WIP Wednesday: The One With BIRTHDAYS!

Done Like A Dinner


Not the Heirloom quilt, mind you. That still needs the binding sewn down. It's been sewn down for at least three months! *blushes*

But the SeaBreeze mini, the Snowflake Cushions, and the Batik Cushions were all completed - fully completed - these last three weeks!

I was going to make a post about the Snowflake Cushions and the Snowflake Quilt, but I haven't had the chance. The Batik Cushions are old WIPs. As in, WIPs for six or seven years, quilted, but never completed, and never shown anywhere. They'll stay at home on a couch or lounge, or under a cat. One of those things. :)

Anyway, one of the Snowflake cushions and the SeaBreeze mini are both hanging in the NSW Quilt Guild offices in the city, hopefully being admired for their bright, bold, not-brown modernness!

WIPs

Passacaglia

Sewing the rosettes together!


And sewing some of the star-and-diamond sets together wrong on the morning commute: what happens when your brain and fingers go on automatic:


King of Bling (a.k.a. "Red Letter Day" #redletteraustralia)

Top is all sewn together!


I think I'll get it all-over machine quilted, and it'll go to the adopted daughter of some friends in the US.

It's called 'King Of Bling' because my youngest sister saw it, and those were the first words out of her mouth. When I finally stopped laughing, I asked why she said that. "It really has its disco on," was her answer.

So, 'King of Bling' it is!

Mystery MakeModernMagazine

Make Modern Magazine is a new online crafter's magazine in Australia, and they've asked for quilt pattern submissions for their first issue.

I think it's a bit late to submit anything for the first issue, and I'm pretty sure that they've had dozens of submissions from the various quilters all over Australia.

I haven't sent mine in yet. Mostly because I haven't done the math properly - this is, admittedly, where I fall over like a great falling thing. Because I'm good at math, but I hate working things out. much easier to just keep making them until one falls over! (Or something.)

But I got my Cotton+Steel order a couple of weeks ago. My original plan was pretty much just to get the basics, because the colours were pretty good, but all the mint and peach colours weren't my thing. And then I saw the fabric in person, on the bolt.


And I bought just a little more fabric...

Then I got it all home and started cutting into the C+S basics. And the longer I stared at the colours, the more I liked them.

And now I want to buy the linen for bag projects when I haven't finished the linen I already have. And I want to buy the prints that I didn't think that much of when I first saw the collection because I'm starting to think that they'll good nicely with [insert project here]. And I'm starting to like those crazy lions and the ibex thingummies and this is WEIRD.

I have decided that there's a spell on this fabric. Seriously. Because mint and peach are NOT MY THING. They have never BEEN my thing. They are STILL not my thing.

But I am finding that I really LOVE them in the C+S collection.

WHAT. ON. EARTH.


But I will say this: well played, C+S. Well played!


And all of the rambling about C+S is really just to say that I has a Sekrit Projekt in the works. Made of C+S. Because it really is a ridiculously nice fabric line!

Destash

The destash has been going pretty well - lots of fabric bundles going out the door!


Still more to go, though!

*sigh*

The Wall Of Crazy Projects


That's the Millefiori Madness (Passacaglia), the Supernova Friendship swap, and a little handsewing I stopped doing over a year ago because I didn't imagine how I was going to finish it all. I think I'm just going to make a cushion out of it. (Convenient things, cushions!)

No Movement

Snowflake Quilt

Haven't touched it since July. (Yes, it's only the 6th day of August, but still!)

No 'to do' list today. Just the observation that I think I have to cease piecing any new quilts, no matter how many cool ideas I get. Because in less than a month, I will have MY OWN HOUSE and it needs priority. Before I make all the floor quilts ever. (...I could make them out of Cotton+Steel!!! o.O SOMEONE STOP ME!)

BIRTHDAY GIVEAWAY

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit excitable today. That's because it's my birthday. (And because I'm at work typing this up because I finished three major issues that have been wanting resolution for a couple of days. SO RELIEVED!) Anyway, If the title didn't tell you it's my birthday, this paragraph probably did.

And this giveaway certainly will.

So, this birthday's blog giveaway is A Heap Of Heather!


