Time is a thief

I've been so busy that my blogging has been falling by the wayside and June has been a blur.
What a neglectful blogger and just when I have more time, dh and I get sick. Bring on the drugs, they can make me feel almost normal.

Enough of the whinging, I did tease a bit last time with the block of the month  I got from the quilt show and a couple of smart people guessed correctly. It's the Jane Pizar quilt ( the Marriage Quilt) from Carolyn's Quilt Room. Carolyn does the most amazing and authentic looking reproduction quilts. These blocks are 7" finished and hand pieced. These are challenging for me but do-able and I'm happy to say I think I'm over over the fear of hand piecing. The more I do, the better I get.

My other reproduction quilt is growing. I have just finished panel #7 out of thirteen which takes me over the half way point. The sun is shining today so I took it outside for the photos.

And yet another reproduction quilt is moving along at a snail's pace with the quilting. I decided on a grid for the center of the wreaths in my Coxcomb quilt. It contrasts nicely with the straight lines for the rest of the background quilting. This is the back which I'm showing first because.........

The front looks like a dog's breakfast with all the pen marks. I started off by marking the grid with one inch lines, divided those for half inch lines but that looked way too big. You guesed it, I went for quarter inch grid which was far too small. Well it stands to reason that 3/8th's was going to be just right so it's been marked to death in rainbow colours and looks a mess. Fear not, it all washes out in the end.

Apart from the bom I bought at the show, I was quite restrained and only bought a few fat quarters. I was trying to get some fabrics like Jean from Linen and Raspberry uses in her fabulous hexies. These got the Jean stamp of approval and she was kind enough to send  me a few of her hexies in the mail. I'm yearning to play with some fussy cut hexies now.

Until next time, Janet

On my needles

It seems like ages since I could sit down and blog, we had a long weekend and lots of family visiting so I've been snatching moments to play with my projects.
I've been knitting with gorgeous Noro Kureyon wool to make squares for an afghan. I've become sensitive to wool and can't wear it as a garment but I do like to play with knitting needles.

The changes in the colours are just delicious especially when I knit the squares from the outside and inside of the balls every so many rows.

You probably recognise the pattern as the Lizard ridge, free at knitty.com.
The bubbles have been likened to wee boobies but when the blocks are blocked or washed, they disappear. I may not even block them because they look so good.

I spent the whole day yesterday at the Sydney quilt show and still didn't see everything. I did catch up with some favourite people and picked up some loot. I bought Brigitte Giblin's book from the Quiltmania stand. There is a quilt in there that I'm mad for. Brigitte has started a blog which gives a whole lot of valuable information about the quilts she has in the book and how to's on English paper piecing.

I could have bought at least four books at that stand but settled on this one by Reiko Kato because it has lots of wonderful purse patterns.

I didn't think I'd buy any fabric but after a lot of deliberation, I weakened and bought a block of the month with fabric kitted up so this is for the first month.

I'm not going to say what it is until I have a block made and can show you since it's hand piecing (eeek) with reproduction fabrics and that's something that will challenge me. Lets just say that I probably need my head read because it's a biggie project and I needed the kit because I just know I don't have enough of the repros in my stash.

I'd better carry on with this Trailing Vines panel which is nearly done. I'll be posting the next installment sometime in the weekend for those of you stitching along with me. I'll also try and do a post on how to tackle really skinny small leaves soon.

I have three other projects on the go at the moment, how many are you tackling?

The last retreat project

I dug up these blocks I started several years ago and had abandoned and decided I'd play around with them since I had a lot of the hst done and ready to go. I still like the blocks and wanted some simple piecing project to do. Wasn't I good not starting anything new? Mind you, this is so old it's like new again.
These are the blocks I had already sewn and when I put them together again, I thought all the 2" triangles were making the top look rather busy.

The project originally came from the Purl bee blog which was inspired by an antique quilt shown here.

I thought what  if I did blocks with less  smaller triangles , it might open up some more negative space so I downloaded a page of graph paper and did some colouring in to give me a starting point.

I ended up ditching the drawing and just played around with the configuration of each 12" block.

I'm happier with the blocks now that I've combined them all together and this is where I'm presently at.

For some reason the orange triangles are photographing much brighter than what they are but it is a grey day here and hard to get the light right. I think I can only last as long as it takes to do a single sized quilt. I've tried to sew a block a day so it doesn't end up being put aside again, so far that plan is working out fine.

Thanks for visiting, Janet