This and That

Spent the last few days playing around with fabric, our local Guild are holding a Market Day on Saturday at our monthly meeting and I have a table booked so deciding which pieces of fabric I would let go was first on the agenda.

It was great looking through my baskets, coming across fabrics which I have had for years and thinking I just couldn't let a quarter yard piece of that one go - you can guess what the result of the exercise was - most fabrics went back into the basket, however I do have lots of threads, beads and so on which I don't have any use for so out they go. Books had been sorted over the past few weeks so I have a stack of those for the Market.

I bought a six cube cabinet for storing my larger pieces of Kaffe Fasset Collective fabrics so those are all tidy now

Next on my list was to decide what to do with the hundreds of triangles left over from HSTeria, cut more triangles in black and I've started a new project.

After all the wet weather we have had today was glorious, the sun was warm and my basket of violas are blooming away merrily

The weekend will be spent  playing around with the template for my blog, I feel the need to change a few things and have a makeover!

We should have a post soon from Angela giving us the August colour for RSC 2014, there was a hint that it could possibly be orange, looking forward to that.

Enjoy the rest of your week, back again soon with more cats.

HSTeria - last link-up

Here we are, the last link-up with Vicki at Field Trips in Fiber who so kindly organised this quilt along.
We have seen some great examples of using half square triangles in quilts and I've enjoyed this quilt along enormously even if I have concentrated on just the one quilt!  Still have the diagonal seams to sew but family circumstances mean that I won't get around to this until later in the week so I decided to post now even though "Red Sea Sunset" is not totally finished,  the wave along the bottom edge needs fixing - I was so careful with bias edges but the bottom ones got away from me.

Red Sea Sunset

I must find my tripod, trying to get the photographs without it means I'm ending up with wonky looking quilts and then cropping evenly to lose the background becomes difficult to say the least, the yet to be sewn diagonal seams don't help!

As a result of all the different fabrics used I have a large bag of left over triangles, these are being stitched to black half square triangles and being placed in a random fashion - photo next post all being well.

The first bunches of narcissus appeared the shops last week and I love the scent of these early flowers, two bunches came home with me.

Off to read the blog posts for today - have a good week.

Scrappy Red Cats for RSC 2014

Kitty time again!

Six more red cats towards my quilt in varying shades of red and only five more months to go before our grand reveal. I will have 126 cats and a quilt of 70" x 81" and already I'm beginning to work on  how this will be quilted, something simple I think.

You know I'm enjoying making these so much I have the idea that another one is on the cards probably smaller in size in Amish colours,  again with the black solid and I reckon that would look OK.

Cold wet and windy here in NZ today and probably the same all the week so great quilting weather.

When I have piled all my triangles from HSTeria into a bag, a large bag, I can get on with making my quilting room more manageable and that really needs attacking this week.

Linking up now with Angela at SoScrappy, just had a quick peep and there are heaps of bloggers linked up this week with all their red projects, try and get across there.

See you soon.

HSTeria - almost at the finish line!

Yes almost finished,  just one half of a square to place and sew today ready for showing fully next week.

I didn't post last week due to family issues, dental visits and more but the main reason was that I just sort of "hit the wall" with designing and colour choice for this quilt, I just couldn't move forward with it at all and had to walk away for a few days to recharge the batteries, this has never happened to me before but yesterday I felt energised once more and worked on three more blocks, I see now after cropping that the one on the left needs some adjustment so it's out with the seam ripper later!

I have piles of six inch strips of fabrics all over my cutting table, sewing table and eight trays of triangles cut in every colour imaginable!

What a mammoth task it's going to be to sort into my scrap drawers at the end of the process.

I am thinking I will use my Accuquilt to cut strips and tumblers for future use from the leftovers.

Normally I would link up with Vicki at Field Trips in Fiber but due to the continuing Internet problems she is having at the moment the link possibly won't be up until Sunday, I will edit once her HST post is available.

Have a good weekend

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Red

Great choice by Angela for the colour this month, I do have lots of reds in my stash but not many plains they're all patterned but that hasn't stopped me sewing up four red cats for my post today

another six will be "in production" ready for this coming Saturday.

This is a brief post as we had a slight mishap on Saturday evening with the plumbing set up in our laundry. A small piece of replacement board at the bottom of the wall by the laundry tub had to be replaced and John would then paint  it,  he decided to nail this in place then said there was hot water over the floor and possibly I had a leak from my new machine - not the case  -  he had nailed straight through the hot water pipe! Major mop up with water in the laundry and running down into the garage, emergency call to a plumber who suggested just isolating and turning off the hot water system and switching off the heater in the garage. As the charge for an emergency call during weekend hours was considerable

 compared to weekday call out we opted to wait until this morning. Plumber arrived and because of the position of the piping behind the walls he had to remove a piece of the

 plaster board which had just been replaced and newly painted!!! I have had better days!

Okay, after my moan I am now linking up with Angela and Rainbow Scrap Happy girls and I'm going visiting now to take a peek at all the red link ups

HSTeria 5 July

Three more blocks of the puzzle in place

Still a WIP on the wall and only a few blocks sewn together on the top left hand side, I need to leave the other blocks just loose on the wall until I have decided where to go with colour. Will be linking up with Vicki and the gang shortly - please go visit!

Haven't done anywhere near as much quilting as I had intended due to the painting of the laundry and bathroom, which is a shame as it has been the perfect weather this week for shutting myself off and just getting the machine going. Rain most every day, thunder storms with quite a number of houses badly damaged with lightning strikes, the lawn areas in the garden are just a bog! Alternating showers and sunny spots so far today and we went along to watch our eldest grand-daughter horse riding,  lovely display for end of term  a synchronised performance to music by Cold Play - great!

Totally different tack now - fruit - I love fresh fruit apart from one in particular which I adore looking at  purely because of the colours

Water Melon
one of the most delicious fruits going with it's beautiful red flesh surrounded by creamy white and the patterned green skin. I have about a yard of water melon fabric bought years ago when fruit and veg  fabrics became all the rage but I'm still thinking what to do with it! Our youngest granddaughter loves water melon and I have seen her sit at the table with a huge plate of melon wedges in front of her, juice dripping down her chin in seventh heaven.

Red cat afternoon now for me and should be posting those in a day or so.

Don't forget to click on the link with Vicki above and I do hope you're all having a lovely 4th July!