Spikey Quilt Quilting!

I started quilting the Spikey Quilt yesterday. I decided on a simple echo stitch near the ditch in matching thread for each second point. I was going to do for every point but quickly realized that sewing every second point was just as good. A tangle of rainbow threads!

I love my walking foot! It just glides over the fabric so nicely. I'm doing white around all the spikes and then am going to do some textural pebble quilting all over the white. I'm really pleased with how it is looking, its starting to grow on me with each stitch and I'm hoping that the person that receives this will be appreciative of the work gone into it. Even though the last quilt I made in this swap was ohh'ed and ahhh'ed over on flickr, I get the gut feeling that the person didn't really like it and I don't want that to happen to this little quilt. I know that is the risks of swaps, but..... you know what I mean don't you?

Around the Block - February.

Ohhhh, just slipping in for this months round of Around the Block 2! This month I picked Becky's envelope. She asked for triangles, as long as it had a triangle in it, she was happy! I noticed in her inspiration gallery though she had two of these flying geese in a circle. It's always been a block I wanted to do, so I printed out the free pattern found here and some sewing, unpicking, more sewing, more unpicking later, wolah! Hope you like it Becky! Now shall I post it over or hand it to you in person next month at SIT??! :)

SIT Name Badge - Part 2!

One of the other lovely ladies going to SIT next month is posting me up a proper pin fastening for the back of the name badge. As usual Australia Post is traveling on a camel, so I have been looking at this all week thinking something is missing........ So I added another row of petals in yellow to make it pop! I like it better now.

SIT Name Badge!

I got an email yesterday from the airline carrying me from Darwin to Sydney for SIT next month to say they had had canceled my flight, booked back in August thank you very much and put me on another flight leaving 8 hours later than the original time. Not impressed to put it mildly, not impressed at all..... So after I sorted out that on the phone and accepted there wasn't much I could do about it, I turned my thoughts to the name badge swap and thought the deadline for posting is approaching, get cracking Helen! It has to be in the SIT colours and it is a secret swap....

I went for an oval flowery thingy. These little petals were fiddly to do, they measure .5 an inch across and under an inch long.

I sewed the yellow and brown ovals together, hand stitched the name on it, but I can't show you that bit yet! Then glued the petals in place and also a back panel to keep it all neat. Just have the pin clasp to sew on tonight and then ready top post away!

Jelly Roll Quilt Finished.

I finished the binding and the label on this quilt for Corrie's Quilts for Queensland during the week. I used some Amy Butler Midwest Modern for the backing.

We are on the tail end of Ex Tropical Cyclone Carlos this weekend which really just means a lot of rain. Hence the photos taken under the patio here!

Not bad for a quick little quilt. All ready to pop in the post on Monday.

Spikey Quilt Top #1 Finished!

Look at those pointy spikes! You could take an eye out with one of those!

With the man away fishing on the weekend, I got a lot of sewing done! I'm very happy with how all the quarters matched up, I was expecting to do some unpicking but it all went smoothly. Now how to quilt it? I was thinking pebble quilting in the white but then for the points, maybe a straight line of hand quilting along the longer point's edge? Thoughts dear viewers?

As I have been looking at it I questioned too myself, why did I do the colour wheel going around twice? So for my second one I am just going to go around once. I have my material cut and labeled, ready to go for another big weekend of sewing!

Catch of the Day!

The husband went on a boy's only fishing trip on the weekend. They went somewhere off Cape Domett. He caught a BIG fish! This is a 1 metre and 10 cm Jew Fish or a Mulloway.

This one was smaller, about 82 cms.

It's almost as tall as Milly! So it's fish for tea tonight as well as last night..... and a lot in the freezer!

Spikey Quilt Update.

Another quarter done of my Dolls Quilt Swap. Looks good hey?

Yes Helen, it looks fantastic until you put it with the half already done only to see that you totally stuffed up the color direction!!! It should have been green going around to yellow, orange and then red. D'oh!!!!

So I have folded it up and tossed it aside in frustration. That is what you get from sewing for 10 minutes here and 20 minutes there after work when you are tired. So I spent this afternoon laying it all out and numbering it so tomorrow being the start of the weekend, I can just sew it! Looking at this photo though, think I better add A to one quarter, B to the next etc, so I don't get them mixed up. Oh the confusion!

Hidden Valley.

What to you call a bunch of teachers that walk into a valley on a weekend? I am not sure, but I did ponder it as I made up the rear party of an afternoon outing to Hidden Valley or Mirima National Park on Sunday. This park is on our doorstep practically, I drive past it every day and despite being here a year, we have never been for a walk in it! So we packed our towels, snacks and drinks and took a 30 minute trek to this.......

