A Quilted Wonky Goose!

I am enjoying working on this. Am enjoying the colours. So may have gone overboard in the amount of photos in this post. Just a warning!

I very gingerly cut the side of this strip and placed it over the squares and blanket stitched it on immediately! I was worried it would unfray. I always worry about that, hence the little scraps of fabric at the end of the stitching. Whats that called again? Leaders and headers?? Anyway, notice I have pinned the strip in place with the new flower head flat pins purchased at the recent craft fair, very nice pins! How have I survived so long with out flat head pins?

So with one side done, I then cut off the other, not so scared this time! And then straight onto the fun part, quilting little wavy echo lines on each side, up and down, up and down, up and down! Some close ups of the waves, in white, of course.



And this is what it looks like in its whole. Its quite stiff which isn't suprising with all that quilting. All I can see when I look at it is the green fabric with the white swirls, that maybe stands out a bit much.... Not unpicking it now! Now to bind it and actually move onto the quilt for the swap. This is all still testing the waters. Or rather an excuse for myself to have a little mini quilt too.

Wonky Geese Progress.

Its funny how things just come around. I have finished the quilting on the lemonade quilt in the last post and sewn on the binding. All I need to do is hand sew the binding down, that can wait a few days. But half way through all that I thought about how the background for my wonky flying geese blocks are going to look. Sort of like the sketch above!

So I thought I'd trial it on the first strip I did, the red/orange/yellow one? To go with the rainbow colours, on a background of blue and green squares, a gradiation, sort of complimenting the triangles? I had fun cutting up these 2.5 inch squares and then sewing them together this afternoon while the girls watched and acted scenes out of The Lion King. Really must get the soundtrack to that film, they love it! Anyway, back to the sewing.... I had all the rows sewn together and then laid the strip over it. The edges are going to be cut back and I am hoping to echo the gentle curve as like a frame for the geese. Am I making sense or do I sound silly?

I was thinking that I had a few more scraps of this white but alas, all I found was a little 3 x 5 scrap that would have maybe done one more level of geese. As quickly as I was sewing I was altering my design. I'm now going to unpick both the top and bottom rows, so the geese strip will fit nicely between top and bottom rather than floating. It will make sense, I can see it pitcured in my head, just to make it reality.

WIP Wednesday Week 22 - Stippling a Lemonade Quilt.

I finished this quilt top how many weeks back? Ummmmm, 7 weeks ago. Today I had the best of intentions to sew together my three 18 inch blocks for my table runner swap, sandwich it and quilt it as Wednesday is Wonderful Wednesday in this house! Grace at school, Milly in FDC, no shifts at work for me, a glorious 5 hours of sewing freedom.

But when I went to gather up all the things to sandwich my runner, I realized all my pins where in the above quilt top, all sandwiched and ready to quilt. So what to do? Take out all the pins or just sit down and start to quilt this one instead? *sigh* I quilted this one, all over stipples with swirly lovehearts thrown in occassionally. I have about another 40 minutes to do then its ready for the binding. I'm thinking lime green or red. Lime green might go better with the yellow backing....

Rainbow Wonky Flying Geese

I have finished 2 rows out of 4 of my wonky flying rainbow geese. They look good, just one slight problem that I didn't notice till I was up too the first of the blue triangles. See how above they aren't quite the same height? Can you work out what happened? Which colour did I miss on one of them?

The orange! 4th triangle from the bottom, opps! Missed it! But the funny thing is, the colours still run quite smoothly, you can't really tell its missing unless it was next to the other one. On the two rows I have still to sew, I am only up to the third triangles so I could sew these two the same and have a pair of 16 flying geese and a pair of 17!

Table Runner Sneek Peak.....

Amungst all my newly found skills in the joys of foundation peicing (ha ha!) I have been working on my runner for the Table Runner swap. Above is a sneek peak. I think if I post more detail or talk about it any more, my swapee will click it is her and that will spoil the suprise. Looks a bit like a puppy! The red and brown floral lurking in the background, I got in Sydney earlier this year. Slowly working up the confidence to cut into new fabric!

