Swooning Southern Belles signed, sealed and delivered......and lots more

Lots of photos!!!

Swooning Southern Belles has been finished for a while now, but recently we went for a road trip to deliver her to her new owner.

My MIL loves her new quilt!!! My MIL was a trained tailor,so I was a little nervous about making a quilt for her, knowing the piecing would have to be perfect! (or as good as I could get it!) I'm glad to say, after some inspection, my stitching passed! It is great to know that someone who realises all the time, effort and love that has gone into this quilt, she really appreciates and values it.

Next are a few photos from the trip. (plenty of fabric and stitching too)

The devastation of a bushfire along the highway near Morwell, Victoria.

The day we went through this area the air was quite clear. For almost 4 weeks the fire continued to burn, out of control, in an open-cut brown coal mine. The whole area was covered in smoke and ash. It was so bad people with respiratory problems, children and the elderly were encouraged to move, temporarily, from the area.

In contrast, this is the view along the road in far East Gippsland, Victoria, not too far from the border with New South Wales.

Tree ferns and tall gums.

Narooma, on the south coast of New South Wales.

A seal resting on a rock

 Moving on to the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

Now back to fabric and sewing!!!

Here are 3 delicious fabrics I found at Somerset last week. These are Dutch Heritage Gujarat by Petra Prins and Nel Kooiman. The left-most fabric is a wonderful border fabric, then 2 prints of different scales.

I have finished block 19,  of CCCQ.

While we were away I was also lucky enough to win the monthly door prize at Magic Patch Quilting in Tyabb. Quiltmania magazine and 3 fat quarters.

Lastly, some happy mail!!! A new pattern and fabric to make it.

I saw a quilt like this at Quilts in the Barn last year and I have been looking for the pattern ever since! This one I found online, through a newsletter from Mary Koval's shop, Mary Koval Antique Quilts in USA. I believe Di Ford also had a hand in designing this quilt. :)

The first block of Mountmellic is coming along. Photos soon.

Have a great week everyone! Tomorrow I am going to Castlemaine to see the inaugural quilt show organised by the Castlemaine Applique Group. (lots of details on Threadbear blog)

Two finishes.

It has been a long time coming, but I have finally finished Joseph's Coat quilt top!

I began this quilt during an online quilt-along with Kellie Wulfsohn of Don't Look Now blog. I was lucky enough to take some classes with Kellie when I first started the quilt. After making lots of the circles the quilt was put on the back burner while I made (started!!!) a few more quilts.
When I finally got the circles back out again I had to figure out how to put them all together! I decided to applique them to a background. Luckily I still had plenty of the background fabric.

The quilt is all hand appliqued. Each melon was prepared using a wash away backing, cut in the melon shape, which was ironed onto the fabric. I then used a glue stick to glue the edges of the fabric around the melon.The melons where then hand appliqued down with matching thread onto a background square to form the circle shape. A photo of a single circle can be found at the top of this post. I cut away the excess fabric before appliqueing each circle down. Half circles where made to fill the gaps. There was lots of preparation time before I put the top together!

All the fabrics in this quilt are designed by either Kaffe Fassett, Brandon Mably or Philip Jacobs.

This quilt will be for my DD and her DH.

I will back it with one of the more blue fabrics.

While trying to decide how to finish the quilt, we did think about making a scalloped edge following the shape of the blocks, but decided to keep the quilt a rectangle and maintain a border of white around the blocks.

I did also consider hand quilting it, but I want to finish it before the decade ends (Lol!!!), so I willl be machine quilting it!


Just a sneak peek of my other finish. I will have lots more photos after I given the quilt to its recipient.

Swooning Southern Belles quilt is finished!


Happy New Year to everyone!!

A big thank you to everyone who visits my blog, reads any of my posts or leaves a comment!!

May 2014 bring you all that you wish for.

Miriam.

Edited to add.... Katrina, who quilted my Sarah Morrell quilt, has just posted  about how she quilted my quilt, see here.
To see more photos on my blog of my finished Sarah Morrell go here.
Lots of progress photos in several posts here.