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

Thursday again

Well, I finished the 10 churn dash blocks today - not good!!

I have a photo and it's taken on a ridiculous angle, but that's all I

could manage today, reason why after the photo

with wavy blocks!

 I wouldn't want to size this to Xtra Large.
 I've had back/neck problems for ages

and at my review Monday of my CT scan and appt with the Spinal 

specialist they confirmed that basically my whole spine is in a

very bad way.

I won't bore you with the effect this is having on me, but it's enough to make

life very, very difficult in a number of ways and extremely painful.

Decreased sensation in my fingers is having an effect on

my patchwork piecing and that bugs me!!! Small pieces
are now a no go for me, as you can tell by looking
at the Churn Dash blocks above.

Whilst I'm mulling over some issues relating to the above I

had a wander around the garden,

the camellia below is superb, around 6" across

and look what's just opened in time

for the official start of Spring tomorrow here in

New Zealand - my special little violet "Freckles".

Time to head over to see what's happening

on

Sew Stitch Snap SHARE

with

Linda at Koka Quilts
and
Julie at JulieLou

see you there!

Maureen

A Brief Encounter .....

This will be brief due to a silly way of rushing to grab a hold

of the car door - thankfully no fingers trapped but I tore

one of my nails almost halfway down the nail bed!!

OUCH

This was on Monday and luckily we were almost right next to our

doctor's surgery so I hopped in there and the

ever so kind nurse trimmed of what she could, the saying

"hanging by a thread" now has a whole new

meaning for me!

Very difficult to sew/type, below is all I could manage

this week.

So here are four 6" Churn Dash blocks, these

will be in the next row of my Memory Quilt 1,

see the labels on the right for a past photo.

I foolishly thought I could try a little hand quilting (sore

finger left hand), the quilt - Paintbox - was already in the hoop

with three blocks quilted - but it was a no go!!

All my above efforts were closely watched over by my

faithful helper

who is obviously letting me know that she's not moving!
I'll be back in a few days, have a good weekend.

Projects - present and future - and a visit to sew stitch snap SHARE

We're still in Winter, at least officially, but this beauty

was flowering yesterday

and heaps more all ready to open, the scent is out of this world.

I've finished my Golden Strips top

I had to lay it on the floor to take the photo, not enough room

on my design wall and the morning light was brighter than

I would have liked for photographing.

Here's a close-up with one of my favourite fabrics with

the gorgeous roses in Yellow Floral Delight, a Philip Jacobs design.

I 'd decided there was no more room on my book shelves for any

more quilting books but then I succumbed to this one,

it arrived in the mail a few days ago

and it's another glorious publication!!

One of the first quilts which caught my attention was this one

and it really is brighter than it looks here.

I have lots of the KF  stripes and his shot cottons so

this is on my list, the best part is I don't need to think about spending

on fabrics.

My Little Bits blocks are coming along slowly, there's quite

a lot of cutting in this one. Placement is supposed to be random, it is a scrappy quilt

after all,

but I'll make all the blocks before putting them up on the wall

and play around with them.

Paying a visit to 

Linda and Julie

for

sew stitch snap SHARE

Moving forward

My Golden Strips quilt only has 5 more strips to go up

this should be all sewn tomorrow.

I'm still getting the hang of my new computer and all the gadgets,

 this photo was taken with my iPad and the light was not

very good, it's not coming up as rich a golden as it truly is.

You all know how much I love the Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics,

one of the reason I enjoy working with strips from these guys

is the serendipity which can come from randomly sewing the strips, check out 

Shoal on the left hand side with a strip of Pastel Brocade next to it,

I love the way we almost have a secondary pattern where the centre of the 

Brocade flower meets up with the top of one of the fish - not cut and matched I have to say.

I had a new book arrive yesterday, I missed out on this at the first printing

and they went to a second print

and I'm looking forward to some practice over the next week.

Another project for next week is to gather my scraps from Gypsy Wife

and join in September with Ann  at Fret Not Yourself blog,

Ann thought it would be a good idea to make scrappy butterfly
blocks, I'm joining in with her 'cos there's
 no shortage of scraps at my place!!

I'm just going to post a photo of  lovely camellia -  Guilio Nuccio -
it's a practice run for adding text with a new editing system,
things may not work out too well on this first trial.
Here goes

well I can just about see the text bottom right,
a little more work needed methinks!

All for now, enjoy the rest of your week
and happy quilting.

sew stitch snap SHARE

And so another Wednesday has come around and

this week is another link up with
Linda and Julie

for
sew stitch snap SHARE.

Not a whole lot going on in my little sewing room,
just something easy and straight out of a book!

From a Kaffe Fassett book, pattern named Golden Strips!!
Pretty self explanatory.
I'm not too convinced about the Grey Brocade fabric, I'll sew up a few
more strips and see how I feel about it then.

The time since my post last week has been spent taking stock of
a few things, being up before dawn to look
at the planet Venus which is beautifully clear just before dawn
in the Eastern sky

just a tiny pinprick on this photo, but followed by

a beautiful sunrise.

Trying to walk on a very marshy lawn to see what's flowering in
the garden beds - one of my favourites is this

and if my memory serves me right this is a primula - correct
me if I'm wrong.
And that's it in this brief, barely quilting, post.
Don't forget to visit with Linda and Julie - links above
at the top.
I'll be back in a few days after upping my game with
the amount
of quilting projects I'm posting these days!

Maureen