A New Year 2023

 Wishing you all a belated Happy New Year.

Both husband and I have taken turns at being unwell since Christmas Day, hence no quilting, at least not until yesterday when I was finally able to head to the machine to finish up stitching Willy Nilly.  Headed off to the garden to photograph, by the time I was trying to do this inside the light in my studio wasn't the best - light in here comes from the East so only good for the morning really. Willy Nilly measures 48" x 60".

Underneath the Japanese Maple, this is such a good spot for photographing quilts, just that you can't see a flat photo on the wall, I need to carry out some detective work to find a better place inside.  Another shot with hydrangeas.

We're waiting for Cyclone Hale to hit us here in New Zealand, this latest cyclone was formed in the Coral Sea and will probably hit fully tomorrow. We've had only two or three days of Summer weather in Auckland and elsewhere in New Zealand, the rest of the time rain, rain and more rain. The ground in places is sodden, campers and holiday makers have had to abandon their plans and most have returned home.

Here's a Met Service shot of the likely scenario late tomorrow, the top of the North Island  just peeping out of the blue,  here in Auckland we're well and truly underneath the blue.

The air is cooling slightly and the wind picking up slowly, I hopped outside to cut a few flowers because inevitable the roses, dahlias - in fact anything in bloom will end up flat on the ground or still semi upright but as clumps of brown wetness!

One bright spot has been the delivery of a small number of new fabrics, a few from the Kaffe Fassett 85 and Fabulous collection, here is the black colourway of Sprays

another arrival was Belle Epoque by Stacy Peterson for Free Spirit, I fell for the rich deep blue in this one and could see it as a border fabric.

Another favourite fabric designer is Anna Maria Horner and I bought yardage of her new line Vivacious, this is not the usual weight quilting cotton but beautiful butter soft lawn, I have a blouse/shirt pattern which would be ideal for this fabric.

I'm looking forward to being at the machine for a while tomorrow, provided that the power doesn't cut out and hoping and praying that 2023 will have me free of accidents and broken bones!

Maureen

Four more sleeps until Christmas Day

 This post before Christmas has nothing at all relating to quilting!!

My one-patch is stalled right now as is my Lego quilt. The time just seems to fly by so I'm not pushing myself to try and finish one of them in the three days before Christmas, instead I'm going to sign off with a few photos from my garden, a riot of colour right now with first the rains and now the hot, hot weather, hope these will brighten your day.

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas!

Maureen

How come it's December???

 Can't believe we're almost at the end of 2022 already with far less achieved on the quilting side of things than I had anticipated! 

My plan to take me to the end of this year is to be working on two quilts, this first one 
is the one patch, now to be called Willy Nilly with thanks to Julie who made the comment that she liked that I had just picked up the squares 'willy nilly'

WILLY NILLY

and the second is the Lego quilt, now to be named Mixed Bag as the strips were just pulled out of the bag  randomly - this was cropped, not very well, but all the blocks are now off the wall. Fifteen blocks finished and I'm thinking another 15 to give me 5 x 6, however at 50" x 60" it could be a little on the small size for a lap quilt. I see I made a start on this quilt in 2020 and just realised that it's looking quite dark, I think I photographed at the wrong time of the day.

MIXED BAG

My Slashed Squares top has been sent off for quilting, could be January before that's taken care of.

Next year I have a few projects in mind, one of them will include the Brandon Mably fabric below, in the store for basting pins but spotted this particular fabric on the KF racks, seems that it's his first designer fabric as the selvedge has it down as BM 001 - Casbah

I scored three half metre pieces too, top two are Martha Negley and the bottom is a Philip Jacobs - Gloriana.

The garden is full of colour again after the constant rain reduced my rose blooms to wet, brown lumps but the first dahlia is out, I just love the colour in this one.

A colourful way to end the post, more flowers should be out when I post next time, also more quilting!

Have a happy week

Maureen

Procrastination

Is anyone else out there guilty of the above?? I seem to have been in a state of procrastination for the best part of this year, however, over the past three weeks I've been tidying, deciding which quilts will be quilted in the coming year and I aim to finish a couple of projects, new ones are destined for 2023 also.

I came across a great article on the above subject, if anyone is interested here's the link https://jamesclear.com/procrastination - it's very long but fascinating.

