Holiday stitching

As promised yesterday, here's a report on what I got up to on holiday.

First up is the la passacaglia quilt which I hope do a lot of in 2015. I'm really happy with how these first 3 cogs have started out. I intend to do a bit of fussy cutting, but I think I'll focus more on the colours than the designs in the fabrics. I can already tell there's going to be at least 5 different shades of Kaffe Fassett's Paperweight in this quilt. There are 3 in the photo below. The outside ring of the blue cog is a fabric by Makower.

These cogs aren't sewn together because the red and blue ones need to be expanded yet.

Although I've done English paper piecing before, this quilt is going to take ages. I'm glue basting this time which I've never done before. As a result the fabric is pulled slightly tighter over the edges of the papers and there's not as much room to put the needle through. I do think glue basting will give a neater finish though, and I hate to think how long it would take to tack all of the pieces by hand. I've already had to put the first refill into the glue pen!

The other reason that this quilt will take so long is fabric selections. As you can see above, I just took over the coffee table in the lounge with all my fabrics. I've seen other people saying that choosing the fabrics is the hardest part. I think that the hand sewing is forcing people to slow down and consider all parts of the process very carefully. We all want these quilts to be as near to perfect as they can be, so everyone is taking their time choosing their fabrics.

The paper piecing can be a bit hard on my hands, so I did some embroidery too for a change of stitching.

Mum gave me this cute Santa ornament for Christmas and I've done all the cross stitch on it now, and it just needs the beads to finish it. I hope to do that this week. In fact, I've just seen that Roger Federer plays in the Brisbane final at 10pm NZ time tonight, so that might be excuse I need to stay up late.

I also finished the first panel on the Gingerbread Christmas Etui. I only had to do Santa and the reindeer, but it's one over one so I needed good light and fresh eyes.

I made a start on the Haunted House, because let's face it, Halloween will be here before Christmas. I'ts always good to get the first side of these houses done because then I can picture how big it is, and be sure the other pieces will fit perfectly.

Here's the coffee table in the family room. You can see I took over both coffee tables. And you'll see that I took my lovely pin cushion from Carla on holiday with me. I also took my sweet pouch from Serena, but its not in either of these photos. I'll show you it another day soon.  The Possum Magic ladies are all busy as another hand over date is looming. I love seeing what everyone does to the quilts. You can see progress shots on my Possum Magic tab at the top of the page.