To celebrate My Birthday, 2014, I am giving at least two yards of Heather Ross' Mendocino Mermaids fabric. Mermaids! Swimming sisters! Octopi! Seahorses! Chances are, there will be at least one FQ of Mermaids in Gold, and one FQ of Swimming Sisters in Fuchsia. The rest of it will be whatever I can pull together from my stash of Mendocino. (Yes, I have a stash.) And yes, they're re-releasing the collection next year, but sometimes it's nice to have a little of the original, too! :)

To enter, just leave a comment on this post telling me which of my WIPs you like best. (Or which of my finishes.)

eta: I have decided to offer a second entry for my instagram followers, after all. So one entry for commenting here on the blog, another for being one of my Instapeeps!

Draw will close this Saturday midday, Australian EST. What time is that where I am?

Have a good week!

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Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. I didn't quite write five pages of WIP. I think. Maybe I did!

The Great Aussie Destash! (a.k.a. "the purge")

I've been destashing for a while, actually - since the start of the year when I realised that my fabric milieu had changed in the five years since I really started collecting fabric and that I needed to be rid of a lot of the older stuff, and needed to be more careful about what I bought.

Also, around April, I acquired the stash of a friend of a friend which she'd been sitting on for 10 years without doing any quilting. She didn't figure she was going to get back into quilting so would I like it?

Like any quilter, I contemplated the possibility of free fabric and went YES.



Before I realised that all that fabric required sorting. And selling. And storing. EEK.



There are some good pieces in there - like all these solid colour homespuns!



Homespun, yes, but still useful for backings. I've already used quite a bit of yardage for backings. Donated a lot to a church quilting group out in the south-west (at the parental home of a Sydney friend). Sold a few on FB.

And instagram.



And more instagram.



I'm debating the wisdom of FB, though. People only ever buy individual fabrics, not bundles. And when they buy the bundles, they fuss about the postage!

I suspect this is because Instapeeps (largely quilty peeps) order online often enough to be very well aware that quilting fabric has weight to it and that postage costs money. FB peeps (mostly home crafters) buy their fabrics from the local fabric store and so get it by length and don't think about how much it costs to send by weight. It makes a difference in how they approach purchases.

A final glimpse of my destash space (and my WIP space, and my fabric storage space, and my non-quilt-craft storage space, and...):



Linking up to The Purge over at Stitched In Color, because it's fun when you're part of a team. (Everything is awesome!)

*runs away from the earworm*

it's nice to be noticed

At the Southern Cross Quilters group on Saturday, one of the women mentioned that she'd seen a blogpost about the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair that mentioned my quilt. She couldn't remember who or where, but she said that the blogger was looking at the quilts just for things that appealed to her, not with the eye of quilting judges, and that mine was specifically mentioned.

Four hours later, upon arriving home from SCQuilters group, I get a text from Penny Poppleton with the link in it!

The blog is Forever In Fibre and the post is here: Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair - the quilts.

You might recognise one of the quilts. :)

Speaking of the Quilt Show, the NSW Quilt Guild (who runs the show) asked Penny Poppleton to speak at their August meeting about 'modern quilting' and the Sydney Modern Quilt Guild. And she asked if there was anyone willing to come with her and bring some quilts, and I offered to come and lend moral support.

I think it went quite well. The ladies were all older, but very open to what we talked about, and the Guild asked if they could hang a few of our quilts in their office for the month. Which is how my Snowflake cushion, the SeaBreeze mini, and my Mondrian Dreaming are all gracing the walls of the NSW Quilt Guild!


I also got a pic of Mondrian Dreaming hanging up. I wasn't very assiduous about photographing the quilt show this year - not even my own quilts...


(The black strip along the bottom is the skirting, and the grey is the floor; it disconcerted me for a few moments and I took the picture!)

This is a quilt that's gotten quite a bit of interest from quilters - especially after I explain how it's made. I think people are quite interested in the "traditional block in new designs" angle: and the fact that something so 'modern' can come out of something so 'simple' is attractive, too!

