Morrell blocks all together!!!

This morning I finished sewing all the blocks together for my Morrell Quilt!!! :)

Photography was a little difficult with the size of the quilt and the strength of the wind.

It was rather warm here today. It got to 43 C (about 110 F) in our backyard!


I hope 2011 is a healthy and prosperous year for all. ...... with lots of sewing time!!!

Woohoo, it is done!!!

My very last block for the Morrell Quilt is finished!!!!


I admit I did procrastinate over this block. Look at all those triangles!!!! So, block 46, I won!!!

Sixty blocks finished, 59 by hand and the triple Irish chain block by machine.

It won't take long to put all the blocks together. I already have the top 2/3rds sewn together.

There is a border of triangles to come.



I wish everyone a Merry and Blessed Christmas.

Thank you for visiting! :)

Just a chat

There is some sewing happening here, but nothing to show yet. I have been working on the last Morrell block. I have the last 2 sides of the last round to sew together.
I am also doing a little sewing for Christmas presents, so I won't post any photos of them until after Christmas.
Tonight I had a play with some FMQ on my sewing machine. Lets just say I need lots more practice!!!! I can sew very wobbly lines! lol

Yesterday my DH and I celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary. We had lunch at a cafe in the Yarra Valley, north east of Melbourne. The photos are of some of the valley. It is looking lovely and green now. After lunch we took a leisurely drive home via a cherry farm and a berry farm. This afternoon I made strawberry sherbet (anyone remember Gabriel Gate's book French Cuisine for Australians????), berry muffins and a big batch of shortbread. (See a trend here????....I have a huge sweet tooth lol!!!)

I hope everyone in the Northern hemisphere is keeping warm and safe from all the snow.

Enjoy the preparations for Christmas and remember the Reason for the Season.

Special thoughts to friends with health problems at the moment.

WIP

I finished the binding and quilting of the little doll quilt. I am very happy with how it turned out.


Below are all my hexie flowers for One Flower Wednesday. I now have enough finished for the design I want to make. I will be using a light cream fabric for the background.




This is my last hexie flower.



Two more Morrell Quilt blocks this week.





I have just one more block to make!!!!!! Woohooo!!

The First Day of Summer.....

Yesterday I made this little doll quilt top. I found the pattern here. It is from Kathleen Tracey's blog A Sentimental Quilter. Some great little quilt patterns there! I wanted to make something fun that could be finished quickly. I have backing and binding fabrics chosen, so hopefully I can finish it today. Most of the fabrics are from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Homefront. I love her fabric designs. (I have a little piece of turkey red fabric from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Reunion fabric on the way here too. :))


Summertime here in our garden brings strawberries... delicious!..



...and the coriander that has bolted to seed with the warmer weather. The flowers are pretty!




I have finished the last of my Dresden Plate blocks. I still have to chose a background fabric. I had fun making these blocks! :)




Summertime brings lots of new fruit. This is the beginning of a small crop of Gravenstein apples. When we moved here we planted a Jonathan apple tree on to which my husband grafted several other varieties of apple from my parent's garden. The only one that took was the Gravenstein. We have one branch that produces a small crop of fruit that are great for cooking.



This rose is actually from the root stock of a Mr Lincoln rose that died years ago. This year has been a great year for roses in my garden and this plant is covered in small flowers.


Two more Morrell blocks are finished!

This is the only block in the quilt with a vase.




This one has 33 flying geese blocks......well, I thought I made 33....one flew the coop! I hunted high and low for the blue fabric and couldn't find it. Luckily I found a replacement in my stash that is almost a matching shade of blue, but not the correct spot. If you don't look too closely the "odd" block fits in!




Recently I have tried a couple of "new to me" techniques. I love learning new ways of doing things. Both techniques I used when I made my friend's quilt.

The first was strip piecing....yes, I had never sewn pieces together that way before!!! It was much faster than the usual way of stopping after every sewing line. Saves thread too!

The other new technique I tried was for basting the quilt. I usually try to find a large table and spread the whole quilt out and pin baste. Often the quilt won't fit on the table and mostly I have ended up with (huge) tucks in the back because part of the quilt hangs over the edge of the table!!!! That leads to lots of frustration, then procrastination over finishing the quilt because I need to rebaste the whole thing!

Well, several moths ago I saw videos on youtube by Sharon Schamber where she showed a different technique to baste quilts. I was reminded of the technique when I saw the links again on Janet's blog. Here are links to the 2 videos. Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhwNylePFAA and part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_EjBGz5vGQ
You don't need a huge space and luckily for me DH had 2 pieces of wood that were just right.
The technique worked perfectly for me first go!!! I will definitely be basting my quilts that way in the future.

The weather here is warming up and we have had the wettest Spring in years. (Last month we reached average rainfall for 12 months for the first time in 11 years!) The garden is loving the rain and warm weather. However, some parts of Australia have had more rain than they need. Spare a thought for Chookyblue and others who have had too much rain!


My favourite red rose Red Velvet. The photo doesn't do justice to the true colour of the rose.

Morrel progress and a win

Two more Morrell Quilt blocks finished. I have 4 more prepared ready to sew. After that there is only one block left! The last block has lots of tiny triangles in it, so I have been procrastinating over that one!




A few weeks ago Barb of Fun With Barb and Mary had a giveaway. I was lucky enough to be the winner! :) I won the pattern below. Barb also included a cute Halloween card. Thank you Barb for a great prize!



I started working on the pattern earlier this week. Here is my progress so far. I have found enough fabrics in my stash to make the whole top.




