WIP Wednesday: the last of the year!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Not much progress this week; I think I'm going to have to accept that pretty much nothing more is going to get done this year on the quilting front. I just don't have the time.

Well, maybe the family's Christmas presents...

Finished

Birthday Block: December - Goose Creek

Finally finished the last of the LJ Birthday blocks, albeit extremely late. I won't be participating next year - I have two quilt tops from this block swap (last year, and this year) and haven't yet put them together. Both will need extra blocks from me, I'll probably make them in January.

Scrappy Goose Creek block, for a boy's quilt.

We were asked not to have any pinks, but I figured a single splash won't impugn his masculinity.

Disappearing Charms quilt

Finally bound!

This one has been sitting around, unbound, for the last, oh, year. Possibly more. I just never had the impetus to finish it until now. A friend had a baby shower on the weekend which I couldn't attend, so I finished it up on Sunday and sent it along with another friend.

One baby down, two to go! I'll make a quilt for one, and a bag for baby things for the other. Hopefully before the children turn two! (They've just been born...)

WIP

New York Beauty

I only ended up doing six of the ten paper pieced blocks. (Actually, it was only 5, with block #0 being done twice.)

I'm not sure what this is going to be once I quilt it (at home) and binding it - I think It might end up being used as Something For The Kitteh To Colonise. Don't really have anywhere to hang it just yet.

Sydney Modern Quilt Guild - Hexa-Go-Go

Still sewing hexagons!

And adding scraps:

If you would like to contribute a block to this quilt - whether you're Australian or an international - it would be wonderful if you would mail us at the Sydney MQG (sydneymodernquiltguild at gmail dot com) and we'll send you one of the kits (if you want a particular colour, we should be able to accomodate that). Check this post for details!

In Conclusion

It's been quite a year in my own personal quilt blogosphere - many new subscribers/readers, several new experiences, and a new appreciation for how much time quilting can take from your life!

This will be my last WIP Wednesday - this time next week I shall be leaving on a jet plane to visit my dad in Viet Nam. Looking forward to it. :)

A "best of 2012" post is coming up...just as soon as I sort out the small matter of a graphics editor. (My computer crashed a month ago and I've been working with my business laptop but it's not exactly portable.) I prefer doing it on a graphics editor because I can adjust things like colour and layout and all kinds of things.

Oh, and have some very un-merry kitteh (with cameo from sis):

"Let me dowwwwwn! I want oouuuuuttt!"

In the meantime Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers!

love,
Sel.

WIP Wednesday: the one where Eternity is finished!

Warning: long post ahead. But many pictures to relieve the walls of text!

FINISHED: Heck To The Yeah!

The Eternity Quilt

WE ARE FINISHED, BABY!

Pieced, quilted, bound, and done!

This photo was taken at Material Obsession's Swap Day - the Sydney Modern Quilt Guild had a small table down the back corner of the garden, and so we displayed our various quilts - Penny Poppleton's 7-Day Hexagon Quilt, Pinkying's Sunset+, and my Modern Maze top. It was a great day filled with much chatting and conversation and fabric purchasing. I'm very carefully not thinking about how much I bought at the various stalls!

With the Eternity Quilt's completion, I can safely say that I've achieved at least one of my goals for quilting this year, which was to make a quilt from beginning to end - piecing, quilting, binding.

Of course, I had to pick the biggest, most complicated quilt out of the ones I've made this year. *sigh*

But now that I've done it once, it can only get easier, right? :)

WIPs: And Miles To Go Before I Sleep

This is the bit where everything kind of gets blurry in my head. I've been working on Eternity so long and so hard for the last couple of months that I've almost forgotten what other projects I had before!

Terrain Challenge
This has sadly languished after I discovered that I was going to have to sew a lot more strips together to get the full-sized quilt I want out of it.

Luckily, I am not short of Terrain fabric...

And I think Terrain is going on the backburner while I deal with the familial Christmas Presents. (January. It'll be done by January. Yeah.)

Christmas
So hard to work out gifts for my family! I've given just about everyone quilts now. Except for Stepbro2, which I should probably rectify. I might offer him a quilt, made to his colour/style preferences.

Otherwise, the siblings (sibling-and-spouse in one case) are all getting French Memo Boards, covered specific to their preferences. Don't know if they'll use them or just tuck them away to carry dust. Whatever. Useful and simple and (at least for the sisters) practical. I should probably make one for the half-bro in HK, and one for the new stepbro in Vietnam. (Extended families. Eesh.)

I think I have some time this Sunday...

TO DO: For All We Know The Best Is Yet To Come
Projects for the new year:

Sydney Modern Quilt Guild - Hexa-Go-Go Charity Quilt
One of the tenets of the Sydney Modern Quilt Guild is to contribute back to the community by contributing charity quilts and acts of service.

To that end, we're putting together two quilts for entry in the Sydney Quilt Show (June 2013), one of which will be from Tacha Bruecher's famous Hexa-Go-Go book. Tacha has even offered to put together a block herself, for which we are very very grateful!

