Grow Your Blog - January 25th

Hello!

Once again, I am participating in the Grow Your Blog party, kindly organised by 2 Bags Full.  Click on the icon over there (points to the right.....) to be redirected to Vicki's website.

I participated in the Grow Your Blog last year, and I met lots of lovely people, so I thought I would have another go!

I'm Suzie, I am Australian, and whilst I've tried many forms of needlework, mostly I'm quilting now.  In a previous life I once share owned a quilt shop, and I find I still have many UFO's still needing to be finished that were leftover from there.  I do love to knit though, and I tend to do that, late at night, when the family has gone to bed and the house is quiet.

I thought perhaps over the next couple of days I might show you some of my last few finishes, so you can get a feel of what my blog is like and decide if you want to follow me or not.

I've always loved 1930s reproduction fabrics, and Aunt Grace are my favourites.  I've made quilt top after quilt top in these styles of fabrics.

There are more, mostly still in phases of completion.  I tend to hyperventilate if my box of thirties fabrics gets down, as an empty box of thirties prints would be just awful.

I also love Civil War fabrics, and I've made a million or so scrap quilts.  I'm particularly fond of Bonnie Hunter designs, so they pop up on my blog a lot.  

I'll save the Civil War and the scrappy quilt photos till the next few days, I think, rather than explode your internet browser with all the photos.

I'd love you to comment and leave your blog name so I can pop over and visit you.  I'm thinking of having a giveaway, because (in a purely serendipitous quirk of fate) this happens to be my 500th blog post so if you'd like to enter my competition, please leave your name and contact details on this post.  I haven't a clue what I will give away yet, but I hope it will be something that will tickle your fancy.  I've never done a giveaway before, so this is a new experience for me.

Thanks so much for the visit, if you're new to my blog.  And if you're not, if you're a longer time reader, thanks so much for sticking around for 500 posts - I value these new friendships I am making very much.

Happy Quilting!

Suzie

This sums up my day

This is the never ending tower of ironing. It is never ending. It is so tall it regularly topples over.  I do ironing, then I do a load of washing, and then the ironing keeps growing.  Is it being the mother of two kids? I'm not sure, I don't ever remember being so behind on my chores before.

And this is what I came home to this afternoon.  

Who gets time to sew? Not me, that's for sure!

Take a stroll around the garden…

Once again, I have little to show you in the crafty department, but my roses are well and truly putting on a show so I thought I might show them off a little.

When we built our house, we had the front of the house block landscaped professionally (which was SUCH a good idea, we would still be trying to finish it if it were left to us).  My husband very cleverly advises people to include the landscaping if possible when budgeting for a house, which we did and I’ve never regretted it.  The back was our own design, and it grew over a period of a couple of years.  One thing we did agree on was NO ROSES.

We end up arguing about rose bushes, you see.  My husband is slightly trigger happy when it comes to pruning, and in our last house all three bushes died a horrible death because I felt he could just not Leave. The. Darn. Rose. Bushes. Alone.  He believed it was other causes that contributed to their death, I believe it was down to him.  We argued much.

As you can see though, there are many roses in our garden now.  We agreed, sensibly I think, that if we got rose bushes, we would get professional help in learning how to prune them.  Which is what ended up happening, and now some of our rose bushes are six foot tall.  I love, love, love them.  I believe he finally knows how to prune them (and no, I was not invited to do them myself, which is what I would have liked.  The outside is well and truly his domain).

It is the height of summer, however and as soon as one luscious little rosebud pops its head out, the sun quickly fries all the petals.  You’ve got to be quick to get a bunch that haven’t been cooked.

But as a whole from a distance, they do look scrumptious.  I love home grown roses.  Overblown, messy, every rose a different colour – I love that. 

 

 

We are about to undertake an arty quilt class in the next few months and I’ve been trying to find photos/ideas to use as my main theme.  The photo above worked really well, and that might be where I start.  Perhaps.

We do have other flowers in our garden.  I think this may be a native, but very probably wrong in that (gardening is not my speciality).  We have a few in our garden and they grow like weeds!

Can I tell you a secret?  Really, strongly, avidly dislike agapanthus.  Strongly.  Don’t know why I took a photo of it. 

Can I tell you another story?  We had three lovely, beautiful English lavender bushes.  Had is the important word there.  Despite my pleas – he pruned them.  They all died.  This is a struggling, very small little English lavender I made him go out and buy me.  He’s promised never to touch the lavender again. 

And just to show you it’s not all sweetness and light in my garden, we found this rather terrifying thing.  His body alone was over an inch long, without adding the legs!

