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.  

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 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!

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

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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.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter