Finally finished!

Back in 2015 a facebook group that I belong to organised a block of the month. I kept up with the blocks - you may have followed my progress here - and then I stalled. Earlier this year I decided to try the quilt as you go method on these blocks and I found this to be brilliant. The blocks got quilted in no time at all - far less daunting that having a whole quilt in front of you to quilt. The sashing and borders were soon added and then it got hot! And it stayed hot for most of the summer, so sitting with a quilt on my lap to finish off the quilting was not pleasant. However, to bring a long ramble to a close, quilting of the borders and sashing is finally finished and here is the ta dah moment!

Hand pieced and hand quilted - I did a fairly random wavy line through the sashing and a loopy one round the borders.
Nice to cross something off my UFO list.

FNSI October

The weeks are whizzing by far too quickly! Many thanks Wendy for hosting our get together again - click on the link to see what everyone was working on.

I have had the pattern for a weebrawbag for a few weeks now and have been itching to make one.

The pattern is by Laura Cunningham and you can find her on Instagram @laura_zuckerkuss

So yesterday afternoon I got out my fabrics and started cutting. There are two sizes of bag so of course I decided to make one of each!

For the smaller bag I am using some delicious batiks that have been in my stash for a while. For the larger bag some pretty floral for the pocket and a bird print for the bag.

No time to start sewing as we were then off to visit a friend for a walk through her woods. The weather here is still amazing although chilly at night. So we are seeing clear blue skies every day. No sign yet of migrating cranes so winter is not too imminent!

During the evening I managed a little more quilting on my pink quilt.

A few more evenings should see this finished! At last.

Anyway, I am off to sew a bag or two - have a great weekend.

FNwF, happy mail and other news

Many thanks to Cheryll for inviting us to join her again last Friday. For one reason or another Friday was a stitchy non event for me - all I managed were a few bits of quilting on my Pink BOM which seems to be taking me ages to finish!

I received some happy mail last week - these gorgeous Island Batik fabrics which I won in a blog hop from Turid.

At the moment they are still too gorgeous to unwrap but I will soon find a project for them I am sure.

I finished off the little crazy quilting pincushion that I was making

and completed the crazy quilting I was working on for a competition - still no photo's allowed, sorry.

The patchwork girls came last week and started on their next block of the Mystery Quilt. This is what they are making.

A Log Cabin, log cabin! Now, I got the idea for this block from a blog but stupidly did not make a note of whose blog! So if you are reading this then please, please contact me so that I can credit you.

Update May 2019 - I finally found the inspiration for my block! here My thanks to JanineMarie of Quilts from the Little House whose beautiful log cabin block I copied!

And finally, I have completed two more blocks for the RSC - September

and October

I am off to UK again this week but hope to be back in time for FNSI - so see you there.

Friday Night with Friends and RSC

Great to be joining in again with FNwF - thanks to Cheryll for inviting us round even though she is off on her travels! You can see what everyone got up to here.

I started off my afternoon by machining up these two blocks for April and May's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Yellow is almost non existent in my fabric stash but I managed to find these gold and mustards in my box of squares so they will do. The selection of pinks was a little better. I am linking up with Scrap Happy Saturday

Next up were some swap hexies - I finished one during the afternoon and the other in the evening.

 

After a cold spell last weekend it has started to warm up again and we were able to spend some time in the garden yesterday afternoon planting out our tomato, pepper and aubergine plants. They all had to be mulched with grass cuttings too to try and stop the soil drying out too quickly around them.

 

Come the evening I was very happy just to sit and sew. After finishing off the second hexie flower I cracked on with my next pink block.

 

 

And am very happy with the progress made.

Thanks Chez for an enjoyable FNwF's.

It's been a while....

.....but hopefully I am now back on track and will be posting regularly! April has been a busy month with two visits to UK to see family but the suitcases have now been put away until the autumn and we are busy getting the garden tidied and planted up for the summer. I have also some decorating to do before our first visitors of the year at the beginning of June.

There has been sewing time and I have a couple of things to show you. First up, quilting on my pink BOM has continued - only five more blocks to do now.

I am really loving this QAYG - each block is so quick to quilt and it does not seem so daunting as quilting a whole quilt.

I have also finally finished the Winterberry embroidery that was in my winter Craftpod - you can read my post about the Craftpod here
I usually avoid satin stitch like the plague so am really pleased that these little berries do actually look like berries!

The patchwork girls met this afternoon and here are our EPP blocks for the Mystery Quilt.

