Mardi Gras - a smaller version

Mardi Gras is now a flimsy albeit considerably smaller than

the original which had 36 blocks.

The pattern is in the book

Sunday Morning Quilts

by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkinson.

My last post showed 17 blocks up on my design wall, why I had decided

to make another 72" quilt right now I really don't know, I decided to come

to a stop after making another three blocks.

Size of 48" x 60",  a reasonable size to use for throwing

over the legs on a cold day.

Not a quilt made of precisely cut strips, most are a little

wonky and pulled from my clean-up cut basket.

Even some of the blocks are wonky although they do measure 12" square.
In this photo the quilt looks darker at the bottom, it isn't, it's the time
of day when taking the shot.

Only four more 'sleeps' now until Christmas Day, so our two smallest

grandchildren tell me.

I won't post again until after Christmas, by which time I hope to have had

some time to myself to plan quilts for next year. Problem is 

deciding which, so many ideas are buzzing around in my head.

I'm signing off on this post with a close-up of a

pink lily from my birthday bouquet earlier in the year

and wishing everyone a very

Happy Christmas

Maureen

Sort of Improv Ad Hoc but definitely utility

I still haven't even begun to formulate a plan

for the AHIQ project of scale and time has almost run out!

However, four more blocks were added yesterday to Mardi Gras,

eighteen in total now, another eighteen to go! I need to make a concerted

effort to have these finished within the next two weeks.

For some reason I only took individual shots

of three of the blocks.

These are  only meet the criteria of Ad Hoc

in that strips are pulled out of the bin in an ad hoc manner, you can

see that not all the strips are even width and there is the odd

slip up in the placement in one block!

The above is the sum total of stitching over the past week.

I'm in the throes of sorting fabrics and trying to find a good

chunk of time at my desk to make a list of quilts to be finished, and in

order of importance.  Future projects need to be listed and this is the

difficult part, there are so many but not enough time!!

In the garden the Autumn colours are taking centre stage, in

addition to camellias at this time of year my hibiscus are in bloom,

I took these photos below this morning.

I have more but they can be saved for another post.

I'll end this post with a photo of my helper who decided I didn't need

to neatly fold any more fabrics for the basket, she would have

her afternoon nap in there, and she was not moving for anyone!

I'm off to visit 

Kaja at Sew Slowly and Ann at Fret Not Yourself

to catch up AHIQ posts.

Found Treasures and one more for Mardi Gras

Reading posts on Sunday I was thrilled to see the this post below from

Cynthia

Quilting is more fun than Housework - Oh Scrap! Geese Migration

because I loved this pattern of hers a few years ago when
it was published in a magazine. This was one
I had to make and began it as a project for RSC 2015.
There were a few projects on the go and sadly the Geese Migration
fell off the radar, but seeing her photos again had me thinking!!
I hunted in my parts box and found these.

The blue one had to be quickly photographed just now, couldn't
find the original.

I'm going to hop into RSC 2018 and finish, hopefully,
with two blocks in each designated colour.

The only actual sewing today was another quarter log

which means I can now link up with
Julie and Linda at
sew, stitch, snap, SHARE
and see what treats are in store today.
Linking up Sunday with
Cynthia and Oh Scrap!

Maureen

Strips Galore and Sew,Stitch,Snap,SHARE

We've had a lot going on around here so time at

my sewing machine has been almost non-existent,

however, I have made four more blocks today for my

Mardi Gras quilt.

I have a couple of tubs of scraps by the side of my machine,

chunks, clean up cuts, plain old left-overs from lots of quilts and

I'm just digging in and going with what comes out,

this strip was too wide but I just sew and cut to length,

 press, then use my ruler to trim to the width

I want.

After setting myself the target of making four blocks this afternoon

I now have 12 blocks, just another 24 to go! Blocks are 12" finished

and it goes without saying that most of these scraps are

my favourite bright and bold KF Collective fabrics, with a few

other additions from over the years.

 Still playing around with possible arrangements but had a break because

of this distraction arriving on our doorstep this morning,

four Quiltfolk magazines - I thought about this magazine when it first became available

but the cost had me hesitating,  decided to go for it last week and

when I checked on the subscription costs found they were also

offering the first four issues at half price - too good an offer to pass up.

Before linking for Sew,Stitch,Snap,SHARE   two 

rose photos.

A "Peace" rose opened for a few days and saved from the rain

and another photo from two days ago

That's it from me, hope you'll go and visit
Linda at Kokaquilts
and

Julie at Justjulielou

for
week 17 of Sew,Stitch,Snap.SHARE
see you soon.

Maureen

Tea and Sympathy

Definitely tea and sympathy has been the order

of the day at our place over the past two weeks.

I've only just felt like sitting at the machine today and

sewing strips - nice and simple and not too much thinking!

Mardi Gras update, eight blocks so far with another

twenty eight to go!

I could go with nine full blocks set three by three, example of one

setting style above and

when all 36 are ready for playtime there'll be

some time spent arranging and re-arranging.

I could also go this way

I'm sure I'll find a few different settings when the time comes.

We can't quite believe that within the course of two weeks or so

we had news that two dear friends and a cousin of

my husband had died. 

The first we heard a friend in Germany had passed

peacefully in her sleep - younger than I am!

Then we had a call from Australia telling us that John's cousin

had died, again a good 10 yrs younger than me,

then an email from England with news of another long time

friend, known by me since I was

around 6 years old and as I'm now 70 that's a lot of years!

I'm now in a better frame of mind and quilting will

help, also I've been out for a few lemons off the tree,

lemon curd making tomorrow!

Hope that in the midst of all the turmoil in the

world at the moment you're still able to

enjoy quilting.

Maureen

Back on track with my quilting - baby steps!

Had itchy fingers after taking things slowly

for a few days so off on to another project!! Do I really need another project

I asked myself - I thought perhaps I did!

Before doing that I decided to steadily tidy through

my wire baskets which hold most of my fabric stash.

First up was green

then yellow and orange

pinks and red 

blue and purple

I had an excess of blues and some have spilled over into another

basket. I have no idea why I collected so many blues -I don't use it 

a heck of a lot. The remaining 18 baskets will be

attacked a few here and there.

I'm sure you all know about my passion for the

Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics,  sorting these into

colour groups can sometimes be a bit dodgy. It's easy to get an

overall impression of the focus colour but with so many other

colours in the mix it can sometimes be a hit and miss affair.

However, the abundance of colour is the reason I love them!

As a break from this I decided to delve into the containers of strips,

long and short, thick and thin, some not uniform in width. Strips

were picked randomly but looking at these quarter blocks

I can see I've begun with two lighter blocks and veered off to

my usual richer fabrics!

It doesn't matter because this is intended to be 72" x 72" and they'll all hopefully

play nicely !! These blocks are 12".

Don't know why the two bottom photos are not keeping in line.

Name for this quilt will be "Mardi Gras".

I'm thinking now of blogger friends who may be caught in 

Hurricane Irma, in fact anyone who is experiencing this horrific

catastrophe. We have been following on the TV news reports,

quite unbelievable.

Stay Safe.

Maureen