And this is the latest addition to the stash purchased today. Browns and creams and dark blue and purple? What is happening to my colour tastes? There is no way I would have brough brown this time last year, but that print, second from the bottom is my favourite! Wonder how long it will be before I cut into it, I only got half a metre. Thinking about it, I think it is all these swaps that have made me think outside my normal colour square and some of the combinations I have had to sew with I have liked. And that is a good thing. :)

Rainbow Wonky Geese Ready to go!

I have pulled out the colours for my rainbow wonky flying geese. Nice and bright as one would expect! But rainbow's are bright aren't they? I have added 4 more geese onto the chain, made it a bit longer as I couldn't condense the rainbow into 12 colours like the other one I did with the yellows to reds. There are 4 in each pile, so 4 rainbows.....

Last time I had the iron and a stack of material next to me and sewed one, ironed down then chopped a peice of the next bit of material sort of..... it took a bit of time. So this time around I have all the colours precut roughly ready to go. The white bits, there are too many, I'll cut and sew those as I go.

Now just to find the time to put them together. Busy weekend lined up, Daz is back tonight, working all day on Saturday, out to dinner on Saturday night with friends. Sunday off to Ad's house for the day. Can I take my machine? I'll have to as I am just itching to sew these!

Mini Wonky Geese block.

I was sitting there last night working on the second strip of wonky geese when I ran out of white fabric! I have a whole metre uncut of white and I thought the dots were the same size, but on closer inspection, realized that they aren't! Bugger! And here I was thinking I was so clever using up all my scraps of white. So I have turned this into a little mini quilt, its only 5 by 6 inches here. Perfect for a next swap maybe?! I have pulled out more fabric as the next ones I sew I'm going to a rainbow gradiation. The plan is to sew 2 quilts, one for me, one for my partner. One in the yellow, orange, red then one in a rainbow.

And I just had to blog this, it came home yesterday in Grace's bag. It was on display done for Mother's Day, a portait of their Mum and what she means to them. "Mummy likes to do sewing. She makes lovely quilts." Awwww, thanks Gracie!

WIP Wednesday, Week 21 - Foundation Flying Wonky Geese!

I have been in a sewing rut the last week, all I seem to be sewing is stuff for swaps, which I normally love doing but it just feels that I am sewing to other peoples colour choices and styles, rather than my own and am feeling a bit over it. Don't mean to say I don't enjoy the challenge of a swap, just that I want to sew something for me!

But I felt better yesterday when I posted 3 swap things out. Joy's Round Robin is now on the way to AJ. Emma has some green and white blocks heading her way. And Ellen has the mini quilt heading her way! So that only leaves 3 swaps to go. Two dolls quilts and a table runner. So which one do I start on now? The one that isn't due to be posted till August, the flickr dolls quilt swap. My partner has given me open preferences and we have similar taste in colours, so I am going to do something I would like.

I had a google search for foundation peicing after seeing Ad's very nice flying geese the other day. I've never done foundation peicing, time to give it a go. I found this version of wonky flying geese, called Chasing Geese and thought hmmmm, yellow to red with white. (I can't get the link to go on the actual page the pattern is on, you'll have to scroll to page 4 if you are interested.) I used all scraps except for the orange and white swirl fabric. I had to cut into a new FQ for that! This is one block done. It wasn't as tricky as I thought it would be and am happy with the result. Perhaps this is all I need to get out of that rut? Now to go sew 4 more......

Mini Quilt finished!

I have finished my mini quilt for the flickr 6" to 12" mini quilt trading swap! Ellen, its on its way to your house! Just a sneek peak for you at the moment. I'm happy with how it came out. Hope you are too. Next swap project please!

WIP Week 20 - Mini Quilt Swap

A few weeks ago I signed up for a swap which was a mini 6 to 12 inch quilt swap. And inspired by my wonky green and white blocks the other week, I whipped up this.

