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

Refreshed and ready to quilt!!

My three weeks enforced leave of absence

 seems

to have had the desired results, but

hardly any quilting has been done apart from binding my

Tula Pink quilt

I used up a variety of the striped fabric in the her collection 

for the binding, luckily they all seem to work well.

the quilting lines actually go across the quilt, I just forgot

to rotate!

measurements 58" x 68"

quilted by Leeanne at

Quilt Me Kiwi

I haven't been wasting my time, I have been

spending some sitting in the garden here, especially in the early morning

and late afternoon

with a good book

which arrived only one week ago and is a treasure! I'm limiting

myself to reading about one quilter each day, I definitely recommend this one

and what a Christmas gift it would make!

Quite a lot of the featured quilters are new to me, which is good,

lots of variety in the use of colour and design.

The good side of having a rest is that the mind quietens and ideas

come steadily and clearly, I have found that I'm forming

a way forward with my quilting next year.

Scrap quilts are definitely on the agenda, colour with Kaffe Collective

as usual and I'm waiting for May when the new range

from Anna Maria Horner hits the stores, lots of brights!

Time out has also made me realise that I have bought fabric on  a whim

sometimes, fabric which really is "not me" so I am going to sell these.

Also I'm definitely not going to 'follow the trend' with regard to quilt patterns,

these too have been collected with gay abandon and

I realise now that I will never make them!

More on the above next year, but below I have snaps of three of

my hydrangeas which are performing nicely and along with

the other flowers in the garden gave me such pleasure

over the last little while.

Another benefit I have found is the time to really look, not just pass

by and glance fleetingly but really see what beauty there is in

the smallest gift from the garden

will you just look at the colour and detail in these

tiny wee seed capsules from the Japanese Maple lying on the

old table on our deck. I also enjoy seeing all the clumps of

lichen taking a hold.

Gosh, this has been a pretty long post but I hope you

made it through to the end!

Happy Quilting

Maureen

A few more blocks for Unconventional and Unexpected - progress!!

If you cast your mind back to January you may remember that I was
joining other quilters invited by Sujata Shah to take part part in her
Unconventional and Unexpected Quilt Along

Our posts are on her blog
Basket Full of Scraps
with our quilts being inspired by the ones
in a book
Unconventional and Unexpected
by
Roderick Kiracofe

and I chose the one below.



"Cross"/Four Patch

Not wanting to make a straight copy of this beautiful quilt I began my own take on it
 using quite different fabrics to the ones in the photo above, the first six were on my blog
HERE
and then life intervened, as it does, and no further blocks were made until
two days ago.

These are my latest ones, and I'm loving them!

I prefer these to my original blocks so I'll be continuing on
using a mix of lots of Kaffe Fassett Collective
and Anna Maria Horner fabrics plus a few others.
So many new designers are coming out with super bold and colourful
fabric lines now.

I have been planning future projects so not much playing with fabrics
unfortunately. I have pulled my Tula Pink quilt

out of the drawer
and hope to make a start on the binding tomorrow.

We're coming to the official end of Winter here in New Zealand,
I'm definitely looking forward to Spring and the colour in the garden,
but we do  have some beautiful flowering hibiscus still blooming

and brightening up a rainy day.

That's it from me for now, wishing you all
Happy Quilting until next time.

Maureen

March aka here comes Autumn

Yes, officially the 1st of March is the start of our Autumn

down here in New Zealand, the leaves of the

Japanese Maple are already showing their colour a little

and the hydrangeas, once richly pink and blue, have

now begun their journey down the road into the antique colours

and still as beautiful as ever!

All things quilting - not a lot actually, I've been down

with an infection which stopped progress.

The sum of my achievements covers five more blocks for

the 

Red is a Neutral

 invitational with

AdHoc Improvisational Quilters

I intend to sash these blocks to negate stress on the eyes!!

A fabric has been chosen but I need more than the small amount 

on hand, another order should be here within the week.

I do quite like them just as they are but when I have 20 blocks

measuring 14" the effect could be pretty overpowering.

Found my unfinished piece

with the name

Playtime

As I only have four more small kaleidoscope blocks

to add, along with four corners, it would probably

only take a morning to finish, better get on to it!

By the way, all the photos will enlarge if you give

them a click.

Oh, of course the Kaffe Fassett Collective have a new fabric collection

out now, needless to say I spent some time ordering!

One package arrived yesterday - yummy colours -

and the opening of the package was supervised by

my little helper who 

 doesn't have the tip of her left ear missing, she just

moved her head as I was taking the photo. After

sitting quietly watching proceedings she took matters into

her own paws to check out the fabric

and  was swiftly ejected from the cutting table.

She is an ardent KF fan.

Another non-quilting job was a trip down memory lane.

