018 Show And Tell - Mini Amish

Geez Louise, I've made some crap in my lifetime.

This is another example.  Made to fit in a laundry.  I made two, hung them both and yeah, they looked okay at the time (we're talking years ago) but I'm seriously wondering what to do with them now.  I could chuck them, to be honest I'd be too embarrassed to give them away.

These small wallhangings are useless to me now.  But what to do with them?  Dilemma, dilemma.

See you soon!

013 Show and Tell - Scrappy Pinwheels

This is another one of those what was I thinking quilts?

It's all fine, really.  But it's far too small to be useful.  And it's another one in the cupboard, wondering what I shall do with it.  I suppose it's big enough for a dog blanket, and that's a sad statement when the best you can find to do with it is to give it as a dog blanket.

Sometimes it's hard to look back with today's eyes, isn't it?  But at the time, there was a need for a design in our shop that beginners could do, and this served its purposes.  

But I still don't have a place for it.

Hope your day is going well.  See you soon!

007 - Show and Tell (Flower Baby Quilt)

Some of these older quilts I'm just downright embarrassed to show you.  But I'm going to anyway.

This one was designed for those customers who were brand new to quilting.  It's a very basic quilt.  Sadly it looks like a dog's breakfast but what can you do?

It's part of my quilting history and I guess it at least shows how far I've come?  

Happy quilting!

006 - A Finish To Show You

I've not just been resting on my laurels over the last six months.  I've been Finishing. Some. Stuff. Off.

I have a feeling I've shown you this before, but it might not have been finished totally.  It's totally bound, labelled stitched on, all good to go.

I even machine quilted this myself on the long arm.  I did okay.  Bit wonky but okay.

I had grand plans to go once a week to Mum's house and get good at long arm quilting.  But like all of my craft plans, I ran out of day and week, and that stopped.

I'm trying to get back to it.  We'll see.

Hope your day is going well.  Happy Quilting!

003 - Show And Tell (Checkered Hearts)

Back into the Show And Tell routine, documenting and photographing all my quilts, even the less spectacular ones.

This one was made many, many years ago and has been washed and loved to death.

I look back now at all the flaws, and I need to remember that whilst it may look dreadful, we didn't know as much as we do now and it was loved to death.  Washed and washed and washed, now it's faded, the binding has begun to shrink, and it doesn't matter because isn't that what we make quilts for?  To wear out from use and then to make another one?

Anyway.  It's photographed and documented.

44 degree day today.  Not sure what that is in the old numbers but well over 100.  Hot (boom boom) on the heels of our all time hottest day on record, 48 degrees the other day.  Australia is either burning or flying away in dust storms, and it's really very hard to not get caught up in the emotion of it all.  I focus on the positives, we are safe here, we are far from fire trouble, we have water and we have electricity.  But so many places are burning.  It's hard to know what to say or do.  

I always sew on days like today.  Keeps me calmer, somehow.

Anyway.  Hope your day is a quilty one!

Thankyou!

Thank you so much for the lovely reception that month one of Bountiful Bouquet has received.  I can't tell you how thrilled I was to see some new followers!  It's so much fun to open your blog account each morning and see new friends!  I thoroughly recommend you start a blog - if I can do it, anyone can!

I've given you more than enough work for one month, but as with most block of the month programmes, some months are easier than others and when you have done all your homework one month, you can pick up some of the other ones that have been lagging!

I'm off with the family on a little three day beach stay tomorrow, so I thought I'd pop in and show you a couple more finishes I've done before we go.  I've realised that I've not cropped either picture, so you get it warts and all so to speak - threads included.  Doesn't that sum up a quilter?  Covered in threads! 

The first one is a really simple four patch that was once upon a time going to be a shop design, now it's just something I found scrunched up in the cupboard that needed a little button holing done and bob's your uncle. I haven't decided what to do with it now, it's a bit useless with the size it is.   Perhaps I'll include it in a backing down the track.  For now it goes in the 'topped but not quilted cupboard';

I'm not sure if I've shown you this one or not, I have a suspicion I may have.  Toooooooo much sun to see it properly, but this is definitely going to the quilter (aka mother) to be quilted.  It's my oldest living UFO and definitely needs some quilting love.  It's been a cupboard far too long, now it's time to stick the old dear on a bed someplace.

