Star Trek Uniform and More Retreat Blocks!

Three more blocks arrived today from the USA :-) Beautiful floral fabric.

Thank you!

Now I'm off to continue sewing a Star Trek uniform for my 11 yo son who wants to look like Captain Archer on Enterprise. We found some blue velour in my stash and have chosen a jacket and leggings pattern from Ottobre. I've sewn two zipped patch pockets on the front and some yellow grosgrain ribbon over one shoulder and sleeve, I will have to get some more tomorrow for the other shoulder, I knew I should have bought extra! Here's a sneak preview :-)

We found a Space Shuttle badge and J used my machine's alphabet function to embroider "ENTERPRISE" on the badge, which is now sewn onto the left sleeve.

More Retreat Blocks!

More retreat blocks arrived in the mail today from two ladies in the USA! Such a lovely surprise :-) I think these will look great trimmed with some spring themed sashing.

Thank You !

Foundation Piecing pack

I wanted to learn more about foundation piecing and at Micki's recommendation I ordered a little starter pack from Carol Doak. Well, it has arrived :-), I took the book away to a two day work conference with me to read when alone in my room. Now I need to hog the TV and watch the DVD, then practice with the ruler and paper (and fabric).

I'll be starting the Surfing Sue quilt with miniature blocks once I get the hang of the technique. This is one of the projects I'm participating in at International Friendship Quilters

I won the block lottery!

I've been away for two days and came home to a lovely surprise. Wow, my name was drawn as the winner of the April Retreat lottery, with my QuiltingForAll Yahoo group. There are 53 framed four patch blocks on their way to me! Janice has shared photos of her completed blocks on her blog. The rest will be a surprise. Can't wait!

Thank you for organising the lottery Bev :-)

April Retreat Lottery

I'm participating in a weekend sewing retreat with QuiltingForAll. These are my completed lottery blocks as blogged here earlier, actually I only committed to 5 blocks (i.e. 5 entries in the block lottery) so I could increase my entry to 9 blocks and hopefully increase my chances of winning the block lottery, now that would be exciting!!! I was making ten blocks tonight but had a mishap with my cutting, shouldn't have been talking to DH ;-), so one fell by the wayside!

Looks like spring has sprung!

Long Tall with borders

Gosh it's hard to photograph finished quilt tops, looks more crooked than it is!! I found some cream fabric to use as the inner border (didn't quite have enough glitter accent fabric)which frames the darker areas effectively. I used the leftover background fabric for the outer border but had to halve the width from 6 1/2" to 3 1/4" to make enough strips to go all the way around :-). My daughter prefers this one to the Rock Star quilt top, more elegant and easy on the eye ;-).

Long Tall throw without borders

I've finished sewing the strips together for the Long Tall quilt top!! This is the throw size which is about 40"x60" at the moment. I'll be adding two borders, an inner border (1 1/2") and an outer border (6 1/2"). If I have enough fabric I thought I'd use the silver/black glitter accent fabric for the inner border and the background fabric for the outer border. Anyway I'll work that out during my next sewing session, time for a break .

The strips really had to be trimmed accurately to construct this top neatly, boy oh boy, spent a bit of time unpicking bits and pieces for this one and re-cutting some of the uneven strips (I bought the class kit!). It was an interesting logistics puzzle working out how to combine the strips to make the blocks and then to arrange the blocks so that the colours worked well. Relieved I've made it through to this stage, phew :-).

Mungo

Introducing my new little nephew, born in December 2008. He has 5 big sisters so is a welcome addition for his Dad ;-) Everyone adores him and he obviously feels the same!

I've started a Jacob's Ladder quilt for him using transport themed fat quarters (a more masculine theme for the house), will have to name the quilt 'Mungo's Ladder' ;-). Here are the first 4 blocks. I might have to make a little outfit for him this long weekend, I've sewn many outfits for his big sisters over the years. Baby clothes are so quick to make (and use very little fabric)!

April Retreat

I'm getting ready for an April weekend retreat (17-19 April) with my QuiltingForAll yahoo group. We're sewing up Framed Four Patch blocks from the quilterscache site. The four patch section is to be white or white on white with any floral and the "frame" is to be light to medium green.

Just have to share the retreat organiser's reasons for choosing this fabric combination ... "I chose these colours because it's been a long winter here and I'm so starved for greenery and flowers." It'll be a pleasure to help out ;-).

