One Flower Wednesday

Just one flower this week.

The live flowers are ornamental cabbages!

A Wednesday kind of Thursday,...and milestone progress

My flower for "One Flower Wednesday" is a day late, but here it is!!! Liberty fabric again and the camelia is the first for that bush this year. The bush is almost 30 years old so it is quite large now.


The little quilt top below is what has been keeping me busy for the last couple of days. Ranette sent me a bundle of fat eighths last year and earlier this year I cut them up into 3 inch squares with the plan to make a quilt like the one below. I finally sewed them together this week!!! I machined everything, so it didn't take too long. Sometimes I love to make something I can finish quickly while I am making quilts that take months to complete.
Today I found fabric for backing and binding....forgot to buy batting though!!!!






Morrell Quilt...........progress.........


Ta da!!!

Only 24 more blocks to go!

All the blocks are sewn by hand. (I did machine the blocks together!.......I was a bit impatient to see it in one piece!)
I have loved making all these blocks. A few are quick and easy, a few are a real challenge and most of the broderie perse blocks just take time.
We have a get together with the ladies I started this quilt with in a couple of weeks. I am really looking forward to seeing what everyone else's quilts look like. I wonder if anyone has finished??
I will take photos and post them if the ladies will allow me.


Today is one year since I started blogging regularly. What a year it has been!!! I have met both in person and "virtually" an amazing group of inspiring, supportive and friendly people. I have made friends I know I will keep for a lifetime. Inspirational posts have encouraged me to challenge my sewing skills. I have had tears of sadness and tears of happiness while you have shared your lives with me. Some posts have made me think and look at life in a new way. Thank you to everyone who has visited....almost 10,000 of you from all over the world, and thank you to everyone who has left a comment or sent me an email.

Today is also my birthday.


Heres to the next 12 months of learning, sharing, inspiration and friendship.

Thank you one and all!!!

Blog winners!!!

Cathy from Cabbage Quilts had a giveaway recently and I was lucky enough to win!

Today Cathy and I were going to be in the same area, so we arranged to meet in person so she could give me her prize.

Cathy is even more gracious in person than she seems on her blog! It was absolutely wonderful to meet Cathy again and I think we could have chatted all day!
If you haven't seen Cathy's blog, you are missing out some of the most wonderful quilts in blogland. Cathy is a very inspirational and talented quilter! Have a look at her mosaic quilt!!!



Here is what I won....

This book, by Jane Brocket, is full of information and inspiration! I am going to spend many hours with this book! Thank you Cathy!!!!!
Jane Brocket also has a blog and a website......lots more inspiration!!


Cathy also included a tape measure and a pretty card.

Take a look at the fabric Cathy used to wrap the prize...


How perfect is that!!!! Cathy's blog is called Cabbage quilts and mine is called Yellow Roses!


Now, to let you know the winner of my extra copy of Quiltmania. I drew a name randomly tonight and Darlene (no blog) is the winner. The magazine will be in the mail to Darlene next week.

My sewing for the week is in the following post. I was having a bit of trouble with blogger tonight, so I decide to separate my news into 2 posts.

Some sewing this week

I finished quilting the little top I showed you last week.
It took quite a while! I didn't realise how long it would take to quilt, but there are lots of little spiral patterns there!


Here are a couple more photos so you can see the quilting stitches more closely.



I am quite happy with how it turned out.

Next I will bind it and turn it into a cushion.

I hope to continue practicing my machine quilting and quilt something a little larger next.


I made one hexie flower this week. The photograph doesn't show the true colours, unfortunately.


I am having trouble adding more photographs tonight, so I will do another post.

Surprises in the mail

Recently I subscribed to Quiltmania magazine. The first editions arrived today. Lots and lots of inspiration!!

Quiltmania has been very difficult to find here. A couple of months ago it did start appearing our newsagents. Somehow I have managed to end up with 2 copies of issue 75. I would like to offer one of those copies to one of my readers. Just mention in a comment you would like the copy and I will send it to a randomly selected person.



The second piece of surprise mail was this pattern.

I won the pattern from the Fat Quarterly blog.

I decided to dive right into my stash and start sewing!!

Here is what I came up with...


...........and its reversible!!!




Cute huh??

I finished the broderie perse Morrell block last night.




It is only the 3rd day of winter here and look what I found in my garden already! My first jonquil of the season. :)



I would like to thank everyone who comes to visit my blog. A special thank you to everyone who leaves a comment. I have had lots of wonderful comments lately. :) I try to reply individually to everyone who leaves a comment, but unfortunately some people are no reply. I am thanking all of you here. I love visiting all the commenters who have a blog too!

Happy sewing!!!

Lots of stitching....

Here is my next raw edge applique project ready to be quilted. I love all the bright, girly colours in the fabrics. Plenty of opportunities for fussy cutting in these fabrics too. This will be made into another cushion.


Below is my next Morrell quilt block. I have another appliqued block almost finished. One more pieced block to make after that and I can join all the centre section of the quilt together. I'm almost 2 thirds of the way through!!!




Yesterday I got out all my klosjes to sew them together. After laying them out I discovered I was 2 short!! Here are the 2 extras I sewed this morning.


I haven't been sewing as many JC blocks lately, but here they all are so far. I laid them all out so I could get an idea of how they look together and whether I want to make more green blocks or more blue ones. I'm not sure yet what I will do. The section in the photo may end up in the middle of the quilt.



On Saturday I went to an all day class on machine quilting with Mariya Waters. Since taking the class with Kellie a few weeks ago I now have more confidence in my ability to learn machine quilting. Saturday's class covered stitching made without marking the fabric. It was a great class and I came away eager to practice and learn more. I would love to take another class to learn the next level of quilting skills so that one day I will be as confident with my machine quilting as I am with my piecing. Hopefully, soon, those three words "quilt as desired" will not be as intimidating! lol

I have finished one more hexagon flower this week. It is the 2nd day of winter here, but we still have some sunshine this afternoon. I decided to photograph my flower outside with some other flowers. The plant on the left is a white camelia which was grown by my mother. The plant on the right is an Australian native called a Correa.


Happy sewing, everyone! :)