Sunday sewing with Hannah

Almost finished up sewing block seams, more tomorrow and then, hopefully, a completed top on Tuesday

and then a full photo without the addition of my chair back and small ironing surface. Just click to enlarge the photo. Oh for a larger design wall. This was such an easy quilt to make, perfect for using up already cut 2 and1/2 "strips or a jelly roll.

Here I've used strips left over from other projects and also I cut into odd shaped large scraps, a few I also cut from favourite yardage. Two strips I particularly wanted to use were short of a 13" length but by scratching around in my very small scraps I found tiny pieces and stitched together, it is after all a scrappy quilt, here's a joined up strip, tiny piece LH side. 

I began with neat stacks of 13" strips, two of which are below, lots more not in the photo. The throw size is 60" x 72" and I gaily kept on going hunting strips, I only needed 120 but when counting up found that I had stacked 260, perhaps there will be a second Hannah quilt in the future.

Here's how they ended up after random pulling out of pieces

and there are more of these covering the cutting table. Guess what I'm going to be doing come Tuesday!

For a break last week kind husband drove me to the new premises of The Ribbon Rose, a well established store for many, many years here in Auckland. Recently they moved and what a treasure filled three storey building they now occupy. The fabric floor is amazing and it goes without saying that I found a few KF fabrics on sale, just a few quarters came home with me. Large bins had simply rolled up metre lengths of fabrics at good prices, I took a chance and bought this one

delighted when I came back home and unrolled, below is a small section of the full piece.

I just love this!!

Books are a passion of mine, all my life I have been a voracious reader but over the past few years this pleasure, for various reasons, seemed to have been left behind a little. I'm now back on board with books and there are quite a few on my bookshelves which I have never read, some have been read many times over  because they were so exciting, moving and so very interesting.

Two below, the cover of the first one is self-explanatory, having worked in a Pathology Lab for a number of years in long ago days, and also spent time in General Practice surgeries as receptionist, I was excited to find this book a little while ago. 

These Precious Days is a collection of essays  by Ann Patchett, each essay stands alone. I see myself keeping this one to read during quiet time in the evening, perhaps even when settled in bed with a nice hot drink!

Perhaps I could write a little about my thoughts on a particular essay after reading here on the blog.

Silly mistake made by me in my last post.  I spoke about making a quilt for our "soon to be grand-daughter" - the quilt will actually be for our great grand-daughter!

That's all from me for now, a rest day today after a family lunch here at home yesterday on my husband's 80th birthday, we had such a happy time but I was shattered by early evening and my bed called to me earlier than usual.

Maureen

The Hannah quilt and yellow is the colour of the day

I totally forgot to post the photo of the Hannah quilt pattern in my last post  - here it is, a design from
Erica Jackman at KitchenTable Quilting just click on the link to visit her site and patterns.

I haven't used too light a wide strip in my version between the four narrow strips, I bought yardage seen on a local quilt shop site,  (Scalloped Hills from Corin Dantini), also I've used strips from my boxes. I may need to cut a few more pieces from yardage as I go along, progress so far just sitting on the wall waiting until until I have sewn another 18 blocks before I decide on a final arrangement.

I'm trying to be a little more organised and methodical with scraps! I have different lengths of strip leftovers from this project which didn't meet the 13" I required.

At the very bottom are 13"strips ready to be used, and squares of the Scalloped Hills fabric. The remainder above are now sorted into roughly, from the left, 11", 10", 8", 4"and 5"  then a stack of, what I refer too as smidgy bits! I now have to decide the best way of storing them without a muddle.

If you're wondering about the mention of yellow in the title of the post, two pics from the garden today,

the first ripe lemon from our tree, beautiful and not marked or pecked by the many birds we have around, guess who's going to be baking crunchy lemon muffins later this afternoon.

Here is a bush, the Kowhai,  which is a favourite of the tuis in the garden, beautiful birds with the most delightful song, I've never posted a video on my blog but I recorded the early dawn song a few days ago so maybe I can try, for now here's the photo.

Oh, I almost forgot the violet growing by one of the rocks bordering a garden bed, not yellow but a nice contrast!

 

Wish  I could "post" the perfume from little flower!

Happy quilting.

Maureen

PS excuse the breaks in a couple of the lines  don't know why this is happening but hoping to sort out before I write next.

Here we go again - Cyclone Gabrielle is heading for New Zealand

 Can you believe this?? From a category 2 it has now gone up to category 3 so Auckland, Northland (area further North than Auckland) and Coromandel a little further down and East from Auckland are directly in the firing line. We are once again in a State of Emergency for the next week, forecasts tell us that this will be a 100 yr event with 150kilometre winds,  power outage, trees down, waves up to 6 or 7 metres, and to have enough medications for one week, food for at least three days, a plan should evacuation be necessary, this would include pets of course.  The destruction will be huge as recovery is still underway from the one two weeks ago -  and still we have doubters on climate change and global warming!

Apologies for the rant, now on to quilting.

First of all a pull for a quilt pattern from  Rachaeldaisy - Across The Fields, I have a few more softer fabrics to add to these below, a few already chosen have been missed off this photo.

The quilt calls for 7 and 1/2" half square triangles and  tidying with grand-daughter earlier in the week I found a small cache of 8" already cut for some long forgotten project, perfect to trim down and use here.

Before I forget, remember Tiny Beasts  destined for Balderdash in my last post, not any more! The large squares of 9 and 1/2" were too large for the Tiny Beasts fabric, they didn't play happily at all. The small squares I had in my post were perfect so I'm going to save these for a future project.

I have another fabric pull ready for The Hannah Quilt from Erica Jackman - link takes you to her site
Kitchen Table Quilting.

I'm wanting to get on to this one asap! Lots of strips with fabrics by KF Collective, delicious colour, perfection!!

Now for something out of my comfort zone. I don't usually buy Jelly Rolls but one came up on a site here in New Zealand and the colours seemed to be nice and bright although not ones I would normally work with. These were going to be used for the Maggie Pearl quilt - link takes you to the site.

When I unrolled the fabrics they were a more subdued colour, what to do, decided to go with them. I have five blocks made and finding it hard going with a limited number of colours - 

see what I mean? It's not a huge quilt just 40" x 56" so I can hang on in there.

That's all my quilting news, with the cyclone on it's way and probably hitting fully on Sunday I may or may not be stitching, plus I have a steroid injection in my shoulder next week so it may be slow stitching for a a week or two following on from that. 

I can't end this post without mention of the horrific situation in Turkey and Syria, my thoughts and prayers are with all caught up in these tragedies who are suffering in so many, many ways.

Maureen