I'm really happy about that, as a matter of fact. The reason I put that quilt into the show was so people could see that quilts don't have to be fancy and amazing (I mean, the show is full of amazing quilts) but can be simple and pretty and practical - this is something that would easily go on a bed or a couch, be snuggled under, covered in household gunk, and thrown in the wash, not something that people would be all 'oh, I can't use that'. So to have people look at it and decide "hey, I could do that" is good. That's how I got into quilting myself, after all!

Also, while I'm basking in the glow, Di of Snippets 'n Scraps was so lovely as to include my Mondrian Dreaming in her 2014 Quilt Show post. Di's selvage skirt at the show was beautiful and has inspired me to try the same thing. Exactly when, I don't know, but I'm wondering if my Cotton + Steel selvages will be sufficient, or if I should stop selling the selvages I've got all collected up...

Welcome to the Sea Breeze MQAL!

Welcome to my day on the Sea Breeze MQAL bloghop!

I watched Canoe Ridge Creations run the MQAL the first time with some interest and delight in the design. However, my primary thought on seeing the size of the quilts was "oh, way too small for me to bother".

I'm generally a big quilts person. In fact, when I was basting a picnic quilt at the Sydney Modern Quilt Group sew-in a couple of months back, one of the women who knows me well studied my work, looked at me and asked, "Isn't it a bit small, Sel?" (And it was small compared to the size my quilts usually end up!)


So, mini-quilts? Not my thing. And then Angie at GnomeAngel decides to run the Sea Breeze MQAL on instagram and intarwebs and puts out a call. And I, like the overenthusiastic, DO ALL THE PROJECTS, A-personality type that is me, sign up to be even busier than I already am!

Plus, HSTs! HSTs are my nemesis. Or possibly my Jekyll-and-Hyde. On one hand, they're so cute and versatile, capable of making so many patterns and sub-patterns, on the other, they require cutting into squares, drawing lines down the middle, sewing on each side of the line, cutting along the line, pressing the seams open, and trimming! That's five extra steps in block development! Who has time for that, I ask you?


Okay, so clearly I have time for that. Or I like the result. One or the other. Possibly both.

With a name like "Sea Breeze" and given the stash of Kona solids occupying my shelf-space, I kind of felt like I really should go the blue fabric route. Lots of blue, and a nice, stormy grey in Kona Slate. (I don't know the specific Konas I used, I'm afraid, I didn't check.)


Then there was the question of design. I wasn't as daring as some of the other bloggers in the MQAL (deviate from the pattern? *clutches pearls* Oh, how could you?) but I did want to do something a little different from the norm. The standard layout looks lovely - like a still, deep pool. But this is the SeaBreeze MQAL, after all. So I figured I'd mix it up.


('scuse the toes!)

Now it's more 'choppy seas' than 'rainforest jumping pool'. And adds a bit of intrigue to the design: the eye focuses on the dark grey rather than the blues.


I backed it in the remaining scraps, and quilted it on my domestic machine which doesn't have a BSR.


The quilting is pretty bad up close, so I'm limiting pics of the actual quilting. Amy Butler's Lark turned out to be the perfect colour for the binding and adds a touch of forest to the overall effect. And I machine-bound it rather than hand-bound it because I was in a hurry to get it done and didn't feel like sewing the binding neatly on.


And here it is with my other weekend finishes - two snowflake cushions and two batik cushions.


I'm still looking at the result wondering what on earth I'll do with it. Right now, I'm tending towards gifting it to the infant son of a couple in my bible study group.

Have you gone around and looked at the various SeaBreeze MQAL quilts yet? There's a Facebook page, an Instagram tag (#seabreezemqal), and GnomeAngel's blog to check out!

WIP Wednesday: the one with lots of bits and pieces

It's been a crazy week. CRAZY.

WIPs

Rainbow Snowflakes

The snowflake blocks weren't so bad once I got my piecing system working for the block. It takes about 60 mins to put one together when everything's laid out and you have the divider strips cut. And when there isn't unpicking to be done!


But the red-orange one is giving me trouble. It was the first one, so there were still bugs in the process, and the result wasn't quite as neat as the later ones.


I'm thinking of going back and redoing it because it's bugging me. It's not like I have a shortage of scraps. I may have a shortage of sanity, though!

