Wednesday 28 March 2018

Another week goes by!

 Another week of Aves BOW - this time week 9.  A set of 8 humming bird blocks.  It's lovely to keep this project ticking over week by week.
 A landmark day in household - lots of fun on the day with both family and friends arriving to join the celebration.
Finally, the front of the cushion part of the quillow that I'm making.  This mini quilt (as that's what it is, in effect) showcases one of the blocks that is repeated 25 times in the quilt, with inner sashing and HST border to take it up to 20" square.

My plan is to have finished the quillow by Sunday ready to pass it over.  I'd better go and carry on with it now!

Happy Easter, and I hope that you find plenty of time for crafting too!

Wednesday 21 March 2018

Fun Times!

 Aves Quilt BOW part 8 - shown here first as the ring that I created...
 .....and here actually attached to the block centre that we made last week.
 There was also a second part to this week's 'work' - making and adding the stripe sections to four blocks that we'd made previously.  Lovely and colourful!
 Time left over to start on 'Betty's Quilt' too.  I've got a variety of purples and hope to be able to create a pattern with the layout when I've made them all.  This is just the first set of 8 (plus my original sample block) laid out to check that the secondary pattern is looking how I expected!
Card making too  - these sample blocks from Gillian Travis's workshop make good toppers for a couple of cards.  Always nice to be able to use samples for something useful.

I'm off to do some more sewing now!  Hope that you are able to enjoy some crafting time this week too.

Tuesday 13 March 2018

Pick 'n' Mix

Its been a week of many different things this time!

Aves BOW week 7 complete!

Of course, I'm working on Week 8 now, which is the flying geese circle for around this block.
 I also spent a day at a workshop arranged by my quilt group (Richmond and Kew Quilters) and run by Gillian Travis who was teaching her 'Interchange' fusible applique technique.

I started this penguin wall hanging which finished at home (once I'd got back to a machine with zig zag stitch on it).

Good fun!
 I'd started cutting these out at the workshop too.  Love always wins (hearts) but hugs (O) and kisses (X) are good too!
 Then there was the passport holder made so that DD1 could carry her passport with her during her work experience placement (with enough room in a back pocket for a couple of coins and a tissue too, just in case!
 I even managed a quilty finish too!

The 4" squares looked a little dull just as they were, so I appliqued a flower on top.  Better, but still not my best work.  I think that a red might have worked better as a flower.  Next time I'll audition more fabrics before going for it.

Approximately 40" x 20"
I hope that it will still make someone happy!

Wednesday 7 March 2018

Two more small finishes

 This was the little quilt that arrived as a result of the leftover scrappy HSTs.  These were mainly the 'medium' charms that didn't easily fit either the dark or lights that I needed for the pattern on my last quilt.

Just a couple of extras cut from stash, plus a central block of the hen fabric that appears in quite a few of my scrap quilts!
 It finished at 40" square.

I wasn't sure what binding to use.  I wondered about something in a soft colour to complement the sashing  / border (which reminds me of an old fashioned eiderdown) but decided instead to pick up on the greens that appear in some of the blocks with a lime green spotty binding.  Not the perfect green, but the best that I had in my stash!
 Quilted with a loop-de-loop pattern, it came together fairly quickly in the end.
 The same can't be said about this weeks Aves block, which I'm finding very slow. 

Of course, if I managed to sew the right pieces to the pattern it might be quicker - yesterday I sewed eight pieces with the wrong fabrics (and unpicked them all, despite the short stitch length because of it being foundation piecing).  This is on top of the unpicking that I've done because I've failed to place the pieces well enough (those tricky triangles).
 Then there was the trimming mistake, where I suddenly decided to cut along a sewing line, not a cutting line.....sigh!

It's a beautiful block, I just hope that I can do it justice - eventually!

My second finish?  The mini heart quilt shown here on my sewing room wall, along with some of the other sewing - complete or still in progress from this year.

I need to take 'final shots' of it, but I enjoyed quilting and finishing it last week.

On to other new projects now!