One thing I didn't procrastinate about was this book, the courier delivered just now

I couldn't resist a quick peek - it's unbelievably stunning - guess what I'm reading tonight! On the stitching side of life not much has happened due to the above word in the heading of the post, but I do have a small stack of more 16 patch blocks

more will be sewn this coming weekend, husband is out on a painting  day Sunday so I can just sit and sew without any interruptions.

A few new Tula Pink fabrics arrived from the Moon Garden range, two of my favourites here

I just love the owls! The snakes are amazing but I didn't photograph those this time around, this post is top heavy enough with photos but I do have below some of the roses in the garden. First one is, I think, Princess Anne and second, just cannot remember, I'll check in my David Austin book later, third one is a modern rose and fourth is the rambler Veilchenblau growing along our back fence

My spacing seems to be playing up for me right now I'll work on that for the next post.

Back to my book!

Maureen

Stunning Surprise

 If you read my last post we were just heading across the road to visit son and family for a 5.00pm platter of goodies and what a surprise I had! Sunny day sitting out on the balcony, cool wind began to blow so I was asked would I like a jacket or quilt/blanket to keep myself warm, accepted.

Couldn't believe my eyes when out Matt came with this quilt  below draped over his arm

I may have shrieked - can't remember but what a thrill to see and handle this old quilt. All hand stitched apart from someone must have machined around the cream ?binding and stitched over the hand quilting.

It's quite large and I'll go back and measure. A friend of son and his then wife were given this quilt from a friend as their wedding present, I knew they had been gifted a quilt but I didn't realise that it was an old one. Its definitely hand stitched and quilted.

Doesn't seem to have any batting, if it originally did then it's become so thin  that it can't be felt. Just a cream backing. Cotton fabrics with the tiny tartan squares having a taffeta sort of feel, one is torn so I'll have a peek. You will notice that one block is stitched in upside down - I didn't until I came to begin this post. I have a few photos below of blocks.

sorry this one is upside down

The photo below shows a corner with the faded yellow border which is not even width at all, narrower in places then becoming wider further along.

 As mentioned above the hand stitching and the overstitching with machine can be seen clearly.  No makers name or any sort of label on the back. This was bought in Alabama, Matt's friend was working in America at the time, he will try and make contact  to establish where in Alabama she found it.

I love quilts, especially bright and bold as you well know, I look at older quilts in books and have never been very excited by them before but as I handled this quilt, thinking about the maker and the length of time she would have been stitching, using whatever pieces of fabric she could find, I was enormously moved and felt so privileged to gently handle it. I shall be 'visiting' said quilt again soon!!

If any of you have thoughts on the age of the quilt, or any other ideas, please do share them with me.

Back to my sewing haven right now, back soon.

Happy Quilting everyone.

Maureen

Slow and Steady

Well, I'm certainly slow and steady at the moment!  Three projects in the works right now but not getting along as quickly as I should like - better time management is called for I think.

Just two more rows of my Slashed Squares quilt need to be sewn together but instead of pressing on I decided to do a little more fabric arranging, not a good move in some respects but in others it's resulted in  finding a project from two years ago. 

Found hidden in the bottom of a box tucked away at the back of the cupboard was a container of 2 and1/2" squares, a number of squares stitched into fours and one 16 patch square.

Below we have a shockingly untidy collection of squares

a number of the four patch strips

and the 16 patch

 

I just couldn't remember cutting or stitching these but felt they must be reasonably recent. After sitting a while I did recall this was after seeing a post from quiltdivajulie and her quilt Bemused in January 2020,  the link will take you straight to the post. I fell in love with her quilt and decided there and then to make one - you can see I didn't actually get very far at the time.

 Taking the bull by the horns I headed straight to the machine and made a start but after a while realised not all the squares were equal, some were a smidgen out so the seams weren't always matching up. Thinking not good enough, begin again with new squares and perhaps Leila could use my efforts so far for her own quilt!!!

This isn't the traditional light square, dark square but just whatever came out of the box was stitched together. However, I love it anyway and I'm quite sad that I wasn't careful enough with my cutting.

In between sorting and sewing I made a start on ditch quilting long strips on Northern Lights. Next step will be hand quilting in the ombre patches.

A few more fabrics have been added to my stash

Bold Blooms from Kaffe Fassett

and Hibiscus below from Philip Jacobs

That's all from me for now, we've just had a message from our eldest son to pop across the road to his place, grand-daughter has put together a platter of tasty eats for 5.00pm, who could refuse that! See you soon and Happy Quilting.

Maureen