A beautiful pool. Deep enough to jump off into. See that figure in the white top on the left clapping as the others jumped in?? Notice how there is a gap in the ladies jumping off, almost like the person in the white was supposed to jump in too but at the last second stepped back and said "No WAY!" Well that chicken is me! Just couldn't do it!

There was a smaller ledge that the girls were happy jumping off.

I jumped in off this one just fine. :)

A Slight Hiccup!

I got all excitied yesterday after posting and finished two of the quarters and then decided to sew it together to make the half. Spot the hiccup?? Look! Can you see it?? It took Daz a few minutes to find it but to me its glaring in the face! Okay, see the dark pink strip in the middle? Firstly its supposed to be a bit thicker, when all four blocks are joined there will be a cross that stands out a bit more than the spikes, thats part of the pattern, so its not that. But it is to do with the dark pink. See on the right it comes down to a nice sharp point meeting the lighter pink? That is good. But see on the right? It comes down to a point, all good, looking nice, then it goes straight! Argh!!!!

I know exactly what I have done wrong which makes it more fustrating! You are supposed to sew on the solid lines. I decided at the beginning to make the points a bit longer, so I decided to sew on the solid line for the first side of the spike and then on the dash line for the other side of the spike. And that worked fine until it came time to sew the two quarters together! I trimmed it before I sewed it to get the bulk down, and I should have trimmed one side on the solid line and one on the dash line, but instead I trimmed both on the solid. Bugger!!!

And here is the colour selection for the other side of the spiky wheel.

So here I am ready for round two. I suppose its not really that noticable..... but I'll make another one anyway. Good thing I like to make two versions for these quilt swaps!

The Spiky Quilt - DQS#10!

We have had rumbling thunder here all afternoon, the sort of thunder that makes the window's rattle, a hot and steamy day, perfect for starting a new project! I have decided to make a start on my quilt for the 10th round of the flickr DQS. I'm going for a rainbow palette and am using some sheets from my Judy Niemyer Japanese Fan pattern I purchased over the holidays.

I have called it the Spiky Quilt or rather Matilda has, she came in and said "What are you sewing Mummy?" and had a look at what was on the ironing board and announced "Ohhhh, you are sewing a spiky quilt!" Not too sure if I'm going to do it in a circle yet or an S shape or something else. Here is the first quarter done though.

SIT Houses.

The dates for SIT are creeping closer and closer! The girls on our little Facebook group are getting excited! I can't wait!!!! 3591kms and two flights to get to a weekend of sewing and shopping and gossiping. I was so disappointed I couldn't go last year so this year the dearest husband had no choice but to say of course you can go sweet heart...... Besides I have a birthday this year that ends with an 0 so I'm thinking of it as a little birthday pressie to myself.

But back to the houses! The wonderful Cass organizes a Sample Swap held on the Saturday Stitching Day. It works along the lines of you make five of one item, then in the afternoon Cass will break us into groups of 6 people, a circle is formed and we do a weird dance (which is very important apparently!) And I'll get something from each person in my circle and they’ll each get something from me! So I thought I'd make 5 little mini house quilts. I thought I'd make them a little bit special and incorporate the Sew It Together logo. I duplicated it on an A4 sheet in Photoshop and then printed it out on the printer at home on a sheet of Matilda's Own printable fabric sheets and wolah, roof fabric!

This one is ready to sandwich. Think I'll make up the other four and then sandwich and quilt them together.

First Day of School for 2011!

My what a difference a year can make. This time last year at the start of the school year, Grace was less than impressed as you may remember from this blog post. And now look at her this morning! Very confident and more than eager to go. One if the perks of working at the same school your kids attend is that you know who their teachers are, so we knew all throughout the holidays that Grace had Mrs H and Milly had Miss W who was the same teacher she had last year so she was extra happy. Milly is in year one this year and Grace is in year three. Year three? How did that happen? I still remember her first day of kindy! She didn't want me to hang around and see her in the door this morning, lucky I got to chat to her teacher in the staff room about how it was going. Milly let me walk her to her room and come in for a few minutes, then I was shooed out of there too! We have two happy confident kids so should be proud of that. 2011 is going to be a great year for both of them.

Confessions of a Walking Foot.

I have finished quilting this quilt. It was quick, just a quarter of an inch on one side of each row. Since taking this photo this morning the binding is all one ready to be hand sewn down. We are back to school next week and I am cramming as much sewing in as possible in these last few days as term 1 is a big one this year, 12 weeks long! The teacher, teachers aide and two students in this house are going to be exhausted at the end of it! Thinking about planning a trip here at the end of those 12 weeks, something to focus on.

