The Chain of Arrows quilt is finished at long last, it sat waiting for it's binding for at least two months. I just couldn't get motivated to start it, but when I did sit down and do it I was finished in an hour and a half. I can't believe I put it off for so long. I love the finished quilt; I used a bamboo/cotton batting and it feels lovely and soft. Once it's washed I will decide if I like it enough to use it again.

Apart from that, the only sewing I've done is those mystery blocks, but that's enough. I can't believe that I would willingly sign up for this much piecing; 100 8"blocks, just before Christmas. Madness, but still a lot of fun.

Sewing the little leftover triangles seriously added to the amount of time the Step 3 units took, but it was well worth it. I have nearly 400 of these to add to my stash, and by a happy co-incidence I was already making 1.5" red and white HST. I have a container half full of them already, earmarked for a Pine Tree quilt, so I'm well on the way with these latest additions. I'm so glad that the colours Bonnie chose worked in so well with my own private plans, or I'd have 400 HSTs to use up in some other way.

And speaking of waste triangles, when I made my black and grey Starstruck quilt, I firmly put all the trimmed off triangles in the bin. I had a few doubts when the bin rapidly filled up, and I realised just how much fabric I was throwing away. But I was strong. Until Mereth saw what I was doing, and was horrified. She 'rescued' it all, took it back to her sewing room and produced this little block. Too cute.

On several visits to her place I needed something to do, so I sewed and pressed and trimmed the other triangles for her; and then seeing as I'd done all the work anyway I took it all back and I'm currently making a small quilt out of the pieces. So much for putting it all in the bin; I tried, I really did!

A friend was married last weekend, and it was a beautiful wedding. The flowers were stunning, and the bride left instructions that they were to be given to anybody who wanted them, and the excess sent to the hospital. We brought home a bucket of them, three shades of pink and an amazing green rose; there is something magical about masses of roses, they are just glorious. I hope the people at the hospital enjoyed them too.

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I spent the whole weekend working on the units for Bonnie's latest mystery, and I'm still not caught up. Mereth sewed some of the step 2 units for me, and cut strips for other steps, so I haven't done all the work myself and I can't really complain. I don't have to keep up with everyone else, I could just sew at my own pace, but somehow it doesn't work that way. I couldn't settle to anything else while I knew that huge pile of pieces was waiting for me.
I'm glad I was dedicated enough to keep at it, and now that Bonnie has started putting the blocks together I'm not so anxious; I love the look of the blocks, and I'm sure I'll finish this according to plan. But how does Bonnie do all this work, in so little time? She amazes me.
I'm so glad to have used up so much fabric with this mystery, about 5m of cream neutrals alone, and my stash drawers are getting empty. What a wonderful feeling to look into a drawer and think 'Hmmm, need to go shopping for more neutrals soon...'

I think this will be a lovely Christmas quilt, and I've enjoyed making it so far, even though it's been a marathon effort to keep up. I must be slowing down in my old age.

Lookit all these dog-ears trimmed from the triangles. I keep these and give them to Mereth; it stops my sewing room getting messy from all these tiny scraps, and she has a place for them and welcomes every little snippet. She'll have to show you a picture of what she does with them.

It's been nothing but socialising these last two days, and trying to get some work done in between. We've quilted a lot of Christmas runners and banners lately, and they're all ready to be sent home to their owners. I've managed to put up one tree in the workroom and decorate it with little household items that we find cute. Both of us have a collection of cookie cutters and metal kitchen gadgets, and some are really decorative, so they have made their way on to the tree this year. The yo-yo garland is an on-going project; I save a square of the backing fabric from every quilt we quilt on Millhouse, and make it into a yo-yo. We have added more than 80 this year, and the length is quite impressive. It's all colours and we can't plan it, but I love the variety of fabrics and patterns, and it's interesting to remember the quilts they came from.

On our way out to visit Matt we drive past a field of cows and calves, with the odd bull thrown into the mix. They are all the most gorgeous mix of cream, mocha and chocolate colours, but I think this girl is the prettiest. That spot on her forehead really sets off her dark eyes and dished face. What a darling.

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I mentioned my Grey Havens quilt, and then realised that I had never posted a picture of it. It's a quilt I made after my Mum died in 2006; I just began making the blocks, and realised afterwards that it was my 'mourning' quilt, lots of blacks and greys. It's a block that is sometimes called Lost Ships, and that reminded me of the Elves in Lord Of The Rings, taking their ships to the Grey Havens, which is how they depart Middle Earth. So I called my quilt Grey Havens.

