A few weeks back Lorraine from Hettie’s Patch rang me to see if I wanted to participate in November’s class with Kellie from Don’t Look Now as I hadn’t been able to make October’s due to illness.

I had a bit a of a think about it and decided that I did want to do it as I had been disappointed that I hadn’t been able to make the first class.

It was a busy week leading up to the class and I tried to get everything ready for class during the week and of course packed waaay too much!

On Saturday we learnt how to cut out the shapes, iron them onto the background fabric and then sew them on.

Sunday was learning free motion quilting patterns and practicing that on either another blank practice sandwich or just practicing on the square that we had worked on on Saturday.

As I really wanted to have this project done and finished by the end of Sunday I decided that I would just quilt on the cushion that I had already started.

That, and I’m no good at practicing.  I’m too impatient.  I’d rather just go for it

The 2 things that I really wanted to take away from this weekend was learning different quilting patterns and also how to make a cushion.

Mid Sunday afternoon I finished the machine quilting and then I started bugging Kellie with questions and help so that I could accomplish my 2 learning outcome (sorry, have been studying for tafe too much lately!).

Thankfully, she was very patient with me and didn’t seem annoyed with all my questions!

I got all but the binding sewn onto the cushion by the time they kicked me out and as we finished still within shopping time I wizzed down to Spotlight to pick up and cushion insert and some loose filling.

Back home I set my machine up and by 7pm that night wa lah!  I was done

I think it turned out well and I really like my swirls.

***

In other news: Rose was holding a Giveaway for her latest pattern Teen Dreams.  I left a comment as it is a really pretty pattern and now that I know how to make cushions it seemed to fall right up my alley.

However, I wasn’t expecting to win but guess what?  I did!  What’s even better is that it arrived today   I can’t wait to get some spare time to be able to do some sewing and create it.

Anyways, I know I’m a bit late with this post but better late than never right?

I’m off to finish binding a wall hanging I’m making for a friend at work’s baby girl.  I’ll show a picture and post it when I’m done.

Hope you are all enjoying the sunshine and have finished your Xmas shopping

So, I’m back and ready to post but my internet is broken!!

I had all of these lovely photos to show of my “Quilt Camp” weekend that I spent at Hettie’s Patch at Kellie’s workshop but as I can’t get my internet to work (please god, let it be soon!) I can’t upload them to show you here.

I am also ready to start quilting and finishing off some projects and also start a few new ones – mainly cushions (now that I know how to make them, thanks to the lovely Kellie ) for gifts for Xmas however, I can’t as I still have to finish stuff off for TAFE.

Bring on next Tuesday when TAFE is all done and all I then have to contend with is work

I’ll post some pictures as soon as I have my internet up and running and I can also show you the cushion that I finished Sunday after class as well

I was reading on Kameleon’s blog that there is currently an Aussie Hexagon Challenge going on in Queensland at the moment where they are aiming to create the World’s Biggest Hexagon Quilt.

Too bad they want the centre hexagon green, otherwise I would have had a tonne of hexagons they could have had!

They ‘only’ need a further 800 rosettes!

It will be amazing when it’s done, I can’t wait to see it

Well, I don’t know about you guys but for me sewing at night I sometimes find it a bit hard to see.

And I know that it is much easier to see what I’m doing when I sew during the day and I get the sunlight streaming in the front window.

So, I have worked out that it is either the fact that I’m getting older or my eyes are going on me ’cause I’m getting older or if the light in the sewing room is getting worse.

As I can’t do much about the first two options I’ve gone with the third which I can fix!

Wa lah!

My new wizz bang floor lamp from Kmart.

It does have a charming list to the left however, I figure that 1.  you can’t expect good quality for $40 and 2.  I really can’t be bother repackaging it up and taking it back.

Thinking about it now I probably could have gone to Target and gotten something slightly better for the same price but it’s too late now!

Side note:  has anyone else noticed how painful it is now to buy a light globe?  I got lost when I had to choose between cool light, warm light, screw in, twist in, 9w, 11w (not their real watt!) and mini or floodlight size.

I remember the day when you just picked one up and off you went

I must be getting old

Well, I’m very happy, ecstatic even, to annouce that my sewing mojo seems to have found it’s way back to me

This of course, has made me a very happy girl and I’ve been ensconced in my sewing room today since 2pm.

I’ve been making the first block of Butterfly Garden that I made many months ago into a wall hanging as I’m now starting again with that quilt with a different colour scheme.

Of course, when quilting it I ran out of thread at 5.05pm so I couldn’t run to the shops and buy some more.  I’ll go tomorrow once they open once again.

So I moved onto a new quilt pattern that will use up some left over half square triangles from the green baby quilt that I made a few months ago.

