3 More Finishes

I am pleased to say I have managed to donate 3 comfort quilts and send one to my 92 year old Uncle.

I showed his one as I was making it.See here

I quilted wavy lines on it and used scraps for the backing.

This one below was made in 1990ish and has been in the cupboard ever since. Machine pieced, hand appliqued and hand quilted. To enter a quilt in The Great NZ Quilt Show, we were asked if we could donate any quilts we either just made, or that weren't being used, for a local charity.

Back of quilt below

 

 Another scrap donation quilt.

 

 

 

 

The No Knead Seed Bread I always make which is a great recipe by 

Nadia Lim

I had to include a photo of our lovely old Border Collie, Jess. She is 15 years old, and although is slightly deaf ( selected hearing sometimes) she is fit and well. She is /was a working dog, but now that we have sold most of our land, she is a household pet. She is so obedient, that you only need to talk in a normal voice to her, and she will do as she is told straight away.

Bye for now and thanks for reading.

http://www.susannasquilts.blogspot.com

Life is Ticking Along

There seems to be a run on new babies in our family. My sister's 3rd great grandchild arrived, and is a lovely healthy little girl.  I used some of my pastels, of which I don't have many, and made her a cot quilt.

  It measures approx. 40" x 48"

I love making these scrappy backs, which uses up more of the stash and orphan blocks.

Sorry about the photo quality, and although this quilt hadn't been folded long, it seems to have kept the fold line.

The local quilt group I am in makes cushions for the Heart patients at the city hospital. These 14" cushions are held against the chest when they have to cough after surgery. They get to take them home and use them under their seat belt in the car.

I managed to make 8 from my stash. Obviously they have to have inserts.

My friend and neighbor and walking mate for 15 years has just moved to another town which is great for them, but not for me. :-(

I wanted to give her a quilt, for her bed, and decided 30's stars was the one.

She had packed up most of the house, but I wanted a photo of it on her bed.

I have just finished piecing and appliqueing   'Don't Leaf Me' by Wendy Williams

I did this using Invisible machine appliqueing for the stems and leaves, and hand applique for the felt flowers. 

Thanks everyone for dropping by.

Would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment. 😉💓

http://susannasquilts.blogspot.com

Fruit Salad and Turkish Delight!

The lockdown hasn't made alot of difference to our household, except we can't go out for lunches, and I have the most terrible hair. It has grown about 1"since I last had it cut, and gone is the style I used to have. I shouldn't complain though because alot of people are in a much worse situation.

I am so thankful I have my sewing that I love to do, and the time just flies.

I was invited to join the making of a Mystery quilt hosted by the Adelaide Quilt Guild of South Australia.

Thinking I had more things on the go that I needed to finish first, but being inquisitive, I joined up. I thought I would lurk, and just see what everyone was making.  But.....it got the better of me, and I decided to join in, making not one but two quilts of the same pattern, only using totally different fabrics. The reason being, it looked easy and I need to use up more old fabrics

I misinterpreted the values, so when it came to putting all the small blocks together to form one large 22" block, it became clear the mistake I had made. 

In Fruit Salad I just went with what I had made.
The flying geese were paper foundation pieced.

Deciding whether or not to sash.

I decided not to sash, as it was quite busy, and I didn't have a large enough piece of any fabric to use.

Fruit Salad

Fruit salad measures 66" square.


 As I was piecing the second quilt at the same time, I made the same mistake, not realising, but I managed to get it right .....sort of... in the end.

Turkish Delight

Turkish Delight measures 85" square with the sashing and borders.

 Both the photos show the quilts lighter on the right side at the bottom. This is because my design wall is next to a ranchslider ( window/door that goes to the floor)

I like this one better and it was good to use up some fabrics that I had bought about 20 years ago.

Into the pile of tops/flimses they go, although I will probably sell Fruit Salad as is. 

If anyone is keen on the pattern to make this, I have been told I can share it.

This is the site   
http://www.saquilters.org.au/2020-casa-felix-mystery-quilt.htm

Thanks for dropping by

I http://www.susannasquilts.blogspot.com

Happy New Year from New Zealand

My first post for 2020. 

The weather here today is fabulous, and very hot, for us anyway. At last our summer has arrived, but we are getting low on water, so have to start conserving. Catching buckets from the washing machine, and kitchen sink for the garden at least. You'd be surprised at how much waste water goes down the plughole in the kitchen sink!

I have finished mainly hand piecing, with a little machining, Jen Kingwells  'The Avenue' and now have it pin basted for big stitch quilting. 

 I started handpiecing this quilt by making and drawing around templates I made myself, but after making a few realised they were not very accurate, which bugged me no end.  I then sent for her templates ( they don't include them with the pattern) and found by cutting, then stitching the blocks were much more to my liking!
I tend to lose interest if the blocks aren't accurate, so this has been a while in the making.

