Back in the garden.

Here are my "One Flower Wednesday" flowers so far. All are made using Liberty fabrics. The centre blooms are the first of my orchids this year.


The weather has cooled off significantly here. We have had our first frost already.

I made this shawl a few years ago. It is very warm, but does tend to shed because of all the "fluffy" yarns in it.





This is my latest finish for the Morrell quilt.




Today I prepared the next pieced block.

I am still working on 3 more projects. Variety is the spice of life!!! lol

I have 15 Jacobs Coat blocks finished and 3 more ready to applique.

The next project using Kellie's raw edge applique method is almost ready to be quilted. Hopefully I will have a photo later in the week.

I have also started hand quilting my Cheddar Cheese and Crackers mini quilt.

So, lots happening here, but slow progress on each one.

Back to sewing.... :)

More than One Flower Wednesday

Liberty fabric and zygocactus flowers.




My cushion is finished! I have had a second class, with lots of hints from Kellie, and lots more practice since I did that machine quilting, so the next piece should be a big improvement. I have started the machine applique on a second cushion and I have ideas for a small quilt using the raw edge applique technique.


Another broderie perse Morrell block finished! I am more than half way through making the blocks now. :)


Jacob's Coat is coming along well. I have 13 blocks finished and 2 more prepared ready to sew in the next few days.

Have a great week, everyone. :)

Happy Mother's Day

All the paintings in this post were painted by my mother.




The painting below is my mother as a young child with her Grandfather. They were going to hunt for gold.




This book was one of my gifts for Mother's Day. I am going to spend many hours reading those pages.




I hope all the mother's reading this post are having a wonderful Mother's Day.

I would like to send special wishes to those who have lost their mother.

Especially my heart goes out to any mothers who have lost a child.

Today every child - made luke warm cup of tea and burnt toast is as good as a 5 star meal.

One Flower Wednesday

Liberty fabric

White camelia.

A little bit here, a little bit there.....

Over the last 2 or 3 weeks I have been working on several different projects. I have finally got my Morrell blocks out again and the photo above is my latest finish. I started the Morrell Quilt about this time last year and worked on it steadily through last year. This year there have been several distractions....good ones. :) We have a get together scheduled late in June to show our (hopefully!!!) completed quilts. Well..........I am sure I will not have the quilt completed, but I am determined to get quite a few more blocks finished.

Below are photos of progress on some of the above mentioned "distractions"............


These are my last 4 spool blocks. I have a total of 50 now and I have decided that is a good place to stop. Forty nine blocks will make a cute little wall hanging, with an extra block to incorporate in the label on the back.


From my previous post you will have noticed that I have joined in with the "one flower Wednesday" group, so I will be making hexies instead of klosjes now. :)


Last week I attended a class with Kellie of Don't Look Now! blog. The class is for her raw edge applique technique.

Below is my practice piece. I am quite happy with my applique.

However, my machine quilting still needs lots of practice. I have only done a very small amount of machine quilting and always using the stitch regulator on my machine. This time I tried quilting without the stitch regulator. There is a lot of variation in the size of my stitches at the moment. Lots of practice coming up for me!!



Next week we have the second class with Kellie, so I hope to have this block finished and made into a pillow and other project using the raw edge applique techinique started.

In another of Kellie's projects I am making great progress. These blocks are really enjoyable to sew. I have 11 blocks completed now. The 12th block is well on its way.


Have a great weekend everyone. :)

I will be hunting for a piece of fabric to complete the applique on that Morrell block.

One Flower Wednesday

One inch hexagons, Liberty fabric.

Rose: Red Velvet.

Jacob's Coat progress

Seven blocks finished!! I am having lots of fun putting these blocks together.



This afternoon I got out the rest of the petals I have cut out and started playing with arranging some more blocks.

Here is the general idea of the effect I am trying to achieve.






Eight more spool blocks this week.







My daphne has started to bloom.




Happy Birthday to my sister in law; a fellow quilter!

A beach visit and another finish.

On Easter Monday afternoon we went to Phillip Island, just over an hour's drive from us.




Below is a view from the front beach at Cowes, the largest town on the island. This beach is on the northern side of the island, so is more sheltered.



The next 2 photos are from the south side of the island. Bass Straight is the stretch of water here. Next stop south is Tasmania, then Antarctica. The southerly winds can be pretty cold on here!
Several of the beaches on the island are very popular with surfers.







I managed a finish today!!!

This little quilt is the result of inspiration from this post by Jan of Be*mused.

Quite some time ago I bought a pack of fabric which was sourced from Kyoto, Japan and contained cut up pieces of kimonos. I decided to use those fabrics for this project. All the pieces were quite small, none larger than 12 inches square. In the pack many of the pieces were still as they were sewn originally with lots of seams. The first few seams I unpicked were machine sewn, but as I got further into the construction I found hand sewing. All the hems were hand finished and all the facings and linings were hand stitched down. As I unpicked these stitches I wondered who had sewn these stitches. How long ago were they sewn? How would he or she feel about me unpicking their work? I imagine quite a few hours went into making the original kimonos.



The background fabric appears to be a wool with a fine thread of lighter blue woven in with the darker blue. The fabric with white on it I guess is cotton and the other fabrics from are man made fibers.

For the batting I used a quite thin, dark grey pellon.

Using large stitches in groups like this for the quilting is the technique I wanted to try. I used a DMC 80 crochet cotton thread and alternated white and 2 shades of blue. The stitching went together quickly and I just "made it up as I went"! I am happy with how it turned out.

The backing is a fabric I bought when I was in Japan a couple of years ago.
For the binding I used another technique I have never done before. I brought the backing around to the front and hand stitched it down. I think I still prefer the look of the method I usually use of a double thickness bias binding. However, for this small quilt, which measures a bit less than 50 cm (20 inches) square, I think it works OK.



I received some fabric in the mail today. One package with more Kaffe Fassett fabrics for Joseph's Coat and the other included a layer cake of Rural Jardin. I loved the Rouenneries fabrics so much I would like to make another quilt, but this time I will combine the 2 lines.
Considering we just had Easter holidays, I was amazed that both packages traveled from USA to Australia in only 6 or 7 days.





Happy sewing, everyone! :)

I have had a more productive week this week, sewing wise. These are all the klosjes I have made so far. I finished 12 more this week.



Three Jacob's Coat blocks are finished and one is almost finished. The blocks aren't sewn together yet. I will probably rearrange them when I have a few more made.


I have one other project I have been sewing. I will write about it in another post later.

My DH went to the market this morning and brought home flowers. :)




Happy Easter to all my readers!

Saturday Klosjes 2

Only 6 spool blocks finished this week. I am going to stay with these colours and I may start repeating some of the fabrics, but using a different background fabric each time.


I had a great day on Tuesday! I took a class with Kellie of Don't Look Now for her Joseph's Coat quilt. The class was well worth attending. Below is the block I started during the class.





The first Camellia flower of the season.