One step forward, two steps back

If you read my last post from 29th October you might recall that I showed

my scrap vortex cut into strips along with two other fabrics.

deconstructed scrap vortex

aboriginal dot and kf stripe

I also said that before the end of that week I would have something to

show for my efforts as I was now off crutches.

They are now back with me, hence the wording of the title.

Dictionary definition of the post title:

If you take one step forward, two steps back, you make progress but then

experience events that cause you to be further behind than you were when you made

the progress.

In reality I have made al little progress in the past two days sewing a few seams and

buying new fabrics - necessary for therapy!

Below is the beginning of my take on a new Chinese Coins using the strips

shown above.

Strips sewn 3" x 11 and 1/2", yes a bit of a strange size.

You can see that the bright scrap strips seem to be taking second place

to the dark combination.

Here is one completed strip, there will be three in total

My husband looked at this and said I had killed the colour,

perhaps I have but I am happy with it. Yes, it has darker elements rather

than my usual all over bright colour, I think sometimes our quilts reflect

our mood at the time, mine wasn't that great!

But  here comes the colour starting with

the 2018 range of Moda Bella Solids - there a few moody darks

at the bottom of the bundle, I have plans for an Amish piece.

 The next two photos are Tula Pink Zuma and sadly 

these shots don't quite show the vibrancy of this range.

Don't ask what I have in mind for Zuma,I have a lot of ideas buzzing around.

The beauty of Tula Pink fabrics

is that they mix and match, especially when incorporating

her solids, stripes and dots.

Lunch time now - home baked savoury cheese muffins and a cuppa.

Fingers crossed for a little more sewing over the weekend.

Happy Quilting

Maureen

A finished flimsy and a new project

It's been some time!!!

Crutches back with the physio - at the moment anyway - and I'm back

at the machine but with a difference, I have my left foot on the pedal

not the right one,  this change took me a little while to get the co-ordination flowing
smoothly.
I've been doing a little sorting of projects.

First off I finished the seams on the 2 x 4 quilt top, comes under the heading
of a Squirrel Club project.

then a little more hand quilting on Paintbox, 

this is the full shot below from (can't believe this)

2015!!!!! 

I pulled out a WIP  - below - put away because I wasn't sure if I truly

wanted to continue with it, I do, that's down for next week.

 A wander in the garden

and then onto Scrap Vortex (below).

You may remember it was put aside because I was fast

losing the ability to focus my eyes stitching this.

Julie, who blogs at quiltdivajulie.blogspot.com/,
offered to adopt the blocks should I decide I truly didn't want
to continue on with it.
After thinking this over and pulling the said project out of
the parts box I decided to take drastic action

so now I have twenty three 3 and1/2" by 12 and 1/2" pieces,
a selection below

and I also have

a few strips of KF Aboriginal Dots
and one of his stripe fabrics.

I'm still stitching on this one but I'll have a photo
up later in the week.

Before I sign off a huge thank you for all the good wishes
sent my way. It's a toss up as to whether it's a
Medial Collateral Ligament tear or the Meniscus or something entirely
different, another knee specialist visit this week.

Bye for now and Happy Quilting

Maureen

Latest addition to the Parts Box

In my last post I had a photo of progress on my Scrap Vortex which was 

playing havoc with my eyes!! Update - below we have the Parts Box

and now we have the Parts Box with Scrap Vortex creeping in two days

after my last post. The eyes were not happy.

Yes folks I threw in the towel!

I had the idea that a strip could look good in a pieced backing but then

began playing at cutting it up into simple shapes, definitely easier on the eyes.

After the blinding shapes and colour I needed to

work on another Squirrel project which was a little more subdued.

I'm using up left over batik strips 2 and 1/2" wide and using the 2 by 4 setting.

There are still a few more to sew but I have the completed ones just pinned roughly

 on my small design wall,

it's easier to see the blend of colours and then I'll play around

with the mix later.

Soon it will be decision time - do I go with the vertical or horizontal setting.

Which is your preferred orientation?
I think I prefer the vertical.

Other happenings at my place - taking care of little Leila who

was bitten on a back leg by one of the cats next door. It's almost

two weeks now and pretty much healed up. We had

two visits to the vet clinic, it could have been worse.

I normally have two or three sessions taking her into the back garden

for a half an hour play around but one of the devils sneaked

down the side of the shade house and got her before I could make a move.

We've decided she is now being a full time indoor cat! I see lots and lots

of cats featuring in quilters posts both here and on Instagram, I'd be interested to know 

how many of you keep them totally indoors, I do know that Lynne

over at The Patchery Menagerie

has Millie, her Tuxedo cat, indoors permanently.

In between trying to sew and nursing duties I did fit in

a walk around the block and spotted a beautiful clump of these flowers,

love the colour.

Back to the sewing machine for me  

Happy Quilting

Maureen

Springtime, The Squirrel Club and a finish

Let's go with the finish first.

The binding of this quilt below was delayed, due in no small

part to the fact that I am currently on my fourth round of antibiotics

in five weeks!

However, I summoned the energy yesterday to have a finish, no photo of the bound quilt
until next time, I've left it too late in the day to photograph outside.

I went with the AMH border fabric for the binding

and decided to forego hand stitching down on the back

and used the machine saving me quite some time.

My Squirrel project - see sidebar - is a Scrap Vortex quilt.

I had decided to work with decent size pieces of fabric to save time, but

somehow I found they were going smaller!

Excuse the 'rough and ready' photo below, the gridded flannel

needs straightening.

