A Block for a Baby

This is a cute little block with tabs to encourage a toddler to grasp things, but soft and squishy enough for Mum or Dad to grab. The 4 inch square sides are embroidered with a, b, c and 1, 2, 3

The pattern came from A Little Different, that wonderful shop in Sharp St, Newtown (Geelong)   The first task was to do the embroideries then cut the squares down to size.  This time I remembered to put a backing on the fabric first.

Lay them out as the pattern shows, then join, adding tabs randomly as you go,  and stuff.

AFL Football

It's Grand Final Day in Melbourne today for the Australian Football League, the real game of football, and no, Geelong is not playing today.  But the faithful never fade and yesterday in our Friday group Pam was doing the binding on her Geelong Football quilt.  It was made from de-constructed bed linen for the Geelong Cats symbols and hand embroidered with the years when Geelong won the premiership. all nine of them.    Such a lot of years.

One very imaginative lady, to put that together.

Flowers and Ribbons Quilt

It is over three years since I finished these flower embroideries.

 But then I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them.  They were from an Inspirations magaxine some time ago but they had used them in an all white quilt, which was absolutely beautiful, straight out of a glossy magazine spread, but rather impractical in my world.

So every now and then I would come across them in the drawerr then put them back again.  I just didn't want to do my usual way of just having a rectangular border around each embroidery.  But the last time this happened some scraps of fabric were near the flowers which just happened to look like ribbons and a local shop had a sale on with fat quarters for $3  each so I was able to get a variety of fabrics for the ribbons.

What next ?  Well I'm thinking perhaps a very narrow, slightly bright border first, then a wider border in one of the ribbon fabrics if any of them are still availab.e

Shame on me but I forgot to put backing on the white fabric before I started the embroideries..  This is not a good idea. And the white fabric is a bit transparent so I hope when  the white batting is behind it the seams won't be quite so obvious.

I hope that having got this far that it doesn't sit in the drawer  too long while I make up my mind on how to  continue.

A Hexagon of Diamonds

It's eight months since I last posted here but these days there really is an overload of information to be absorbed and an overload of things I want to do so posting my quilting, even though it has never stopped, hasn't exactly sent me running to the keyboard.

But here is what turned out to be the simplest and fastest lap  quilt that I have ever made - a series of diamond shapes which radiate from the centre and fit into a hexagon.

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Part of its simplicity comes from the cutting out.  Six inch strips are cut across the fabric simply using the width of your six inch ruler.  Then each strip is cut tinto diamonds using the 60 degree line on the ruler.

Because there was no measuring, just using the width of the ruler for the cutting, I found the piecing was much more accurate than with my usual measure and cut.

The backing is also easy as the finished width of the quilt is just right for using one width of your normal quilting fabric.

I followed the instructions for the quilt at Sewn by Leila

Vases of Flowers Quilt

Dear Diary

So sorry that I've been neglecting you. But every Friday afternoon I have been faithfully hand quilting my last two quilts.  It's been slow progress though.  But with the temperature hitting 45 degrees last week  I finally put together the last pieces of my Vases of Flowers quilt.  I had done the embroideries over 12 months ago -  I seem to do the embroideries and then can't decided how to put them together. They need to be integrated into the quilt, not just sit as contrasting boxes on a background. In this case the various florals have been chosen to tone with the flowers in each vase.

The background colour is not quite showing accurately.  I think I would call it an oyster green, if there is such a colour.  Just a very soft off-beat green. It is 50" square and is now on the pile for quilting.

But just remember dear diary that you were my first bloggy love and though I have less time to spend with you  and less things to report on these days because I am too busy doing other things I will still visit you as often as I can.