I was hoping that this would fit on a lovely wooden hanger I have in our bedroom, so I can at least change the quilt that has been hanging there for about 13 years. 

I am tired of looking at the same thing. Well, The Avenue has turned out about 4" too wide, so back to the drawing board to make something smaller. 

I have so much trouble making small quilts! :-)

I have now made a start on machine appliqueing my kit from Wendy Williams called 'Dont Leaf Me!
Love the fabrics in the kit. 

Bye for now 

http://www.susannasquilts.blogspot.com

Another Baby Quilt , A Block finished & A Christmas gift completed.

Another Baby quilt finished for my niece this time. I was fortunate enough to take a class at the Auckland Symposium, with Angela Walters, which was such fun, and gave me the confidence to try different quilting, other than my stock standard large stippling. I really enjoyed trying out different stitches, and also using my rulers. I still need loads of practice, but when the binding is on, it looks pretty OK. Baby quilts are a good way to practice...not too large! The pattern was from an idea I saw on Missouri Star Quilt Company,

I have also managed to finish a block from another class I took. This time back-basting applique with Wendy Whellum from Adelaide, Australia. This is such a great way to needle turn hand applique.

And, to finish off two cushions made as Christmas gifts for a daughter-in-law. She doesn't look at my blog, so I can show them on here.  The hexagon one was made with advise/instruction from my friend Linda at Flourishing Palms in Florida.

 Kelly's favourite colour is teal. I made both of these 16"cushions with a flapped zipper, which was so easy.

I got the idea for this from Scissortail Studio: How to make a Perfect Zippered Pillow on you tube.

Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for stopping by

A beautiful Spring Day!

The time flies when you are having fun, so they say!  I sew almost every day which is so wonderful. I am very lucky having such a large space in which to do this, although I don't seem to have alot to show at the moment. 

One thing I have finished is two cot/baby quilts for our new neighbours, who 8 weeks ago had a little girl.  They also have a 2 year old boy, so I thought I can't make for one and not the other! 

I managed to buy a panel of a unicorn, and added some sawtooth stars made from my 30's stash.  I also pieced the back using the same stash cut into 5" squares.

I must say it was a perfect rectangle, but my hanger leaves a bit to be desired! LOL!  I had to chop out his fingers and slippers! Not literally of course...haha!

 Unfortunately I didn't get a close up of the machine quilting, before I gifted them.

You can see it on the animal quilt. I did wavy lines about 1 1/2" apart, and then went the other way, which made it more like criss cross.

The sashings were from my stash again. YEAH!

 The backing was one that went with the panel fabric, so it was nice to get it matching. I had to join of course to be large enough.  Both quilts measured approx. 45" x 50"

The mum of these two littlies sent me a photo of them both with their quilts, and the 2 year old loved his!

I always remember my mother, who was a dressmaker, saying it was much harder to alter a garment than to make a new one from scratch.  Well, in my opinion the same could be said for adding onto a quilt.  I made a quilt for my grandson who was 15 at the time, see here.
 About 6 months ago he moved into a large bed ( he is now 6' 2" ) and I found his quilt in the cupboard, cause it was too small for the bed. I brought it home, and added a strip after removing the border on the side and top and bottom. 

It looked and sounded easy, but I wouldn't want to do it again!  Anyway he now has a quilt he can use. I've always liked this quilt, so felt it was worth doing, and of course I still had plenty of fabric in the STASH! 

Photo taken on my spare bed.

showing the border.

Thanks for dropping by

http://www.susannasquilts.blogspot.com

Strings and friends

At the moment there seems to be a flurry of string quilts, which are so much fun to make.
A few years ago four of us were invited to another friends little beach cottage for a weekend of sewing.
The plan was for each of us to make a string quilt, sharing each others strips. 
My quilt was made with really large blocks, and I was going to use some old calico ( quite thin after years of being curtains)  as my backing instead of paper, but then found it would make the quilt too heavy, so used a light weight sew-on vylene.

We all arrived with our "strings" dumped them in the middle of the room and started sewing.

The cottage is very tiny, so with 5 of us sewing on our tables, and stepping around all our fabric it was a tight squeeze. As you can see we made a pathway to walk through. 

Two blocks stitched together.

 Back of the blocks stitched onto vylene.

 16 blocks together. Each block after trimming and sewing measures 16 3/4".  A funny size, but that was the average of all. 

Its still at this stage, as I'm not sure about batting and machine quilting, but I think I may use a light weight pellon.  

Another day a few years earlier sewing a string quilt for a grand-daughter.
 

The interest in string quilts and in particular Humble quilts has got me itching to start another one.



Thanks for dropping by

http://www.susannasquilts.blogspot.com