15 Minute Challenge

Its school holidays this week and my son had a birthday party/sleepover so there have been a couple of misses this week.  Sunday night virtually no sleep on Saturday night and managing to drop the centre medallion from the Lancaster Quilt into my Hot Chocolate I gave up attempting to achieve anything.  At the moment most of my creative time has been spent writing patterns.  I have made great headway though and might even have all the wordy bits done by the end of the week.

Yesterday I did have a mixed media play date with Squid.  The other week I got the book Mixed Media  Girls with Suzi Blu after scouring Adelaide for Prismacolor pencils (have to buy the individually) as the colours weren't in the multi packs that I could afford.    Here is my effort which I am impressed with for a first attempt.  Still have to apply the bees wax over the top which will give it a more softer look.  Squid was a bit less impressed with her effort, I endeavoured to explain to her that this sort of painting doesn't have to be perfect, lots of tears were involved so I was regretting the play date idea by the end. She got over it when I managed to totally obliterate my girls face with paint layers and had to scrub hard to retrieve it.  

If I can remember it the week kinda of went like this.

Wednesday: stitched hanging sleeve
Thursday: Photo shoot for Soul Stitches (very unsuccessful must get back to that)
Friday: pattern writing, lancaster quilt
Saturday: pattern writing
Sunday : sleep
Monday: pattern writing
Tuesday: mixed media play date

Head on over to Kate's to see who met the challenge this week.

New BOM

I know that you are probably sick of seeing pictures of the work in progress but it is all finished now and I am into the pattern writing stage.  Luckily I had already started so fingers crossed it doesn't take too long.  I decided to head down to the beach to take photo's but the lighting was all wrong far to many shadows in the early morning the picture above is the best of a really bad lot.  Might have another trip to the botanic gardens during the holidays to try for some better shots.

If you are interested in doing the BOM Sarah at QFD will be running it again.  If you would like to do it through your local quilt shop get them to contact me.

15 Minute Challenge

Another week of not much blogging but lots and lots of stitching, at least I am keeping up with the challenge.  The quilt is finished, now I need to get into pattern writing and cutting instructions for the BOM. The quilt is called Soul Stitches.

Last week I also started another quilt, it is Lancaster by Sue Daley.  I picked up the paper piecing kit at Sarah's Sue Daley workshop and have been itching to start stitching but I wanted to get Soul Stitches finished first.  As I can't do lots of machine quilting all at once I needed something to stitch at night... that was my excuse and I am sticking to it.

Here is the centre medallion for the quilt.  The centre diamond is from some fabric I had in my stash and it just screamed fussy cut.  I have basted about 100 clamshell (need 50 for the centre) but will need 300 for the borders.  I am joining the clam shells which will form the corners of the centre square it is quite relaxing and I got a heap done in the couple of nights that I have sat down to do it.


Back to Soul Stitches, the Golden Paper was a complete success and is really quite easy to remove there are a few tiny bits in the stitching here and there but they should wash out when I remove the glue baste ( I used a quick spray of glue baste to secure the paper in place the instructions say pin).
























Now for the running sheet, the week kinda went like this.

Wednesday: Quilting, Lancaster clam shells
Thursday: Lots and Lots of quilting
Friday: more quilting and more clam shells
Saturday: finished quilting and prepared binding
Sunday: binding binding binding
Monday:finished binding
Tuesday: stitched down hanging sleeve.

Head on over to Kate's to see who else met the challenge this week.

15 Minute Challenge

I have been neglecting the blog, but I have been busy.  There have been quite a few facebook posts on the Seabreeze Page.  I am in the middle of quilting the next bom quilt.  I have also been worked extra this week,  September is our busiest month and believe me it has been a long month already and we aren't 2 weeks in yet.

I had a mini clean up in the sewing room in preparation for quilting.  The fact that I couldn't see the sewing table made it kind of no option at all.  When I was cleaning up I found a roll of golden quilting paper and I thought I'd give it a go with quilting the quilt.   I knew I wanted motives all over the quilt but I wanted it to be a bit more uniform that the usual make it up as a go along kind of quilting that I tend to do.  I drew some daisies in various sizes to fit the various blocks.  The golden paper is transparent enough to see though for placing and once it is stitched tears easily away from the stitches without disrupting those stitches.  Removing the paper after stitching is a bit of a chore but I was able to remove them from the first 3 stitched blocks in about an hour and while I did it finished off the thread ends as well.

The stitcheries are always a little problematic.  In the past I probably would have left the blocks unquilted, but a while ago I heard a long arm quilter say that she thought stitchery blocks should be quilted as as the quilt ages the blocks tend to gape and lift.  I now carefully stitch around the embroidery, usually only those bits that have the thicker stitches, like satin stitch and chain stitch and it helps to anchor the stitchery blocks and gives the embroidery a bit more of a lift and makes them pop out from the quilt.

On to the run down the week has gone like this

Wednesday: border fans
Thursday: border fans
Friday: stitched the final border on
Saturday: made up backing fabric and sandwiched the quilt
Sunday: started quilting
Monday: more quilting and stencil making
Tuesday: more quilting, removing paper and thread end sewing.

I am pretty sure the next week will be more of the quilting, removing paper and end sewing and hopefully binding as well.  

Head on over to Kate's to see who else met the challenge this week.

15 Minute Challenge

After 3 beautiful spring days and one hot and windy day yesterday winter has returned.  We woke up to rain this morning, which will freshen everything up after the north wind yesterday.  Here are some camellias' from my MIL's garden.  This bush I my favourite from the 3 or 4 she has it is about 2m tall and is covered in buds and flowers.   At the moment only the top half is flowering and I bet it took a beating yesterday with the heat and wind so I am glad that I took this photo on Sunday.

The borders of the quilt continue this week.  I am up to appliquéing the fans of the final border and I hope to finish that tonight.  I have even made inroads into the pattern writing.

My hubby had the day off yesterday, we went to my son's class he was presenting his RTA which is basically a project on a subject.  The student research the topic and then present for 9 minutes.  We have lived and breathed this project for a couple of months now.  His topic was Amelia Earheart, he made a replica of her plane from card we found the model on  the internet (www.fiddlersgreen.net) and he spoke very well and managed to embellished his presentation with more information than he had written on the cue cards which was fantastic.  He got an A.

I hope to start working on a couple of other projects that have been commissioned this week and then start quilting next week.  I have been quilting the quilt in my head for a few days now which is what I usually do before heading to the machine with it.

Head on over to Kate's to see who else has met the challenge this week.

Spring has Sprung

What a glorious end to the week it has been the first and second days of spring have been typically spring days here in Adelaide it has been wonderful.

It has been a pretty full on week.  I mentioned in my last post that my son had got injured in the final footy game for the season and that has been some cause for concern this week.  He is fully recovered now but I'm afraid the nature of his injury may haunt his father and me for a little while yet.  He came away with we suspect was slight concussion and a very sore neck which thankfully a couple of  treatments, lots of ice packs and anti-inflamatory gel put to right.

But Thursday he was given the all clear to play in his tennis grand final which his team won.  Here they are accepting the shield.

I've been stitching away getting borders done for the quilt.  Top and bottom are complete and I am working on the side borders.  I have to say they are looking pretty cute, can't wait till it is all finished so I can start quilting.  I have been starting to trawl Pinterest for quilting ideas.  I guess it will come to me when the quilt is under the bed of the machine.  

Curlypops Bag Adventure ended on the last day of August you can see the wrap up here and here. Lots of bag inspiration there.