Progress

This morning I thought I would have to tell you that I only managed to applique 2 little pears, and one bird to my Christmas tree block, but with some work today I added 11 more leaves.  So I am aiming to finish putting all of the leaves onto this block this upcoming week.
  I did buy backing and binding fabric for my little quilt, and it is basted and I have even made a start hand quilting. 

But, in doing this I uncovered another UFO, my hand quilting warm up quilt!

I managed to get the center of my TB Lovers quilt together with its cornerstone and sashing, and have added the top and bottom of the first border.  I will have that first border on by next Thursday.  I will decide on the size of the final border, when I dig out my border quilting stencils and see which looks the best!  As for my scrap quilt, I have made little progress, but little bits are adding up on this quilt.

Thanks for listening, karen

On The Design Wall

Since I've said that this project must become finished,  I decided to put the blocks I have already done on the design wall to see what I have done.....

Christmas Trees

I want to check too how the colours were shaping up......most of the greens are in the lime colour family.....
This is the block I am currently working on..

birds in a pear tree

but I was happy with one branch...

so I unpicked!

Love karen

Saturday Stitching.....and shopping

I just had to go to Threadbear in Castlemaine for a friend's birthday present ......and some fabric for myself.

The fat 1/8ths are for my friend.  The cream floral is the backing for my little quilt top, along with the tiny green stripe for its binding.  The blue fabric is for an upcoming project ....once I have finished something!

So, onto my stitching.  Yesterday, my Fool's Gold 3 package arrived.  This is the third round and the block I am working on is for Ruby.  Here is what I have done so far.....I have to have the block finished on Monday, so that I can post it on Tuesday the 15th.

Ruby's naked block

Saturday's stitching.

Love karen

Finishing

Flickr Group for 2013: the Year of The Finished Project

I have chosen  4 UFO's to work on this month.

First is The Christmas Tree quilt, designed by Maria Cook as a BOM to improve applique skills

I have done 4 or 5 blocks so far and I am working on this one at the moment. 
I plan to add 7 elements this week, mainly leaves.

Then I have our exhibition this year and I must finish this project for that.  Nothing like having a deadline is there!  I want to exhibit the other 3 year long project I've been working towards as well.  I fell in love with this book....

 and I have made some of the dolls quilt tops and they are ready to quilt.  I have been dithering over the backing fabric.  At first I wanted to have the same backing fabric for each quilt and the project got stalled while I tried to find "the perfect fabric".  Now I just will choose something I like that will hide my hand quilting stitches!  I want to buy the fabric this upcoming week, and get the quilt basted by next week.  This is the first little quilt top.

So those are the smaller projects....on to the bigger ones.

I won these blocks as part of my internet group TBLovers and have started working on putting them together.

the 10 blocks I won

 The project stalled due to trying to decide what fabrics and setting to best set off these blocks.

This is the first arrangement

But my friend, and mentor, Maria suggested putting cream sashing to give the top a more modern look.

cream sashing and scrappy cornerstones

 I had made 2 extra blocks but used the same background fabric which was very busy...so made yet another with a quieter background.  I started this week to sew the sashing to the blocks and began assembling rows.

this weeks progress

 

 

 

                                                                                         

lastly, using up my scraps started a UFO from this book...

here is what I have done ready to go on the design wall,

I will continue to use those scraps as leaders and enders to make more slabs of fabric to include in this quilt top.

So I will plan each Friday what I will be doing next week and on Thursday 7th of Febuary will report on my overall progress towards a complete FINISH.
love karen

On the Design Wall

TBLovers Lottery blocks

 Last year I finally won the lottery!  The Internet group I belong to, has a monthly lottery block contest and I won so here are the blocks laid out for me to photograph and send the photo to our list mom (she can be such a nag!)( actually she is a darling) and for me to decide how I am going to turn this into a quilt.  I had bought TB fabric to use but then came the news that the designer is retiring so I've been buying as much as I can afford from a shop I know off in Melbourne.  Unfortunately I haven't found all the perfect fabrics.  Today I used 2 of the rejects to make a further 2 album stars to bring the block total to 12.

Craftsy BOM 2013 January

The other thing I did this weekend is sign up for the Crafsty BOM 2013.  This is a photo of the 4 off center log cabin blocks I made. I like the batiks I used but will have to be very careful of value when it comes to making the other blocks, some of the blocks require very strong contrast to work....we will see how it goes.
  Hope you enjoyed, love karen