2007 Quilt Review

Well its that time of the year again, Christmas is over, time to start thinking about what project to get stuck into next. Time to reflect over what one has made through the year. Last year it was these quilts here. This year, there is a few more....

Started out a busy January making the one above for a dear blogging buddy Cass's second daughter Lucy. I love this chicken print, very bright and vibrant.

Also in January, this one for the girls Family Day Care carer who was about to have her own baby. I am quite excitied as that was nearly a year ago and she is starting up her Family Day Care again which I can sent Milly to her again instead of the place she goes to once a week now.

Then in March I finished this one for another friend that had her second baby, a little boy named Hugo, cot sized. Terrible photo sorry. Old dodgy camera.

In May I finished another cot sized one for an online buddy who had her second baby. Used up quite a few blue scraps making this one!

And then in August I finally finished this one for another friend who had her second son, baby Elliott. One of my favorites this quilt. I was scared of using the white at first but I think it worked perfectly!

Also in August I finshed this Dissappearing 9 Patch quilt for another online buddy who had her fourth child, a boy after 3 girls, was just so happy for her to sew this one.

September saw the wrap up of a Raggedy Edges lap sized quilt.

October saw me finish Caitlin's quilt. One of the girls in my "real life" Mothers Group had her second child, a girl, little Caitlin.


November saw the unveiling of two dolls quilts as part of a swap organized with the EB Quilters. A fun swap!

December sent me into a spin, deciding to make two lap sized quilts as thank you presents for Grace's kindy teacher and her assistant. The above one was for the teacher, Mrs K.

And then this one for the assistant teacher which I pulled out all stops to finish in 19 days! Thank goodness for charm square packs and the stunning simplicity of Dissappearing 9 Patches!

Phew! I think that was all! While I was going through all my posts gathering these photos and working out when I had made them, I realized that a lot of my friends have had babies this year and not one of these quilts has stayed in my house! 2008 I am going to finish a single bed sized quilt for both of the girls and finally finish my own queen sized quilt. That is the goal for 2008!

Christmas Craft and Lights.

No WIP Wednesday today. Actually its on holidays till January next year. There is simply too much going on at the moment to sew! I feel like a slack blogger too. Daz is on holidays at the moment, so I have stepped into the full time working role at my work. Which at first seemed like a great idea but today was day 5 of 9 to 6 and I'm over it! Can't wait for Christmas just to have a break! Daz and the girls have been having a ball, every day I have come home to a trashed house and dirty faces, they are loving it! We took them last night to see some Christmas lights not too far from our place. This cul de sac has won the award for best Christmas Lights 4 years in a row! It was like peak hour traffic last night at 9pm, but the girls loved it!

Haven't really mentioned in here, but Grace has finished kindy. Last Thursday was her final day. Next year it will be full time pre primary, she is growing up and already looking foward to the "big kids school". She came home with lots of goodies, two huge scrap books of all the work she has done this year and a box of Christmas craft. She does love her craft! Hmmm, wonder where she gets that from!

My Christmas Swap from Leah

Look at all these lovely goodies that I recieved in the mail from Leah as part of the EB Sewing Girls Christmas Swap! Talk about spoilt! A copy of the wonderful Patchworking & Quilting mag, which I don't have! A cute pincushion, made by you Leah? Some lovely Christmas material, some sweet iron on transfers of little retro maids kinda like Holly Hobbie, a childhood favourite. A handstitched little Christmas hanging of a very trim Santa! I showed Grace and her comment was "Look at his small legs! Is that really Santa?" And lastly a very genourous 10 fat flats from Spotlight. You spoilt me with 10 Leah, lovely choice of colours too, right up my pallette alley! Thank you for everything and also thank you for organizing this swap too, great work!

Was thinking about all the swaps we have done this year. We have had the Valentines Day swap in February. The Kitchen Swap in April where I scored some lovely goodies from Cass. The Dress Up Swap in July from Kerry. Those are Milly's faourite shoes Kerry! And finally the Bag Swap in October from Bec. Such a great way to share with such a lovely group of ladies. Wonder what 2008 will hold for us in the world of sewing swaps?

WIP Wednesday - Week 48 - Santa Photo.

Okay, its not technically a sewing WIP, but still this is a WIP! It will take me 3 photos and about 6 visits to various Santa's around different shopping centres to get Matilda warmed up to the jolly man in red till I get a snap of her also on his knee! When this one was taken last week she was crouching behind the pram wailing "can we go home now!" Grace mean while walked up to him cool as a cucumber and asked for a Barbie motor home please! She has been wary of him too these last two years so it is lovely to share such a beautiful photo of her with Santa.

19 Day D9P finished!

I did it! The 19 day quilt challenge I set myself back here, finished! I think the fact that all my squares were already cut cut a huge chunk of time off. I was up too 12.30 last night finishing sewing on the label. I redid Mrs K's one from the last post, same image exactly, luckily it was still on the computer. I'm doing a different label technique now as on Saturday night we went to friend's for tea, the family who's little boy got this quilt. And I gave that to him in August and despite it not being washed, the label is all bubbling and cracking and peeling off from the fabric I had ironed it on! How embarrassing! I'm not too sure what went wrong as the labels I have done the same way at home here and have had for a few years are fine. But anyway, no more Tshirt transfer film for me, I am going the printable fabric way, using this here.

Anyway, slight ramble off the subject, sorry! Today was the last day of kindy for me. Grace's last day is on Thursday but Daz will be doing the kindy run as I'll be at work. Seems like this year has flown by, no more kindy runs till 2009 when Milly starts. Such a PITA when we started but one got used to it. So being the last day, decided to give the teacher and her assistant their quilts this morning. They didn't open it while I was there, popped it under the tree and said thank you and gave me a kiss as I thanked them for all their hard work. Drivng away I felt a tiny bit dissappointed that I wasn't there when they opened it. On one hand its nice to see the persons face when they recieve a quilt, on the other hand its kinda embarrassing all the gushing of "Wow did you make that?" from other people.

When Milly and I came back for the pick up, they had opened them and were all smiles and thank you's! Grace said they sat around the Christmas tree and Mrs K opened all her pressies and "when she opened mine, I had to go to the front and she gave me a big cuddle and said thank you and said she liked it very much". Awwwww!

Week 47 - WIP Wednesday - Mrs's K's quilt finished

Well its not technically a WIP, as this quilt is finished! I finished Mrs K's quilt last night. Which means I can sigh with relief, phew, only one more quilt to go before the end of term. I am pleased with this one. Not at all my usual colour palette but I like it. And without beating my own drum too much, I am chuffed that with each quilt I finish, my skill is a little better, not that many tucks where I haven't smoothed the fabric down! I took it up and showed Mum last week when I was still sewing down the binding, and started to show her the faults in it. She waved it off saying "If Mrs K isn't a quilter, she won't notice!"


I love the back too! Not only cause the quilting itself shows up nicely, but cause thats where the label is! How cool is this label? I got Grace to draw a picture of Mrs K, here she is in her garden with her pretty flowers (jumping for joy as the school year is nearly over I think!). I then photographed it, went into Photoshop and added the type, then printed it out on my usual tshirt transfer way and then blanket stitched it on. I used Joy's tip of vizeofixing it into place which worked well.

Now all I have to do is wrap it and get Grace to keep it a secret till we give it to her on Monday.