I’ve now got that to a point that I can’t do anything more until I can get to Quiltaholics and buy some more fabric.

“My mojo’s back and my credit card’s going to be in trouble*…”

*Sung to the tune of “My Boyfriend’s Back”

I haven’t been blogging lately because I haven’t been sewing.

It seems that my mojo has just up and left me.

I have had the week off work off sick as I seem to have caught a really bad cold.  They even tested me for whooping cough!

Thankfully, the test came back negative and I don’t have it.

However, I don’t think that I’ve ever been this sick in my life.

I have been working on bringing my mojo back this week working on my hexagon quilt and also Leanne’s Butterfly Garden so hopefully we’ll see more posts more often from me

Having said all that, I was supposed to go to the workshop at Hettie’s Patch this weekend with Kellie from Don’t Look Now fame.

But after the doctor’s visit on Friday and add to the fact that I also seem to have given my Grandma this cold I thought it would be best if I gave the workshop a miss.

I would hate to infect everyone else with it.

I hope you all have a great weekend and learn lots of cool stuff

I have been pottering around with Stars in Court over the past two weeks and haven’t really made much progress as I just haven’t been putting the time in.

However, the end of July is nearly upon us which means August is around the corner and I will be needing this quilt soon so that I can give it to it’s owner.

Although I’m really starting to fall in love with it so hopefully I’ll be able to let it go!

Friday night however, I decided that enough was enough and I would just have to pull my finger out and get it finished.

After I finished putting the borders on I went and got out the material that I had bought from Spotlight the other weekend only to find that the instructions had been wrong and I hadn’t bought enough

I was not a happy.

I also wasn’t going to go and buy some more to make it enough so I grabbed 2 other pink fabrics and then cut enough 10.5′ squares to make a big enough backing, sewed it all together.  Crisis averted.  And it looks really pretty now too.  Much prettier than it would have been with just the one fabric.

Saturday and all of today were relegated to quilting and I managed to get to the end of that by 8pm tonight.  Another 1.5hr later and I also had binding sewn on ready to be hand stitched to the back during the week.

Whilst I’m happy with the way that it has turned out I’m going to go to the quilt store tomorrow to get some sparkly yellow and pink thread and quilt a star in the middle of the appliqued stars.

At the moment I’ve just gone around them and it does look okay but not quite right so I’ll fix that after I finish hand sewing the binding down.

I also found this site on the weekend and made up my own tag which I think looks groovy.Why don’t you hop on over and go get yours

Hope you all had a lovely weekend.

Posted in patchwork Tagged: stars in court, wordle ]]> http://gingerquilts.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/all-quilted/feed/ 0 Ginger http://gingerquilts.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/a-day-in-my-life-16-july-2009/ http://gingerquilts.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/a-day-in-my-life-16-july-2009/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:47:47 +0000 Ginger http://gingerquilts.wordpress.com/?p=312 ]]>

*Quick note: I’m posting this on Saturday 18th July*

Well, I’ve just looked back in my archives and can see the last time I did this was exactly 1 year ago!

I never meant to leave it so long and every time the 16th of the month rolled around I always felt bad that I wasn’t posting but just not bad enough to do it!

However, this month I am in a ‘get it done’ mood and have decided to pick it back up

So here we go!

****

5.00am – first alarm goes off, decide that I’m waaay too tired to get up yet and press snooze.

5.20am – second alarm goes off, still too tired to get up.  Definitely don’t want to go to the gym either.  Hit snooze.

7.30am – this is a much more civilised hour.  And I don’t start work ’till 9am.  I get to sleep in a bit longer.  Snooze.

7.35am – hang on, I start at 9am… that means that I have to leave at the latest at 8.10am.  Ooops.  Lay in is over.  Gotta get up and go.

8.10am – head out the door for the drive to work.

8.40am – arrive at the coffee shop near work, order my coffee to go, hope back in the car and drive the couple of meters left to go to work.

8.42am – arrive at work, unpack my stuff, make some porridge for brekkie and turn my ‘puter on.

9.00am – start work, it’s all go go go.  My boss isn’t in today as she’s in Melbourne on a work trip so it’s up to me and L to move things along.  New girl isn’t in today cause she is apparently ’sick’.  Again.

11.00am – i’m hungry.  what’s to eat?  Hmmm, I’ll have my banana I think.

12.00am – think about having lunch, cause I’m hungry again/still.  Go grab my sandwhich from the fridge and fill up my water bottle.  Decide to keep working and get something done.  I’ll take my lunch break later.  Someone’s going down to the Green Cafe, I’ll get them to grab me another coffee

“coffee makes the world go ’round, coffee makes the world go ’round….”