And I'm not looking forward to putting it together. Y-seams will probably be involved and I have a mortal terror of them...


Passacaglia

Sewed Rosettes 1 and 3 together. Currently working on the surrounding Rosettes to start filling it all in.


As much as I admire the fussy-cutters doing amazing things with the Passacaglia (check out the #epicmillefioriquilt tag on instagram), I rather like the simple drama of the Reese Scannell shot-cottons. Stark geometrics, colour, and tricksing the eye: all my kinds of things!

SeaBreeze mini QAL

It's started! Full QAL post over at GnomeAngel.com, with the list of awesome Australian quilt bloggers, but there's also a FB group here.


I finally got moving and have my HSTs sewn and trimmed. I was going to do something rainbow scrappy, but ended up just using Kona solids - Kona Slate, and a range of the lighter blues. It's a SeaBreeze mini-quilt after all!

And today (Thursday here in Aus) is my day to Instagram the #seabreezemqal. So here's the story so far!



Warning! Layout on instagram may not necessarily resemble final quilt!
On Tuesday the blogger was joworimakes of Instagram - and her mini quilt is so spectacular! Yesterday's bloggers are Leanne of Daisy and Jack and Annabel (IG: @belloquacity).


No Movement

There's still The Unfinished Borders Club:
1. Build Me Up Buttercup
2. USA Hurray
3. All Around The World

...and The Needs Backings Club:
1. Pantone Challenge
2. Farmhouse

...and The FMQ Club:
1. Mendocino Mermaids
2. Honey Honey
3. Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend

...and The Blocks In Bits Club:
1. Red Letter Day blocks
2. batik log cabin blocks
3. "Swell" quilt
4. "Framed" quilt

Stop laughing. I know I have a lot of things to finish! *sulks*

TO DO

Destash

Ugh. I really hate trying to organise this thing. And then take photos. And then get the photos up. And then sort out invoices and everything. But it needs doing.

So that's me this week. What about you? How are your projects coming along?

(Also, sorry to all the people who commented on the last WIP Wednesday who didn't receive a mail back. I was intending to get back to you all and then the last week happened.)

WIP Wednesday - the one with plenty of snowflakes!

So it's been a week! What a week! I got a little bit more progress done in-between everything else, but not much. Not as much as I would have liked.

The main reason - the big reason - is that on Saturday, my sister and I bought a house!


Small house on manageable block in good location. Pretty much ready to move into, and seems in good condition - we need to confirm that with some inspections. It was within our budget and even if it turns out to need serious repairs, we can afford that. (At least, I'm pretty sure we can.)

I'm still in a state of "WHAT HAVE WE DONE??" though...

WIPs

Rainbow Snowflakes

So this is most of the stuff I've done this week - getting my snowflakes up and moving.

There's the scrappy snowflakes which I'm piecing with painstaking care:


And the two original snowflake blocks I made, which I'm turning into cushion covers:


So basically, my design wall is entirely snowflakes:


Passacaglia

Sloooowly moving - getting onto the smaller rosettes!


No Movement

The six quilts and their backings are sitting in a package on my kitchen floor, because I haven't been able to get it to the post office. Saturday. Definitely Saturday...

SeaBreeze mini QAL

I have fabrics! I have plans! I just have no space to enact them!

step 1: finish the snowflakes by Saturday so there's not all these little pieces lying around
step 2: start cutting and sewing the blocks on Saturday
step 3: resist the urge to make it a big mini quilt (I don't usually do small quilts! I do ginormous queen-sized ones!)


TO DO

1. Finish as many WIPs as possible before moving

1. Build Me Up Buttercup - borders
2. USA Hurray - borders
3. All Around The World - borders

2. Destash! Destash! Destash!

And this will be fabrics, books, perfume oils, drawing stuff - SO MUCH STUFF. My middle sister and I will be moving into a house that is basically one-third the size of our current one. Which we have lived in for the last ten years straight, and before that for thirteen years on-and-off.

That's a LOT of stuff.

