WIDRN Wedneday: the one with Show Plans

April could be quilting month...

March was gardening month, and tbh my quilting activities have largely fallen by the wayside.

My focus on April would be getting a quilt submitted for the Sydney Quilt Show (run by the Quilt Guild of NSW). And HALLELUJAH it doesn't have to be a finished top!

In fact, last year (or the year before) the guild was saying they would require a fully completed quilt in the coming year, completely ignoring that most of the younger quilters are entirely deadline-driven, in part because we're so busy (this is a hobby-in-the-middle-of-a-full-life-of-survival, not a something-to-relax-into-in-retirement), in part just because that's how we've been psychologically trained (last minute assignments, anyone? Anyone? BUELLER?)

Also, by 'younger', I am meaning "under 50" because that's how old I am, and I'm technically GenX. And yes, I am in the 'younger' cohort of quilters. When I started quilting around 15 years ago, the women quilting were all over 55, which makes them in their 70s now.

The new NSW Quilt Guild committee have also scrapped the rule that you can't show your quilts on social media before the show. So that's nice - not that I expect anyone will particularly recognise mine. I'm not exactly famous in the Quilt Guild circles.

Anyway, I have thoughts and scraps and definitely want to make a scrappy quilt.

I need to get past the 'but before I start on this project' mindset. I have two quilts to bind - they've been sitting around for a year or maybe more - and they have to get out to friends by the end of this month (arbitrary, just because it's abruptly gotten cold at nights here in Sydney).

It's just binding, I tell myself. It's easily done.

And it is! But actually getting myself to the machine to do it? Something else entirely.

I really do wish I could make my quilt 'Swarm' again. It was just so finicky, with so many pieces! And has gone to someone who doesn't appreciate it, I suspect. And people have wanted a quilt pattern for it for YEARS. If I'd capitalised on it a decade ago when quilt patterns were the thing...

Anyway. The pattern I have in mind is very simple - just solid squares and HSTs, in a gradating rainbow of colours. It's finicky on the seams and putting it together will be hellish - but that's part of the challenge, right? Also, it will use a BUNCH of my HST scraps. So many of those...

WIP Wednesday: the one with a list of things to do

Sorry for the radio silence, it's been a slightly crazy summer and is looking like a slightly crazy start of the year with everything going on...

I have done almost no sewing whatsoever. A little bit here. A little bit there. Focusing has been difficult. Being inspired to act has been nearly impossible. There are plenty of things I'd like to make, but actually sitting down and doing them?

Yeah, nah.

Nevertheless, here are my plans for the year...

Make Nine

Sew House Seven tea dress in green flowers

Scrap quilt

quilt

quilt

quilt

t-shirt underpants

backless black top for mardi gras

zero waste pattern

Finish Nine

Style Arc Paperbag Pant

Plantain Top - DONE!!

peacock flimsy 1 quilted

peacock flimsy 2 quilted

peacock flimsy 3 quilted

Ruby Star plaidish 1 bound and gifted

Ruby Star plaidish 2 bound and gifted

low-backed top for Mardi Gras

WIDRN Wednesday: The one with Christmas Plans

I want to make stuffed toys for the nieces and nephews. They all have a quilt now (okay, not the youngest two yet) but I'd like to make them a stuffy.

This Nessie stuffed toy

Sock Monkey

Sloth plushie

Dolphin Plushie

Flamingo

I mean, that's very ambitious, I know. I only have four weeks to CHristmas, and I'm throwing a party on Sunday. So. It could get a little tight. That said, I won't be seeing either K and C, or L for a while. And I don't think any of their parents are so invested in the kids presents, so long as we call or contact them on relevant days.

WIDRN Sunday: the one with 5am dress modifications...

I've been away overseas for seven weeks, since the end of August. Just got back on Thursday morning (closer to Thursday midday), and spent that afternoon and Friday doing all the washing loads and then swapping my winter wardrobe and bedding over to summer.

On Saturday, I had a Frocktails event in town, and was trying to work out what I could wear. I briefly contemplated this dress which I made back in 2018 and wore for a 'Frocks and Croqs' event (croquet).

However, seven years have passed since those days and I no longer fit into the dress:

I was a little bit disappointed - after all, this is not a dress that you get to wear every day! However, phyiscality dictated that 'no, this is not going to be an option' and I had planned to wear my Sew House Seven tea dress in a pretty dark-blue floral-sprigged print.

However, at 5am on Saturday morning, having had a pretty decent eight hours straight of sleep, I got a wild hair in my head and googled "how to adjust a dress that you don't fit into" (or something like that). I didn't use AI results because I never use AI, because AI is a terrible tool that gives you an answer that sounds like an answer to the question that you asked but which is not necessarily actually an answer to the question that you asked, not to mention it makes you lazy. And I don't find it particularly helpful, either. Better to just go for the straight search and find something practical and real instead of made-up (not to mention the environmental waste).

The results that turned up were 'turn the back into a corset lacing'. Which...oh, of course! And after looking at this post "How to Change a Zipper to a lace-up back", and watching this video "How to make *ANY* dress a lace-up (corset) back", and realising I still had some fabric from the dress as well as some dress boning, I thought "yeah, I can do this!"

So I started by following the instructions on the page, which suggested making two side panels and a modesty panel.

I skipped the modesty panel, and started making the side panels...

...and then I realised that I didn't need to do any of that with my specific dress, I could have just created the lacing loops simply by making a facing along the centre back seam of the dress where the zipper had been. Idiot!

