Something Old, Something New and a Finish

Something old begins with me sorting through

a huge box of scraps with pieces going back some 25/30 years!

Here was this small piece

 from yardage of a Hoffman fabric around, I guess,

1989/1990, it's showing darker than it truly is on this photo.

Around that time I made a few waistcoats using Hoffman

fabric and strip piecing.

The main Auckland newspaper had an Arts section and

 approached a local quilt shop as they were gong to run a feature on clothing made
using Hoffman fabrics, did she know of anyone?

Yes she did - me!

Did I have anything special on hand, no not at that moment

but I had just gotten hold of a Turkish Coat pattern, how would that work,

yes please, when do they want to photograph - in THREE days!!!

  Front

Back

Front open

showing the fabric lining, all these panel seams were covered in different

strips of fabric hand sewn to hide the raw edges.

This is still hanging in the closet, I have worn it twice, but as you can

see it's not the sort of coat you wear out regularly!

Something new is fabric, I couldn't walk away from these

two

I had picked out a soft light aqua rather like the Grunge fabrics, 

 and then spotted this brilliant magenta colour, straight under

my arm and heading off to pay I walked

past the KF Collective display and here was this magnificent

Philip Jacobs Japanese Chrysanthemum - how had I missed this before??

You can see the pops of rich turquoise green and a little 

yellow peeking out on the fold there.

I feel there may be a squirrel on the loose in my studio!

A Finish

Rainbow Blur is now back from  

Leeanne at Quilt Me Kiwi

and I finished binding yesterday.

Sorry for the rough photo I'm trying to balance on crutches whilst

getting the whole quilt in the photo, missed some of the edge off.

Measuring 60" x 74"

Cotton batting

Quilting pattern by Leeanne is Yodel - double click the photo
it's a great geometric design.
Binding is Anna Maria Horner Source Code.

Time for an afternoon cuppa, I hope all who celebrated
the 4th July had a happy day and enjoy the weekend.
See you soon.

Maureen

Planning, Surprises and Sunrise - heavy on photos!

I have a total finish!!

The quilt for Bea's 20th birthday has now been bound, she doesn't know

anything about this surprise at all, I hope she likes it!!

Photos taken on the old deck

Two more quilt tops are on their way to Leeanne

for her to work her magic with the quilting

Rainbow Blur below

and my Tula Pink top

I'm just about to bind one of my Memory Quilts - quick peek at a

smidgy bit of it below.

I need to get down down to some serious planning on quilts to be made,

size, fabrics chosen and so on. It's going to be a hard task to decide which to play with

over the next twelve months. I'm having a sale at our Auckland Quilt Guild

early August, with the results of a serious de-stash.

An echocardiogram a couple of weeks ago gave us a surprise,

I have a congenital heart defect, not picked up before.

My aortic valve did not form correctly, instead of having

three leaflets (tri-leaflet) which peel back fully in order to let the blood flow mine

is bicuspid, the valve only splits into two flaps, looks like a round emoji with just the smile!

This, as you can see, is a

slight problem!

The  valve thickens and becomes stiff  (stenosis) and is a disorder which is progressive - 

presently mild but progression rate is variable, hence my decision to take stock

of my proposed quilting and fabrics, hopefully prematurely!

However, life goes on and just look at this sunrise two days ago,

took my breath away.

You can just see a peep of soft turquoise streaking in through the trees.

Have a great weekend, see you soon.

Maureen

Moving along

Moving along but at a pretty slow pace unfortunately.

Plagued again with health issues leading to

an urgent cardiac appointment last week, rheumatology this coming

Saturday and the icing on the cake will be a visit

to the Orthopaedic Spinal clinic,

I'm also waiting now for a CT Cardiac Angiography.

Due to the above my Anna Maria Horner quilt has

not progressed as I would like but with

chain piecing the blocks do go together easily.

The two bottom blocks are stitched and then sewn to the bottom 

of the 10" finished square then the three on the left are stitched.

There are two 5" finished blocks and a four patch.

These change block by block 

you can see here below how the order of squares and four patch are moved around.

So, I have two rows of blocks stitched and the bottom two

just placed on the wall ready for stitching, gives

shows pretty well why the quilt is named Rainbow Blur.

I'm trying to be better organised with planning my quilting projects

and tomorrow is allocated to putting together the backing

for Frog Frenzy and sending it off for quilting and hopefully finishing

up the third row of Rainbow Blur.

We had a massive storm here overnight, lots of damage in both Islands

and Auckland (where I am) was really badly hit, I think I managed to sleep

for around only 4 hours! We knew we were into Autumn but

surely not yet into Winter, temperatures have fallen dramatically.

Leaves are covering the lawn, but look at the colors

and also spotted this morning

a disorientated Mrs Tiggywinkle, I fear the poor

little thing may be unwell given that it's out and about during the day.

A few new Kaffe Collective fabrics to finish up the post

I love the poppies!

An early bed time is on the cards for me, hoping to

catch up on sleep.

Enjoy the rest of the week and happy quilting.

Maureen

AHIQ #31 - the start of a utility quilt

Whilst many may not think of this quilt I'm making as

a utility quilt, if I go off some of the descriptions I've read I'm

thinking it is.

One I read:

'a functional quilt that usually contains a simple pattern'

another

'a quilt that was made to be used daily knowing

that someday it would be used up'

sadly I'm not sure where these came from originally but I had them written down

on my little studio notice board.

 My Anna Maria Horner fabrics arrived

and I had printed out a free pattern ( Rainbow Blur) from Free Spirit using

these Sweet  Dreams fabrics, two blocks, one just a large square the

other a mix of different sized squares.

The pattern called for the block size to be 18 and 1/2" - a little on the

large size for me, I just want this to be a cover up quilt for keeping us

warm in the winter months, not worried if it needs washing

every week, kids and cats welcome to use it!

I sized the block down to 15 and 1/2", four blocks across and

five down.

Looking at this now, had it been my own design and improv it

would have met the Scale Challenge - four different sized squares!

I'm still cutting the pieces and they're living in their own plastic bags

marked A through to X, 24 lovely fabrics and there will be enough left

to make something smaller afterwards.

As we're now into Autumn I was happy to see two of my early

flowering camellias blooming yesterday

this bottom one was a pure dark pink originally and now most of the blooms

are opening streaked here and there with white.

Back to my machine now to sew more strips for the Frog quilt

and sew more on Rainbow Blur - I think it may be quite

addictive!

Linking up now with 

Kaja and Ann

who host AHIQ

why not visit and see who's meeting the scale challenge

and who's on utility!

Maureen