(Photo of one of the quilts in Hexa-Go-Go.)

The quilts will be raffled or auctioned off after the Quilt Show and the proceeds donated to a charity that specialises in the care and support of women displaced by domestic violence. we wanted something very specifically female-oriented (which is not to say that men don't experience domestic violence, only that due to the nature of society, women often find themselves without legal or financial support when relationships turn bad).

These are my blocks to make (I took a whole row):

Incidentally, if you would like to contribute a block - whether you're Australian or an international - it would be wonderful if you would mail us at the Sydney MQG (sydneymodernquiltguild at gmail dot com) and we'll send you one of the kits (if you specify a preferred colour, we should be able to accomodate that).

There are more details in this post, but the short of it is that you'll work from your stash, you'll be paper-piecing a block to a color map, and sending it back to us, along with a few extra strips for the borders of your block. We're looking to have this done by the end of January 2013, so time is a factor, but if you're willing and able over the Christmas/New Year period, we'd love all the help we can get!

TARDIS Teapot Rug
For a friend presently stationed in Germany. The square of fabric was from Spoonflower back when I first discovered printable fabrics. I got it because, hey, TARDISes! (TARDII?) *geeks out*

We're actually sending a care package to Germany, although she's coming back home for Christmas. Then, when she gets back to Germany, she'll have a box full of goodies from home! Among which we've sent a teapot and tea. And now a TARDIS Teapot Rug. If I can get it quilted and bound in the next couple of days. Ugh. NO TIME.

Gift Quilts
I'll be travelling through the USA next September, San Francisco, Atlanta, probably North Carolina/Virginia, and then New York, before heading out to Europe (Venice and Italy). Big trip!

Since I'll be staying with friends along the way, I'd like to give them all quilts as gifts. As well as wanting to get a bunch of quilts over to friends in the US that I stayed with time after time in the noughties before I started quilting.

So, the plan is to make a lot of quilts, take over a lot of quilts, gift a lot of quilts...and then come back with ALL THE FABRIC.

One of the quilts I'm going to make is for an Egyptophile, which is why I was very excited when Robert Kaufman brought out the Valley Of The Kings fabric line a couple of years back:

I'd really like the panel if I could find it, but I didn't get the FQ bundle and so, no panel. Anyone know where I could find one?

--

And that's my rather long WIP Wednesday post!

How about yours? Have you linked up? Have you commented on other people's projects?

Mendocino giveaway winner!

Congratulations to Cynthia at The Sewing Dork, who is the winner of the Mendocino Mermaids giveaway!

Cynthia, I've dropped you an email and a comment on your blog and hope to hear back from you soon so I can get your package in the mail.

Thanks so much to everyone for sharing your great finds - from wedding dresses to fabric finds, to circles of friends, and the loves of our lives - I take immense pleasure in hearing about others' good fortune in small and great ways!

I hope you all have a wonderful Seasonal time of year, however you celebrate it (or not, as the case may go)!

WIP Wednesday - the one with blocks and quilting

WIPs!

Birthday Blocks

Getting there!

One coffee-themed block:

Only it's the wrong design!

The second coffee-themed block - this one is the correct design!

Stars block from 99 Modern Quilt Blocks:

Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner

I've been avoiding quilting my own quilts, partly because my machine is just not up to the challenge of large-scale quilting in anything other than straight lines, partly because I didn't want to open that door.

But I need at least one quilt for Material Obsession's Swap Day on Saturday - something bright and 'modern', and the only thing that even vaguely fit the order was Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner, last photographed here:

I don't know if it will exactly fit in with the vivacity of the quilts that are Material Obsession's meat and milk, but I figured it was better than my alternatives.

The quilting is very basic - 'stitch in the ditch' in a diamond pattern, following the pattern of the blocks. It's not very tight quilting, so I imagine there'll be quite a bit of puffiness as it goes through washes and washes.

I'll be sewing the binding on over the next couple of days/nights.

Quilting Lessons

I did my machine quilting course last Wednesday on the Avanti longarm machine. Very nice, very educational. Lots to learn and take in, but also a pleasure to work with.

I wish I'd taken the Angela Walter's Free Motion Quilting book along with me so I could try out the various quilting styles, but, hey, there's lots of quilts yet to go!

After I finish The Eternity Quilt, I may start working on the piles of quilt tops that I haven't gotten around to quilting - partly because when I finished them I didn't have the money to get them quilted, partly because at least one of them will need specialised quilting

Speaking of which...

Eternity Quilt

Still a WIP - until this weekend!

Again, I'm hoping to get this done for Material Obsession's Swap Day - this coming Saturday. And I have three or so hours booked at the Avanti this afternoon, so hopefully some inroads will be made on the quilting. At the least, I want the copperplate outlined and emphasised with some very fine stippling. Once that's done, I'll branch out further out with curls and flourishes all the way to the edge of the quilt.

