Marcelle Medallion QAL with Penny Poppleton!

*waves hello from NC, USA*

Briefly interrupting my vacationing to post a notice (somewhat late) that my friend Penny Poppleton is running a Marcelle Medallion Quilt-Along for September:

Penny is an amazing quilter, the President of the Sydney Modern Quilters Guild, and a busy mother of two adorbsable little munchkins, and the Marcelle Medallion quilt that she made for her husband's birthday is spectacular. If I weren't in another country right now, I'd definitely be in on this!

May I encourage you to go along and see what she's doing and join in? Even just a little late!

WIP Wednesday: the one with fannish cushion covers!

Finished! (ish)

Pacific Rim Cushion Covers

I got the applique completed - not as nicely as I'd have liked, but still good! And very pretty! :)

I was hoping to get the Pan-Pacific Defence Corps logo on the back, but it was just more effort than I could manage - the bird-design is kind of tricksy!

Now that I've done applique, the next time I think of a mad project like this it should be easier, right? :)

WIPs

USA Hurray!

So, finally got the hourglasses sewn together, cut, pressed, and trimmed! Ugh, how do I hate trimming? Let me count the ways! But using the power of friendship (*cue magical girl sparkly sequence*) I managed to distract my mind long enough to let my hands complete the task.

Sewing them together is a bit of a braintwist, though, because you have to get them the right way around, and because my colour scheme is not as random as the Charm Crossing (Moda Bake Shop) pattern, I have to be careful which way they go together.

But I have enough of them for a queen-sized quilt, easily. Possibly even two, given how the numbers are stacking up!

I'm not going to get this done before I go; my best hope is to have the top completed, and be able to show it to my friend (and apologise for not having it done before this).

To Do

Tiger By The Tail

A gift for my hockey coach, who's been my team coach for the last three years. The basic design is hourglasses and nine-patches in orangy/yellows and browns.

She’s a fan of the Balmain Tigers in the Aussie NRL and I thought that the orange-and-black colour scheme (obviously tiger colours, as well as team colours) and the name would be highly appropriate for her! Another woman on my hockey team has done some quilting before and offered to help out, seeing as I’ll be away for the next five weeks...

I'm thinking I need more browns/blacks for this. It may require a trip to the LQS... Oh the horror!

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The next five weeks are going to be very quiet on the quilting front, because I'll be travelling across the US and northern Italy, so not too many WIP updates. I'm taking some hexy handsewing, so hopefully that will occupy me a little in my travels. :)

What have you been doing this week?

WIP Wednesday: the one with applique!

Finished! (ish)

I don't remember giving this one a name, so it’s just going to be "Heirloom".

Such beautiful rich colours!

And the back!

(It's a satin-stripe cotton, that's why there's the horizontal lines on the picture - I swear it's not a bad refresh rate for your screen!)

Modern Batik Maze

And now the bit that I always find difficult to motivate myself to do - binding!

WIPs

Pacific Rim cushion-covers


So, I went to watch Pacific Rim a couple of weeks ago and came out pretty much in love with that movie. The characters! The machines! The monsters!

I joined a gift exchange and decided I'd make some cushions with the logo of one of the giant fighting machines - the main one, in fact, called Gipsy Danger and piloted by the heroes of the movie. (One of whom is a heroine but who stays fully clothed over the course of the movie and in all the promotional materials, who is respected for her skills without bringing her gender into it, and who doesn't get with the hero at the end of the movie. But I digress...)

I decided on a rough applique rather than satin-stitched because the movie, as a whole, is about the scrappy resistance at the end of the world, and everything is rusted and well-worn and much-used before it's finally junked. So I thought a little roughness wouldn't go astray.

The logo on the stiffened fabric - traced and cut out:

A detail of the stitching - it's not very neat, unfortunately!

One side done!

Got to finish the other side and then put the cushion-cover together and send it off to my recipient!

Of course, now that I've done one, I'm thinking of doing other sigils and logos from movies - Avengers logos and suchlike...

USA Hurray!


Ugh. I haven't made much progress on this:

In the back: a pile of HSTs that need to be turned into Hourglasses.
In the middle: the untrimmed Hourglasses.
In the foreground: the trimmed hourglasses, ready to be turned into blocks.

Yeah, I'm pushing it. :/

To Do

Nothing really on this - get USA Hurray and the Pacific Rim cushion covers done, then prep some handsewing for the US and head on out!

what about you?

WIP Wednesday: the one with quick and dirty

Sorry, not much time to chat today - going to the P!NK concert tonight in Sydney! I only have one finish and one WIP this week.

Wonky Farm Stars

All done and sewn together!

One dodgy silhouette picture:

One picture from the Sydney Southern Cross Quilters meet I was at on Saturday with much better lighting!

Now to get it quilted. FMQ it myself, or send to the quilter?

USA Hurray

Lots of lines for broken dish blocks:

And plenty of Broken Dishes - up on the design wall:

Next to finish making and pressing the rest of them, then sewing them into blocks. It's a busy couple of weeks, too, right before I go away. No rest for the wicked, I suppose!

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What have you been doing this week?

