My Gnomes - and the Peacock Party link up

I finished my Gnome quilt in time to give it to my mum and dad for Christmas. They laughed, and thought it was a good representation of themselves.

It was fun to make the quilt in fabrics similar to what they wear when they are gardening.

I had it quilted by Sue Burnett of Busy Bee Quilt Shop in Wellington.

The pattern is Norm and Nanette by Elizabeth Hartman.  Although you can download it in pdf, I'd recommend buying the printed version like I did, because the pattern is 24 pages.  Many local quilt shops are stocking Elizabeth Hartman's patterns now.

photo from Elizabeth Hartman's website

The pattern gives instructions for the full sized quilt above, and also the small lap quilt that I made.
The large quilt is 68" x 76"
and the small quilt is 30" x 36"

We've been outdoors enjoying summer this week.

Here are a couple of photos of a beautiful Pohutukawa tree in my neighbourhood.  These trees are flowering all around the coast of the North Island of New Zealand at the moment.

Now, it's time for the Peacock Party.  Thank you to everyone who has been linking up.  It's great to discover new bloggers and read what other quilters have been making. Feel free to link up and share your latest creations.

Inlinkz Link Party

A trip to Auckland

Last week I had to go to Auckland for work.  It's a one hour flight from Wellington, so it's a nice getaway.  My parents live in Auckland, and my older son is also up there, studying at university.

Mum and I share our love of sewing and quilting, so we visited a few quilt shops while I was there.  We both want to make the Sue Spargo needle case on the cover of the latest Inspirations magazine, so we each bought wool felt and ribbons.  Mum's pile is on the left, and mine is on the right (incase you couldn't guess).

I found the perfect backing fabric for my Peacock at Sunset tapestry so I was happy about that.  It just happens to be Kaffe Fassett of course. I'm going to take it to Nancy's Stitch Studio to be stretched and turned into a cushion/pillow.  They do a great job and it will be much better than I could do myself.

Mum showed me her latest EPP creation.  It's one of the variations of the Mischief Quilt designed by Karen Tripp.  You can find the pattern, templates and paper pieces on Karen's website DIY Addict website here.

Mum is also working on the butterfly quilt by Elizabeth Hartman.  It's called Lepidoptera and mum finds that amusing because she used to work in the zoology department of Otago University and knew the Greek/Latin names of many animals and creatures. I've supplied a lot of the bright fabrics for the butterflies because mum's stash is mainly florals.

Now I'm home and back to hand quilting my Possum Magic quilt.  This quilt was made by a group of friends in a round robin.  You can read more about it here.

I want to enter it into our national symposium which is in October, but entries close on 13 June so I need to work on it every day.

The class placements for Symposium were announced this week and I got into all of my first choices so I'm very happy about that.  I'll be taking classes with Jen Kingwell, Chris Jurd and Deborah Louie.
There's so many other things I want to finish before then though!