WIDRN Wednesday: finishes and quilt shows and new starts

It's been pretty quiet on the sewing front through May, which I knew it was going to be (see last post) because I was going to be emotionally and mentally busy.

After the Australian election, I had to go away for work for two weeks, and while I took a little bit of handsewing, I knew that I wasn't going to get much done, so only finished up one handsewing star.

Then, right at the start of June, I submitted two quilts for the Sydney Quilt Show. They're nothing special - one is from the two quilts that I did with the fractured stars, and the other one is an old scraps-from-another-quilt that I called "It Is Easy Being Green". I really need to get my ass in gear faster for the Australian Quilt Show (which is a different beast altogether), but I'm just not really keeping up with all the quilt shows anymore. Or the making of quilts.

At some point earlier in the year I'm pretty sure I joined a quilt along... Except that I can't seem to find the email. (Okay, went and found it in my instagram messages - Make Modern, Issue 64, has an exclusive quilt-along - the Moon Diamond quilt.

But then I also started a new quilt last night!

The fabrics are various patterns and prints, but mostly around Timeless Treasures' PLUME collection (at least ten years old). I've held onto it for ages, not knowing how to use them, and then I spotted the Communique Quilt Pattern by Mouse In My Pocket and it seemed perfect for this.

Except that I started cutting...then realised I'd cut the blocks too small - the pattern sizing on the printout is the FINISHED block, and I made no allowances for seams. *facepalm* So now I'm adding framing to the blocks, which will make them stand out, sure, but is also adding one more thing to the process.

This is actually going to be two quilts in matched style - I'm thinking they might suit the C1 cousins better - E1 and G2 - in terms of something that they'd use, rather than the 'stars' quilts I just made, which I explicitly linked to the quilt I gave E1's daughter, but which aren't their style at all (IMO).

Also, cousin A5 is getting married in August, after her brother M4 got married two years ago. And their brother N3 got married, uh, at least twenty five years ago. He's my age and got at least one adult kid and another that's about to turn 18 (I think). Eesh.

I've been planning to get their quilts done for YEARS now. I guess this is the kick in the pants that I needed.

(ps. I have no idea how I've previously referenced the names of my cousins. It's all confusing - C1/E1, C2/G2, C3/N3, etc. All the way down to M6, P7, K8, P9...)

Did some handsewing on Saturday with a local quilt group meet-up. The Restless Hands Of Sel quilt is slowly progressing. Slooooowly.

It sheds papers like a chicken sheds feathers at moulting time and is an absolute mess to carry around. Eep.

And then on Monday, I decided I was going to finish a quilt by binding it - I can't remember what I called this. La Luna fabric by Tula Pink, and the Penny Patch quilt pattern:

Another quilt that I'm going to keep because I like the fabric. At least, I'm going to keep it right now. B1 doesn't like it much - she thinks the staring ladies are creepy. (She doesn't know about Día de los Muertos and sugar skulls.)

One more quilt to bind in the collection - need to work out what binding for that one - a Tula Pink Neptune quilt. Don't think I have enough of the darker shades of Neptune to do the entire border.

WIDRN Wednesday: Teal Stars, Green Stars

I've been so busy with Australian election stuff, I haven't had much time to do sewing. That said, I've had a couple of quilt tops hanging up for a while and hadn't had the time or energy to do anything about them. Finished them just this week, so that's a nice fillip! I called them "Teal Stars" but given our recent elections, that may not have a very good association with the recipients. They're going to my two oldest cousins, one of whom got married last year, the other who's been married for...oh, about 25 years. Not sure what I'm going to work on yet - I'd really like to have at my scrap box, but there are so many other quilts that need completing right now! And I still have two quilts to bind, and six to give away! The 'cousin quilts' in particular...this feels like it could be their year... Three tops down, six to go! Tricky question about giveaway quilts: do I offer them to a bunch of guy friends from church? Or do I go looking for old friends who might like a quilt? I think I'll make another postage stamp quilt. I have a couple of blocks and strips all ready for that. Then I'd like to make a 'simple rectangle' scrap quilt - the 'lava flow' pattern from "Successful Scrap Quilts (from simple rectangles)", which has lots of excellent ideas and designs. ...maybe it isn't the cousin quilt year after all...