So that's all for now.  Thankyou again for the very nice comments and reaction to my block of the month.  I'd love for you to tell your friends about it, or leave me a comment so that I know you're out there. 

Till next time,

Suzie

I'm back!

Hey!

I'm here!

I'm still on wireless but I have been told that I can now get broadband so in a coupla days, I'll be cruising the information superhighway like I haven't in years!  When will I quilt?  There's too much internet to see with so much gig download allowable!  Movies!  Songs!  Podcasts!  Ebooks!  All the treasures of the universe are out there for me now!

I've been sewing a lot while I've been away from the blog, and have a couple of finishes for you.  They are all rather boring, I admit.  I've started so many things over the last twenty years and I think the reason they have stayed UFO's for so long is because they are pretty average and boring to do, and even more average and boring to look at.  I am eager to get as many of them done, so that I can can begin the business of creation and start to do some really pretty things.  One day....

But for now...

Blah. 

This is something I'm not immensely proud of, I don't like it and it's toooooooo much but it started as a design for the shop and it just didn't work.  So it got bundled up and chucked in the 'don't wanna work on it' pile for YEARS.  But now it's done.  I'm thinking that border is too wide so I'll probably cut that back before it gets quilted.  If it ever gets quilted.

Now for number two:

This was another design we had done for the shop.  It was based around the border print, a most delicious design by Jennifer Sampou called Rainforest.  The original shop design had taken parts of the border, like the fish and the birds and we'd appliqued them randomly over the log cabins.  It looked so pretty.  But we didn't have enough fabric to finish this one that way, and so it remains a little bare.  But this is another one of those twenty year old UFO's and therefore I am very proud it's done.

Finally, the oldest UFO I have in my cupboard.  And I love this one.  I'm emotionally attached to it. 

My apologies for the crap photo but I don't have anywhere to hang it.  This was begun before I was married, before we had the shop, before I'd ever quilted before.  It's got the hair of old dogs and cats long since gone on it.  My dad was alive.  When I pulled it out of the bag, it smelt like his cigarette smoke.  He's been gone nearly as long as this quilt has been started. 

It was a design from a Family Circle magazine, and it was all template based, and done in centimetres.  Now, Australia is a metric country but for the last how ever many years, we have done our quilting with inches, just like the rest of the world.  I put this design away because at the time, I didn't know how to adapt a pattern to inches, and it was all too hard.  After twenty years of designing and quilting, I know now how easy it is to fudge a bit here, make a border a bit wider to fit the flying geese in, all of those little tricks. 

This one will definitely be quilted soon.  It's supposed to have a further border on it, but I've run out of so many of the fabrics that were in it.  They were those lovely Joan Kessler florals from Concord that were EVERYWHERE a decade ago.  Now it's all trendy and modern and not my style at all and poor old Joan Kessler fabrics, I don't know where you would find them these days.  I think it looks fine.

So that's my show and tell for today.  I hope you liked it, and I shall see you tomorrow.

Suzie

p.s. I haven't forgotton about the block of the month instructions.  I'm still waiting for my Nancy Halvorsen fabric to arrive from America.  It's taking a lot longer than it usually does.  I'm so terribly spoiled with your American postal system.  Sooooo much faster than the Australian one.

And even more pastels.....

I have two little girls.  I have a lot of pastel quilts.

More Pastels

When my daughter was born, I cut a swag of pastel fabrics to make her a wall quilt. I kept all the bits of fabric that were left over in a bag.  It was a big bag, admittedly.  And I have just kept on making quilts from the leftover fabrics.  This is another one of the quilts I made from the same original fabrics.  It's amazing just how many quilts you can make from one bag of fabric. 

That would be a good challenge to have one day, wouldn't it?  A bag of fabric, and the winner is the person who can make the most projects from it.  With the least amount of leftover.

My bag is fairly empty now, and I have lots more quilts to show you that I made from it.  But this is just a little one, from a Chook Shed design.  I made many, many Chook Shed designs over the years.  I suspect a lot of us Aussies did.

More tomorrow,

Suzie

Show and Tell

I'm actually pretty proud of myself.  The things that blogging forces you to learn in relation to the computer is pretty terrific.  Till now, I've been taking photos, editing them in Picasa, saving them, writing a blog post, adding them in and then publishing the post.  Lots of steps and difficult at times. 