WIP: the one with broken dishes

It's been a crazy busy week for me, so not much progress at all.

Some USA Hurray!

HSTs waiting to be paired and have the lines drawn, so they can become Broken Dishes:

Lines drawn and ready to be paired for sewing:

Broken dishes, laid out:

I think I'm going to have to put a lot more effort into this. A lot more spare time to quilting!

Wonky Farm

And we have the blocks done!

I only got that done this morning, so there was no time to lay them out properly. It's not as effective as I'd like, although nicely bright.

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What have you been doing this week?

WIP Wednesday: the one with red, white, and blue

back from the quilter!

Aunty's Quilt

Front, with Smokey:

Back:

The Half-Square Harvest

Front, with Mal:

Back:

WIP

USA Hurray!

Got all the HSTs sewn together and cut at the Sit 'N Sew for the Sydney MQG meet on Saturday - I love hanging with my sewing gals! (For more details of the day, check out the post on the Sydney MQG website!)

Big pile here.

Cut and pressed, and ready to be turned into hourglasses, just as soon as I have the time...

Wonky Farm

Getting the nine-patches together:

Laying out some of the blocks:

other things

Kona Stash

Ordering my Kona Stash by colour card:

I'm not convinced that all the colours are correct - there are a few shades that just seem marginally 'off'. Very annoying.

Otherwise my quilting life has been fairly quiet since work has been ramping up again. I'm going to have to finish 'USA Hurray' and 'Wonky Farm' before I go off to the US, though!

What have you been doing this week?

WIP Wednesday: the one with beermats and baklava

Finished

Buttercup Beermats

I spent pretty much the better part of Saturday getting these done. I'm not sure that I like the black edging so much, but the friend I gifted them to loved them. So all's well that sews decently!

The design is pretty enough that I'll probably make more of these - and maybe a matching set of placemats to go with?

Ultimately, I'm very pleased with how bright and cheerful they turned out!

WIP

USA Hurray!

Lots of HSTs. Lots and lots and lots of HSTs. And I haven't even gotten around to turning them into Broken Dishes! The trimming down is going to be slightly nightmarish, I think...

I'm not sure I'm going to have time to finish, quilt, and bind this before I go away on holiday and gift it to a friend I've been staying with while on most of my US trips. But I'm damn well going to try!

Other Things

I made Pomegranate Baklava and it was pretty amazing.

Recipe post is soon to come.

Warning, there are crazy amounts of butter and sugar in this; it is not 'healthy' by the standards of any nutritionist, dietician, or medical quack in the known universe!

However, I firmly believe that taking pleasure in food is an important part of food consumption - not eating a whole pan of these, but having one square slowly and pleasurably, and with great mindfulness and sensual enjoyment! I recommend with a big glass of milk or water (or tea or coffee if that's your preferred beverage).

quilted quilts

I'm due to receive a couple of these back later this week - and I have a whole bunch more to send off to the quilter! Wait for pretty pictures!

Instagram

Are any of you on Instagram? I tend to post more pics of my WIPs (and my cats, and my food, and panoramas) there as seldear so if any of you guys would like to come by and check me out - I rather enjoy flicking through to see what other people have done!

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What have you been doing this week? Have you linked up at Freshly Pieced?

Buttercup Beermats for a BIrthday!

I've had these HST cutoffs for at least a year, possibly more. Ever since I made the quilt top 'Build Me Up Buttercup!' (Yes, earworm. I apologise!)

Finally got around to collecting them together, squaring them up, and setting them out. And a friend's 30th Birthday was the perfect opportunity to get them done!

I settled on a pattern of off-centre concentric squares because I liked the look better than the 'coil' for something this small, and the quilting is simply stitch-in-the-ditch.

They're backed with medium-weight interfacing to give them a bit of stiffness, but they should be quite washable.

And they look so pretty with the black-and-white dishware!

I still have a heap of these HSTs, so I guess another set will be forthcoming - perhaps with a slightly different layout or quilting design, and maybe with a set of placemats to match? We'll see.

Food: Pomegranate Baklava

I found this dessert in the book The Lost Recipe For Happiness by Barbara O'Neal. It's a work of fiction, but all through the book are recipes menioned in the story.

The story's pretty good - very evocative and sensuous and a little bit haunted.

This one is created the night the heroine challenges her rival to a cookoff - a three course meal with entree, main, dessert. The prize is the position of 'head chef' in the restaurant they're both working at.


The pomegranate baklava recipe is actually her rival's creation, and it wins the competition for 'best individual dish', although she wins the overall menu.

Having made this, I can see why!

May I suggest you don't read this book while hungry? It's full of delicious things that make me want to fly immediately into the US to get all these foods that you don't get in Australia. (Of course, once I'm in the US, I always want delicious things from Australia that are hard to get over in the US. Like Vegemite on toast. Australian toast, not that cakey thing Americans call toast.)


There'll be a full post with the recipe later - I've decided to make it a second time this weekend now that I know what it entails.

Finally, I've changed the header on my blog, because I've been staring at the old header for a couple of years and all I can see is the imperfections. This is a little better, I think.

What do you think?