WIA Wednesday: the one with missing pieces

I have continued making the blocks for the 2nd Teal Stars quilt, it's about half done. It's mostly just having the cutting board clear and laying it out, cutting the block, arranging it, and sewing it together. Four blocks down, five blocks to go.

I can do it by next week if I do one a day.

One a day. It's not difficult. Just one.

I finished another row of stars for the Restless Hands quilt:

If I was going to do this quilt again (ahahahahahaha no) then I'd do lots of neutrals for the background and most of the stars, and then some swathes of stars with a little bit of colour before sweeping in to more vivid hues, so there are all the stars in the sky...but not all of them are visible at once.

I think two of the stars are switched around. One has a piece where there doesn't need to be a piece, and the other has a gap - a piece is missing. So do I swap the piece around, or do I move the stars entirely?

Otherwise, it's a really busy week for me on several fronts so not much is going to happen.

WIA Wednesday - 'Where I'm At' Wednesday

WIA Wednesday: a general update, because so often I haven't done anything much at all, so the WIPs just sit there unmoved.  

This week, I made a cushion envelope for a cushion whose envelope had disintegrated, and I sewed a quilt block for the Teal/Blue Stars, and finished a couple of stars for the Restless Hands of Sel.

It's not much, but it's some progress. Progress on my creative stuff is difficult when I'm prepping for the winter garden, when the world is on fire, and when I'm trying to help out with a local electoral candidate. All worthy causes, but hoo boy, I kind of miss the days when I didn't have to think about anything else.

Quiltfest 2025

I'm actually participating in QuiltFest 2025, run by Amy's Creative Side. Trying to keep on top of all the entries, to talk about new things, to describe the changes going on in my quilting process and life. But a lot of it is looking back at stuff I've done in the past, trying to retrace the thoughts I started with back in the day.

Also, realising just how messy and disorganised my quilting 'studio' is compared to all the Pinterest-perfect studios that are in the hashtag!

There's nothing quite as humbling as the realisation that you aren't working in a light-filled attic that's cleaned to within an inch of its life, with the fabrics colour-coded, or maybe designer-coded, neatly arrayed on comic book boards.

But also, this is real life, real quilting. I'm not even trying to be Stepford - metaphorically speaking - just trying to get stuff done. Which means...mess. And disorganisation. And different styles of fabric. Sorting that makes sense for a brief period of time and then doesn't make sense at all. Unfinished objects that sit around for AGES in various boxes and bags and states of unfinishedness. Fabric that I fully intend to sell but can't get anyone to buy...

It's a lot.

I haven't really done much more on the 2nd of the two quilt tops I'm making. Sewn some of the blocks together, but that's about it.

Oh well, it's still progress, however slow.

WIP Wednesday: the one with new quilts

Once a month; that's as often as I have to update this. Just once a month!

I don't have many pics for this one because I've been making videos, trying to put together something for social media in the midst of everything being a little bit crazy.

I'm going with the Moroccan quilt by the Questioning Quilter

Well, it's three weeks later, and I've done absolutely nothing on the video front.

I did end up making the quilt top though:

First the layout:

Then starting to set up the blocks:

The finished blocks:

I've sewn the blocks together into a single top, but haven't taken a photo. It's not very large: 1.6m x 1.6m or thereabouts. It doesn't need to be huge; I don't really do huge quilts anymore. Also: I ran out of the fabric for the background.

This is one quilt of two for cousins 1 and 2, my oldest cousins. Cousin 2 got married last year, and I was going to make her a quilt but couldn't find a pattern I liked. I'm not convinced this one is great, but it's good enough and it uses up fabrics I wasn't otherwise going to use.

I have the blocks all ready for the next one, but haven't yet gotten around to squaring them up and laying them out. That'll be in the next couple of weeks, I guess...

Finally, the background fabric is the same fabric as I used for a quilt I made for Cousin 1's daughter in the 'Walkabout' quilt. So that's a nice match for her, C1 and C2.

WIP Wednesday: the one with no WIPs (well, not quite)

In fact this week I have no WIPs. (Well, that's not entirely true. I have no WIPs that are active right now. The ones that I do have are long boxed up, or long since tucked into a corner of 'yeah, not gonna happen for yonks'.

