Quilters meetings

One of the best parts of having a blog is meeting other quilters from all over the world. One of the extra special times is getting to meet quilters in real life. I have been lucky enough to have 2 get togethers over the last few days. Both times there have been bloggers and non bloggers present.

On Saturday Cathy organised a day out at Amitie.

Here we are: Melissa, me, Deb (no blog) and Cathy. Merran left earlier, so unfortunately I missed getting a photo of her.
(Amitie currently has a sale till June 30th.)

This is what I brought home from Amitie...

The print fabric I will use for broderie perse onto the fabric below it on the left. At the moment that fabric is a little light, but if you look at the small fabric swatch below the words "International Quilt Study Centre" , that is what the background will look like after it has been tea dyed. A pretty good match! I also bought some more DMC thread.

These are small pieces of fabric for future use.

The fabric on the left is a viole. It is wonderfully soft and has a lovely sheen. Next is from Simpler Tymes by Jeanne Horton, a Kaffe Fasset shot cotton and the last fabric....hmmm not enough information on my piece of the selvedge to identify it. :(

After Amitie we drove down to Patchwork on Central Park.

I came home with a couple of solids from there.

A very pale blue and a white.

Next it was lunch time! All the chatting leads to an appetite!

Around the corner from Patchwork on Central Park we found  Our Kitchen Table. Great food and great coffee!

Notice the pretty saucer...well look at what they did with the matching cups!!

An amazingly beautiful light fitting!

And more imaginative decor....there was a bowl or two of quinces and a vase of onion flowers to see, as well as the cabbage flowers on Cathy's blog post.

There will definitely be more visits to Our Kitchen Table.


The second get together was the inaugural meeting of the Mornington Stitch Group at Cathy's home. Nine quilters sat and stitched, ate and drank well, laughed and chatted together during a lovely evening. Unfortunately my camera skills were sadly lacking last night, so I don't have any photos to share. Present were Kathy, Julie and Deb (non bloggers) all friends of Cathy's, Kay and her friend Liz (no blog) , Emma and Michelle. It was great to meet the ladies I had never met before.  I am really looking forward to our next meeting at Michelle's home. (Michelle has a couple of photos on her blog)

I feel quite lucky to be able to make lots of new friends through blogging,  both online and in real life. We all share a love of fabric, stitching and creating! It can't get much better than that!


All photos taken with permission...and no brown paper bags changed hands.

Cheddar Cheese and Crackers is finished!!

I have enjoyed every stitch of making this quilt!! I don't know why I waiting soooo long to finish it!!
The quilt began with a Quiltalong with Lori of Humble Quilts.

The little quilt is machine pieced (a challenge for me with such tiny pieces. Those squares finish at one inch) and hand quilted.

All the main fabrics in the quilt (except the cheddar, which is Kona's school bus) are from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Homefront line. The shirting background is from New Town Farm by Windham.

I marked the straight lines with a hera maker and used tissue paper with the flower design drawn on for the flowers.

We had a bit of excited around here last night. An earthquake rumbled by!! A very unusual occurance in our part of the world. At about 5.2 on the Richter scale it was the largest to hit here in over 100 years. It started out as the sound of a strong gust of wind, then the whole house shook, lasting for more than 30 seconds. Every dog in the neighbourhood was barking!! Fortunately there was no damage here, but some people did get some slight damage.

Thank you to everyone who left birthday wishes on my last post. They are very much appreciated! :)



A couple of flowers from the garden. The cyclamen are doing very well this year.

Birthdays

I am a day late.

Yesterday was 3 years since I started my blog. It has been an amazing journey! :)  Through this blog I have met some wonderfully inspiring, encouraging, generous and friendly people, both online and, fortunately for me, in real life.
My blog has 176 followers and has had more than 43,000 visitors!
Thank you to every single one of you!!!

Yesterday was also my birthday.

I tried a new cupcake recipe. I made a batch of vanilla cupcakes using a recipe from Magnolia Bakery. I have never watched an episode of SATC, but I have heard of the Magnolia Bakery. :)

The cakes were delicious! I also have to admit, you are never too old to lick the bowl...yum!! hehe! 

The rose on the top of the cake was made by pressing coloured fondant into a silicon mold. I love how they turned out!

Just for fun here is a photo of me on my 8th birthday. (quite some years ago! Lol) Mum made and decorated the cake. I wanted to be a nurse when I was 8 years old.
Mum also made the red coat and the tartan skirt. I wore that skirt for years!


I'll be back soon with a finish.

Some Works in Progress and some finishes

Sewing, crochet and quilting have kept me occupied over the last couple of weeks.

Below is a sneak peek of some hand quilting.

I finished the hand quilting on Cheddar Cheese and Crackers last night. This little quilt has been going for a long time for me!!! I started the hand quilting around this time last year, but I was hit by tennis elbow, so most of my hand stitching was put away for quite a number of weeks. Since the cooler weather arrived here I started hand quilting again. This afternoon I will attach the binding. More photos to come soon.

I have sewn a few buds to the current Friends of Baltimore block.

A couple of finishes too!