Once I knew it was a mourning quilt, I wanted to make it even more significant, so I used fabrics that had a lot of meaning and memories invested in them. (More of that here.) And I even extended that to the backing. Here is the pieced backing, of 10"squares. There is a cross of light fabric on the left, with a darker square in the middle. Those two fabrics are pieces of a dress of Mum's, and a pyjama set of Dad's.The dress was a purchased cotton sundress that I remember Mum wearing when we were very small. I recall watching her iron it, in the days when laundry had to be sprinkled with water from a sprinkler bottle, which was a plastic bottle that had a wide perforated top. All the ironing was damped down, rolled up tight and stacked in the laundry basket, covered with a towel. Then Mum worked her way through it all, piece by piece, and the iron made a satisfying sizzle as it hit the damp cloth. No steam irons in those days.

Around about 1965 Mum made Dad a set of pyjamas and a shave coat from this fabric, cut out on the kitchen table while we watched, fascinated; then sewn together on the machine I still use for a lot of my piecing. The actual pyjamas were worn and discarded. I thought the material we had were the scraps from that, but when I cut this square out I realised that the pieces were a set of pyjamas for my elder brother that had never been made up. One of Mum's UFOs. Life got terribly busy for her once our Dad died, and many items of clothing that had been cut out had to be abandoned as she went out to work. And we grew too much to make finishing them worthwhile, so there they sat, and still sit, in some cases. When I saw the pieces for those little pajamas it made me remember when my brother was that small, and how much Mum loved to sew, and how much she loved to provide for us.

I guess some of my UFOs will be around for my children and grandchildren to find, and I'm OK with that. I hope they'll remember me and my quilts for a long time.

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Just because I haven't been posting, doesn't mean I haven't been doing things. I've been obsessed with the Dear Janes for two weeks, and completed another 30 blocks. I think I'm over the hundred mark now, I will have to count them all up. It's been fun, and frustrating, and interesting, and satisfying, but I'm about ready to pack them all away and get back to normal sewing. I just can't see that sewing 1/2"squares and 7/8"triangles is normal; it's bizarre, and I wouldn't contemplate it for any other project. But if Jane did it, then so must I.

Mereth remains unmoved by my growing collection of tiny blocks. I haven't converted her, and never will, but that's OK. She can help me hand quilt it.....
I finished a baby quilt, that had been hanging around for more than a year. It has cotton wadding, and I quilted it heavily; now to wash it and let it crinkle up. I have a new bolt of cotton batting, and I'm keen to see how it behaves in a quilt. These pastel blocks were a lot of fun, and used up tiny scraps that would have otherwise gone in the bin. Mereth and I have been using up our little bits and pieces for many years now, it's an exercise in economy that I doubt we'll ever abandon, no matter how much fabric there is on the shelf, or in the drawers, or the plastic crates, or the cupboards....

The first day of the cool weather we went out for a walk at Bowmans Park with the dogs, who had been cooped up inside for days. They had a ball, racing through the bush and revelling in the light rain. I took a whole series of photos of Dolly, and not one of them turned out; she is always moving, and all I capture of her is a blur. Finally Matt held her still, so I could get a protrait of her and her dad; they are the best of friends, I love watching them play together. She's not that much smaller than him now, and she can outrun him too. She's lightning quick.

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These dreary blocks are more Broken Dishes, made with the cast-off triangles from the bindings that I make. I have no idea why I started doing this, probably from a misguided sense of economy, and I have no idea why I keep doing it. Most binding fabrics aren't particularly wonderful, so the combinations in the blocks are not anything I would normally choose. I guess I'm making it so that one day, when it's a quilt, I can show it to people and say 'Each block is the leftovers of bindings from two quilts, so there's 60 (or 80 or whatever) quilts represented.' And people will stare sideways at it and say 'Oh how interesting' and leave me to enjoy my ugly quilt.

But I won't stop making the blocks either; maybe I"ll just use nicer fabrics in my bindings.

It's been one of those non-stop weeks, full of outside appointments that play havoc with blogging, but I think we're done with all that now, and it's going to be workroom time from now on. We have Christmas quilt deadlines to meet for customers, so there will be a few marathon sessions to get as much done as soon as possible. I'm looking forward to it, especially as the weather is being so beautifully cool; it makes you want to get busy working when the conditions are so pleasant.

