Last of the Blues!

Yes it's officially the last Saturday (Sunday here in NZ) for anything Blue for Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014, sounds as if something exciting is in the pipeline for 2015 so go along over to
Angela at superscrappy
she's not giving much away but
Vicki over at Field Trips in Fiber
will have details in her December Newsletter.

Well, I am all "catted out" right now but have two more 16 patch blue blocks

excuse the large watermark on this and the next photo, far too large but I'll remedy this for next post.

My H blocks kept me busy yesterday and some were blue, well sort of blue

I made a few positive and negatives in two other colours and four others

so nothing exciting this post I'm afraid!

I'm trying to organise my three tubs of scraps but it's a mammoth task and only possible to achieve this in short bursts. I must have some fabrics in there from up to 20 years ago and I suspect some of these may end up being culled and go on to be given away.

Time for putting all my cats together this month and I need to baste Red Sea Sunset and Cotton Candy, these two should be basically straight line quilting, the tricky quilting will come when I have to work out how to quilt my cats.
I'm off to link up with
RSC 2014
Happy Quilting
Maureen

One more for RSC 2014 and a few blues!

Recently Linda aka Razzle Dazzle Quilter a fellow blogger and superb quilter here in New Zealand emailed me a photo of her new feline friend!

What a beauty he is, I loved  his amazing colour - which is classed as Lavender Mink - and said what a good idea it would be to make a cat for my quilt in that shade.
This is the nearest I could find

so he will be in good company in my cat quilt! Note he will not have one ear larger than the other  both will be equal in size when he is stitched up with the others!

 I think I mentioned  that I found quite a few blue fabrics hidden away in a project (16 patch) started a few years ago,  so to meet the blue theme for the month
I have four more blocks made this morning.

It's a very humid day with us, not conducive to sewing and I'm really hoping this gets less towards evening, terrible trying to sleep when you feel as if you're breathing in water! No doubt we'll have to watch for things like downy mildew etc. on the veggies and roses.

Better get a move on and go link with

Angela and friends at RSC 2014

Have a Happy Thanksgiving

Colour Challenges

A few days ago I posted my purple block here all ready for me to deconstruct and put into the Purple Colour Challenge organised by Aotearoa Quilters here in New Zealand. Had to be predominantly purple and 12" x 12" - here is my finished piece

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

after another check for threads and a light press it was
 off by courier yesterday for the receiving deadline of tomorrow (Friday here)
 and I can see from the tracking system that it's out for delivery today, fingers crossed there are no hiccups along the way!

The only other achievements since my last post was more shifting things around in my studio, I really do have too much stuff crammed in here but I'm working on it slowly. My main issue is to come up with the best system I can for sorting my scraps I have stacks and stacks in assorted boxes and bags and drawers and it really annoys me to have to spend time hunting through these for what I need!

I decided on a pattern for a quilt for one of our grand-daughters now that I have the yardage of Guinea Flowers in a dusky pink on my shelf.

Also a few more H blocks and the next step here is to get them up on the wall
to see whether I need more brights and which colours, I have 36 so far.

Today more tidying and hopefully the last three rounds on Cotton Candy, ideally I would like to baste Red Sea Sunset but we'll see!

Almost There - RSC 2014

Yes, almost time to call it a day for my kitties!

Six more to add this week which actually brings me over the

total number needed and I now must  make a decision 

as to whether I add another vertical row to make

the quilt a little wider. Present measurement would be

70" x 81" and I guess this would be a good size.

There are a few cats in my collection

in the Guinea Flower design

which I'm very fond of. Rings

also I have, I think, in most

colourways.

Seems as if I once again I have resized one of the cats slightly larger  - the one here on the right - looks like a much fatter creature!

Beloved Batiks - I love working with these because it doesn't fray and the 

colours are glorious.  

The gingko kitten on the left I think is just beautiful, this is the only colour way I have in this design. Had I known it was going to look so amazing when the fabrics arrived 

I would have chosen a couple more colours.

 

 Besides my cats I'm into quilting my Purple Challenge piece and loving it, cutting more H blocks today and plan to work on Cotton Candy tomorrow.

If the old knees were in good working order I would be basting my Bargello but that's going to 

have to wait for another day.

After all the rain we've had here in NZ the garden is looking lush and flowers opening up left right and centre, the rose below is either Yellow Charles Austin or Graham Thomas, I've lost the label! It's a beauty.

Quickly on the subject of flowers I am expecting a bundle of digitally printed fabrics from
Fingerprint and one of their fabrics is just covered in fallen rose blooms, quite a delight to see. If you have the time go and have a peep.

