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

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

Kaleidoscopes

It's an absolutely beautiful Spring day today, although extremely cold and yesterday

we actually had hail and horrific cold blasts.

Cherry blossom is out in the garden, guaranteed to lift the spirits,

regardless of whether they are in need of lifting or not.

A few more kaleidoscope blocks were added to the growing collection

yesterday. A few sets, mix of Kaffe Collective and batiks

then cut and sewn, with a few left over pieces just

to mix things up a bit.

So, progress is being made but I need to ramp things up a bit

with this project, in fact I need to ramp up on a lot of projects! 

Today I'm getting on with a few improvements - hopefully - to my working

set up in the studio. I have a large board to cover after I post 

which gives me a larger area

for ironing, this will sit on new cubes which we bought yesterday, 

they're 40cm square, four of them and stacked two together

gives me a good height for my padded new board.

The sturdy fabric boxes which fit inside give me a heck of a lot

of scope for fabric reorganisation.

That's me for Friday, have a good quilting weekend!

Maureen

Ups and downs

It's been a week lacking in motivation! 

I've been fiddling around and not achieving much at all really,

a little quilting on Paintbox

using grey thread one quarter inch around the blocks, intending

to quilt two rows then deal with the border and the blocks

will be hand quilted using the multi thread.

All very simple I know, but that's how I like this one.

Our two youngest grandsons - 4 and 6 yrs and brothers - love The Minions so

after spotting Minion fabric online I had to buy some and

made the simplest cushions for each of them to cuddle up with

when watching their heroes on TV,

we took them around to their place today and they went crazy!!

Small package arrived in the mail, all batiks

and enjoyed looking at my hydrangeas, I love this one

below with the limey green which gradually changes to the pink as

it matures.

I've also been giving a lot of thought to what I would like to

achieve next year with my quilting - far too much is the answer - so 

more serious thinking this week and a long "want to do" list!

Have a happy week

Maureen

HSTeria and Accuquilt

Thank goodness for Accuquilt!!!

I have lost track of the number of triangles - half square - cut on this machine in order to make my Ocean Waves quilt, I am so pleased I decided to buy one.

This week has really only been spent playing around with colours  and trying to decide how to grade down towards the bottom of the piece so sadly no more finished blocks to show.  I was asked by a fellow blogger last week whether I sewed two HSTs together then placed them or placed individually - the latter,  which means I can blend from one colour to another even though time taken is an issue.

I have a series of trays and try and use one for each colour, they start off life all neat and tidy, well reasonably neat and tidy as on the trays on the left, but usually end up after an hour or two in the state of the one below right! So when I need just one piece to fit in I start rummaging through

 During the week the pieces on the tray and board on the left were cut plus a blue tray and another teal/turquoise tray to join the ones I was already working with, reason for this was that I had forgotten a new basket of batiks from a few weeks ago which  hadn't  been "filed"  away in their new colour homes! Lesson learnt there.

Linking up now with Vicki hosting our HST Quilt Along
and back to sewing blocks ready for the next link up.

Catching up

I should be at my machine sewing more 9 patches for my MATO quilt "Desert Rose" or more 16 patch blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014 (waiting for the colour for next month) or sewing the crib quilt for our youngest grandson or  even quilting my Fractured quilt but I decided to do something which had been bugging me for ages, my large crate of scraps was becoming so full that I could only just pull it from under my sewing table to add more pieces to it, time to make the choice on what to keep.

The photos above really don't do the amount of material justice. Some of these fabrics have been hanging around for a good 15 years or more and what you see is only part of the problem,  yesterday evening was spent on this and after all the time it is taking I am seriously considering just pulling the special pieces and putting the rest into a huge bag and asking the local primary school if they would be able to make use of them it's just going to take me too long to sort every bit out into colour families.

One  task to cross of my list though is the binding on the Bento style quilt for my daughter, 

I decided I just couldn't face hand stitching the odd 400"  or so on the back of the quilt so bit the bullet and after carefully pressing the binding over I machine stitched from the front - I couldn't quite believe that the stitching didn't show - although it's a different matter on the back side, not quite a straight line of stitching but I'm not stressing about it.

On the subject of scraps there will be more scraps in the future because part of my order of batiks arrived yesterday, absolutely gorgeous! Can't wait for the other package to arrive. These were ordered before January 1st so I am not going to get into trouble from  Fabriholics Anonymous.

Back to the scrap heap and then I think some work on Desert Rose tomorrow, DH arrives back from the UK  in the morning so it will be an early start collecting him from the airport.

Maureen