Letters from Australia – a top!

A little while back I saw a blog hop featuring the ‘Bush Gum Blossoms’ line from Amanda Brandl Designs. 

Amanda specialises in Australiana fabrics and her designs feature Australian birds, animals and plants. 

This line reminded me of the May Gibbs Snugglepot and Cuddlepie series of kid’s stories from my childhood and I’m a sucker for my own personal nostalgia so promptly bought a fat quarter bundle.

When I was rummaging through my stash to see what else might work with it I came across a yard of chocolate brown solid and a charcoal text print and went to work to make the You’ve Got Mail quilt by Missouri Star Quilt Company. 

The tutorial shows how to make it using a layer cake and there is a charm pack version as well, Love Notes.

The quilt top finishes at 40 by 48 inches and is made up of 4 inch finished half square triangle units. 

Finally, in an already photo heavy post - the real thing.

Happy sewing

Sue

Linking up to Lorna atSew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

March 2018 Bee Block Round-up

The March Stash Bee queen is Jen (@jentexas). She picked the paper-pieced Geese Trails block from Piece and Press. She asked for blue or grey background and a transition across the geese colours. We could decide on the layout and the number of sections with geese in them ourselves. I decided to use a blue grey and transitioned my geese from coral to orange to melon and back to coral again. That was the idea anyway, I think it worked. It’s a great looking block but there are loads of seams.

This month we have two queens in Bee Inspired. First to post was Jennifer from The Inquiring Quilter who designed her own shamrock block which will be the border for the quilt we made blocks for last year. Her tutorial is here. Unfinished size is 4 ½  inches.

And on the other throne is Paige at Quilted Blooms who asked for a rectangular teenage version of the I Spy block for a charity quilt. You can find the tutorial here. These were quick and easy to put together.  I suppose I could have used my Dr Suess fabric again, but I resisted. I found these alternatives that I think will be fine for a teenager.

And after two months in a row of requests for the use of novelty fabric in bee blocks I’ve bitten the bullet and bought a couple of fabrics that have a bit of novelty value and appeal to me without being especially juvenile. Here’s one. Cup of tea anyone?

I hope you took it easy with the buns and chocolate, I didn't. Happy sewing

Sue

Linking up to Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

Curated Quilts Minimalist Challenge (a finish)

Hello and Happy New Year!

I had a marvelous break that felt much longer than it actually was and I’m back feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the challenges of 2018.

When I was thinking about maybe setting some goals for 2018 one of the things I thought I’d like to have a go at is the Curated Quilts mini challenges. I also have a long list of quilt tops to be finished. I want to improve my fabric selection in my blocks and I’m doing a bit of Pinterest study to that end J. Also use my stash – I have a Pavlovian response to the words ‘fabric sale’ and I might have gone a touch nuts at Thanksgiving. This is half of what I bought. On the up side I love it all so that’s a bonus.

I decided that I need to make 10 quilt tops before I’m allowed to buy any more fabric and that lasted till yesterday when the local fabric shop had 50% off.

Anyway enough blathering, the latest CuratedQuilts Mini Challenge was announced just before Christmas giving me a little extra time to play about and ta da this is what I can show for it.

While the other entries I’ve seen have used more of the available colours for their challenges I’ve chosen to go with black and pale grey. I have no excuse for this since I had all the colours in my stash.

I was sure I was going to mess this up somewhere and it came pretty close size-wise since it finishes smack on the minimum at 10 inches square. Next time I’ll start bigger and trim.

The little strips are ¼ inch wide so I paper pieced that section and matchstick quilted it in random widths. One resolution ticked off already!

Happy sewing

Sue

Linking up to Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needleand Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Wednesday Wait Loss at TheInquiring Quilter

Five Things Friday #5

It’s been a really good week this week!

First up, I went to the rose nursery and bought some more roses. So, I had 109 and with these new ones the count is now up to 114. Here’s one of them, the absolutely divine Julia’s Rose.