So I quilted this with my walking foot, I have a love/hate relationship with it. Was so disappointed in the quilting that I produced with it on this quilt last year. I was getting quilt drag with that quilt, so with this one I was determined to do it the proper way, down one row, rotate and then back the other way, so you aren't going in the same direction all the time. I did that for maybe 8 rows and it was pulling badly on the back, getting dragged again. So then I decided to go just one way and everything then clicked. No drag, lovely smooth quilting. So then I unpicked those first 8 rows and redid them going the same way as the others and it is perfect. Flat and smooth and no drag. Go figure. Walking foot I don't understand you but thank you for doing what I wanted you to do on this quilt.

Pink Squares Finished!

Wow, that is a lot!!! Well done to everyone involved, a great effort. Congratulations go to Cristina who won my quilt with her generous bid of $200!! I'm designing a label for Cristina now and then hopefully it will be in the mail to her by the weekend.

Also in the mail tomorrow is this quilt to Corrie for her collection of quilts.

Pebble quilting all finished, binding sewn down.

Label on. I put my email address on it as I don't know who is going to get this quilt so it would be nice to think that one day, maybe, to get an email saying hi, I got your quilt. I loved the binding for this one. There was no red in the pink squares, but somehow it just went!

Bit of pebble quilting close up.

And just from another angle. The vine on the right is that one with the purple flowers, it is a weed I know, but I love how it crawls along the back fence. We are hopeless gardeners Daz and I but up here everything is so lush and green. Anyway, I hope whoever ends up with this quilt likes it as much as I do.

Around the Block - January.

I received this from Kate last week. Just perfect!! Thanks Kate. And a good reminder for myself too of this months Around the Block 2 commitments.

So without further ado I grabbed an envelope and picked this for Abbe who requested stacked coins. Reminds me of book spines. Nice cool colours to work with.

And while in the mood I used some of the scraps Kate had sent back along with the scraps I had received from others to who up quickly 4 more 6.5 inch blocks to mare another 12.5 inch block! I'm hoping to make one for each I receive.

Then with Grace's help I lay them all out. A nice balance so far!

My auction closes tonight! Still a chance to bid here!

365 days ago....

A year ago today we moved here to this town called Kununurra that we now call home. Stepping off that plane, dazed, immediately wrapped in a warm blanket of heat and humidity. Welcomed by strangers that have become friends. Our thoughts ranged from "What have we done??" to "How exciting!! What an adventure!" We think we are pretty lucky to have scored Kununurra as a placement, such a beautiful corner of Australia. I can see us staying up here for awhile.... To celebrate 365 days here, we went out this afternoon to Middle Springs. We had been here once before, but this time we went to the same place but somewhere a little different.

We walked up the side of the falls, followed the stream. It wasn't a hard walk, 10 minutes or so.

Took in the sights along the way! We have had a few decent days of rain this week and so the waterfalls are flowing.

And up the top is a collection of flowing pools. Some where waist deep, others knee deep, others a few meters deep. All connected by the stream rushing through. I tried a self timer shot but couldn't get back in time! Yes, I am wearing shoes in the water, we all wear them, our trekking shoes we call them. My camera battery died after I took the first photo in this post. The pool in the first photo was on the other side of the pool above. The water fell into the next pool, it was so beautiful up there. I was cross my camera battery died, we will just have to go back again.

Sewing Frenzy!

I love summer holidays! Now we are back from the "official" holiday we are all relaxing at home and I am on a sewing frenzy at the moment. Finished the pebble quilting on the pink squares quilt, binding is all pinned into place, ready to hand sew down.

Inspired by Corrie, I whipped out the jelly roll I had left over from making Ruby's quilt and sewed all the strips together in a few hours. Wolah! Quilt ready to sandwich. This one is going to her Quilts For Queensland appeal too.

And in between that I have started a new quilt. Rainbow squares. Pretty much like the pink squares but bigger and brighter, I love sewing these blocks. Picking out a centre then thinking oh yes, that would look nice framing that, sew it, then ohhhh, how about that spotty fabric? Yes, perfect, sew it!

These are my favourites so far. I'm up to purple, green and blue to go next.

But we haven't been sitting around home all the time. Have taken advantage of the rain and having our own 4WD and getting out and seeing some of the waterfalls around only in the wet season.

This one is Black Rock which we have been to a few times before. It holds a special place in my heart as it was the first place we ever visited when we came up here. Okay, back to the sewing!