Fabriholics Anonymous

This morning a post from Jess of The Elven Garden came up in the list on my dashboard

which detailed a scheme with Rebecca about not buying more fabrics and using what we have in our stash - brilliant idea!!

I have been quilting and buying fabric for around 30 years now, had numerous sales at our Guild to reduce stash and books but still my shelves and baskets are overflowing, so I bit the bullet and will be joining 

FABRIHOLICS ANONYMOUS

read below

GOALS:

- To use the Stash I already have!

- Finish UFOs without distraction by shifting to other new beautiful fabric.

- Stop the insanity of constantly buying the latest and greatest fabric.

- Save the $$ I spend on stashing.

- Destash the fabrics that I realize I am never going to use.

FABRIC FAST RULES:

1) No fabric purchases for 6 months beginning January 1, 2014.   

2) At 6 months reevaluate status and decide whether to keep going for full year.  Evaluation July 1, 2014.

3) Create a UFO list and complete them!

4) Exceptions

• Backing: purchasing a backing to finish a quilt top is permissible.  However, attempting to use fabric in your possession for a backing is preferable.
• Books and Magazine purchases are allowed as they are not fabric.  Notions acceptable too.
• Swap Mama Fabric: if hosting a swap you are permitted to by fabric to execute swap duties, but you may not join a swap simply for the sake of being able to buy fabric!
• Quilts for Publication: if you are making a quilt for a publication and need certain fabric to execute it correctly then that is a major exception - who can blame you?

The button is on my right hand side bar so click there or the links to Jess and Rebecca above and find out all the details.

I now feel rather smug that I have a lot of new fabrics bought over the past month to sort and put away, plus I am expecting another order from Glorious Colour, hopefully sometime next week - do I feel guilty? No - fabrics below some from Glorious Color and others from BryerPatch

OK time to get some serious sorting in my quilting room

Maureen 

Quilt Alongs and Sunny Days

Having taken part in the Fractured Quilt Along hosted by Vicki I enjoyed the process so much that I decided to join in with Midnight At The Oasis hosted by Sharon and Jess,  go for a visit and have a look at what has been achieved so far. You can also click on the side button. This is a lovely pattern although if you read my post purely on MATO you will see why mine is a little different!

One lovely surprise from the Fractured QAL was that I won one of the draws organised by Vicki and yesterday received a gorgeous piece of her dyed fabric

Thanks so much Vicki!

So apart from piecing a border on MATO I spent a lot of time reading this week and with the sunny days we've been enjoying I have taken time out just to wander around the garden each day seeing what was in flower. Quite a few plants are just about ready, my roses are in bud and two flowering,

the one below is "Crepuscle"growing along the fence

love this one and she has a delightful scent.

I also found the plant below in the garden centre a few weeks ago and have a number of my soft pink/apricot roses and a yellow one underplanted with these 

Loving gardening and quilting I find a lot of inspiration for colour in quilts from my garden - just look at the photo above for example, and below is  a photo of the beginning of a few lemons, the flowers on the orange and lemon trees are falling now and for the first time I took a really close look at the mini lemons

aren't the colours great?

Until next post

Happy Quilting

Maureen

Midnight At The Oasis 2

A couple of days late here I am with my MATO post

Because of issues with arthritis and a flare of my auto-immune issues my hands were a disaster  so hand applique on an orange peel border was out. I didn't feel up to even using machine applique on all the small petals so I came up with flying geese instead!

Unlike the pattern there is not a lot of contrast between the centre medallion and first border but that's the way I wanted it, more of a moody look. Next problem is the upcoming border with the applique vine - again that is out presently for me so I shall have to get busy thinking of a substitute to use instead that fits with everything else.

Beautiful work being done on the QAL (thanks to Sharon and Jess)  click on their names or just click on the Midnight At The Oasis button on the side bar and have a look at the link-up.

I have my usual blog to write now so better get to it

Hope you're all enjoying a happy weekend

Maureen

Birthday and Blues

The title of this post is  not strictly accurate - I did have a great birthday yesterday the 26th.  Our daughter asked if we would all like to go to her place for a meal so it was a full house and we all had a great time, lovely to see our six grandchildren enjoying themselves. One really good bit was when  the lights were closed off and my lovely chocolate birthday cake lit with candles was brought into the dining room and put on the table and everyone launched into Happy Birthday to Mum/Grandma, our second youngest grandson (2 1/2 yrs)was delighted to see and hear all this and his little face was a delight to see - he thought this was all for him and when the singing stopped promptly made a dash to blow out the candles!