There’s nothing better than coming home from work and finding some happy mail on the doorstep. This is the giveaway I won from This Mom Quilts a few weeks back. It’s a lovely haul of low volume fabric (including some blueberry park that I’ve been drooling over); some ribbon to bring my gift styling up another notch; a pencil case; some hexie templates and a needle keeper. Thanks Amanda, too generous!

I signed up for the Modern Quilt Guild mini swap and received an email with my partner info on Wednesday. 

One of the suggestions was to make a collage for inspiration for our swap mate. This is mine, clockwise from top left the makers are Libs Elliott, Cynthia from Ahhh Quilting, Wendy from Quiltamour and Svetlana from sotak handmade.

Don’t you just love the way plants will grow in any crack available. This is the lovely delicate looking Australian Native Violet.

Linking up with Amanda at Gypsy Moon Quilt Co for Five Things Friday.

Have a great weekend!

Five Things Friday #4

It’s been a while since I posted a 5 Happy Things list. This is what has been making me smile of late.

It’s spring here and plants are coming back to life. There’s an amazing rampant “green” smell in my backyard at this time of year. Breathe deep - it must be healthy!

Picking up a book at the library can be tricky and I’m sure we’ve all had our share of disappointments so it’s always a bonus when you pick up a good one. This is light-hearted and fun, for the most part. It’s kind of Mary Poppins goes modern and adult (ahem) which probably explains the upside down umbrella on the cover.

I ordered some labels from Australian business Labels and Ribbon so all my lousy label days are behind me. The cheap option doesn’t allow you to add your own logo but there are lots of different fonts to choose from and various designs for the little picture in the corner.

More quilt books from the library. I went through the catalogue of what was available, picked out quite a few and saved them into a list. I was tempted to reserve them all at once but, no, I thought it through for a minute and picked out a couple at a time.

And lastly this fabric which can only be described as high visibility green. I found it at a local fabric and manchester franchise, Textile Traders. They were having a sale, one day only, printed ‘craft’ fabric, $7 per metre! This is such a bargain! Unless you’ve ever fabric shopped in Australia you have no idea, but just for comparison my Local Quilt Stores are selling Kona solids for $20 per metre. I hot footed over there at very least out of curiosity and checked it out. They don’t have a big range but what they do have is current and good quality (in store anyway) and I was extremely tempted but I don’t need any more prints… I hate leaving empty handed don’t you? So I bought some Quilters Cotton solids that I need for upcoming projects and this piece found its way in due to a wave of FOMO which struck as I was leaving. What if I wanted it for something and I couldn’t find it again? Tragic! The bonus was that being the type of store it is they are very generous with their cuts. They measure a little more before they start and add a little more to the end. Happy days!

Linking up with Amanda at Gypsy Moon Quilt Co for Five Things Friday.

Have a great weekend!

Facets Plus QAL Fabric Pull

Have you seen the Facets Plus QAL being run by Amanda at This Mom Quilts? I’m joining in for this one and it will be my first ever Quilt Along!!! So excited!

This is my fabric pull for this quilt. 

I have a pile of ½ yard charcoal prints that I collected last year for a project that somehow seemed to get pushed back and back every time something new came along. The design I had in mind wasn’t a million miles away from Amanda’s and so it was a simple matter of bringing the quilt back up to the top of the list. That’s great! Because this is a quilt I actually NEED. It will be going on the king single sized bed in my spare room, so I will be adapting it (is this allowed in a QAL? I think so…) to make it longer and wider by adding borders.

The facet plus blocks will be a mix of these solids (and one hand dye). Amanda’s design gives a little more creative head room than the standard plus block allowing a few more colours and combinations.

Thankfully Amanda’s giving us a realistic time frame to get this put together, so if you haven’t quite made up your mind there’s still plenty of time… cutting instructions came out on Monday and the fabric requirements are here.

Linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Let's Bee Sewcial at Sew Fresh Quilts.