I'm privately hoping to get the binding completed tomorrow, but realistically it's very unlikely. It's a HUGE quilt! I'll be very glad to have it done, though!

eta: OMG. DONE LIKE A DINNER.

Other things

I'm going to visit my dad and his new wife in Vietnam after Christmas. I'm contemplating taking a quilt along for her - not sure quite what, though - I know almost nothing about her style, or what she might like, and I'd hate to put a lot of effort into something she thinks is 'meh'. (I don't know, she might think it's 'meh' anyway?) She seems like a very fashionable person. And I am decidedly...not fashionable. :)

Maybe leave it until after I've visited them and have a better idea of her likes/dislikes? Or whether she'd want a quilt at all.

Swap Day

I'm offering one package comprising a half-metre each of three Mendocino Mermaids prints. Go and enter the giveaway!

Cat is not included in giveaway!

I <3 Kona

Received the charms from my charm swap with Alyssa at Pile O'Fabric

Now to think of what to make with them!

And I think that's about it for me!

So what have you been working on this week?

Wait, what? It's Giveaway Day?

Okay, so I nearly missed this entirely. And I even have something to giveaway!

I found a couple of bolts of Heather Ross' Mendocino Mermaids in a local quilt shop. On sale. For $9.95/m AUD. (Yes, that sounds like a lot to Americans. Trust me, when the brand fabrics cost a minimum of $22.95/m, then $9.95/m is cheap.) It’s out of print and can’t be found for love, although it can be found for ridiculous amounts of money on Etsy.

Needless to say, upon digging through every other bolt in the shop, I bought the bolts on the spot.

So, I am giving away one package of Mendocino mermaid fabric, comprising 1/2 metre (by WOF) of each fabric in the picture. (You can't have the cat. Sorry.)

That's:
1 x ½ metre of Swimming Sisters in fuschia
1 x ½ metre of Mermaids in gold
1 x ½ metre of Kelp in blush
note: (½ metre is about 19” – just over half a yard)

As will be obvious from the picture, my house and quilting room is not a cat free environment and I cannot guarantee that there will be no cat hairs on the fabric or in the package. Enter in the giveaway at your own risk of allergic reaction!

To enter the giveaway:
Comment with the story of the best 'find' you've ever made - be it fabric or shopping or the perfect present or someone in your life. I'll pick a story at random when the Giveaway period ends (7th December 6pm PST).

If you're a 'no reply' commenter, please don't forget to leave your email!

Announcing the winner may be a little delayed, because I am on the East Coast of Australia, and 6pm on the 7th PST, I will be at Material Obsession’s Swap Day and in recovery from my work Christmas Party on Friday night. Please be patient with me!

WIP Wednesday: the one with little progress

Not a very busy week. I'm waiting to take my longarm quilting class this afternoon, so nothing more on the Eternity quilt this week! But expect finishedness next week!

Finished

However, we have one more birthday block - Criss Cross Triangles for Tami:

I ended up making two blocks, mostly because I wanted to see how it looked with the solid red vs. the patterned red.

Work In Progress

A little bit more on the Terrain Challenge!

I doubt I'm going to get it done by the start of December. I'm massively overloaded as it is. -- What have you been working on this week? Have you linked it up at the Linky Party?

Parental Patchwork Presents

This post is very much overdue. I simply haven't had the picture to put it all together.

Having completed my mum's quilt, the "ImpStar" (started about 15 months ago), I figured I should hurry up and finish the stepdad's pillowslips (which my mum asked me to make at least a couple of years ago).

The fabric is Imperial Collection 6, which I accidentally ordered while trying to get hold of more Imperial Collection 7 for Mum's ImpStar quilt. Oops!

The first panel - Fans and Flowers - came with the FQ bundle, but the second panel is entirely unrelated and something I found in the Blue Mountains, at the delightfully-named Picklemouse Corner in Leura, almost a year ago while I was at a writer's retreat.

I spotted it, thought "oh, that could work with the collection" got home and discovered that it pretty much perfectly matched! Don't you love it when a good plan comes together?

Draped over the big body-pillow to get a feel for how it's going to look!

Ready for basting and quilting!

No batting, just the top and two layers of cotton to give it a bit of thickness.

First time I used my quilting gloves! Great for moving the quilt around (although I need a bigger machine arm and a decent platform on which to rest the quilt).

The quilting is not very good. I started with a variation on an Angela Walter FMQ pattern "Tiles" only to realise that it didn't really work for triangles.

So I switched to straight-line quilting with a walking foot. Much easier and a bit more in keeping with the style of the blocks.

Finished body pillow!

And all together now and laid out on the parental bed!

They're very happy with it, and I'm very happy with it. It's all good!

Instagram Friday: the three week table version

Three weeks worth of instagrams, turned into a table for convenience of viewing...

Hope the Americans are having a great Thanksgiving; and hope everyone else is looking forward to an excellent weekend!