Whilst it’s true that many of our spiders are poisonous, including the red back of course, I’ve heard that most of the garden ones are just normal, household variety, non poisonous.  We left this one there, his web was most impressive and it would be a shame to knock it down.

So there you are, a trip through my rose bushes.  Hope you enjoyed it!

Show And Tell - Stitching

Back in the olden days (pre children) I did a lot of cross stitch.  I haven't done it in years, though I did try a couple of years ago.  I found that my brain, post babies, didn't see to work the way it did pre babies.  I'm sure it's only a temporary problem, I'm sure when I don't have little people around so often, interrupting the flow of thought , I will be able to get the brain back into gear for that sort of work.  

With my luck, by that time my eyesight will have gone!  Ah, the joys of motherhood/growing older/ not enough time!

Once again, it's an Ipod photo so apologies.  Normal, lovely photos will resume once the children are back at school (seven days and counting).

Again, back in the olden days, I used to do a lot of cross stitch and a lot of it was the cutesey - angely type as shown above.  My tastes have changed a lot since then, and I'm not sure that I want all the cutesy stuff on show anymore.  But this one I think is sweet, it is tucked away in a quiet corner and it's just the right thing for the right spot.  

I did the framing/frill thing all by myself which I'm pretty pleased about.  I can see a couple of mistakes I made (not giving enough gathering over the bottom corners) but I can live with that.  

How are your weeks going?  Can you believe it's nearly the end of January?  Already?  Ridiculous.  I've got a couple of big events (birthday party for one daughter, shopping for the return of school) and then hopefully I shall be back in the swing of my home life.  Currently things are EVERYWHERE.  The girls have played so wonderfully all holidays, it makes my heart warm.  But, my lordy, they have made such a disaster area of the house with various cubbies and clothes out for dress ups and toys and games and legos......  I'm letting it all go (either that, or go berserk every minute at them and that's no fun) but once school gets back, I'm all set for a big, big clean up.  Don't get me wrong though, I have loved having them home, loved hearing their little voices as they play imaginative games.  I'll miss them when they go back to school.  We've all been sleeping in, eating late, no schedules - and that's just lovely.

I've also been preserving/stewing/jam making with all the various stone fruits that we have been blessed enough to have at present.  But the timing is always so hectic.  Christmas, School Holidays, Summer Fruit all seems to go together and it's difficult to try and fit it all in.  And everything- EVERYTHING- is sticky.  

So soon, counting down, things shall be back to order.

Four Patches

So remember last week when I was complaining about how hard four patches are to use?

I found this!

I’ve seen it pop up on a few blogs, but in particular this (new to me) blog:

http://www.quiltjane.com/2015/01/apq-quilt-long-go-four-it.html

where there are some beautiful pictures and ideas for four patches. I won’t steal the pictures because that will probably get me in trouble but I urge you to go and look – the quilts are just lovely

I particularly love the quilt sashed with the floral print, and I can can certainly see something in my future with that design.

Isn’t it funny how you ask a question, and the universe throws something into your lap to answer it? 

Happy Quilting!

Grand Illusion Off The Wall

And something else up on it!

You've seen this one before in a much better photo.  But I took this one with the Ipod so my apologies.  I've been busy sewing Grand Illusion blocks and it's all rather boring and messy with nothing much to show you yet, so I thought I'd put the next 'I'm Mulling It Over' quilt on the wall.

As with most of my quilts, this one started as a vague idea - a new quilt for our queen sized bed.  And it was all going along swimmingly, with no real design happening except that it needed to fit our bed.

It's made to the step above, give or take a bit of hand applique.  Then, like with many of my quilts, it all got a big complicated.

It needs to be queensized, so it needs great big whopping borders.  The plan for this one was to have the cream borders all around (forgive the truly horrendous creases - these have literally just come out of a shopping bag - no ironing here! and then much of the same as the pieced border that would sit nicely along the outer edge of our bed, before it drapes over the sides (if you follow me).

Problem that I have is that it's too busy a quilt for our bed and the design gets lost on it. But it looks so lovely up on a wall that I've decided I shall continue it on as a quilt to hang behind the bed, rather than on it.

Buuuuuuuut.  It's not big enough yet, so I need to add more stuff.  And there in lies the 'hmmmm....what next?'.  I'm definitely thinking of more of the same with the applique.  I have so much time (cough cough) that intricate applique is just what I need to do.  But to not do it would be doing this quilt a disservice.  Because I have to tell you, I really, really love this one.

