WIP Wednesday - Strippy Binding - And a Worthy Winner!

I have finished quilting this Stacked Coin baby quilt. I used a pale pink polyester thread, ek, never again. The colour is lovely, it works well, but being a cheap and nasty brand it broke everytime I got any speed up on the machine. So there was twice as many threads as usual to sew in. Oh well.... Just pinning down the binding and then ready to hand sew in place. Then I can turn my attention to my next project, a little swap with the lovely Lynne!

Thank you for all the lovely comments. I'm working my way through answering them all. I wish I had 130 quilts to give away. Interestingly enough, about a third of the comments had their reply set up to "no reply blogger". Which means if you leave a comment on someones blog they can't email you back to reply to that comment. Some people may prefer it that way or some may not just realize that they haven't got their email linked up to receive email responses. Lisa wrote a great post back here on how you can check. She explains it better than I could!

So back to the drawing barrel! Good old Random Org pulled Epiphany's name from the barrel! Congratulations Sue!!! Thanks everyone for entering, see you back at the 700th post giveaway!

Ivanhoe Crossing.

Remember that scene in Australia where the Drover drives Nicole across the water? Or where you too busy drooling over Hugh Jackman like I was? It was filmed at a place called Ivanhoe Crossing which is not far from where we now live.

We went there yesterday for a look see, no Drover in sight unfortunately.

The water flows so fast here. It depends on how much water is being released upstream from Diversion Dam to as how fast or slow it flows. Perfect place for catching barramundi apparently although no one was there fishing today.

This was as far as we could go, but of course we wouldn't dream of crossing it in our little car! Must, must, must get a 4WD! The road will open in the "dry" season which officially goes from April to September. I told the girls we would come back when Grandad came up and cross in his 4WD! See those two dark dots in the water on the left? That was actually the heads of two Japanese backpackers who were lying on the road in the water cooling down. The water was about maybe 40cms deep? Their car was parked near ours, Queensland number plates, packed full of camping gear. They didn't read the sign as Grace pointed out to me.

I wouldn't swim here! I'd be torn between worrying about getting washed over the edge or chomped by a crocodile! So we'll stick to the backyard pool.

Thanks for all the amazing comments about the quilt up for grabs to celebrate my 600th post. Still a few more days to enter. Good luck!

600th Post Giveaway!

Well, after thinking about starting a blog, I have bit the bullet and decided to do one. I do a bit of quilting at home when I'm not running around being a Mum to a 3 year old and a 21 month old. Sometimes I do both! I'm hoping that by starting a blog about my work it will inspire me to do more.This is what I am working on at the moment. Its a quilt for a friend who had a baby girl back in May. Better get cracking! I'm going to add a boarder of purple 2.5 inch squares......

I started blogging on the 28th of July 2006, nearly 4 years later I have cracked my 6ooth post! Above is a snippet of my first ever post. A lot of sewing and friendships have been made since then! The girls have grown a bit, we have seen Daz through Uni, moved house twice and moved to a new town the other end of Australia and I have brought a lot of fabric since then!

To celebrate I am giving this little mini quilt away. I have just finished sewing down the binding. It measures 13 x 17 inches. I used some left over charm squares from the Stacked Coin I blogged about in the previous post. And quilted in in my favourite quilting pattern of the moment, pebbles. Wouldn't want to do this all over on anything bigger than a mini quilt, it looks great but it took awhile!

I randomly pieced these together and had bit of a d'oh moment when I realized the two brown and green blobby bits were right next to each other. But then I really liked it, sort of draws your eye in.

So leave a comment below. Don't have to answer any questions or relate a favourite memory or anything like that, just pop out of lurkdome and say hello. I love reading everyone's comments in any post, makes it feel like I'm not talking to myself. I'll draw a winner from the random selector thingy on say Wednesday. See you then!

Stacked Coins.

What do you do when you break a needle trying to do reverse stitching with your walking foot on? You fling the Round Robin you are quilting across the other side of the ironing board, break out the Lila Tueller Santorini charm squares, slice them in half, sew them randomly in four piles, sash with 4 inches of white and instant quilt top for another girlfriend who is due in a few weeks. I don't know if she is having a girl or boy, hopefully a girl.

Have realized that this is my 599th post. Just around the corner from the big 600! It's giveaway time I think, you'll have to come back. Meanwhile gaze up at the massive Ghost Gum tree in our backyard.

WIP Wednesday - More Round Robin Quilting.

Thanks for all the lovely comments about my Round Robin quilting. I've been working away at it. A little bit here, a bit there. I have finished the first two "rounds" as above. Pebbled all the red and white half triangle squares. I have changed threads and am using the white I purchased back here. It is a bit shinier than the cotton I was using before, but you can't really tell unless you look and the only person who will look is me! It seems to be good thread, if I go to fast though it does break but otherwise no problems.

For these ones I just echo stitched as close as I could to the edge of the top white triangle and pebble quilted just that one. The rest of the block sort of puffs out but thats okay, if I pebble everything it will be as stiff as a board!

I have started on one side of the third "round". No pebbling here, just a straight stitch either side of the seam. This is a pain to do, a lot of short sew, turn, short sew, turn the quilt around again back the other way. But it will look effective I keep telling myself. Getting there....

Round Robin Quilting.

