Eye Spy Quilts

I’ve always been a structured quilter.  I like things to be balanced. Wreaths to be curved and in a circle.  Borders not random, but evenly placed.  I do not like this style of quilting:

http://www.dsquilts.com/

and I apologise in advance if I offend Denyse Schmidt but I’m sure my little opinion matters not so much to her.  I appreciate the quality of work and the not wanting to redo old ground, but it’s not me. 

This is me, by the way:

 

http://themarmaladecatpatchworkdesigns.blogspot.com/2008/10/double-wedding-ring-at-ballarat.html

 

Totally delicious.  I adore it.

 

Back in 2000, I (like many readers, I assume) joined in lots of millenium swaps for 3” squares.  I had a wonderful time and met (at least in cyberspace) lots of lovely people from all over the world. 

 

But I could never find the right Millenium Quilt pattern, no matter how hard I tried.  They all seemed to be too … messy for want of a better word.  Not structured enough.  So I left the box of squares.  And in the great mouse-capade episode of last week (dead mouse in the ceiling, smelly dead mouse smell in the most precious room of the entire house, the sewing room), I unearthed them again.

 

Now I’m a more experienced quilter, I’ve realised that 3” squares are tricky little suckers to use.  But that was 11 years ago (Oh. My. God.) and I know stuff now.

 

Purely by chance, I was browsing on quilter blogs and found a wonderful eye spy quilt.  The eye spy quilt was another on my bucket list that one day, I’d like to start.

 

So in the interest of not starting any new projects till I finished the one before it…. I started a new project.

 

This one is so easy.  You stitch fifteen three inch square (or whatever size takes your fancy), stitch them together into five rows of five, border them with a plain homespun, and there you go:

 

I think that’s a fabulous idea to use up some of those three inch squares.  I do sincerely apologise for the original quilter of this design.  I tried for far too long to find your website.  I’ll happily give you credit if you let me know.

 

So that’s tomorrow’s job.  Let’s see how we go.

Till then, happy quilting!

When the world gets too much...

Today has been one of those days.  It shouldn't have been, it started out fine.  Child one at school, child two at a rare morning of daycare.  Free time for me. 

And my free time was lovely, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I even pushed the boat out and brought two lattes in the one morning - what a splurge!

But then I picked child two up from daycare at lunch time and for whatever reason it went down hill from there.  It began with me breaking my tooth and now having only half what was there originally, and it ended ten minutes ago with child one having a rare lapse and peeing her child seat on the way home from school.  But not in my daggy old car that doesn't really matter.  Oh no, in my husband's spick and span work car that he is very, VERY precious about.  I'm surprised he even lets us mere mortals in his work car.

And there was a whole lot of boring crapola in between that didn't go my way.  Pout.

So I'm supposed to be helping child one with her homework and instead, I'm stealing ten minutes to myself. 

I find when the world all gets too much, like today - all I want to do is escape into my sewing room and shut the door.  I don't want music, movies, distractions.  I want to just put my head down, bum up and sew all afternoon.  Those times are so few now.  I love my family to pieces but I do find the older they get, the more they demand of my time.  There are parties to go to, ballet lessons to drive to, netball lessons to attend.  And I know it will only get worse. 

Anyway.  Big deep breath, happy face on.  Tomorrow I'll try and unearth the digital camera from underneath the mountain of crap that it's hiding in and show you some quilt eye candy.  Or Quilt Porn, if you're naughty.  I'm not naughty, of course. 

:)

Happy quilting!

Coming Clean

I spent a large amount of time over the past month organising.  Mainly my sewing room, but some other things as well.  It's my aim to have a clean sewing room, with everything in its place.  It's also very important to me to have a photographic record of all that I have done.  I started making photos of all my quilts years ago, and mostly I have been faithful to that.  Consequently, I have many photo albums filled with quilts, and bags, and cross stitches, and so much more. 

I think there's a touch of the hoarder in me and I find it hard to settle if I can't finish things.  But I'm also  great starter, and I have so many UFO's in my cupboard, and PIGS (which I learned yesterday meant Projects In Grocery Sacks), and magazines and patterns that I feel I will never settle in my sewing room, which is meant to be the one room I can totally relax in. 

So I have a quandary, a dirty little secret.  I don't know if I should just Ebay the lot of it and declutter, or if I will regret it forever. 

As I said, all a bit of a quandary.

Been gone long time...

I've been meaning to post, really truly I have.  And suddenly I look and it's three months since I last updated. 

A lot happened in that time.  Mostly my beloved lap top has gone bung.  Bung is a technical term for *&^54 itself.  I've had it into the computer doctor and whilst it now opens okay, which it wasn't doing before, I am now forced to type like a beginner and go niccceeeee annnnnnnndddd slooooooooow.  If I go too fast the computer falls over in a dead faint after an attack of the vapours.  Which is rather frustrating. 

There's also a dead mouse in the ceiling over my sewing room. Yes, we've looked for it.  No, we can't find it.  So all my sewing room stuff is now in my spare room so that the smell doesn't go through everything and meanwhile my mother in law is coming to stay this weekend and I'm going to have to sort through everything and put it back into the smelly sewing room so that she has someplace to sleep and I'm not at all angry/stressed about that situation AT ALL.

So between the dead mouse thing and the computer gone bung thing, I've not been a good blogger.  Sorry about that.

But the plans for the freebie block of the month are progressing well.  As in, I've taken the folder out of its box and put it on the table.  That's a start.

So, hopefully tomorrow I'll post a little more, if the fading wallflower of a computer will let me.  If not, I'll see you again in three months!