Every now and again something wonderful comes in the mail ....

The Sister's Choice quilt is back from being beautifully quilted by Blackbird Quiltery, Roy and Lisa always do a wonderful job of quilting which really transforms my tops.

The back is green and hopefully you can see some of the detail ..
The loops are in the narrow lime green border, and can you tell they have quilted around every motif in the outer border !!!
Trevor says the quilting looks like grapes and vine leaves.


A couple of blocks to show close ups of the quilting ... can you see the feathers?

I will be binding this quilt at my retreat next weekend, it is mid winter here so it will nice to sit and sew with the quilt on my lap.

Ahhh .... the hills of home ...
heading towards our beautiful valley and the ground is green now that the heat of summer is past, it is mid winter here now though little rain, it has however been just enough to change the landscape from brown to green so took some photos as we were driving along, huge amounts of new vinyard plantings too, it is the first time I have seen these.

Needed to have a storage bag for my large square rulers as they are clear - predating the fluro type - every time I put the rulers down I "lose" them so decided to use some lefyovers from the orange crush to make a storage bag, son decided it needed a handle and suggested using a tie, so off to the thrift shop I went and then attached the tie to each side so now *Voila* the bag can hang up - and I can find the rulers!!

BTW I used a towel which had become thin for the batting.

Orange Crush

Here is my top before borders.


Am having to be a little creative with the borders coz I am using a border print - and I am short by about 3" so having to mitre the corners that fit, then trim the fabric to piece onto the short borders aagh!!!


Hopefully they will be finished this weekend.


Was going to make a pieced back but have enough of the berry print that I used as the accent ... gotta love stashbusting!


Need to decide how to quilt this and then do it!


The close up is just in case you wanted to see some of the variety of prints I used , it is what I call Heinz 57 varieties or as Bonnie says "kitchen sink"

Orange Crush setting

Having seen Julia in Perth's straight setting I decided to rearrange some blocks to that setting , took a photo in the poor lighting we have at night and will decide tomorrow which way to finally set the blocks together.

Am thinking I like the lattice effect of the diagonal lines rather than the straight.

These blocks are just roughly pinned, wanted to do it while the setting was fresh in my mind.

If by chance you happen to see this before I finally decide on the setting please leave me a comment.

Just as an aside this is how I cope without a design wall, have the foam panels from packaging around a fridge and simply lean them against something - in this instance it is a cupboard and the back door.

This week - with a question

Had 36 hours at home this week so this is some of what I managed to achieve ..
The flowers are Nerines and I picked this bunch and brought them back to Trevor's place, forgot to bring a vase ... duh!
The stack and slash I found while looking for something else :-))
Realised the reason it had become an abandoned project was because it had turned out long and skinny ... realised though that if I bordered it and finished it off it could be a door curtain for winter.
Used a batik for the border, now all of the fabrics used in the top are gone, gone ... hooray!

Question is what should I back it with?
The top will face outside so I need something to look at from the inside, therefore that rules black out.
So now this project has moved to be a ASP [already started project]

The tea for two is my starter block for my stay at home round robin.
The design is a fusible called "Sue" from Lizard of Oz
http://www.lizard ofoz.com.au

For a WOO HOO - I made the shopping bags for L. - when I cut a bag out realised there was enough fabric for two bags!!
So now it is on with the packing ready to head to Perth.

Charm swaps

April's charm swaps were for florals and yellows, these were minewhich were sent this week.

TWIO - third weekend in October quilt project

Here is the start of my project - patterns, needlepunched foundation papers, coloured copies of the pattern to indicate where the different colours go, flannel backed tablecloth for storing the quilt in progress - no room for a design wall, desirable though that might be ;-))

Started to sort my fabrics into piles of 'families' , however I only want to make one leaf from each fabric, don't want to over think this so will just pull one fabric at a time, the blue tote on the left is full of fabrics suitable for this quilt mostly in small pieces, no fear of me running out of suitable fabrics for this project!!

My constants are the background fabrics which will be the same throughout the quilt.

Have a downloaded pattern for the leftovers from the quilt, so out of a bag full of scrap fanrics I will end up with two quilts - and maybe a wallhanging, feels good to be stashbusting, and it will be a nice contrast to the Orange Crush project.

Just need to wash the quilt for Noah today and give it to his father tomorrow, seems to have taken a long time to finish but at least it is there now, and Noah is just 4 months old - think he will care whether it took me a week or 4 months to make??

Will post a picture of the finished quilt tomorrow.

quilt top together

Finally have the borders on the cobblestone quilt made with coffee coloured fabrics.

Dad is holding the quilt top and he quite likes it so maybe this one won't be going too far once it is finished ;-))

selvedges

Now I am not into selvedges personally but have an ice cream container full to overflowing - so if anyone wants some then just leave me a comment with a way of getting in touch for your snail mail addy.
too late at night - actually it is early in the morning, to take a photo.