John's Mum had given me a box of buttons as we left England

in 1980, these were gathered by her grandmother, her mother and

mother-in-law over the years. They came from items of clothing dating

back to the late 1800's  and she could tell me, for example, that the horn buttons 

came from a coat made for my husband as a child,

buttons from dresses worn by her grandmother - you

get the picture.

My children used to have great fun visiting their Gran

who would let them rummage through the box.

I thought this one here was very special and very old,

measures almost 1/2" with

lovely intricate detail.

Perhaps the Downton Abbey era.

Well, after sending you all to sleep with multiple

photos and not much progress I shall head off to

the cutting table.

See you soon, have a happy weekend.

Maureen

Ready for the borders

Memory Quilt One is going to have

the borders sewn on, hopefully tomorrow

and then off to be quilted.

Remember this piece below from my earlier post?

Catastrophe - three strips sewn together, up on the design wall I see

that the centre section of the three had some of the strips bowing,

major unpick and no more of Aboriginal Dots fabric in Teal!
Off to the store - none of this particular

colour on the shelf so waiting to see if we can get a hold

of some early next week. Also we discovered that it is officially listed
as Charcoal.

Whilst I'm waiting I'm busy gathering

the fabrics together to make a quilt from the latest

KF book - Quilts in America.

Stonewall

This of course was based on a stone wall in the States, coming

from  the UK the dry stone walls there are quite different depending

on which county they're in. I'm from Lancashire and the colours there

are different to Derbyshire for example, so my quilt will

 certainly not have as much blue as the one

in the photo above. 

I will also be going with a different fabric for the sashing rather than

the one above.

Gathered as of today are a few below.

Most I have in my stash but some I had to buy in.

I like that KF suggests only making one block at a time rather

than thinking to cut all those HSTs at once, time to check

if I have the correct size die for my cutter!!

In the garden I love my day lilies, this one is a very prolific bloomer,

just a touch of lime green in the very centre.

All for now, happy quilting!

Maureen

Back at the machine!!

After a difficult three weeks I finally feel I'm coming out of the fog

and ready for some action - simple action was the order of the day

yesterday.

First up a few more strip sets for

Freshly Squeezed - nice and easy.

Next in line using up a stack of left over batik strips,

I've seen many quilts using this simple block and decided to 

make a start, so quick and easy.

Below I have just a few blocks thrown willy nilly

up on the wall, not even trimmed yet, I have heaps to make so I'm

going to wait until I have enough for a decent size quilt. and

then start the time consuming part of placing in a pleasing

arrangement.

There were a few inches of the strip sets left over at the end

so trying to be more organized I'm cutting

these into 2 and 1/2" wide strips, they can go in my parts box.

I like the look of these on a black background, I found an old piece

of black felt and covered a padded board to photograph individual

blocks and bits and pieces.

Whilst I was in my miserable place an order of Tula Pink solids

arrived to cheer me 

and I just love the saturated colour  of these fabrics, in fact

I was so thrilled I promptly ordered more and given 

 the news from Free Spirit I'm pleased I did

as I read and heard that once these stocks are gone thats it,

until the dust settles. Reading a few lines today it seems that

the designers may have found a "new home".

I had notification that the Tula All Stars fabrics were in so

these should be on the way to me tomorrow.

It seems to be a case of "feast or famine" as the new range

from KF Collective may be released in March and

having seen a preview of these I am in

seventh heaven.

After this binge fest of fabrics I shall be very strong and

resist further buying!!

Due to my missing three weeks my poor garden has suffered somewhat,

weeds galore due to the heat and humidity and then pouring

rain.

A walk around this morning though found  two of my favourites were

flowering to cheer me,

a lovely dahlia given to me by a neighbour all of

32 years ago

and below my spiky bromeliad, touch the leaves at your peril!!

I think I have my colour mojo back now, so until next time

happy quilting!

Maureen

Bits and pieces

Definitely a bits and pieces sort of 10 days, barely anything

achieved on the quilting side - ongoing saga of back problems - but

I was able to spend a little time on a few pieces for the

dark quilt started a couple of posts ago here

and if you have the Judy Newman book - Quilts for Life made with Love - you will

 know that in her quilt Vintage Comfort there are no stripped elements.

I like to change things around a little.

I've been going through my old Hoffman fabrics and cutting them

into strips with my GO cutter, some must be 20 years old!

I needed to make room in my storage baskets making them easier to lift out.

This one below I couldn't bear to cut up

and I'm busy thinking of where I could use a decent

size chunk in a quilt.

A package of fabrics came from Glorious Color,  these are from

the Spring 2017 Kaffe Collective range, the ones below are still

waiting to be stored away.

I'm signing off with a sunset from a few days ago

Back soon, hope you're enjoying some quilting time.

Linking up with 

Linda  and  Julie

for

Sew Stitch Snap SHARE

Maureen