Turns out I can eliminate half of those steps by publishing a blog entry directly from Picasa.  The internet is clever.  Clever, clever internet.

So this is the quilt that I made for my daughter, that was supposed to have yesterday's block included in it.  But the maths got too hard with all those squares, and fitting that block in was like trying to fit a square peg in a round holl, so I just finished it off.  Her room is done in these pretty pastel colours (she's only little) and the box of leftovers is getting pretty grim now.  Which is a good thing, but I need to finish a few outstanding UFO's (like yesterday's) before the box runs out totally.

You can see I've taken her name off from the quilt.  I want her to make her own decisions about how much information is out there about her online, not me.  Hopefully it will be years before that decision needs to be made, because she is far too little to know about computers (though she totally knows how to play with the Ipad, let me tell you).

Tomorrow my other little person is at kindy so I will have a blissful child free morning.  I could use it to clean the bathroom, but more than likely I will get stuck into the UFO box.  Which means, hopefully another blog post to show you tomorrow night!

Till then, happy quilting.

S.

Sunday Funday

So today my DH (and I mean dear in the best sense of the word) took my two little people out for five (yes, FIVE!!) hours.  I love that man.  I sewed and cleaned and watched what I wanted to watch on television.  It was bliss.

I fished out this UFO:

I've a few other half appliqued blocks to add to it, and a few squares to cut out, and then hopefully soon I'll be able to cross that off my list also.  It was a block that was leftover from another quilt (it didn't really work where I wanted to put it) so I made more blocks to make a bigger quilt.  I could have just put this on the back of something but I tend to start new projects with leftover old ones.  I suppose that's part of my UFO problem.  Not knowing when to stop.

Anyhoo...

I had a productive day - I stitched a few folder covers and diary covers for a trading table our quilting group is holding, and I finished my paper bag challenge, which had a deadline of next month, so I'm doing well!  The covers looked very boring in the photos, so I won't show them off.  I couldn't find a tutorial online that covered exactly what I wanted to do, so I made them my own way and I'm actually quite pleased with them. 

So all in all, I'm feeling refreshed, accomplished, and I'm ready to hit Monday morning running!

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Scrappy fun..

Don't you hate days when technology doesn't do what it's supposed to?   A few weeks ago I was very clever and put my own Farmer's Wife Sampler chart from Electric Quilt into this webpage.  I had to save it as a jpg and it was all really smart of me, because I'm not the cleverest person on the internet.  

Now I don't know how to do it.  It's gone from the memory banks.

Which makes the above picture pretty uninteresting really, because the whole point of this post was to show you that I drew a block in EQ6, and then made it in real life, and aren't I clever....except I aren't.  I can't work out how to stick the EQ6 block online.  

So trust me, not so clever.  I'll keep looking online.  I know I saw it someplace.  The internet isn't *that* big a place, I'm sure I can find it.  Oh yeah.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend, see you tomorrow!

What I've been working on...

I've felt a little... blah all day today.  Blah isn't the right word but today I don't feel very good with words.  I'm sure lots of it is this terrible business in Oslo.  I do worry...really I do. 

I've been steadfastly avoiding the television and the internet news.  I'm of the opinion that all this news, all the time is no good for us.  The upside of avoiding television and internet surfing is that I got very busy on my current project.

You may remember this post here where I showed you one block of a project for my swap partner in our quilting group.  It turns out that I've been terribly neglectful in my deadlines, and I thought I had loads of time to go till I have to hand it over.  Not true!  So I've pulled the proverbial out and I have motored along today while the little people played beautifully together, and I think I shall be finished just in time to swap it with my partner.  Do you like it?  Again, yellows are so not my colours, but as I think I've become a little too safe with my colours, I'm pleased I've challenged myself to work outside my comfort zone.

I think it's okay.

Enjoy your weekend!

S.

Blue string quilt blocks

I spent a large amount of today with free time as my little people were taken off my hands for the morning (thank God for grandmothers!).  I managed to piece a large chunk of my blue string quilt blocks, which I'm thrilled about because it went together so much quicker than I thought it would.

I've managed to nearly finish all sixty four blocks, and put a sizeable chunk in my wadding, backing and blue fabric stash.  Of course, it's barely noticeable amongst the rest of the stash, but it's a start!