A few photos from my garden.

The tree below is a Native Frangipani. The yellow flowers have a wonderful scent.




Several of my orchids are blooming at the moment.



Thank you to everyone who left a comment on my last post. I will reply to you all.
Still feeling not so good.

Goodbye Snoopy

Yesterday our dear loving and lovable dog, Snoopy went to doggy Heaven.

Snoopy was a papillon and was 13 years old. He lived with liver problems all his life.
We got Snoopy when he was 6 months old. It was quickly evident he had health problems.
After a few weeks of intensive feeding to build him up he had a major operation to try to fix him.
The surgeon repaired several things and said he did his best, but would be surprised if Snoopy lasted another 12 months.
Well, Snoopy lived another 12 years!
We changed his diet a few times to find just what he liked and what would keep him healthy. He had his ups and downs and the vet called him their wonder dog because he managed to survive many set backs.
Over the last couple of years Snoopy became blind and deaf. He could still find his way around the house and loved to play with Jasper our cat......yes, the cat! They even slept in a chair together.
Yesterday Snoopy deteriorated quickly and I knew it was his time to go.

Goodbye Snoopy. :(

A Finish!

I haven't posted for a while, but I have been busy with a "secret" project.

It has been a long time since I finished a quilt!!!

This is the fastest quilt have ever made! Usually I post my progress as I make my quilts, but there were special circumstances this time. About a month ago a very dear friend of mine contacted me to say she was in hospital and would be there for some time.

I decided to make her a quilt. I wanted to get it made quickly (well, quickly for me!), use bright and cheerful fabrics and I wouldn't be posting about. My friend reads my blog and I wanted to surprise her. :)


I took my inspiration from several bloggers: the combination of colours alternating with white found in some quilts by Rita of Red Pepper Quilts, the use of bright Kaffe Fasset, Brandon Mably and Philip Jacobs fabrics by Cathy of Cabbage Quilts and the straight line quilting by Jacquie of Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

I had a design roll of a recent release of Philip Jacobs fabrics, so I combined that with white and cut out lots and lots of squares. The only part of this quilt not sewn by machine was the stitching down of the binding.

Here is the finished quilt. It measures about 68 inches square.

Click on any of the photos for a larger view.
The quilt is bound with another Philip Jacobs fabric.

A closer view to show the straight line quilting.






For the backing I used a Kaffe Fassett shot cotton.
There were a few squares left over , so I included them in the backing to make it a bit more interesting.




I gave the quilt to my friend today. She loves it!! Her smile was heart warming!

My friend is a star patient and she is making great progress towards her recovery. :)






A corner of my garden.

Wednesday again

I haven't dome much sewing this week, but I did finish one more hexi flower and one more Morrell block.




Only 7 more Morrell blocks to go, then the border.

Below will be my next quilt when the Morrell Quilt is finished. It is the Roseville Album quilt, by Kim McLean. I have all my fabrics now, so I am ready to start. Very tempting!!! It is taking quite a bit of self discipline to keep on with finishing my Morrell quilt. I am a very good starter, and not such a good finisher!! lol!

I have put a badge at the top of my blog's sidebar that leads to the Glorious Applique blog. Glorious Applique is a blog dedicated to quilts designed my Kim McLean. Lots of wonderful, inspiring creations to see there!




Spring brings lots of native flowers in the garden. Below is a bottlebrush. (Callistemon) We have 3 bottlebrush trees in our garden and 2 of them are full of flowers. The flowers bring lots of birds.




He is quite hard to see, but if you click on the photo below you will see a bird in the centre of the photo. He had 5 friends in the garden this afternoon. It can get quite noisy when there are a few birds!!

I don't know what kind of bird he is. Does anyone else know????
(Thank you to Chookyblue and an anonymous commenter. The bird is an Indian Myna bird. They are quite noisy and can be aggressive to other birds. He is not native to Australia)

Next are several shots of rainbow lorikeets. They are much less tame than the parrots I showed last week. It took a few goes before I could get photographs. They kept flying away as soon as I got close enough to get a shot. I managed to get 2 birds in a couple of the photos. They love the nectar in the flowers.





Thank you to all my new visitors and thank you for leaving comments Every one is appreciated! :)


Have a great week everyone!

I have been busy....

On Saturday I went to a machine applique class with Mariya Waters. Today I finish the piece we started on the day. Mariya is a great teacher and an extremely talented quilt maker. A couple of months ago I went to a machine quilting class with her and I am looking forward to the second machine quilting class with Mariya in a few weeks time.


I finished another Tail Feathers block. There is one more waiting to be started.




A couple more Morrell blocks finished! :)





On Sunday I went to Quilts in the Barn. Linda holds an annual exhibition of quilts in her barn. The exhibition raises money for breast cancer research. This year Linda invited Di Ford and the Secret Sewing Sisterhood quilters to exhibit their quilts. I have been aware of the exhibition for the last 3 years, but I had never been before. This year I had to go! I learnt to quilt with Di at her shop.
There were around 90 quilts to see, new people to meet, fabric and patterns to buy and lots of inspiration! Linda has some photos on her blog and will have many more soon.

I have another of Di's quilts on my list to make. I hope to start Hommage to Sallie Ann before the end of the year. I plan to use William Morris fabrics and I have started collecting.

Another couple of dresden plate blocks are finished. Now to decide on a background fabric.

We had a friend from overseas visiting us for a few weeks. Late last week we took him around the hills in our area and we found these Crimson Rosellas. They let us get close enough to get some photos.