14.30pm – ok, I think I can see the light at the end of today’s work and feel happy that I will get it all done.  Debate over taking my half hour break but decide that I’m just too tired and if I stop I don’t know if I’ll start again.

17.00pm – finish work for the day.  I’m hungry again.  No time to stop though, gotta get to the gym in time to get a bike for 6pm RPM.

17.30pm – get to the gym with plenty of time to spare, pick up my ticket and go get changed.  Run into a few people I know and say “hey”.

18.00pm – and so my hour of spinning begins.  Along with the voice in my head that asks me if we are done yet, tells me that this is really tough and taunts me with images of sushi, hot chips, burgers and jersey caramels.  Gotta love the voice that lives in your head!

19.00pm – i’m absolutely starving.  And for some reason I think that this is right time to go shopping for sushi and lollies.  Bad move.  I buy out what feels like the entire lolly aisle and as Coles didn’t have the Jersey Cows that I was really craving I decide to head into Woolworths to see if they do.  They do, so I buy them plus a few more things.

19.45pm – home now.  Completely and utterly starving.  My tummy thinks that my throat is cut.  Warm up dinner and sit down to watch the end of Masterchef.

20.30pm – can my day get any better?  I went to the gym, Chris got booted out of Masterchef (finally) and Rush is about to start.  What a fantastic day!

21.30pm – Rush is finished, I’m exhausted so it’s time to hit the sack me thinks.  Didn’t get any sewing done like I planned/wanted to but I did get a lot of other stuff done so it’s not all bad.

Night all

Posted in day in my life, life Tagged: gym, masterchef, rush, work ]]> http://gingerquilts.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/a-day-in-my-life-16-july-2009/feed/ 1 Ginger http://gingerquilts.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/too-ambitious/ http://gingerquilts.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/too-ambitious/#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:05:20 +0000 Ginger http://gingerquilts.wordpress.com/?p=310 ]]>

So it would seem that I was entirely too ambitious in thinking that I would have Stars in Court quilted or at the very least up to the layered stage by the end of the weekend.

I was still appliqueing the stars Friday night and continued all through Saturday – when I wasn’t running all over Adelaide buying stuff!

I had 2.5 stars left to applique today which I did this afternoon.

It was around 3pm when I was able to start sewing the blocks together to form the top.  It took me to 9.30pm to get to this stage:

Whilst I was sewing the top together I ‘leader endered’ the Bento Box quilt and got the top completely finished.

It finishes at 55.5′ square and I’ll bind it in the blue that’s in the centre of the squares.

Once I’ve finished Stars in Court I”ll layer the Bento Box, quilt it and finish it off.  It is going to be a wedding present for my Personal Trainer when he gets married in February.

I also started Stars & Pinwheels, they being the leader ender to finishing the Stars in Court top.

I really want to do this quilt so I thought if I do a little bit here and little bit there it would be ok and it was either this one or the Clothesline Quilt that Oh Frasson blogged about the other day.

The other quilt that I really really want to start is a version of Mary’s Hearts & Strings.

But I guess they will all just have to wait until I get a few more things finished.  My sewing room is getting waaaaayyyyy too messy

Ok, well, I better go.  I gotta tidy up and get stuff ready for the work week.

Hope you all had a fantastic weekend.

Oh and btw, I bought some Needle Grip Its on the weekend to try and they are fantastic.  I have done heaps of appliquing on the stars over the last 2 days and I don’t even have a hole on my middle finger like I normally would as they have protected my finder from the needle.  I highly recommend them!

So I have 2 border options for Stars In Court and I think I know which one I prefer but though I’d post both options here to see what you guys think.

I will be binding it in a pink that is close to the background of the yellow stars.

I’ll let you know on the weekend which one I went with

Option A – Butterflies

Option B – Turtles

I was going to use the turtles for the backing but looking  at the pattern I see that it wants 2.2m which I know I don’t have.

What I have would have been enough if I had of stuck to my original plan of making it square and smaller than the pattern but at the last minute I went “what the heck! I’ll make it the same size as what they say…..”

However, I saw at Spotlight last weekend that they have it again but a shade darker so I might (ha! who am I kidding?) will mosey on down on the weekend with my current turtles and see how different they are.

I’ll also look in my sewing room to see if I have something suitable regardless, so that potentially I don’t have to buy any more fabric.

So votes please

Option A or Option B?

P.S – I didn’t buy the Jelly Roll ’cause it was going to cost $12 in shipping which I didn’t think was worth paying for.  And I could have bought more fabric to make it worth it but I couldn’t find anything else that ”talked” to me.

Good thing too cause I hit Target after work for some new jeans and ended up buying way more than I intended