Some projects just seem to snowball, and end up much more complicated than they were at the start. Kaye's quilt, nicknamed The Big Brown Bugger, is such a project. It started as a pile of pieces that Mereth could sew together to keep her occupied. Along the way we did the Maths and realised that the tiny bundle of squares and triangles would end up measuring 82" when pieced together. Then there were the borders, another 20". It's HUGE!

Kaye asked me to choose a panto to put over it, and I, being temporarily insane, decided to design something specially for the quilt. I spent a day playing, starting off with a scrap of fabric that featured a stylised pomegranete. Somehow a bird holding a berry in his beak crept into the design, and then his ladylove on a nest. I joked that the birds were Bruce and Kaye, and the pomegranete a symbol of fertility, and the ribald jokes began. Honestly! It doesn't bear repeating. It all just snowballed out of control.

The photo is of the design being stitched out as a test run, and then I decided what worked and what didn't. I redrew what I thought didn't work, and the quilt was loaded onto the biggest machine and quilted in two long sessions.

Then this morning a team of helpers went to work applying the binding and hand stitching it down. The photo is Mereth, Dale and I stitching on a side each; it took a surprisingly short time to stitch down 408" of binding. Many hands make light work. Then the quilt was hung for a picture shoot, and whisked off into the truck to go off to the Sydney show.



We will be leaving in a few hours time, and blogging will resume when we get sorted out at the hotel.