I did finish a few things over the January long weekend:

I sewed together two quilt tops. The Plaidish quilt pattern, again with the Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society fabrics. The blocks were originally going to be just one quilt top, but I looked at the size, realised it was too large, and turned it into two tops with only the addition of a single block!

(1x 49 block quilt: 7x7 + one added block = 2x 25 block quilts: 5x5)

So that worked out really well!

One quilt top:

becomes two quilt tops:

Over the weekend I also finished a shift-dress that I started about 2 months ago. I made the dress with some linen that I won at a Frocktails a couple of years ago, and...finally...came to the conclusion that the style of the dress I was making didn't suit me. Shift dresses - that is, dresses that don't have a fitted waist at the very least - don't suit me. My shoulders are broad, and my hip-waist ratio nearly non-existent. I look great in things that have a clear waistline demarcation, which are clearly two pieces - a top and a bottom, or which show off my top half: shouders and breasts in particular. I have no butt, I have no waist - those things need to be 'faked' if I'm going for a classic hourglass shape.

At any rate, I gave up on the shift dress being a 'comfy dress to wear' - it's now my 'summer beach caftan' suitable for wearing over a swimming costume.

In order to make it comfy, I shortened the sleeves (they were hanging down to my elbow), unpicked the side seams up to the pockets on both sides so I had better leg movement, and re-stitched the edges around the seams and the hem. (Which was a bit of a mess, too. I have no idea what they intended, but whatever it was, it didn't work for me.)  

Then I overlocked just about every seam in the dress - and cursed that I hadn't done it sooner! Overlocking is a wonderful thing.

(I borrowed a friend's overlocker about six months ago; she hasn't asked for it back yet.)

Anyway, out of this fiasco, I have decided: no more shift-dresses. I don't like how I look in them and I need to stop imagining I'll look good in them. I need to go back to finding dresses that work for my figure and play to those strengths.

That said, I have the Elysia Bow and Flower Dress patterns printed out, and while they're not 'shift-dresses', they are looser-figured dresses, although they do have distinct skirtage. I was hoping to make them out of cotton quilting scraps, but that could get a little bit oddball. Hm.

I haven't taken a photo of it yet. Not sure if I will or when.

Clothing thoughts 2025

I have way too much 'unfinished' clothing lying around: shirts, shirts, shirts, tops, tops, tops. And a pair of pants that no longer fit me and which I can't modify so they do - I'd need to go several sizes up. Ugh.

Some thoughts I've had on dressmaking over the last year: 

I need to find the shirt patterns, upsize them for my adult form, and cut out a couple.  I don't like the loose tops so much. Need something a little more structured. The Esme top probaby looks pretty if you've got a figure, but it's either too long, or too sacklike to suit me very well. I could maybe put an elastic waist on it? Dresses also need to be better structure - fitted bodice, tied waistline, at least an a-line skirt. No sack or loose-waisted dresses!

McCall's Misses M7969 - https://sewing.patternreview.com/Patterns/96754

I got four patterns printed:
Billie Woven Pant - Style Arc
Thea Paperbag Pant - Style Arc
Elysia Bow Patchwork Dress - Roberts Wood
Flower Patchword Dress - Roberts Wood

I wonder if I could make the Elysia Bow dress out of patchwork scraps? I mean, that's the idea, isn't it?

what a lot of updates I've got! FINISHES 2024

FINISH FRIDAY time! Feels like it's been a while.

These are the quilts I (finally) completed in 2024 (well, some of them kind of just in 2025).

Rainbow Curves 1A and 1B, and (Break Free or) Build Upon?

Woodland Dead Simple and Spare Squares

A Green Block Oddity and Break Free (or Build Upon)?

Surplus To Requirement (a.k.a. "Harry/The Spare") and Random Penny Patch

Rainbow Around The World and French General 1A

French General 1B and Scarlet Split Square

These are being given away:
- to my 2023 church group, who I was with for five years.
- a couple of gardening friends
- a couple of other church friends
- more gardening friends
- the husband friends
- dad? niecelet? nephlet?

I do have a whole lot more quilts to make...

WIP Wednesday: the one with a not-so-laid-back plaidish

It's been a while since I posted here. Sorry about that; life got busy, and although I was sewing, I didn't have time to update.

The only real WIP I have right now is a laid-back Plaidish in not-so-laid-back Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society.

Slowly sewing it together!