Christmas Quilts

 This week I bought some Christmas fabrics. 

Well, one real Christmas fabric and some complementary fabrics to go with it.  The skiing reindeer are called Jolly Season by Abi Hall for Moda.  I bought mine from Stitchbird in Kilbirnie, and all the other fabrics in this photo are from there too.  

I don't do a lot of Christmas sewing because Christmas falls in summer time in New Zealand, and we don't need quilts on the beds.  I think the last Christmas thing I made was a table runner because the fabric was just so cute (sounds like a similar story to the fabrics above!).

I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the blue Christmas fabrics yet.  Maybe I'll just think about them until November 2022, and make something for next Christmas.  

In the mean time I've got these pretty Christmas quilts to keep me happy this year. 

Oh! Christmas Tree 

Flocks by Night

Holiday Patchwork Forest

These quilts all reflect what Christmas is like here in New Zealand - bright and colourful. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

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Tea Party part 5

I made a lot of progress on my Tea Party quilt this week. 

And I'm loving how it's looking.  I was slightly worried when I put the first border on and the red crosses were a bit concentrated in the bottom half (see below). But I kept going and the next border has balanced out the colour placements.  The next round of blocks will disperse the colours even further, so I'm confident that it's all going to be OK.  

The next round is the 16 feature blocks - I've finished 8 of the blocks already, but I still have to do the wool felt applique on the 8 blocks with tea and coffee cups.  

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Tea Party part 4

 I did it! I started the centre block.

It's quite hard to hand applique on a piece this big, so I'll be pleased when I'm finished this block.  Then I can machine sew on two borders that I've already got ready, and then suddenly I'll be able to see real progress.  

Here's what I'm aiming for.  There's still so much left to do!

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Pandemic Sampler

My Pandemic Sampler is not going to be finished in 2021 after all. I've only got 4 more pages to go, but each page takes me about two weeks when I'm working on it every night.

Everything was going fine when I last posted about it back in July, but then in August I started having real problems with my right hand.  My middle finger became really swollen, and then the tendon in my palm tightened up.  I couldn't do any hand work for about 10 weeks.  

Fortunately my hand is better now (thanks to 2 steroid injections and a round of prednisone), but I'm taking care of my hands and operating on a strict rotation schedule so I don't do too much of any on thing. 

That means that I've had to let go of my goal of finishing this sampler in 2021.  Given that the Pandemic is still lingering on in our little corner of the world, maybe it's appropriate that my sampler completion date will drag into 2022.  

Here's a pretty rose from my garden to end on a high note.  It's Heart of Gold, and new in my garden this year. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

 

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Another talk

Last week I was the guest speaker at Rose City Quilters in Palmerston North, this week I was the guest speaker at Capital Quilters in Lower Hutt.  

Yes, I had a last minute invitation to be the guest speaker at Capital Quilters last weekend.  Unfortunately I couldn't let you know, because like Palmerston North, the meeting was restricted to members only, with a maximum of 100 attendees.  

I hadn't really unpacked from my Palmerston North trip, so it was easy enough to scoop up a few quilts and put them in the car.  I changed my talk up a bit, and included some different quilts including this one:

This is my Scrappy Bear Paw quilt, made to celebrate Capital Quilters 30th anniversary. I love this quilt because it's nice and bright, and I did big stitch hand quilting with Perle 8. 

A lot of members made Bear Paw quilts that year, and we hung them all in the hall at Christmas 2015.  It looked amazing. 

Our guild is going to run a Bear Paw block of the month next year.  Maybe I'll be tempted to make another version when I see all the blocks on the wall.  This is why we chose bear paw.  It's in our logo. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

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Tea Party part 3

I've been quietly working away on my Tea Party quilt in the background.  

I've now finished all 8 of the plainer blocks that will alternate with the tea and coffee cups.  

Next up is the centre block which I might start this week.  Strangely enough, I'm worried that I might stuff it up! I really want this quilt to be beautiful - I guess that's why it's taken me years to start it.  I think I'll just prepare some flowers and leave them on my "design floor" for a few days before I start stitching them on. 

I was the guest speaker at Rose City Quilters in Palmerston North on Monday night.  It was a fabulous meeting, because not only did I get to share my quilts with the guild, but I also got to present the certificates and prizes from their exhibition at the weekend.  

I'd gone to Palmerston North the previous Monday with Clare Smith and we had judged the Rose City Quilters Exhibition.  It was great to see all the quilts up close, and it was quite difficult to determine the winners in some categories.  Congratulations to everyone who won an award. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

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Labour Weekend

It's a long weekend in New Zealand, and I'm hoping to get quite a bit of quilting done.  

First I need to put away all the new fabric sitting on my kitchen bench! 

The Kaffe Fassett ones on the left were a birthday gift from my mum and dad.  I chose them, and ordered them, but they insisted on paying.  I also received Kaffe's latest book for my birthday, so I'm enjoying that at the moment.

The spots and stripes were from a quick trip to Palmerston North on Monday. I was invited to judge the Rose City Quilters exhibition, and I couldn't resist popping in to 3 quilts shops on the way back. 

And the Tula Pink pastels turned up this week, quite unexpectedly.  With USPS no longer accepting parcels to NZ and Australia, I wondered when they might ever arrive.  But a courier dropped them off last night, so that was a very pleasant surprise.  

This afternoon I'm going to pick up one of my quilts from my long arm quilter, and I'm delivering Raindrops are Falling on my Head.  In the end I went with a suggestion from my mum, and just sewed a patterned section of the fabric over the corners to hide the pink, and make the zig zag continue around the quilt.  Thank you for all your suggestions, but this is the one I thought worked the best.  

I'll be sure to show you once it's all quilted.  There's a lot of seam allowances on the back of this one, so I couldn't face hand quilting it.  And, I really want it finished before Christmas.    

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to this week?  Feel free to share a recent blog post below.  

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