Till tomorrow,

Happy Quilting!

S.

A Quick Hello

I've got family staying at the moment, and what with it also being school holidays, little or no sewing is getting done, and I'm able to spend even less time at the computer.  Life sure does fly past!

But I did manage to piece a few of the Civil War quilt blocks by Barbara Brackman, and in lieu of a wordy post, here is some piccies:

When I have a little more time (soon, I hope, please???) I'll organise them a little better.  But not tonight. 

Night all.

S.

Kangaroos

I've noticed that I now have some followers!  I can't tell you how exciting it was to find that out this morning.  Welcome!

It was another no-sew day today, though I did manage to cut up lots of backing fabrics for my strip quilt and sort out all the blue fabrics in my stash (surprisingly, not that many).  So no photos to show you there.

I live in Australia, and one of the interesting animals we have living here is the kangaroo.  I love the kangaroos.  They are as plentiful as you've heard.  I live in a rural area, surrounded by paddocks and fruit blocks and not a day goes by without seeing one, or two.  They are a real hazard at night time on the roads, and many, many cars have had their front end written off by hitting a kangaroo.  They see you coming, and they decide 'Will I jump away from your car, or will I jump right in front of you?' and you don't know which way they will go until they are there.  Thankfully I've never hit one, but that's more sheer luck than anything else.  They are THAT plentiful.

This pattern is one by an Australian designer, and makes great use of batiks and hand died fabrics.  It's another one of my mother's (the woman should really have her own blog, don't you agree?) who really does excel herself on these landscape type quilts. 

Till tomorrow,

S.

15th July

Can you believe I just sat there and thought for ages, and that was the best title I could come up with?  Pathetic.

I didn't get a chance to do much sewing today.  I did the first step of a mystery quilt my quilting group is hosting, but unless you want to see a pile of blue half square triangles, there's not much to show for that.  I'm just about to go and cut up a whole swag of wadding pieces for a strip quilt, but again - there's not much to show there.  So I'm fiddled about in my photo archives to find something to post...and this is it:

I didn't actually make this quilt, it was one my mother did.  But it was the first time I looked at civil war fabrics and thought 'Oh yes, that's what I want to do'.  I'd always been keen on 1930's fabrics, and have a huge amount of those in the cupboard.  I guess it was an easy jump to civil war stuff.  I have too much now, I'll never use it all.  But I do love it.

Well, best go and cut wadding squares.  Hubby is watching his beloved footy team getting flogged.  I might leave him to it.

Till Tomorrow,

S.

All day quilting day

So yesterday, after massive amounts of organisation, pleading, wheedling, promises and hugs, I got to spend my entire day (ten am to ten pm) with my quilting group, sewing.  No kids, no meals to prepare, just pure, unadulterated sewing. 

I worked like a mad woman, and finished the behemouth now known as Bears Paw Quilt No. 1, plus its little friend, Bears Paw Quilt No. 2.  When I was sorting out what I needed to take to my group, I realised that should I finish my quilt at 7 blocks by 7 blocks as was the original plan, it would be so big it could be seen from space.  So I've now made it 6 x 6, which meant I had enough for a littler version.

This is a photo of the littler version.  I don't know that I could find a place big enough to photograph the larger one. 

I've still got to put an outer border of half square triangles on it.  I think that would look okay.  That's my plan for this week.  So please check back to see how it progresses.

Till next time,

Happy Quilting!

Just Sneaking In

I'm supposed to be houseworking, but you know how I feel about that!

Here's a quickie, a scrap quilt I cut with my new Accuquilt Go machine and whipped up in about four minutes.  It's meant to be an Eye Spy but it's more a scrappy thing.  I still think it's kinda okay for a very, very quick quilt.

Till tomorrow!

S.

A finished flimsy

I've been UFO'ing like a mad woman lately.  Here's something else I finished over the weekend.  It is still just a flimsy and I need to stitch buttons on for eyes, but that will happen after I quilt it.  Which I might do in the next week or so.  It's called Noah and was a design by The Chook Shed, an Australian business which has now sadly stopped producing patterns. 

Was originally meant to be a shop sample, but as we've been out of the shop now for three years, I think the time has come to finish the jolly thing.

Happy Quilting!

S.