It was fun to make, loved the prints against the white, loved the wonky detailed quilting in the squares. I sewed down the binding and thought, ohhhhh, I love this! And I thought, I don't want to swap this, I want to keep it for me! So sorry to my swap partner, this one is staying here.

Then I thought, ahhh, what can I make her now instead? I didn't want to make another block like this, so I put the thought on the backburner in my head and turned my attention to repairing some dress up clothes from Grace's school I had volunteered to fix. I was rummaging in the storage tub looking fro some pink ribbon to sew on a cape, when I came across this in a plastic bag! I had totally forgotten about this WIP!

Its all blanket stitched by hand, from a pattern I got ages ago, the cow, bee and dog are my own design, but the rest are from this pattern. So, I have taken one of these blocks and made that into the block to swap! No pictures until its at its new home. Its looking cute though! Just have to sew down the binding. I have enough material here for a few blocks I think!

Baby L's Quilt Finished.

This quilt arrived at its destination over the opposite side of our big wide brown country last week, so I can safely blog it now. A quilt for a baby boy who is now 5 weeks old, we'll refer to him as Baby L. I really enjoyed sewing this one, must have been the white fabric, just looked so crisp and fresh. Total impractical for a baby boy, especially the third boy in the family! But the Mum has told me she has hung it in their room, so that would look cool.


It was the perfect size to just sit on top of a single bed, as I discovered when I took these photos on Milly's bed. The slice and dice blocks ended up being 8 inches square and there is a 2 inch sashing between the blocks, and a 3 inch border around. I wrote all the measurements down for next time as I would like to make this again, maybe for Milly's bed. In pinks and purples again with the white. Add it to the list hey.

The Game.

Got this from over at Sheridan's blog. Thought I'd play along too.

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

Caitlin's Hanger Finished.

Well it was Caitlin's party on the Sunday just passed but I didn't get this hanger finished in time. I wasn't too worried as I had a back up present of some Little People and am seeing her and her Mum tomorrow for our usual Friday Mothers group catch up over coffee. So I finished sewing the tabs on this last night while watching House on telly. I like the matching green floral background and orange binding. Got that at last years Craft Fair, first time I had even cut it up!

And while I am posting photos of hangers sewn, thought I would inlude these two. Finished for Christmas 2004 I think. Look at the dodgy binding! Oh dear, the things you learn over the years...... Nicholas is the longest name I have ever done on a hanger, hence it being a bit bunched up around the letters.

On other quilting news, have you stumbled across this group for Quilting Bloggers? A lovely site to find more quilting blogs to browse. You can add your blog for free, search for blogs by country as well. More time to sit on the computer!

Thanks for all the comments on my last post and the wonky blocks. The multi print one and white, I'm looking at it thinking this is boarder line being really crap or really cool. A fine line indeed! I have the block finished now and ready to sandwich. The fun part!

WIP Week 19 - The Start of the Swaps!

Well at the moment I have more swaps on than I can count on one hand! Some dolls quilt swaps, a table runner swap, the Round Robin and a baby block swap. Its all happening in my sewing room at the moment! Luckily I have my machine back from the sewing machine hospital! But funnily enough I'm in the groove with the little Elna and haven't packed it up yet, so dispite me having my newly serviced machine for over 24 hours, I haven't yet got it out the case and used it!

This is what I have been working on for the last few days. Been flicking through my new Jan Mullen book and getting some inspiration on wonky blocks! I'm loving using white at the moment, makes the colours look crisp. After doing these blocks, got thinking what about using a multi colour print?

So pulled out this fabric which I have had for awhile, don't know who made it. Its beautiful but I have no idea what I would put with it to match it, so perfect to cut up into smaller bits! I have a slight faint memory that Cass may have sent it to me on another swap. Cass? Ring and bells for you?

And this is what I have sewn so far. Sort of a crazy 4 patch in the middle, bit of court house steps and then the start of a star? I'm not saying which swap it is for as that would spoil the suprise of a swap, wouldn't it? Getting there....