Last week I went through my grey fabric and culled 13.5 metres of stuff I didn't love. I have two grey quilts to make backings for, so I sliced up this pile, and another one the same size, into 10.5"squares for a Bonnie Backing. (See this page for Bonnie's Scrap User's System and her thoughts on backings, including a list of links to photos of pieced backs)Mereth and I have different attitudes to pieced backs. She doesn't see the sense in cutting lengths into smaller pieces, whereas I like the regularity of the squares. It's more piecing and more seams, but I love how it looks. So we agree to differ.

Now I just need a few spare moments to sew these together, and I will have an interesting back for my Grey Havens quilt. I needed more than 90 squares, so it certainly used a lot of fabric; I'm down to one drawer of greys and blacks, and I'm very happy about that. And I won't be buying more to replace them.

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The Colonial Squares is just about the easiest patchwork to make, one simple square repeated, but I followed a few simple rules to make sure it went together easily and with no fuss.

I decided to make four patches from my squares, and sew them together later. They made the perfect leader-ender project; I just picked up a light and a dark square and fed them through. The seams were pressed to the dark side.

When I sewed the four patches I made sure that the darks and lights were aligned the same in every single one; the dark patch underneath on the right, dark patch on the top to the left.
The seams were fanned, by unpicking the few stitches in the seam allowances on each side, and then pressed open. By doing that all the seams of the fourpatches nest, no matter how you rotate them, which allowed me to twist and turn them when laying the whole thing out and I never had to worry about seam allowances. When I joined the four patch blocks I fanned those seams too.I didn't worry about colour or balance or anything until I had amassed a large pile of four patches; then I laid out what I had and decided if I needed more black, or red, or tan and made more blocks accordingly.

I made the centre square first, then made corners to turn it on point. To make the edge pieces I cut triangles using the Olfa triangle ruler; I used a 2.75" strip and put the 4 1/2" line on the edge of the strip. (If I wanted to cut them as quarter square units I'd start with a 5.5" square and crosscut diagonally into 4 triangles.) These might be a smidgeon too big, but that's a good thing, it will allow a bit of leeway when it's time to trim the quilt edges.

Two sides of the quilt needed light triangles, and two needed dark. I could have had it dark all round the edge by adding a single row of squares on two sides of the central four patches, but I didn't care enough. I quite like the light and dark edges.
I checked which way the seams wanted to go in the triangle unit, and then pressed them all alike. Then it was just a matter of piecing each corner, and adding it to the central part. And adding two triangles to complete the corner of the corner.

My quilt measures 78"square; the central piece had 81 four patches. Each corner took 19 four patches and 8 triangle units, four dark and four light. Hmm, 157 four patches, plus the edges; that's more than 628 individual squares, what a lot of fabric. More than 5 metres in fact. I'm thrilled to have busted all that stash, and so painlessly. I'd definitely make one again. I have enough squares left over to make a good start.

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This is the finished object from the weekend that involved glue. It's called an Etui; in January Andrea (Welsh Quilter) showed a picture on her blog of one she had made as a gift. I really, really wanted the pattern, so she sent me a copy, with the designer's permission. And I read the instructions and thought 'So much Gloo-ing! I can't!!' And so the pattern, and all the cut out pieces sat in a drawer for months until I found enough courage to tackle it.I sort of came to terms with the sticky fingers and drips and reeks, but I can't say I enjoyed it much. I kept thinking of ways I could make another one without the glue, because I love the finished item, just not the process of making it. Maybe I could sew it all together.....

It's pretty and just what I needed to keep all my hand sewing stuff in one place, so thank you Andrea, I love it. And I may even make another one soon.

Andrea's daughter Jessica is fundraising for a trip to Africa, and Andrea has donated a lovely quilt to raffle. I have requested a few tickets, and this lovely quilt might be mine. But I never win anything, darn it; guess that makes better odds for everyone else with a ticket.

