Pottering Around

Grandma had Carpal Tunnel surgery yesterday so I’ve taken the Monday and Tuesday off so that I can look after her.

So I’ve been doing the little things around the house that she normally does and having to make sure that I do it exactly how she likes it.  Or else!

I’ve also been working on finishing the last of my placemats and have nearly finished them.  I’ll post some pics when they are finally done.

And then I’ve also decided to just quilt a few quilts to get them 1. off my list and 2. just done already

This one is called Snails Trails and I’m finding it hard to quilt as it is so big and chunky.

I’m very tempted to quit and bundle it up and ask someone else toquilt it however, I have  few more at this size and so really need to learn how to do it myself.

The size of  it makes me not want to sit there and do it purely on how long I know it will take to quilt so for the past week I’ve been doing a half hour here and a half hour there on it.

It is far from finished but I’m hoping that I will have a majority of it done before the end of today.

I hope you are all having a lovely day and are safe and warm out of this windy, chilly weather

Quilting Dilemma

I’ve been working on this quilt for quite some time.

The pinwheels have been made as leader enders for quite a few of my already finished tops.

The half square triangles are 1.5′ unfinished and it seems like there are millions of them!  I thought I’d never get this quilt done!

However, the past week or so, I have been working on it and concentrating solely on finishing the top.

Why?

I have no idea.  I just feel like I want it finished and done.

*Edit: Wait!  I remember now.  I needed the box that I was holding it’s bits in for the next quilt that I have my eye on starting.  It’s Mary’s Pinwheels and Stars*

I’ve just finished the last stitch to bring it to a flimsy and will go and layer it when I’ve finished this post but I thought I’d quickly show you what I’m up to.

I am also a bit stuck on how to quilt it though, it has a ginormous amount of seams and if I do my normal meander I know I’ll have to ’suffer’ through a lot of stunt quilting.

But I don’t have any other quilting methods up my sleeve to use.

Well, other than stitch in a ditch.

Which I have thought about and I was contemplating doing it on either side of the seams but then that leaves all the pinwheels without quilting and that won’t work either.

Hmmmm.

Do you guys have any ideas?

2009: Finish #6

I’ve been debating about whether I should put this one on my finished list but then I figured, if I’m going to put other placemats and wall hangings on the finished list then this can be put on there too!

This little quilt was a very quick and easy one from start to finish.

I made the top in one night in April, quilted the top yesterday and finished the binding on it at lunch today!

I’ve already found a place for it in my room too

So now it is onto the rest of the list….

BTW, have you guys seen Mary’s latest quilt pattern?  The pink and green looks just gorgeous and in a perfect coincidence I so happen to have some half square green and cream triangles left over from my Pinapple Blossom.

My fingers are itching to start it but I’ve now made myself a pact that I won’t.  Not until I finish a few more off my list below.

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 – done 6/6/09)
6. Dorothy’s Quilt – done 9/6/09
7. Berries for Breakfast
8. Snail’s Trails
9. Chelsea Steps
10. It’s Puzzling
11. Asian Hearts
12. Galaxy of Scraps
13. 9 Patch Medley
14. Thousand Triangles
15. Bento Box
16. Stars in Court
17. Kokeshi Dolls
18. Choc Coconut Ice

Making Progress

Mum and her partner were down this weekend as it was a long weekend and it is my ‘baby’ brother’s birthday tomorrow.

It was nice to hang with them and spend some more time with my Mum.

Mum asked to go shopping on Saturday at West Lakes and somehow a new handbag made it’s way home with my but it is super cute and has bling on it so I just could not resist.

Saturday night we went out to dinner for my brother’s birthday.

Sunday was pretty much spent at home and this morning I convinced them to take me out to breakfast.

We went to Evida which is my most favouritist breakfast place.  Good food, great coffee & fantastic views; what more could a girl want?

After breakfast it was time for Mum and her partner to leave and I got down the serious (:P) business of spending time at the sewing machine.

I’ve finished the day with the quilting and the binding sewn onto Dorothy’s Quilt and the same again for one of my Xmas Placemats so I feel like I’ve made some progress on my UFO list.

I’ve also managed to handsew down the letters for the next 2 boy’s placemats so all I have to do with them now is quilt them and bind them.

Then once they are done it’s just 1 more Xmas placemat left and I’m out of my Placemat Hell.

I can’t wait

Hope you all had a good long weekend.

I just wish it wasn’t so long to the next one…….

Spotlight Headsup…

Hey Guys

Just giving you a quick heads up for Spotlight.

I went down to my local one earlier today to pick up some more fabric for the back of the quilt that I made the other weekend and yesterday it was $5 a metre so I thought “that’s ok, I can deal with that”.

But, when I went throught the checkout it came down to $3/m!!!!

So, of course I bought more than what I went for.

In the end I got 7.60m for about $25.

Bargain hey?

The lady said that most of the fabrics that are on the reduced aisle are all going down one more notch.  So, the $8/m go to $5/m and the $5/m go to $3/m.

So, if you are after some cheap fabric for the backs of your quilts or even the fronts of your quilts get down to Spotlight

2009: Finish #5.4

Last weekend I took quite a bit of handwork with me to do whilst I was at my Mum’s.

Among all my goodies were these placemats which only needed the binding hand stitched onto the back.

There are 8 of them in total but I had been managing to do a few minutes here and there on them in the preceding weeks so I only(!) had 5 more to do.

I spent most of Saturday sewing them down and by the time I went to bed I had 4 more finished.

I had hoped to finish all of them that day so then I could say that they were done but unfortunately it didn’t happen.

I sat down Sunday night when I got back home with the intentions of finishing the lone placemat but that didn’t happen either.

And so it went for the rest of the week, although I did steal a few minutes here and there at work during lunch until there was just a little bit left to do.

So it came to Friday morning and I was sitting at work waiting for 8.30am to roll around to start work and I thought, I should just finish that **** placemat so that it is done with and I can move on with my life and do something else.

And that is exactly what I did!

At that stage they didn’t have a home.  I was toying with either dividing them up and giving 2 workmates 4 each, keeping them together and giving a workmate all of them or just keeping them on hand for a “just in case” present.

Then it came around to today and we were invited down to my cousin’s new house that she had just moved into.

I thought it would be nice to give her a housewarming present and as I’m currently trying not to spend money where I don’t have to I thought the placemats would do the job instead.

She seemed to like them so I think they were a hit

Ok, I’m now off to finish the xmas placemats, the letter placemats and then my Kokeshi Doll stitchery before it disappears on me!