Pinestream Quilters

Last night I was the guest speaker at Pinestream Quilters in Upper Hutt, Wellington.  

I've spoken to Pinestream Quilters previously, so I decided to take along some of my bags and tapestry cushions, as well as my most recently finished quilts of course. 

Everyone loved my Giraffe tapestry cushion designed by Kim McLean.  I thought that they were no longer available, but upon checking I see that they are back in stock at the Crewel Gobelin in Sydney here.  You can read more about my cushion and how I attached the tassels here. 

I also talked about bag making and showed some of the bags that I've made myself.  

My modified One Hour Basket made with a Renaissance Ribbons velvet ribbon was very popular.  I've found the velvet ribbon in stock at Bower Bird near Hamilton.  Mel from Bower Bird has two new versions I haven't see before:

https://bowerbird.nz/products/velvet-border-odile-bailloeul

https://bowerbird.nz/products/the-queens-garden-velvet-border

Both of them would make beautiful baskets.  I'm getting tempted myself! 

Someone asked about my Pandemic Sampler by Long Dog Samplers and I was horrified to realise this morning that it's been waiting for the back stitching for 11 months now!! I really must get onto that ASAP.  

Thank you Pinestream Quilters - it was a lovely evening spent with like minded quilters. 

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!

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Dear Jen revisited

On Sunday I went digging in my quilting cupboard to find a WIP I wanted to work on.  But before I could find that WIP, I came across my Dear Jen blocks from the quilt along in 2019.  

Jen Kingwell ran the Dear Jen programme and she issued patterns for 6" hand pieced or hand appliqued blocks each week or month.  The blocks were very intricate and making my own templates for every block added to time each block took too.  

In a sign of how my thinking has changed, I went from, "I'll make some more of those one day", straight to, "Why don't I just sew these blocks together and call it quits". 

So I laid out my measly 11 hand pieced blocks and thought about what I could do with them.  Two of them needed a bit of fixing up, so I was a radical and just threw them in the bin!!!

Then I was left with 9 blocks which is a good number for a quilt, so I set to and hand sewed them together while I watched the tennis from Indian Wells.  

A few days later I went searching in my stash for some borders to make my mini quilt a bit bigger.  I must have tried about 20 fabrics before I settled on my final choices, but I'm very happy with them. The orange really works.  

The whole quilt is 30" x 30", so I looked for a yard/metre of fabric in my stash and found In a Finch by Tula Pink:

 

Then I pulled out my Jacqui Gering Walk books 1 and 2 and made a short list of possible machine quilting designs.  In the end I chose the above design which works really well because the quilt is square.  

I'll be sure to show you the finished quilt once I get the binding on.  

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

Swatch Quilt

Remember those fabrics I showed you last week? Well, I cut them up and made the world's fastest quilt pattern - the Swatch Quilt by Ruby Star Society. 

I chose some fairly bold prints for this quilt, but I think they all work together because I've limited the colour palette to blue, yellow and pink/red/orange, with black to break it up.  I resisted my usual urge to add green because it would have been too much.  

Plaids: by Kaffe Fassett Collective and also Kathy Doughty

Yellow spots: Alison Glass

Blue birds: After the Rain by Bookhou for Conservatory Craft

Orange stripes and red/yellow check: Denyse Schmidt

Palm trees: Cotton + Steel

So you can see I have a very eclectic mix of fabrics in my stash. Yes, this quilt is 100% from my stash.

 

I tweaked the measurements and pattern slighty because I wanted my quilt to be big enough to cover the top of a queen sized bed. I'm really happy with how it turned out.  It's currently at the Busy Bee Quilt Shop for long arm quilting because I'm know it's going to be well used, and I prefer machine quilting for quilts that are going to be thrown on the floor.  And hand quilting would just get lost amongst all of this pattern and colour.

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

Quilts for Ukraine - an update

This week I spotted two of our New Zealand quilts that are ready to donate to Ukrainian children in Germany.  The kiwi block makes the first one quite recognisable! But I also recognise the borders because I assembled our quilt tops before I sent them over to Claudia in Germany.  

Claudia received far more quilts and blocks than she ever could have imagined, and she has been donating quilts as quickly as she can.  I'm not concerned that our tops from New Zealand are still working their way through the finishing stages.  It's lovely to see that they have been quilted beautifully, and have matching binding applied by a volunteer.  

I'll keep an eye out for more photos in case they pop up. 

My fabrics for the Swatch quilt

I had a great weekend away on my work social weekend in Kapiti Coast.  They weather is starting to get a bit cooler now and I'm starting to think about quilting again.  I was inspired by the Ruby Star Society Spring sew along I saw on Instagram this week so I looked in my stash and cut blocks for the Swatch quilt:

I see that they have designed their blocks to fit across one width of the fabric, but I wanted my quilt to be larger than 48" x 60", so I've cut my blocks a bit bigger and added two extra rows.  

I'll show you next week when I have it all sewn together.  

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

The end of summer

It's March and I can already feel the weather changing.  Summer is coming to an end.  But before it does, I've got my work social weekend to attend.  

Mt Taranaki

Three years ago in March 2020, just before the COVID lockdowns started, we had our work social weekend in New Plymouth.  It was a great weekend away, and the weather was just perfect. 

Now we're finally able to hold another social weekend and this time we're going to Paraparaumu Beach for the weekend.  Some people will play golf, some will take a boat trip over to Kapiti Island and climb to the top, and some will go on a food tour of local markets and cafes.  Then we'll all meet up on Saturday night for dinner.  

On Sunday there will be more golf and walks before everyone heads home after lunch.   

So I won't get much quilting done this weekend because I'm the one organising the whole weekend. 

After this weekend my calendar is free for a few weeks and I'm really looking forward to cutting into some new fabrics and getting creative. 

Hopefully you've had time for quilting, so feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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