Remember this one? Our Round Robin which started here and I got back completed here. So since December 2008, (oh I cringe to write that date, so long ago) for over a year it has sat folded up in in my pile of stuff. Until yesterday. I have joined the local patchwork and quilting group up here. I have never belonged to a real life quilting group before. Work and kids always got in the way, but here they meet on a Saturday, once a month, perfect! So the question of what to take on the first meeting. Out of the two projects I want to get finished at the moment, my wonky house quilt is just too big and these flowers, well I need a lot of space to sort these as I go. So I thought Round Robin it is!

After explaining to some of the ladies what a Round Robin was, I got around to sandwiching it on the floor, then popped my new and improved FMQ foot on and was off! I got the impression from some of the ladies that the quilting bit is just too hard, most of them seem to get their quilts sent away to be quilted, which is fair enough, each to their own way of doing things. But I like the quilting bit! So far I have just gone for the pebbly effect on the white. White on white, bit hard on the eyes doing it.

Not in all the white area's, just some.

The back is looking great! I went through 4 bobbin changes in the time I was there. It was great, I got to sew from about 11 to 4, I'm back definitely next month. The house was trashed when I got home but Daz was putting a lamb roast in the oven as I walked in the door, so not so bad. :)

Bron's Wonky Star Blocks.

Its Bron's turn this month in Around The Block. Wonky Kaffe stars for her in any size we wanted. I followed these instructions here. Nice and easy! I whipped these up this morning. Hope you like them Bron!

WIP Wednesday - Sarah's Quilt Finished.

I have discovered in the jungle that is our backyard, part of the fence has some wire hung on it which makes a handy place to hang a quilt when finished. I'll admit being out in the backyard scares me, there is always a rustling in the leaves. Wouldn't be a snake, just a lizard...

So on Saturday I avoided watching Garfield, thank goodness. I finally let the girls watch the second Harry Potter movie, they have been nagging me for months. I figured if I said yes at last, they would sit quietly so I could get the binding on. And my plan worked!

So I am all done. Just have to wait for the lady in question to have her baby and name her, so I can do the label.

I love the back.

And a close up of the stippling. I have already unpicked the white around the remaining 4 blocks for the next quick whip it together baby quilt.

Middle Springs.

Another weekend, another waterfall! No not really, we haven't been out since Black Rock a few weekends ago. We have come to sort of an arrangement with our friend the Deputy and his wife. He'll come over and borrow the lawnmower to do his lawn and then when he brings it back, they take us out for a swim at a waterfall! Fantastic arrangement! Can you see the heads swimming in the water? That's Daz and the girls!

We need a 4WD though. I'd like to get out more. This is the road..... um.... maybe track would be a better description? This is the track we came in on. The girls thought it was great, being tossed around on the back seat. Milly said, if we put our hands up in the air, we can pretend we are on a roller coaster!

"Take a photo of me Mummy!" She is still a character this one!

We were pondering why this one is called Middle Springs. The middle of what exactly? Its not far down from Black Rock. My camera battery died after I took the below shot of Grace which was a bummer as I didn't get any shots of the waterfall. Nor any shots of us sitting on our chairs waist deep in the water drinking beer and eating chips and dip! It was better than any resort. :)

Grace had a great time swimming underwater, spotting all the fish. The water was clear but because the sand was brown, it looked muddy. Fish sized up to 30 cms but they were mainly smaller 10cm ones would brush your legs and snatch at any chip crumbs the girls dropped in the water. So another watering hole to show you when you come and visit.

2.5 hours of quilting!

Here is my new darning foot in action! 2.5 hours of stippling in peace, three bobbins of thread, one diet coke, one school pick up and then one Garfield DVD equals this:

Now to ponder over binding and then sew it on. Daz has his first of many "Professional Development" days tomorrow so I will be solo with the girls. May be perfect to sit in front of the tv and chill with them while sewing the binding down. But I refuse to watch Garfield with them!

WIP Wednesday - Some Tiny Houses.

So Sarah's Baby Quilt is drapped over the ironing board waiting for a few quiet hours when I can start quilting it. The baby is due any day though..... But in the mean time I have turned my attention back to Milly's quilt and I made these smaller wonky house blocks for the corners of her quilt top. These were all made from the scraps sent back with the blocks the girls from the Around The Block swap. Another stash busting tick for me. These will trim down to 5 by maybe 6 inches, so not that tiny really, but a lot smaller than the other blocks!

A New Baby Quilt.

I turned over the calendar this morning to realize a friend is due with her second daughter in 5 days! I knew it was sometime in March. So I thought I would recycle an old quilt top. Last time I talked about this quilt was back here. It was to be for Matilda's bed but seeing as though she now has the Wonky Houses I thought I would attack it. I unpicked the top and bottom rows to leave me with a big 4 patch! I then sewed a 2.5 inch strip around the edge, in pink. Wolah, top complete!

For the backing, I thought I'd sew together some of the smaller blocks, trimmed them down to 5.5 inches......

.... then sashed them in some white and.....

..... then raided the backing stash for this plain, safe purple and white spots. Everything was from the stash, I am seeing how far into this year I can get without buying fabric, 2 months down, 10 to go! We'll see.

Then the fun part, sandwiching it on the tiles in front of the wrap up of the Winter Olympics. It's now drapped over the ironing board, ready to quilt!