Road Trip!

All week I’ve been thinking about going to visit my Mum but I kept on talking myself out of it cause she will be down the weekend after.

Mum must have been on the same wavelength though, as yesterday she sms’d me during her lunch break asking if I wanted to come down for the weekend and to bring Gma (Grandma) with me.

I replied that I was thinking about it before she suggested it but definitely would now and then hurriedly moved my hair appointment from Saturday morning to tonight!

I also suggested that I would leave Gma there for the week and then she could come back the weekend after with Mum and John.

So I now get the house to myself for a whole week!  Yippeeeee…..

But now I’ve realised I will have to work out my own lunch and dinner for allll of next week   It’s going to be sooo hard

I’m sure I’ll manage though.

So I know that I haven’t been around much but just letting you know that I won’t be around for the next couple of days either.

So now I’ve got to pack and work out what hand projects I can take and work on and hopefully finish….

*211 days to Christmas*

And Wa Lah!

First you start with a pattern in your latest AP&Q (Vol 17 No 12 – June 2009) that ‘talks’ to you.

Then you stay up waaaay too late picking out fabric from your stash for said pattern

Give it another hour and you have all the pieces cut

Mix a further 4.5 hours and quite a few episodes of ER and you then have half the quilt put together

And the rest of the blocks made

After a break to watch some tv in the other room and another hour you get this

From there, you add in a quick dash to Spotlight for some border fabric and another 1.5 to 2 hours you get this

Wa lah!  A finished quilt top

It measures just over 60′ square.

I really like how it turned out but I think if I were to make it next time I’d skip the corner blocks and put 1′ dark brown or dark green inner border before the large brown border.

I also think that it should have really had a darker brown border but that was the best of the selection that Spotlight had.

That said, I think it still turned out pretty well

I did try to talk myself out of making it but I thought I deserved starting something new cause I have worked sooo hard on my placemats which really don’t do anything for my creativity or my muse.

Later this afternoon I worked on my Thousand Triangles quilt which when finished is going to require a lot of stunt quilting to finish.

Now though, I’m off to try and finish my Kokeshi Dolls before they disappear!

P.S: Kellie is coming to Adelaide!!!  I can’t wait and have already booked my spot.  Weeeeee, it’s going to be sooo much fun

2009: Finish #5.1

At the moment Dad is down for a week to teach his thing on the weekends and spend time with us during the week.

So knowing that I would be spending a lot of time away from home  I made sure I had a lot of hand work to do so that I would be able to continue working on my list of things to do whilst spending time with him.

I’ve been working on these placemats for a few weeks and was very happy when I put the final stitch on the binding of the last one.

There are four of these placemats all identical and they match the four that Mum currently has.

2009 list

1. Blue Ladybirds – done 2/3/09
2. Memories of Spring – done 23/3/09
   
3. Blue Pinwheels – done 19/4/09
4. Green Pineapple Blossoms – done 24/4/09
5. 19 Placemats (4 Mum – done 13/5/09, 2 Xmas, 3 Boys, 8 Spare)
6. Berries for Breakfast
7. Snail’s Trails
8. Chelsea Steps
9. It’s Puzzling
10. Asian Hearts
11. Galaxy of Scraps
12. 9 Patch Medley
13. Thousand Triangles
14. Bento Box
15. Stars in Court

*note: this was written on 23/5/09 but posted on the 13/5/09 as that is when I actually finished the placemats!

Stop the Presses!

Lorraine at Hettie’s Patch has just put up a post to see who would be interested in having Kellie from Don’t Look Now over here in SA for our very own 2 day workshop!

Arrrrggghhhhhhhh!!!!!

How exciting would that be????

So go over to the Hettie’s Patch blog; do not stop, do not pass go and most certainly do not collect your $200; just go and let Lorraine know that you are interested!

Cause I know I am

Uncle!

(pic from Inspired Stitches weekend, completely unrelated to this post)

I surrender!

For once I’m not going to be able to finish what I’ve started….

Whilst at work today I had been thinking about how many pineapples I was going to piece, how big I was going to make it and whether I should really be starting a new project.

Tonight when I got home I went straight to the sewing room to continue working on my pineapples.

It took me quite a few hours and a bit of unstitching before I could finish 2 more.

Now that I’ve done a few more I’ve decided not to continue with it.  I really don’t have the patience for them unfortunately.  That and I find I’m wasting a lot of thread starting and finishing each piece.

So now I have 3 5.5″ pineapple blocks and no idea of what to do with them.

It’s a shame that I don’t like paper piecing as I’ve noticed on a few blogs some log cabin paper pieced quilts (3″ finished blocks) that look gorgeous and I was hoping one day to do one as well.

So, I might put the idea to the side and come back to it in a few year’s time