As you can see they have all done really well. Don't they look effective!

This month their new technique is curved piecing and I am interested to see what they will come up with for this. Here is my block all quilted up so I am ready to start on the next block.

Just noticed that a fly flew into my picture! How annoying.

We had a frost last night - hopefully it will be the last one now until the autumn. Just hoping that it was not hard enough to damage the blossom and our walnuts. A late frost last year did a lot of damage.

It's Friday Night with Friends this week - sign ups are here and I hope to see you there.

March FNSI

Many thanks to Wendy of Sugarlane Designs for hosting us again for our Friday night get together - you can see what everyone was working on here

In 2015 I worked on a BOM - here are my twelve blocks laid out on some dark green fabric that I was thinking of using for sashing.

Well the twelve blocks have been languishing in a bag for the last two years so I thought that it was time to get them out again. As I really do not need another large quilt on my 'to quilt' pile I have decided to quilt each block separately and then join them together with the sashing. I still have that piece of dark green but am wondering if a softer mossy green would be better. Anyway, no need to decide just yet.

Friday was a horrible cold, damp day here and so it was lovely to start my FNSI in the afternoon, sitting by the fire while I started hand quilting the first of my blocks.

And then I got another one completed in the evening!

How satisfying was that! Only ten more to do.

I hope everyone else enjoyed their FNSI.

FNwF - it's October already!

Many thanks to Cheryll for hosting us again - even though she was away! Do pop over to Cheryll's to see what everyone else got up to.

I spent my evening putting together my BOM.

This was the last of the group choices and I now have ten of these 12" blocks. I am planning to make two more so that I will have four rows of three blocks. If anyone has any suggestions do let me know as I am looking for ideas.

After that I spent the rest of my time basting hexies.

I have my CQJP block for October put together and ready to embellish - I could be starting on it tonight!

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Back on line and catching up

Isn't it horrid when you have no internet connection? We were offline most of the time for just over a week and with no telephone so I was feeling very cut off. Occasionally we had a brief connection and were able to download emails but that was even more frustrating as all I got was little snippets of blogs, needing to go online to read the rest. However, touching wood and crossing fingers all has now been well for a couple of days and so it is time to do some catching up.

First of all I have not shown you my July swap ATC's.

Here is the beautiful organza rose that I received from Kate

And this is my flower themed ATC that I sent to Julie

It was also my TAST fly stitch sample

Here is my pink BOM for August

called 'Hill and Valley'.

There has been a lot of secret stitching going on so no pictures but when not doing that I have been working on my August crazy block which now looks like this.

Taking my time for the last couple of days has been a small visitor and her parents. Here she is at a local funfair yesterday - always happy to pose for a photo!!

So that's all for now - lots of blog reading to catch up on so see you soon.

FNWF for June and a crazy finish

Signing up for FNWF was a very last minute thing for me this month. With friends staying I had not expected to have time to sew but we are having a mini heatwave and with afternoon temperatures around 35 degrees we were not going to be out and about.
I decided to make a start on my BOM for June. Well in fact we have two blocks to choose from this month with the option of doing either or both. I am hoping to get both done but made a good start on the simpler one of the two yesterday afternoon.

This block is called Tudor Rose.

Thank you very much to Cheryll for hosting us agin for FNWF - click on her name to go and see what everyone else was sewing.

My CQJP block for May is complete. Here it is with a few closeups.

 

I am very happy with the way this block turned out. The fabrics and threads were all hand dyed using procion dyes and I kept the glitz and glitter to a minimum. The star shape in the centre was part of a bracelet I found at a brocante last Sunday for 50 centimes - the colours seemed just right. And we have seen lots of dragon and damsel flies this week while out and about with our friends.

Have a great weekend

FNSI

FNSI was last night and once again thank you to Wendy for hosting. To see what everyone got up to go here.

I had a few hours in the afternoon and made a start on my CQJP block for April. This month I am going violet!

I love having this blank canvas of different textures to play around with. Here is how it looked after a couple of hours embroidery.

And so that was my evening over.

I also have this block to show you.

My April pink BOM which is called Antique Tile - I sewed this together while we were away over Easter.

We have had a lovely warm sunny week here - it is amazing what difference a couple of weeks away makes to how the garden looks. Everything is very green now, the tulips are nearly over and all the iris are flowering. The weeds and the grass have all grown too, so lots of gardening going on here.
Hope you are all having a great weekend.