Symposium shopping and other news

I've had a lovely long summer holiday, but I had to go back to work this week and will be working every day for the next three weeks. I'm sure I'll still fit some sewing in, but it's always a busy time when the kids go back to school and work starts up again.

I"ll be taking part in the Grow Your Blog event which starts this weekend. Vicki compiles a massive list of blogs taking part, and everyone can explore blogs which may be new to them. I'll provide a link to the list when it goes live.

In the mean time, here's what I've been up to.

I showed you some of the beautiful quilts from the exhibition at Symposium, but I didn't show you what I bought.

Symposium purchases

I bought Quiltmania because it's got a review of the Sydney Quilt Show (Australia) and I knew there were photos of Wendy Williams' amazing quilts in there.

The Tuscany Tote bag pattern is one that I've considered making for sometime. I won't be using Downtown Abby fabrics, though they do look nice in the photo.

The most significant purchase was those 3 rolls of thread. It's Superior Threads Wonderfil Dazzle, a metallic/rayon with a sparkle in it!!

It's just perfect for this large scrappy quilt which is my oldest WIP. I made this jelly roll style quilt with the leftovers from my Bordered Peacock quilt. It's been sitting in it's current form for about 18 months now, however I'm feeling quite excited about it again now that I finally have a plan. I stumbled across the water drops quilting pattern last week (overlapping circles) and now I have an amazing thread. This thread is quite thick - think Perle 8, but the metallic bits are so well embedded that you don't even feel them and the thread will still glide through the needle. This will be my winter hand quilting project for 2015.

Funnily enough I feel quite naughty each time I walk past this thread on the table. I just know what some of my friends will say about it. However, I don't mind. It's me and I love it.

In other news:

I finished this cross stitch beaded Santa from Mill Hill. I'm not going to put a hanger on him, I'll just perch him somewhere on the tree next year.

Mill Hill Santa

I made the next 4 blocks in the Women of Bible quilt. I'm trying to stick to pink and blue but I did introduce some new fabrics this time. Here they all are together.

Women of the Bible quilt

I picked up Serena's Possum Magic quilt and I'm starting to think about what I will add to it. I'd like to use the two fabrics on the left of the picture. It's very grey at the moment and I think it's my job to break up the greyness. Let me know if you have any great ideas please.

Serena's Possum Magic quilt

Lastly, I've fallen into a sea of la passacaglia pieces. Although I'm planing every step meticulously, I'm still sometimes finding that what I though would work, just doesn't work. The colours still work OK, but I think some of the patterns are too busy next to each other. I don't want to revert to solids, so will just keep accumulating all the spare pieces I've cut, and use them in future rosettes.

Only 3 or 4 of the rosettes are as big as the one in the top left of the photo above. All of the rest are smaller, so I've cracked open my Kirsty Allsopp notebook and devised a system to avoid making too many of the wrong sort. Kirsty is very British, so I was thinking British thoughts while organising my notebook, and thinking that Kirsty would be very proud of me getting organised.

Kirsty's lovely notebook 

Inside the note book

I photocopied the pages from the original book, and then cut them up and put one pattern piece on each page of the notebook. There are only 13 patterns, but I think there are about 40 rosettes in total. Now I can make a note in the book each time I finish one. I need 8 of the type on the page shown above, so I'll note each time I finish one.

That's all for now. Back to the glue stick to prep some more pieces for joining tonight.