Much as I enjoy this quilt

there is a limit on the time I can spend working on it before

I lose control of my eyes!!

Instead of going with set size blocks I'm working as if

piecing a jigsaw in that I sew chunks and then fit them in wherever I can and cut to size

 when necessary, having said that there are a couple of 12' blocks in there.

Spring seems to finally be here for us in New Zealand, we've had a few

sunny days and the garden is coming alive again.

I have a huge clump of Clivia which put on a wonderful show

each year, sadly the snails and slugs enjoy a nightly feast on them.

 Always a harbinger of Spring is our Japanese Maple, I love

the lime green of the new leaves.

Last, but not least, the hellebores.

I have the room for two more plants in this area so a visit to the garden centre

will be on the agenda this coming weekend.

Bluebells are peeping up and should be flowering soon.

We're watching the news here of the hurricane heading for

the East coast of America and what a monster!

Thinking of all who are in the path of Florence as I write this,

keep safe.

Maureen

The Squirrel Club

If you look on my right hand sidebar you can see

a cute graphic headed The Squirrel Club and if

you click there you will be taken to a

post from
Julie
explaining how the Squirrel Club began and what
we're doing right now.

Cut to the chase, we're playing with our scraps and
sewing up a storm with a Scrap Vortex quilt inspired
by the design from
Amanda Jean
blogging at
https://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com

Progress to date:
sorting scraps and trimming into squares and rectangles

then stitching into pairs

and  making use of fussy cut pieces left over from my
Gypsy Wife quilt top.

I was too impatient to sew all the pairs I need before
creating a couple of blocks.
These are 12 and 1/2", they won't all be this size but
I've yet to finalise my setting plan.

I wrote in my last post about my 'serious quilting'
which was going to happen over the past week. Given
that we were told of the deaths of three people, two of whom
my husband had been friends with since school day, plus
bad news about kitty Leila - she was discovered to have
luxating patellas Grade 1
 in both hind legs just after we had
given her a home -  we  learned last week
that in two years they have progressed
to Grade 3, therefore the sum of my serious
quilting can be seen in the photos in this post!

I'll finish up now, time to play nurse with a syringe full
of medicine for Leila.

Hope you're all enjoying your quilting,
see you in a few days.

Maureen

Keeping things simple ...

With limited time, due to the kitty, quilting has not been top priority over the past week.

My off-centre medallion now has a border on two sides and my original idea

was to set this square but then tried it on the diagonal,

first the square

sorry about the poor light on this one.

On to the the diagonal

and this is the way I prefer to see it, reminds me of a Tree of Life block.

 I had thought maybe some sort of small liberated block

where the two borders meet but went with a simple square.

This truly is liberated or AdHoc Improv because to make these

borders fit I just chopped bits off a few of the geese units,

you will see a difference in size here and there.

If I go with this there are four pretty large triangles to fill so better get

thinking pretty quick!

 I turned to something simple by asking myself did I really want to

continue on with Scrap Vortex blocks and make a decent size quilt  - short answer was NO,

the blocks are now being made into a large

pillow cover - oops I see I have goofed here with the

text.

Another early start this morning due to a four legged fur baby

crying for breakfast,  being up and about early for this

sunrise was a pleasure.

Next on the agenda this week one green house block, two if possible, fingers crossed!

An early start to Sunday

We were sitting in front of the television at 4.30am today!!

The final of the Rugby World Cup and our All Blacks (New Zealand) were 

playing the Wallabies (Australia) and hooray the All Blacks won the day!!

Back to back wins and the only team to have won

the Cup three times - what a great game. However, I am now paying the price

for the early start to the day, all I have achieved

on the quilting front is to pull fabrics - 

deep pinks for my Scrappy Mountain Majesties (catch-up)

and lime greens for the colour of the month with
Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2015
my iPad camera doesn't seem to be picking up the rich colour of
these limes even though I had them in various light sources
and
two more blocks for Scrap Vortex, once again there seems
to be an issue with colour you can see how dull these blocks
look, they actually are much brighter

a bit of work on finding the best light sourceset up needed I think.

This photo of the first rose to flower in the long side border is
the true colour

Hopefully I shall be more productive over the next few days!

Maureen

A lazy Sunday

I've only just cut and fused another teapot for RSC 2015, by rights

this should be light blue or blue/green but when

I had all the teapots on my wall I switched my previous blue one

and I'm calling it the light blue for this month and

I've made a darker blue one to do a swap!

There jury is still out with this one, I do need some of the teapots to be subdued

and others brighter but when I have all 9 or 12 I'll be in a better position to make
a decision. 

It's been a day or so of play rather than serious sewing, yesterday I 

received the stretched hexie template produced by

Victoria Findlay Wolfe

and just had to cut a couple out, they're 10" long and a quilt top

could be put together in no time, I love the size it's great for showcasing

favourite prints.

Another play-time project is Scrap Vortex, 

Amanda Jean
has been putting up a tutorial for this quilt and it seemed a good
way to use up bits and pieces, the link is to her first week.

Linking up with Angela from RSC 2015

Down to the more serious stuff tomorrow!

Before I head off I must tell you the outcome of my request for
information on a small scrap of fabric two posts ago, I had a 2" square left
and was hoping a store somewhere may have had a little tucked away.
Next thing you know I had an email from
Linda over at Koka Quilts
telling me she had a piece in her pastels, Linda is here in Auckland just
about 30 mins drive away, she kindly popped the fabric in the mail and I
was able to cut a few blocks for the quilt for my
grand-daughter. Hopefully I can return the favour with fabric from my stash.