At least we don't have to get out of our current house for another four months at the extreme range, although the parentals (who technically own the place) would like us out at the three month mark so they have a month to sort, garage sale, and bin everything we leave behind!


other things

The house we've bought has floorboards under the carpet. My only hard line before we move in is to remove the carpet and polish the floorboards. Which means we will have big expanses of floor needing rugs. I've decided to make quilt-rugs to cover the floor in each of the rooms. I can design them however I like, they'll be easily washable, and pretty! (That's my reasoning, anyway.)

So I need to start sourcing slightly more hardy fabrics for the backing.

How about you? What have you been doing this week?

Mad Monday: the one with a house

So...my sister and I bought a house on the weekend.

I'm still in the whole up-and-down "WHAT HAVE WE DONE" state of mind, compounded by the little things that are anxious-making, like mortgages, and inspections, and suchlike.

BUT WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!


Our own house! Pretty much ready to move into!

(Did I mention the anxious-making?)

WIP Wednesday: the one with a QAL!

Done: Quilt Backings!

I got four of them together and they're being posted this morning!

WIP: Snowflake Quilt

I think I'm going to have to draft a paper-piecing pattern for these blocks. They can be done in pieces, but it's finicky. The first block was pretty bad. The second block was a little better.


Of course, the block that has all the really wonky seams is the one with the really visible colours!


WIP: Passacaglia

Another Rosette done!


Just have to finish sewing the last one together, And then we'll start on the smaller part-Rosettes for the lower half of the quilt! Slowly, slowly, slowly!

SeaBreeze Mini QAL


A group of Aussies organised by GnomeAngel has gotten together for a Blog-hop/Insta-hop based off the Sea Breeze Mini quilt by Canoe Ridge Creations.

Monday 21 July – Angie @ GnomeAngel.com
Tuesday 22 July – Kelly & Gillian @ Secret Sewing Society
Wednesday 23 July – Leanne @ Daisy and Jack
Thursday 24 July – Rachel @ Little White Dove & Penny @ Happy Spider Knits Podcasts
Friday 25 July – Melissa @ on Ms Midge
Saturday 26 July – Amanda @ mucho xoxo & Kate @ Stitched with Love
Sunday 27 July – Linden @ Vine Lines Quilting Adventures
Monday 28 July – Sel @ Mad Quilters Disease
Tuesday 29 July – Raylee @ Sunflower Quilting
Wednesday 30 July – Cassie @ Cassie Madge
Thursday 31 July – Deb @ Deb’s Doodlings & Cindy @ Live a Colourful Life
Friday 1 August – Bec @ Skyberries Handmade & Jo @ Jo Loves to Quilt
Saturday 2 August – Angie @ GnomeAngel.com

And yes, that's me on the schedule, on the 28th July!

I'm also instahopping one of the days - I think I'm the 24th July for the instahop. I'll need something to show by then, won't I? EEP!

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And today is the start of the Sydney Quilt Show 2014 - ooh, and Kim Bradley's Creations has Cotton+Steel in and it's being cut at her warehouse today! Looking forward to getting my hands on that.

I went with a couple of friends, among them Jenn of Penny Poppleton, who won second prize for her quilt South-West Sunset!

As for purchasing things, I was pretty restrained, and only bought one 'jelly roll' of Reece Scanell, visible on the bottom right of the photo.


So what have you been doing? I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

Winter Organising Series: Day One

Day 1: Take a photo of your workspace, and list your WIPs









To do:
1. work out a sorting system for fabric - collections, stash, projects, WIPs, and scraps.
2. work out a filing system for paper things - clothing patterns, quilt patterns, books
3. work out an organising system for notions - templates, thread, bobbins, rulers, etc.
4. sell the box of stash that is yet To Go.

