Sunday stash

Old stash.
Japanese fabrics - the first three are from Kimono House which I visited when I was in Melbourne earlier this year, the bottom one was from Funky Fabrix. I don't have names for any of this stack, I'm sorry.




New stash.
Solids from Blueberry Buckle. Ash, white and some Essex linen/cotton blend in putty. Lovely quality, shame I do not like the colour of the putty now that it's arrived. May be destined for ebay unless it grows on me. On the other hand, I love the ash!


Resizing has added an ugly moire to this photo, click for bigger & prettier.

I think I'm in love

I'd already begun to open my heart to yellow (which I've always hated) & then next came orange (ewww!) but now that I've begun combining them with plums, purples & fuchsia they've swept me off my feet. I think the silver of the Kona ash really makes it for me too.



I'm playing with quilt designs that try to capture the feeling that I get from these photos ~ so far its only working with teeny tiny squares (yikes) which would mean ticker tape or confetti I guess. I have to admit I intended this to be a little model ~ for a block in a box quilt say~ but it may turn out to be to scale. I'm not sure yet whether it would work for a lap sized quilt.



I can't wait to see how the new Heather Ross line Far Far Away 2 goes with these fabrics from her Mendocino and first Far Far Away lines. I have a birthday package winging its way across the sea right now. Some of those fabrics will go into my Doll Quilt Swap quilt, some into a charity quilt which I'll blog about once I get it underway and some will be just for me ~ especially the roses.

Busy like a bee

Today is brought to you by the letter B. First of all, I'm on to Plan B for my Doll Quilt Swap design. After spending a little more time following my partner around (virtually) I think that this suits her better than my original hexie/mendocino plan.



Bad photo but you get the idea, I hope. It's my first swap of any kind and I've found that coming up with a design that suits your partner is easy, it's coming up with something that connects the things you both love despite your diferent tastes that is fun & challenging. Does that make sense to anyone else?

My second B is Bee Seam Piecing Downunder. Yep, jumping into the biggest swap on flickr wasn't enough, I've also joined a really lovely Aust/NZ bee and should be receiving some fabrics in the coming week. It looked touch & go there for a minute with getting enough people but now we're all full up. After most of a year lurking around the online quilting world I feel happy to be coming out of my shell a little & can't wait to get sewing.

Third & final B is batting. I've started whipping up my batting squares for sewtakeahike's Quilt as You Go Quilt Along. There have been some truly gorgous blocks posted at the flickr group and since it will be a while before I can afford to have something long arm quilted this is an excellent way to get a queen size quilt onto my bed.

I'll be doing something a little different for my quilt as you go quilt - the blocks will be courthouse steps/drunk love type rather than scrappy log cabin and they'll all have a 2.5" white outer border which should look like sashing. I love the scrappy look but quilte honestly I just don't have that wide a range of fabrics (despite my dedication to building my stash!) & think I'd just be disappointed with the results. Scrappy will just have to be a future project, instead I'm going with the fabrics below plus a few others.




It's such a grey afternoon, maybe I could squeeze in one more B and run myself a bath...

I may love Heather Ross but I still hate gnomes!

 

1. mini quilt., 2. modern mini quilts, 3. Yellow warbler, 4. Tree swallow, 5. "my favorite dress" quilt, 6. Elsie Marley Mini Quilts, 7. Far Far Away Quilt, 8. 'Quiltie', 9. Follow your heart mini art quilt, 10. Mendo Dresden, 11. 1.01 PurpleBird Baby Quilt 1, 12. patchwork placemat for the kiddos

Whew! I've made mosaics, created galleries, rounded out my 800+ favourites, written silly things in my profile and made my complete dislike of gnomes well known. As fun as it's been indulging in my own favourites (not to mention some of the beautiful new things I've found) I can't wait to find out who my Doll Quilt Swap partner is & start finding out what they like!

I'm in!

I think this calls for a whoo and a hoo, I got into the Doll Quilt Swap. I am soo excited and my partner is incredibly relieved to no longer be living with a mad woman who is constantly muttering about why they'd be such a good bebe! Yep, it felt like a long wait around here.
I whipped up this inspiration mosaic in celebration. Actually, this is version two - my original had some blanks so I had to recreate it & then some of my faves mysteriously disappeared, hmm. The end result is less dark greys and less drunk love blocks in this version but it's still full of things I love.

1. Fussy Cut May Block 3, 2. Bee Modern Hanie's block II, 3. Three by Six - for modernsewl, 4. 10 blocks done!, 5. beginnings, 6. flying geese, 7. Received from Chaletgirl. DQS #5?, 8. Saffron Craig designer challenge block, 9. My favorite!, 10. Good Folks and Linen Pillow, 11. string quilt for baby, 12. hey geese!, 13. ohoh, 14. Far Far Away Quilt, 15. DQS7 Peek, 16. pink bird block, 17. DQS7 Spider web block from Sew Hip, 18. 1 & 2, 19. Hexagon quilt top, 20. wonky stars, 21. Mixtape Quilt, 22. Skinny 9-patch, 23. Targets, 24. ORBC Hexagon Quiltalong -- WIP, 25. Quilt As You Go Quilt Along, 26. aweeee!!!, 27. doll quilt swap 7, sneaky peek part 3, 28. dresden love story quilt

Can't wait until we're assigned partners & I can start planning what to make!

Coin quilt progess

** Edited to remove truly horrible photos & replace with more bearable ones.

My Mendocino coin quilt top is almost done, just top & bottom sashing to go.

I'm so sorry for the so-so photos I took with our camera today.


I've just checked my flickr account and it seems I started cutting for this quilt 8 months ago - not exactly a hive of productivity! In my defense I really got stuck with this quilt and was really uncertain about finishing it. Initially it was going to include darker colours & go from white through to dark plum but it just wasn't working for me.

Here the coins all are sewn together in a much better photo.



Eventually, after playing around one day and making this little scrappy number (below, another so-so pic, sorry) I realised that I love the way the blush colours just melt away into the white and that I was never going to like that bright orange block that cut my quilt top in half - see it there, the pumpkin coloured Kelp Forest? It would have to be ALL blush for this quilt, even if I did have to use up the rest of my precious fat quarters and cut a whole new set of coins.




Since I realised that I've been able to make some progress. I made strips to cut my new coins from and have added the sashing. Although this quilt is literally taking me forever! I have learnt an enormous amount in the last eight months, much of it thanks to the amazing world of flickr and blogs.

Here are a few of the things I've learnt:

1. I have to trust my own sense of colour & style and not try to force things that don't work.
   
   
2. For accurate piecing a pressing board is an absolute must! I'm so happy with the blocks I've been able to make since I made myself one.
   
   
3. If I'm going to blog I have to be able to take better photos!

And since I'm here replacing photos, here's one of my new blocks I'm so happy with -



Just a shame about the blue tint of the pic *sigh*.