I made another tablet sleeve. This one is for my DH. I used the same Yoko Saito fabric as I used for my DB's camera  bag. The sleeve pattern is from Simplicity 3889. I also used this pattern when I made the lap top bags.

I finished the cowl for my DD. I used Madeline Tosh Merino DK, colour silver fox.  When I saw Rita's Calm Cowl I thought it would be lovely for my DD. We decided to make it a bit more lacey by adding the edging.

The pattern for the edging came from this book, which I have had for a few years. It is full of a wide variety of patterns and easy to follow instructions.

I am very pleased with how it turned out, and thinking about making one for myself.

I haven't forgotten about making little houses from scraps.

Three more to add to the collection.

I spent a little while this morning finishing off adding labels to all my posts. I hope it makes it easier to find past posts on my various projects.

Recently I have found lots of inspiring projects out in blogland. I have made notes on several projects, quilts or even just single blocks I plan to try in the near future. Have you been inspired to make something from anyone's blog recently?

Blogger's Block of the Month and more.

We are up to month 9 of Bloggers BOM and this month the block was designed by my friend Cathy of Cabbage Quilts.

Cathy created a jewel box block.

Here are my 2 blocks. The first in repro style fabrics.....

....and the second in brights.

It has been a while since I photographed all my blocks together, so here they are.

If you would like to see the blocks that other bloggers have been making there is a flickr group here with lots of great photos.


While I was sick I started crocheting a cowl for my DD. I has been a very long till since I did any crochet and it is amazing how quickly everything came back. Here is a photo of my progress. It will be a little wider and I will add more edging to the other side as well.

 Currently I am working on a Friends of Baltimore block. Today I plan to start adding buds to this block.

It is the second day of winter here. It was a cool start this morning. Now the sun is shining and it is looking like a beautiful day in Melbourne. 
Have a great weekend. :)

Trailing Vines panel one finished.

It has taken a while, but I have been slowly adding leaves and branches to the first panel. Last week I completed sewing the last few leaves to the last branch.

A couple of closer photos...

I am a bit impatient to see how it will look with the borders attached, so I laid out the fabrics to get an idea.

I haven't done much sewing during the last week or so. I got a cold and its the sickest I've been for a long time. I am still recovering and thankfully I feel like I have finally turned the corner today. I have a bit more energy. No going back to gym yet, but I do have sewing and fabric out today. :)

Bordered Diamonds is finished!

If you have been reading my blog for a while you will remember that last year I was lucky enough to do a class with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably. I blogged about the class here.

Yesterday I finally finished the quilt we started in that class!!

This bird block features the fabric I used to base my colour choices on. I looove this fabric!

I love the fan fabric too.

I quilted with 2 lines of quilting down each of the borders and a diamond in the centre of each block.

A photo taken as the sun was still low in the sky this morning shows the quilting a little better.

And on the back..

Down the centre of the back I joined strips of most of the fabrics used in the front of the quilt.

For the binding I used a variegated stripe cut on the bias.

 For the quilting I used a thread I haven't tried before. The DMC machine embroidery cotton is quite fine (size 50) and runs smoothly through the machine while producing no lint.  While it is not a strong thread, I am very happy with the results.

Bordered Diamonds quilted, bound and labelled!

Coming up for air!

I have been busy with lots of sewing!

Successful flying geese! :)

I was so happy with the mini fit to be geese ruler I blogged about earlier, that I bought the larger ruler.

I have tried several different flying geese techniques before and I have found this ruler is the one that I am happiest with. There is very little wasted fabric. This little pile of scraps....

.....is the waste from these flying geese..

I don't have a pile of little triangles I need to find a use for and I am not throwing out flying geese blocks because they have turned out too small or the angles are out. All problems I have struck trying other techniques.
Kathie also posted about this ruler recently.

Here are my flying geese sewn in a quilt. Just a sneak peek because its more secret sewing. :)

Monique Dillard, who designed the Fit to be Geese rulers has also written some books. (Monique also designs fabric) Her techniques and quilt designs are featured in these books.

I have a couple of fat quarter packs these books will be perfect for.

Another package in the mail revealed this..........

The pattern for Kim McLean's latest quilt, Pandemonium. Isn't it an amazing quilt!!

Just 2 more little houses.

You will notice one house is the mirror image of the other! I cut out the roof section of the house on the right the wrong way around! Instead of starting all over again (plus it was the only scrap I had like it), I decided to make the whole house the other way around. When it is in the quilt, no one will notice!

Currently I am also machine quilting 2 small quilts (pictures to come later).

Trailing vines is coming along well. I have almost finished the first panel!!! Yay! Can't wait till I have 2 panels made so I can join then with the sashing.

Hmmm...OK, I am a Gemini, so I "need" to have enough going on to keep 2 people occupied! Lol

It has been ages since I worked on Friends of Baltimore or Roseville Album, but they are certainly not forgotten.

Finally I have managed to get a half decent photo of my quilting and blogging buddy.

Meet Jasper, who is often found sharing my lap with my hand stitching.

Thank you to everyone who offered a solution to the quilt cleaning question in my previous post.

Ok...back to sewing...and

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mothers who read my blog. :)