WORKS IN PROGRESS - GENERAL
- millefiori madness

WORKS IN PROGRESS - REQUIRES BORDERS
- USA Hurray quilt top to complete
- Build Me Up Buttercup quilt top to complete
- around the world quilt (blue-to-gold)

WORKS IN PROGRESS - BLOCKS
- supernova friendship block quilt
- Red Letter Day blocks
- batik log cabin blocks
- 2 Camille Roskelley block quilts

WORKS IN PROGRESS - NEEDS BACKING FOR QUILTING BY JO
- Sweetwater Town Hall
- Momo
- Farmhouse
- Pantone Quilt Challenge
- California Girl
-

TO BE QUILTED BY ME
- Mendocino Mermaids
- Honey HOney
- Rainbow Charms


THINGS I WANT TO MAKE
- snowflake quilt (entry for SEWvivor?)
- Aviatrix Medallion quilt
- Heather Ross: Imagine Greater (Imaginary Creatures)
- Magic Stars by Aneela Hoey
- Juliet Dress in Washi Tape Fabrics
- baby quilt for Teddy W
- scrap patch block

WIP Wednesday: the one with Cotton and Steel!

I'm all quilted out this week!

I offloaded a heap of stash to a friend's mother whose quilting group will use it instead of just storing it.

Show quilts are done and handed in. And next week is the 2014 Sydney Quilt Show! I'm looking forward to seeing all the lovely quilts, and catching up with Sydney quilters all over the region.

Finished!

Show Quilts

I couldn't change the quilt name in time for the show, so "Do You Know Where You're Going To" is still "Walkabout"'s label of the quilt in the show. Ah well. That one will be one to hang on a wall somewhere in the house.


"Mondrian Dreaming", on the other hand, will be gifted out to one of my friends. Exactly whom, I'm not entirely sure. We'll see who wants it, I guess!

WIPs

Not much movement - I was so focused on finishing the show quilts that I put everything else on hold.

Friendship Supernova Swap

First supernova friendship block done!


Now to start on the next one! I'll use a few of the fabrics from this one in the next one, and add some more based on the fabrics in the block that I receive from my swap buddy. I figure that will even out the colour choices of the quilt overall and make it more even-handed.

No Movement

- Rainbow Snowflakes: still up on the board

- Passacaglia: still in the handsewing bag with no progress

- six quilt backings and their tops to my quilter: nope.

TO DO

Find and buy a house!

Our house is being sold, contracts exchanged on Friday, six weeks to settlement. We then have three months to vacate the place before the bulldozers turn up (since it's being developed) which means finding somewhere that my sister B1 and myself can afford to live.

Let's just say that Sydney isn't very affordable right now. *sigh*

However it turns out, it means I'm going to have to start sorting out my sewing supplies, because we'll definitely be moving to a much smaller place, and while I will get a room for my crafts, it will be much smaller and will need to be considerably better organised! I'm going to have to work out a system that's better than "toss it in this drawer and I'll find it later". Which is my current system and it doesn't always work very well!

other things

Ooh! I got to have a look-feel at Cotton+Steel in the flesh on Saturday. Sydney quilt shop Kim Bradley's Creations had the RJR C+s reps come in, and I went to check out the samples!


It is a lovely collection, but the colour combination is not quite me. I did pre-order the Basics collection, though - those will be useful - and a few of the fabrics that I think will look better as pieces of clothing than in my quilts.

If you're in Australia and looking for this collection, Kim Bradley's Creations is ordering in the ENTIRE COLLECTION in bolts, and selling them in FQ bundles. With a payment plan if you can't afford all 140-something prints at once! They're supposed to be arriving this week and will be on sale at the Sydney Quilt Show next week. And after this lot is gone (and it will go) there isn't anything more scheduled to come in until after August!

Blogger Sherri at "A Quilting Life" put together a Summer Organisation Series for cleaning up quilting spaces. Looking through it, I found it pretty useful. And I suspect I'm going to need it. See above re: "current system of organisation". I've been thinking that I might start putting my scraps ( < F8 size) into the boxes that fit in my IKEA EXPEDIT bookshelf (4x4). It would mean I couldn't see them easily, but I'd only pull out the scraps when I'm actually making a scrap quilt. And I don't need to be reminded that they're there - scraps are an inevitable by-product of the quilting process and somewhat unavoidable. I do need to work out exactly how small they are before I should just throw them out or start using them as cushion padding (or something, IDEK).

Finally, I still have a bunch of stash fabrics to sell - more 'traditional' prints, fewer modern ones. And quite a bit of coloured homespun. Maybe I can piece it together for curtains in the new house?

Anyway, that's me. Hope you've been busy, and thanks for stopping by!