It's the season for red and green

This is the quilt on my header and one of my favourites. I made this in a class that went once a month for a year with Val Moore, a fabulous and generous teacher. I must have started it about 7 or 8 years ago but it did take a long time to hand quilt. We made all our blocks and then helped each other with setting them differently and came up with our own border treatments, I'd always wanted to do a dogtooth border, swags, stipple quilting and quilted feathers so it contains all of these. All the quilts were different colours and had our own stamp on them.
It was in this class that I met my friend who invited me to join their little quilting group and as I had only been in Australia for a short while, I jumped at the chance to meet new people.

Have a good weekend, Janet

Applique and Stitcheries

I was inspired to make a crib size quilt after purchasing Gwen Marston's book on four block quilts and then I saw that Lucy had the same idea so I cut some shapes from freezer paper and placed them by eye and made it up as I went. It was a lot of fun and quite freeing not to follow a pattern. I won't be quilting this one until next year.

To answer the questions on my double wedding ring quilt, I don't usually design my own quilts, originally I wanted to make a double wedding ring and used perspex templates and machine pieced in the watercolour style. Well I got bored looking at it and put it away, as you do. Then I had the idea to spark it up using an applique border and was inspired to draw up one similar to the above quilt by Kathy Nakajima which was on the cover of a quilters newsletter magazine. This was before the pattern was available so I had to draw it out on paper to suit the rings. Of course I had to buy the pattern when it did become available.

Needle turned applique is a real love of mine and I have started to make quilts in the red and green colourway which may become a theme for a series, more of those later. I'll have to show some finished quilts or you might think I only do ufo's.

This is what I took to my sewing group last night, we meet in each others homes every Tuesday night and there are eight of us in the group. I don't work on this too often but it's a good take-along project, so I don't care if it takes a long time to do.

Come to think of it, I have a lot of these types of ufo's which is why I probably justify starting new projects.

When I was young, my mother said I shouldn't start anything new until I had finished the last thing so I think I missed out on the fun of making and creating. I'm in my rebellious period now! My mother also said a hobby should be one that earns you money so that it pays for itself, I guess that's to do with the period she grew up in.

There are 9 blocks in the quilt and the pattern is from Cinderberry Stitches. As you can see I'm doing it in girly girly fabrics and so it will probably end up in one of the grandaughter's hands.

Thank you all so much for the warm and welcoming comments, I really appreciate them, I hope I answered some questions for you.

Janet

doll quilts

These little doll quilts are all the go at the moment for wall art. Hey the kids even can play with them too. I was inspired to make these after seeing what Lucy does for fun. They were not only fun but quick to do and I'll be making more in the future. This one is broken dishes and has 2 inch blocks















This one is a strippy string and is a bit larger at around 20 x 16 inches



















Janet