Part of my problem also is that this fabric is slightly limited.  It came from my mother in law when she briefly took up quilting twenty years ago.  So it's all that twenty year old fabric that just isn't around anymore (oh how I wish it was!).  It's rich and glorious and will suit my room perfectly if I can only get the darn thing finished!

I guess the only way to finish it is to start.  I'm going to cut out some of those flowers, maybe a pot or two and have them extend probably from the outer corners to the middle with applique.  Nothing about this will be quick, but I don't mind that.  I'm keen to do the best job I can with this one.

Happy Quilting!

More Grand Illusion....

 

Dasha, in her comments asked me if I had tried butting the blocks up together without sashing.  I actually hadn't tried that version, so I promptly did it and took a photo to show.

 

It's certainly a viable option.  But whilst I love the little stars the connecting blocks make, it doesn't solve my busy-ness problem.

 

So...I have made an executive decision.  I will sash it with probably 2.5" white strips, and have the blue cornerstones as in my previous post.  I'm going to probably make the outer borders out of black, if I have enough.  And then I will do what Bonnie did for her original quilt for her borders.

 

And then I will have all it done.  As to what I will do with the remaining green checkerboard fabrics, I don't have a clue.  Perhaps I will put those away.  I'm not keen to unpick them.

 

That's my Grand Illusion mystery so far.  Hopefully I shall sew tomorrow.  Cross your fingers!

Ready for another mystery quilt?

Some of you may have remembered my post here:

http://sillygoosequilts.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/scraptitude-mystery-quilt.html

where I made this mystery quilt:

Well, there is good news!

Charlotte, the lady who designed this quilt has a new website and a new mystery quilt just starting.

I'm going to probably be foolhardy enough to start this one too.  As I have nothing in my UFO cupboard anymore.

!

Charlotte's website is here:  http://scrapitudequilts.com/

and many thanks to Lori who alerted me to the fact that there is another project I must do!

Hope your Sunday is a quilty one.

Suzie

Grand Illusion Mystery, another update

I've sewn a few more blocks together and laid them out on the display wall.  I still am not warming to it. 

I've been up and down and round about with this quilt.  I'm going to change it.  Now I'm leaving it the way it was designed - at least it will be finished.  Nope, I'm going to change it.  I seriously can't make my mind up.

I like the individual blocks.  I feel good about them.  They are pleasing to me.  And then I lay them out complete with the sashing, and it just deflates like a balloon.  I just don't like it.

So I took out all the sashings and left the cornerstones.  Immediately it's better.

Now my next dilemma is to decide a/what width to make the sashings, and b/what colour to make the sashings.  I'll have to buy more fabric, I don't have enough.  I guess I could do white homespun, I don't think that white looks awful, do you?

And then what to do with the 2037570 remaining green/white/black strips?  I've tried rearranging them into new blocks and they just don't work with anything.  I'm fairly sure I will have to unpick them, or make them for the back.  

All a dilemma really.  But I'm determined not to put it away with all the other UFO's because it's not going to magically turn into a project I will like six months down the track.  

Shall sleep on it, I think.

Suzie

Some more show and tell….

In the absence of anything productive to show you, I thought you might like to see something my mother did years ago, and also I thought I’d give you a lesson in why you should always buy all your fabrics from the same bolt.

Look at this lovely wall hanging Mum made for a quilt challenge years ago.  I’m pretty sure she didn’t win but she did very well regardless.  There was not a thing wrong with it for years.  But you can see the problem, can’t you?

Yes, those blacks.

One day, we noticed that the blacks were looking different.  It’s horribly pronounced right now, as clear as day.  But back then, we noticed that there was something only slightly off.  Just a hint of a problem.

Over time, we noticed the problem got worse.  I’m not sure if it was fading from the sun, though the quilt hasn’t really been in the full light for many a year.  Or if it’s just the way fabric react over time.

Obviously at the time she made the quilt there was no difference, and the blacks would have all come from her stash.

It’s a shame, really.  And it just goes to show how you can never really trust fabric to act in the way you want it to.  Blacks are ALL different.  I’ve yet to see two different bolts of black with exactly the same colour.  And they will react differently to time and sun and weather changes.

So learn from my mother, and always buy what you need when you need it.  Better still, if you can afford it, buy a whole bolt of black.  Don’t mix and match!

Hopefully I’ll be sewing a little more tomorrow, and I will have something more substantial in Grand Illusion to show you.  (Child free day.  Very quiet happy dance!)

Till tomorrow,

Suzie