew the facing down.

Then, after that is complete, I attempt skirt number 2!

Other things I got up to today were sewing together what I could of my triple irish chain. Its moving along slowly. I will admit that for the past two days I have been debating making it two rows shorter, meaning that when I add the next lot of blocks I will be done, and just have borders, but then it wouldnt be big enough for my bed. So I think I will just have to persever. You may notice in the skirt photo that this thing continues down to the floor.

I also made a quater of a civil war block. I'm really liking how all these are coming along - even though I have only finished 2 and have about 5 in progress!

The Children will Play

A lady I work with decided she would buy the Civil War Diary book. So I though, maybe we should have a little 'challenge' of sorts. I picked six blocks to start off with, and we have two weeks to complete the six 6 inch (finished) blocks, then when we are done, she will pick the next six and so on until we have as many as we want. She is making hers in reproductions, I'm making mine in Kaffe Fassett. So far they are looking pretty interesting. Unfortunately, most of the blocks need to be foundation paper pieced, as the measurements are a bit weird.


Those strips are a quarter of an inch wide. I was a bit hesitant about using the diagonally stripped fabric, but once I had finished the little block I was so glad I did.



I think they are looking great so far