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Nov 09

This is a quilt that I put together using Bonnie's instructions from her Quiltville website. It doesn't photograph properly, the colours are very rich in real life, but they always look grey on my computer. I quilted it with one of my pantos, Celtic Scroll. The rows of the panto run from top to bottom of the photo, but there is a diagonal line to the overall pattern so that it's hard to see the rows of the panto. That's a good thing. I love this panto on Log Cabins and checkerboard quilts, really breaks up the straight lines of the piecing and gives the quilt movement. We took another flying trip to Adelaide yesterday, for Mereth's study course and to run business errands for me. It's so hard to leave Miz Millhouse, but lots of other stuff demands precedence right now. There is a big craft show being held in Adelaide, and I will be helping Kaye on the Gammil stand over the weekend. I will also be collecting my DS from the airport, he's arriving tomorrow for an extended stay. He thinks he's here for a holiday, so I'll break it to him gently that he's going to be working! I hope he's prepared to start straight away, printing and handling orders and getting my computers tuned up. It's hard to get a good tech guy, sometimes you have to breed them yourself. He's come a long way since the days when he put flattened Smartie boxes in the floppy drive slot and then denied all knowledge..... (Smarties are candy like M&Ms but bigger, if US readers aren't familiar with them). This is another photo from our drive in the country last week. I've always loved this tiny little building in Caltowie, built with as much care and attention to detail as the bigger buildings. I'm sure it's builders had plans for additions and expansions, but they never happened. I like the green door, and all the different textures of stone and metal and wood. This fuchsia is flowering mightly on my front porch, such a pretty, dainty flower. The garden shops are full of new season fuchsias, and I have bought three that I couldn't resist. I've been deprived of their beauty for 26 years, so now I intend to indulge my love of them.

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We went down to Adelaide last Thursday, and attended the guild meeting, and saw the prizes awarded to the winning quiltmakers. We sat with a friend who had won her division, and it was fun hearing about how she made the quilt. She doesn't make traditional quilts, but I love what she does, she's so innovative and clever. I would link to the winning quilts but the site doesn't appear to be working right now.

We were off early the next day, to meet up with fellow blogger Tazzie for coffee before she went to work. It was great to actually meet her, and talk about our quilts, and recent fabric purchases, and plans for the future. We can't call her our imaginary friend any more, having met her for real!

Then it was off to the show, to meet up with friends and look round the quilts and shops. We were very subdued with what we bought, not because we didn't want anything, but because we were determined not to stock up on more fabric, just to add to the stash. This is the sum total of my purchases; Mereth cast her eyes up to heaven when I rejected the peach and yellow and green flower head pins in several booths, and kept hunting for the blue ones. But the blue ones are prettier! I had to have them and no other.

The fat quarter bundle is from our mate Lisa, of Dyed and Gone To Heaven. My camera refused to do justice to these gorgeous fabrics, they are a wonderful range of sea greens, but they just look grey on my screen. They are lucsious in real life, I can assure you. Lisa challenged us to try something a bit different from our normal palette of reproduction prints, so we're going to do a mini quilt each. And we have to send her pictures when they're done, so she can see we actually used the fabric.

And I bought this American magazine, which is totally unsuitable for our season, but it has an article on reversible cables which I want to know about. It will sit and wait till next year, when I can start knitting in the cooler weather again. We just havve to get through the summer first.

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My weekend was spent finishing two projects, and I was pleased with what I managed to accomplish. The first project was the Colonial Squares, which had grown so large it was taking up all the design wall, and most of my sewing table. When things gets to that stage I just want them finished and done with, so I devoted myself to getting it in one piece. At no time was this ever hard or irksome, I really enjoyed every bit of it. I would even make another one, but not right away. It was an excellent leader-ender, and it looks exactly as I wanted it to. I'll quilt it with a clamshell I think, and use just a simple tea-dyed calico binding.

I don't have photos of the other Finished Object yet, but it involved lots of glue and I was aghast at the mess I can make with a simple glue bottle and a pile of cardboard and fabric. I just wasn't cut out for gloo-ing, and only the cuteness factor of the FO kept me going. I have plans to redesign the pattern as a Sewn Object instead, can't face all that stickiness again.

On to the next thing, whatever that may be. I will have fun consulting the folder full of Quilts To Make...

It's been very, very hot, with nasty dry winds. Dolly has never been through a summer, so she was absolutely unprepared for the heat. She spent a lot of time panting and looking at us with a 'Make It Stop!'look on her face. It was too hot even to play; this is how Dolly amuses herself in hot weather.
She looks like a baby crocodile, just hanging from the rope that I was holding. Occasionally she gave it a tug or too, but that was too strenuous.

She just lay there, head suspended by the rope, jaws locked in that famous Staffy grip, and eventually she drifted off to sleep, still hanging on to her rope. What a life she has....

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