I didn't think to bone it, not until after I was halfway to the party. Also, I lost one of the bodice boning strips at some point - it fell out - so I think the dress was a little lopsided (or at least, tended to slide one way instead of sitting balanced).

But the dress looked good! Especially with my tattoo!

And with the bolero jacket that I made to go with it, so I wasn't walking around Sydney bare-shouldered on a Saturday afternoon.

I think I'm going to have to do this with other dresses that I don't fit into any more. At lesat one, if I still have it (I have a feeling I might have given it away).

Finish Friday: Communique Addendum

I had enough blocks left over for another quilt, slightly smaller, so I made myself one.

It may possibly turn into a gift for a friend I'm seeing later this year. I'll have to think about that.

But the top is done. There were a crazy number of y-seams, because there isn't a straight line in this quilt AT ALL.

But the top is done!

WIDRN Wednesday: the one with peacocks!

I swear this is one of the fastest quilts I've ever made. Less than a month from pieces to full top!

The Communique Quilt is a pattern set up by Andrea of Mouse In My Pocket and I've had this fabric collection (centered around the Timeless Treasures Plume collection of 2013) for, well, a decade and change. I added a few extra fabrics to it - at least one of them is from 'Valley of Kings', a Robert Kaufman collection of the same vintage as Plume - and popped in a blender or two, and a solid here and there.

I laid out a few blocks to get a feel for the design, and in the end just decided to go for it.

And boy howdy!

It seemed once I'd started putting this together, I couldn't stop. I've spent almost every spare hour on this thing since I started, all the way up until Sunday night when I finished the last seam. WHEW.

An initial problem with the quilt is that the pattern has finished block sizes, and I forgot that... Cue me cutting all the peacock blocks a half-inch too small! ARGH! So I ended up having to put borders around them all and...I think it works better in fact! The framing really draws the eye to the block, highlighting the panels in a way that the other 'panel pieces' (the butterflies) don't get. And the colours are just a beautiful mix - azure and gold and aqua and jet.

The pattern size was for a 'throw', but even that was pretty huge, so I took two twelve-inch-high sections out of it (the quilt is built in rectangles, so you can pieces bits of it and then sew them together) and replaced the second 16" block with another panel and some more blocks. I had some blocks pieced, but they just didn't work for the quilt. I'm using them in a 'remainders' quilt with the rest of the scraps from these two quilts. And there are still scraps, of course. There are always scraps...

I took various pictures of them by internal lights at night, a few bad ones during a morning where there wasn't enough sun, and then I just took them outside and photographed them against the neighbour's hedge. I think I might end up doing that more often with my quilts, especially the large ones!

It was going to be for a couple of cousins, but after B1 saw it, she was all "Ooh, I'd like it!" And I figured that I haven't given her and B2 matching quilts yet, so they're getting these two and the cousins can have something else.

I'm kinda glad that they're going to the twins rather than the cousins, tbh. I'll make something else for the cousins...

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!

WIP Wednesday: the one with dresses

Probably more suited to teenagers than to me...

But it looks pretty good!

I feel like it's designed for a younger woman, or maybe that's just because the models on the packet look younger? But the style suits me, even though I don't have the skinny arms or bony back that my vanity would like. (I don't think about it too much; my back is my back, it does the job it needs to, and it has my (very pretty) tattoo.

The only thing that needs doing is the hemming of the dress. Which...will probably not happen at all. It requires me switching sewing machines.

--

Anyway, other thoughts about quilting and stuff.

1. Summer Vibes Geometric Quilt Pattern:
- could make the "quick HST" sets, then just square them up
- how many HSTs required for a queen size?
- note the pattern, it's not just all same-size diamonds. Going to need to do a blockcount.

2. Simple Harmonics
- jelly roll strips, one background colour, anything that contrasts with the background?

3. Gift box. Zippered bags and pincushions and all kinds of odds and sods for giving away come Christmas.
- make a few more of these in the coming months
- could I do one bag a week?

WIP Wednesday: the one with surgery

Right. So, quite a lot has happened since I last posted here.

I submitted my quilts to the Sydney Quilt Show (run by the NSW Quilt Guid), both were accepted. 

I changed work clients, and am now full-time in the office, which means less time for 'puttering'.

I had a hysterectomy and am in recovery. (3rd week of technically 6, although in practicality, most likely 4 weeks.) Have a picture of my Plain Jane Passacaglia on my hospital bed:

My quilt 'Shades of Autumn' won the President's Award at the Sydney Quilt Show!

I started looking at fabric again. This was a BAD IDEA. Fabric lines like Eclectica by Dan Miller, Forest Chatter by Maywood Studio, Hibernation by Tilda... Softer colours, a less brassy palette than I used to do. I still love modern, but softer modern designs. Ugh. I shouldn't look at fabric and this is why!

Sydney Frocktails is coming up and I have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR dress patterns that could work!

However, I still cannot for the life of me find the Sew House Seven "Tea Dress" pattern that is an absolutely fantastic casual summer dress! I'm slightly annoyed! And the instant I buy it, I'm going to end up finding it again, aren't I? Because that's the way this works. *grumble*

Still want to enter the "low-value" modern quilt challenge with something provocative: "a new definition: taking up the lowest volume is peak white feminine". Which could really be done in any quilt pattern.

Hm...

I wonder if I could do my "Interconnected" quilt in low-volume? It's a thought!

But I don't have the time, unless I'm going to do the entirety of the thing THIS WEEK before I go back to work...?

No. Not going to manage that. Not even close!

Okay, going to do some more sewing of blocks for the Plaid-ish quilt that I was halfway through last year (the year before) before I got completely sidetracked in sewing/crafting!