Seeing as the four patch needs to be in 3" x 6" pieces I thought I'd buy a couple of 40 piece 7" charm packs. I bought a white on white pack and an Ivana's Garden pack and some lovely spring green fabric for the frame from my local patchwork shop, shown below.

Long Tall and Rail Fence Swap

Quilt class on Friday night was fun, we were walked through the construction of a strip quilt pattern from Cozy Quilts called Long Tall, then we got to go shopping :-) The fabrics in the class strip pack were lovely so I only needed to choose background and accent fabric. I opted for a dark rather than light background because I love the combination of rainbow colours and black. The colours pop! I tend to like fabrics with images from nature so chose an ivy leaf pattern, it also softened the blackness a little. I thought a glitter accent fabric would be a striking contrast between the black background and the bright coloured strips, and it looks like ripples in a pond.

There were enough strips in the class pack to make a twin size quilt but I've decided to make the throw instead, I'm more likely to finish a smaller quilt ;-) So I had fun selecting the fabrics to use and grouping them into low, medium and high contrast, as shown below.

I'm participating in a Rail Fence swap on my QuiltingForAll yahoo group, and was able to select suitable strips from the rest of the class strip pack to use in the Rail Fence blocks due this month. There are 11 members participating and each has requested a personal colour combination for the blocks and will receive 10 blocks in the month they are drawn (2 members drawn per month). I made a cream, rust and charcoal block for a member in the UK and a cream, lavender and pink block for a member in the US. Oops I'm sorry I forgot to take photos before sending them!

Rock Star

In Feb 09 I attended my first Friday night strip club with Barry (sounds a bit seedy doesn't it, LOL!) at my local patchwork shop. The next one is this Friday April 3 (they're only held once every two months) so I thought I'd share my progress on the first pattern, Rock Star from Cozy Quilts.

A class pack of strips was supplied and we were able to choose our own light and dark background fabrics, mine are pumpkin and dark green. The construction was really clever, not as complicated as it looks! This pattern has shown me how to put together blocks 'on point' too.

The top is finished with a narrow inner border and a wider outer border, I thought the green Dancing Bugs fabric was perfect for the outer border.

With the left overs I've made up a diamond of mixed stars and pieced a border in alternating pumpkin and green. I've purchased some orange Dancing Bugs fabric for the outer border but have yet to add it.

I was thinking of using this on the back of the quilt but I think it would make a cute smaller quilt and I could just put some plain quilt backing on both and get more value for money, perhaps even donate one to charity.

Looking forward to Friday :-) Sneak preview of the next strip club pattern.

Convergence Quilt

I completed this quilt top in a Convergence Quilt (Ricky Tims' style) course at my local patchwork shop on 21 Feb 09. First I found a feature fabric I liked (the leaves in the border) and then had assistance finding 3 other co-ordinating fabrics! I bought 1m of the main fabric and 1 fat quarter of each of the other 3 fabrics, plus an inner border. I really enjoyed finding out how to create this amazing effect!!!

This is how I'd like to use the fabric bought in Berrima on the occasion of our 20th wedding anniversary.

First Quilt Top - A Sudoku Puzzle

Here's the top of my first ever quilt!!! The pattern is 'It's Puzzling' from the Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine (Vol 17, No 2), based on a Sudoku puzzle. We all enjoy Sudoku in my family and I thought I could handle sewing strips and sqaures together :-). This took 2 weeks to sew up in January 2009. Now to find some batting, backing and binding and finish it !!

Here's the centre block of the Sudoku quilt. I picked a feature floral and then chose 8 co-ordinating fabrics (all fat quarter size, cut into 6 inch squares) The sashing is black in 1 inch and 2 inch widths.

20th Wedding Anniversary

To celebrate our 20th Wedding Anniversary we treated ourselves to a weekend away in Kangaroo Valley at Cedars Cottages, staying in the Yurt. Here's a photo of the view we enjoyed from our deck whilst we drank home brewed apple cider.

On the way home we stopped at the Berrima Patchwork shop to select a few fabrics for a wall hanging to remember our experiences there. The red and black of the magnificent cliff faces, the laughing kookaburra family which laughed night and day making us laugh too, the Fresian and Hereford cattle grazing on the lush green grass nearby - especially the new calves bouncing around playing together at dusk (mooo!), and our walk to the beautiful river where we watched the fun of the water bugs whizzing around like mini speedboats.