 The blues bit of the post covers the fact that I haven't achieved anywhere near the progress I intended with my quilting over the past week due to health issues. Still not feeling great but was able yesterday to finish part of the centre medallion for Midnight At The Oasis QAL.

There is a post on 1st November for the QAL and most everyone will probably be well on the way to completing the first border ready for the post - if I can get a move on I should catch up.

I have put together the four triangles and rough cut the set in triangles and the centre square, I have cut them larger and will reduce them down to the correct size when I put the centre medallion together.

If you click on the  button on the right hand side you can find out all about the QAL.

Threads need cutting and edges trimming but I have got them sewn together now and I am so over these small triangles! Don't get me wrong I enjoyed this bit but what a time consuming process, after a few false starts in-between bouts of illness I turned to my tried and true method of using tear away stabiliser for accuracy and piecing in strips, same procedure as using paper which some  have used for this quilt, I just prefer the stabiliser which tears away like a dream or can be left in, it's really fine. So many of these small triangles were cut to give me plenty of choice for placing, just a few below

I have a huge amount left over but for the moment they are heading for a plastic bag in a drawer!

My Fractured quilt is all sewn of course now and waiting to be quilted, quite a lot of the ladies are making second or third quilts, click the button on the side and you can read all about us and what we have been doing. Vicki has sponsored this QAL and I was lucky enough to win the draw on Monday for a piece of her beautiful dyed fabric which should be arriving in my mail box pretty soon.

So the week passed slowly for me and I have been reading a book with the title Quake Dogs. When the earthquakes hit Christchurch two years ago an awful lot of pets were in dire distress and this book tells their stories - very moving indeed, especially if you are a doggie person like me.

A quick wander in the garden this morning to see where my roses were up to with their flowering and a 

David Austin rose which was  a new one this season has a bloom open, this one is Eglantyne, as with all his roses a delicious scent.

So that's it from me for the moment, I have two days posts to read and there are heaps of them so the next little while will be spent sitting here at the computer.

Have a great week

Maureen

Flowers and Feathers

Two posts on the same day once again!

Spent quite some time this week working on the Fractured QAL (see the other post for today), I was determined to have it finished by posting day but didn't quite meet that, just a few more seams to put in.

On the quilting front I am also taking part in Midnight At The Oasis Quilt Along - click the button on side bar to learn more about this beautiful piece and Sharon and Jess who are organising. I was so excited when I saw this was happening I just had to take part.

Feathers - two more glorious colours  from Philip Jacobs - look at these! 

The yellow colourway is actually a little brighter that this photo is showing, both are amazing.

Flowers - a visit to the garden centre with husband last week was intended to just pick up a packet or two of seeds, but it took a huge amount of will-power to leave these three clematis plants behind. 

and the one below was so unusual, I have never seen a clematis like this before

Actually there is something else relating to quilting, last post I spoke about our local bookshop and posted two shots of books bought there last week. We called in again this morning "just to browse"

but I came out with this

So looking forward to reading this one.  I just cannot buy any more books now until the New Year!!!

Hope you're all having a great weekend and don't forget to visit Sharon and Jess by clicking the Midnight at the Oasis button and the one from Vicki for Fractured, until next time

Maureen

Fractured QAL week 7

At last I feel I am almost there with my Fractured!

Just the five vertical seams to go now - and I will try and get that done later this afternoon.

Regarding the size of the original fabric pieces which were given as five inches by four and a half inches, a few of us found things were not working out as planned and had to fudge a bit, some ended up smaller than intended. In the end I cut all my fabrics  into five inch squares and found this much easier, just meant trimming down a little smidgen to the required four and a half inches.

I do know that where rows three and four meet up some of the angles in the small blocks go any which way!!

Not to worry, the Fractured look is achieved. One other thing I noticed this morning is that I must have changed a couple of blocks around and  have ended up with four blue/green ones which really stand out, main thing is I am happy with it! The very colourful look is what I had in mind so all's well.

Still have to baste and quilt of course and probably simple straight line quilting will be my choice following the fractured lines.

Thanks go to Vicki for sponsoring this Quilt Along, go along to her blog where we link up and see where we are all up to, some are onto the second one ! Quite a lot of the fabrics used are left over and I will certainly make another one but using the blocks in a different configuration.

Have a good weekend, catching up on reading blogs is for me now and linking up with Vicki and the others and also writing a second general post.

Maureen