Posting this now and linking up with Angela and all at RSC 2014.
Hope you're all having a happy weekend.

This and That

Not a hugely productive week so far at my place, it's been a busy week but not a lot of quilting!

I've finished cutting the huge hexagons

and half hexies for my quilt using the pattern and colours

from the newest Kaffe Fasset book "Quilts in Morocco".

I'm a member of Aotearoa Quilters here in New Zealand and they have run a colour challenge for the past two or three years, this year was deemed to be Purple but as the date for receiving entries is November 21st I thought I wouldn't have time to get the 12" x 12" challenge together.

Changed my mind late yesterday afternoon and decided to go for it. In the newsletter sent out to members we are told Purple or lilac, lavender, mauve, periwinkle, violet or amethyst so quite a range there! 

I put together one Fractured block yesterday, not a big ask as it is only a 12" block 

today this has been deconstructed in a similar way to three small pieces I made last year inspired by Rayna Gillman's work. I'll put a photo up when the quilting has been done which should be tomorrow or Saturday and I need to have it in the mail on Monday.

In the garden my roses are beginning to come out now and even our heavy rain and windy weather this week hasn't harmed them too much. A pink David Austin rose is blooming in our front garden

normally I would try and take a shot of a perfect rose/roses, one of the opening buds here has a few tattered petals but I'm looking at flowers in another way now. There is a book available from an Art Gallery in Auckland titled "Imperfect" by Emma Bass, this shows flowers, usually in arrangements which have obviously been around a while and are drooping, decaying and so on,  the promotional photos are absolutely wonderful. I  am sooooo tempted to buy this but it's quite pricey and needs a little more thought before I plunge in.

Meanwhile it's back to cats for me after quilting the Purple block - and a great surprise as I've made 125 and only need 126 for the quilt !! How pleased was I when I counted them but I shall make a few more and should be able to post these on Sunday or Monday.

Downton Abbey will on TV in 20 mins so I'm off to get comfortable.

See you soon.

Blue Saturday - Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014

In my last blue cat post I said I didn't have many light blues - I found the reason why in the midst of my stash sorting and reorganisation - a project I had started possibly two years ago, obviously this had somehow got lost behind my plastic storage boxes at the very back of the stacks under my cutting table.

So here are more blue cats

going back to the colour of grey/brown/murky for last month below

and then

and the last cat for this week

and to end this post a photo of the bottom garden - perfect hiding place for cats!

Short post today (apart from all the cat photos) it's terribly hot here today so good for me to stay indoors and put in some more time sorting things out here in my studio.

Going over now to link up with Angela and all taking part in RSC 2014
take a few moments to go along and visit and check out the links!

Choices and bird watching

It's been one of those weeks where I just haven't been able to settle to do anything. I intended having the top of my bargello quilt all ready to go but after reading again the initial post from
Leanne at She Can Quilt
about Scraptastic Tuesday and the 45 comments that had been left for the post I decided I too needed better organisation for sorting scraps, fatal mistake as my studio is now in a worse mess than ever!!

However re the aforementioned scrappy quilt the fabric I originally intended for the border looks dull against the quilt top and I  think I'll leave it without borders and just bind with the green - what do you think? Actually looking now at the pics maybe the white of the design board is distracting me, perhaps it could work.

I have had to fold the top in half in order to fit on the small design board which is higher at one end than the other  so the shots are all over the place something else which needs attending to - not able to access the one fixed to the wall at present due to boxes and fabrics all over the place

 Bird watching - the three baby blackbirds fled the nest last Saturday, I saw them perched on the edge of the nest stretching wings and ten minutes later they were all off! Well, not really off they fluttered down into the bushes below for a day or so.
Parent blackbirds are still calling me for a few raisins every day, they're a delight to see

Poppa arrives for his fix ….

bit worried about the competition

now he has company. ….

and leaves just the one for her…..

Moving on from blackbirds I'm off to continue the great battle with my scraps and storage issues and general mayhem around me. Back at the weekend with a few more cats.

RSC 2014 - Blue Cats and others …..

This is going to be the last month of cat making - light blue is the colour for November and I don't have too many light blues. I have veered off slightly as I have another 20 or more cats to sew up for the size of quilt I'm making so apart from the 4 light blues and a few other colours pictured here I'm just going to cut from my favourite fabrics of the moment for the remainder.

So - light blues

next up peachy batiks

two more reds and you can see that the LH kitty is a true scrap cat

last two

December is  the time for putting all these kitties together - what fun!!

Must mention that I've been having a little trouble with blogger, if you see word verification come up after comments then sorry about that - should be fixed soon.

Heading on over to Angela for Scraphappy Saturday
Have a good week.