Fabrics From Half a World Away

Last night I sat and watched TV and finished hand sewing the binding onto Stained Down Under (which should really be known as The Australian Quilt)  it has taken a year to finish as it spent several months in the I'm-fed-up-with-this-quilt box, but I'm really pleased its finished - I love it!

HUGE Thank You to Sarah who came up with the design and encouraged and cajoled several of us to make our own versions, and to my lovely Sister in Law, Lisa, who took me to every fabric shop within a 100 mile radius of their home in Sydney, and waited patiently while I bought the fabrics.

This quilt is now on the sofa waiting for me to finish on the computer and snuggle under it watching something decent on TV.

I was finishing the binding while I was watching the Arctic Ice Hotel being built on Channel 5.  I've seen it before but I was especially interested in how the workers were dressed, how they were keeping warm  . . . next month himself and I are off to the Arctic circle, and will then have 6 nights on this ship

sailing down the west coast of Norway.  I'm slightly excited!

I really didn't mean to get distracted, but . . .

I know lots of bloggers are on a mission to clear UFOs in 2013, and I know I have a lot of them too (some are confessed on this page), but I'm not ready to commit to finishing any of them just yet, I need to like them again before I can finish them!

But I really didn't mean to ADD to the list, so I decided that I would finish the Tasmanian Twins before I moved onto anything else.  I was doing well . . . but yesterday I went to the January meeting of the Richmond and Kew quilters, and took along Stained Down Under to ask for quilting advice.

Until I took it out of the bag to show to the other ladies (and the gentleman) I'd forgotten how much I love this quilt.

So today, when I came home from work to an empty house (yippee) I quilted it (just in the ditch, along the sashing), machine stitched the binding to the front, and FMQed a kind of label to the front (really difficult to photograph black FMQ on black: this section photographed best)

Not quite a finish as there are a few hours hand sewing left to do, but a very satisfying distraction.  Stained Down Under will be going in the sitting room, so mum, you can have this one for your bed if you want!

Stained Down Under

Stained Down Under has been pieced and basted - YAY!

Inspired by Sarah's Stained Quilt, but without actually following any of the instructions she worked long and hard over, I LOVE IT!!!

No idea how to quilt it though!

Bits and Bobs

I have been doing some sewing - an I spy quilt for a customer, but I haven't yet taken a photo of it (and its downstairs waiting for the binding to be stitched on next time I watch TV and I'm upstairs!!!)

But I can show you the layout of Stained Down Under (which needs to be imagined with black sashing, not mother's cream carpet sashing)

And one of the Fun With Fabric ladies' finished floor cushion

And my very exciting new template ruler from Jill at TabSlot  that arrived this morning.  Jill sells acrylic templates and rulers from her ETSY shop, and will cut them to size.  I quite understand that this looks a strange template . . .

I wanted 73/4 inch sides, (13.5 inches side to side), but Jill's acrylic sheets are 12 x 24, so she couldn't cut the size I wanted.  If you look closely at the two right hand side corners (marked in white) she has cut the start of the final two sides, so I can use the template to cut 4 sides, then flip it around, swapping the two yellow angles with the two white angles, and cut the final two sides.

Less hassle than it sounds,and VERY exciting as not having had this template has resulted in my long planned hexagonal calender quilt being mothballed for several years, and now I can start working on it again - yippee!

 

Creating with Colour

It seems ironic that my house is covered in a thin layer of orange brick dust, as most of Australia looks orange as you fly over it, and I've been working with my Australian Fabrics (and ignoring the brick dust!)

I now have 20 completed 15 inch blocks, so am heading for a Stained Down Under quilt about 60" x 75" (about 150 x 180cm) which should make a good sofa snooze quilt.  I'm not sure it qualifies for the Stained Quilt-a-long as I haven't even looked at Sarah's instructions - instead I looked at photos of her two quilts and then made it all up

I'll be taking all the blocks to mum's on Sunday to lay them out on her floor and play the auditioning / speed dating game while she helps me decide which block goes where, but meanwhile here are all 20

(apologies for the awful photos -  artificial light and flash :-(  and the phone was changing its mind about the focusing, and the colours it wanted to show!)

 Hopefully I'll be able to post photos of the final layout, taken in natural light, after the weekend

More Stains!

I've had a bit of time to play with my Australian fabrics: making more 15 inch blocks for the Stained Down Under quilt

They are looking much brighter in the photos than they really are.  I am really enjoying making them, enjoying the maths of them and the different arrangements for the sashing

(I will get round to trimming them eventually - at least these have been ironed!)

 

Yesterday was World Book Day, and all the children came to school dressed as their favourite character. One of the draw-backs of working in a school . . .  is that staff were expected to come dress up as their fave too.  I had lent out my Winnie The Pooh outfit, so toyed with Pippi Longstocking, but finally went as Joseph and his Amazing Technicoloured Dream Coat:

 

SOOO glad I didn't have to get out of the car on the way to school

Colourful Stain

I know I still have loads of UFOs and PHDs to complete, but I have reduced the total over the last few weeks so I felt I could give myself permission to start on the Stained Glass Quilt (what sort of stain were you thinking of???)

I am not following Sarah's instructions, because I'm rubbish at following instructions, and the thought of cutting all those pieces accurately filled me with a deep foreboding (there's a work I've never used before!).  Another excuse is that I am making a much bigger quilt than Sarah's instructions allow for, and that I have some fabrics I want to fussy cut, and they are quite big prints.

So I started today, and fussy cut my biggest print - Hissing Sid (you probably had to be in your teens in the UK in the late 70s for that name to be familiar, what did he promote? was it Milk? Or was that Humphrey?), and he needed to be cut as a panel 15 inches wide - so that is my starting point: 15 inch blocks.  I have used sashing (lead) cut at 1.5inches, and can present block #1

Untrimmed, and unironed, but a start :-)