Home again…

From a lovely week in Sydney. I traveled by train down to a small town called Berry, where I was attending a Quilters Retreat.
I had a wonderful time – all the quilters I met were really nice and friendly and I saw so many happy faces!
One of my class mates Julie Kennedy offered me a lift back to Sydney on the Sunday evening, which saved me about 3 or so hours traveling by train on the Monday. This gave me more time on Monday and Tuesday to go shopping. I REALLY needed to add to my stash – Yea Right!

I feel a little embarrassed at the collection. When I laid them all out for a photo I must admit I was a little shocked at how much I bought home, and no excess luggage.
The reason I had room in my bag was that I had taken some gifts over and posted them to the Gt Grand children in Perth. Back and front photos of the Hungry Caterpillar Quilt made for baby Hayley Jane.
 

Michelle Marvigs Class

Some of the Moulin Rouge Challenge

The start of my quilt made in class with Kathy Doughty

Back to hand quilting Mrs Billings – she is too big to take any decent photos so I’ll wait until she’s finished and hanging.
Thanks for dropping by and looking at my very spasmodic blogging. Facebook has made it too easy to keep up with friends. :-)

On target….

with quilting my Mrs Billings quilt. I haven’t been anywhere much, and most of my friends have pretty much given up asking me out but, all is going well with my quilting. I have been borrowing Audio Books from the library, and I must admit, I stay quilting longer whilst listening to a good mystery. The only problem with borrowing is, the last book, I got up to nearly the end of the book, and it automatically went back to the library before I found out who murdered the three people. I had to re order it to find out. :-)
Here is a photo of my progress. I have allowed myself up to the end of August to finish these 4 borders. I am onto the 2nd border now. I have planned a week in Sydney at the end of August and when I get home I will have a month to finish the quilt.

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I tell a Fib….

I said I wasn’t going to get side tracked by any other project whilst making Mrs Billings, but when I went to Brisbane in June, I had the perfect excuse to start hand piecing a quilt top in a challenge put out by Brigitte Giblin. Sorry, its closed now but here a a couple of photos from my progress.

The challenge is to make from ones stash ( of course)

 

The centre HAD to be a red spot fabric and this was to be repeated at row 13 or 14. I am a little slow with mine as I’m juggling hand piecing with hand quilting at night.

 

I have changed direction a little with my fabrics, as I realised after row 4 I wanted it to look more old fashioned and not so modern.

The hardest part is trying to work out what fabric to use in the next round. I have also been using Inkling to mark the backs of every second row, so I have an accurate stitching line.

There are about 100 people doing this Hand Piecing Challenge, and we had one person allocated to us to send a fat quarter to, and this is to be added to our quilt somewhere. Haven’t been told yet! Such fun, and we have a facebook page where we post our photos and see what everyone else is doing.

Now…back to Mrs Billings. :-)

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After well over 150 hours

of hand quilting my Mrs Billings, I realised I had a problem with one of the rows. The small squares on point were causing me some angst as in some parts of the quilting I was having to quilt 4 layers and as the area is quite small I was getting everything quite uneven, and I certainly did not like it!
It was making me reluctant to sit and carry on with it. Sunday afternoon I was feeling pretty fed up with that row, when all of a sudden something clicked in my brain and I thought why not just do straight lines across the squares. Brilliant!!!
So…….I have nearly 3 rows to undo but its worth it.
From this


To this…..



I am back to being a ‘Happy Chappy’ and looking forward to another days quilting!
Thanks for taking the time to keep looking. I’m looking forward to having this finished, as there are other things I would love to be doing, but have been very focused and not allowed myself to get sidetracked, which is not normal for me. :-)

A little catch up….

to show you the progress however slow, I am making with Mrs Billings.
No problems as yet  with my fingers, but I have to get up every now  to stretch my back as that seems to be whats getting to me. Later in the day I take a walk to the road gate ( only about 100 metres ) to close it doing stretching arm exercises as I go.  Haha must look funny, but we dont have any close neighbours! :-)

Ive had to undo some of what I’ve done, and redo it, as I’m still getting back into the swing of  hand quilting after not having done any for about 9 years. So hard to get those stitches  even…

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Now For The Last…

border. This will be another time consuming border, when I have to applique all my hexies down.
I have just finished piecing borders 13 & 14. I think the pressing of all the seams was the hardest part, and I started doing it so carefully I thought it would take me two days to do it, so I thought …,what the hell… just go for it, which I don’t usually do.


Hopefully I’ll be able to handquilt it around all those seams!

 

Thanks for keeping up with my progress. I still have about 10 large hexagons and about 20 small one to make, so better get with it!
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Plugging away…

With Mrs Billings. I’m on my time target – I hope. Now onto Borders 13 and 14.  Lots and lots of cutting and sewing!
A photo to show my progress so far. Its very hard to take a photo of the whole quilt as its getting too large.
This is up to border 12
 
I laid it outside ( hopefully no ants have sneaked into a seam) as I would have to shift the furniture to get a photo.
 

This photo is 2 rounds of borders 13 & 14. Two more to go!
Thankfully I am walking with my neighbour for an hour every morning, which makes up for me sitting at the machine for about 6 hours a day at the moment! I am on a mission to get the quilt pieced by Easter, so I can get my quilting friend Judy to baste it, so I can start hand quilting. 
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Cyclone Lusi is on her way….

A photo in our morning newspaper

Remember the saying Red Sky in the morning – a shepherds warning!

I will be hunkered down sewing my Mrs Billings. Had a bit of a stop work on my quilt, due to having my sister stay for a couple of weeks. We were out shopping and site seeing nearly every day. Great time!

A photo of where I am up to with Mrs. B.

 

I have sewn one corner, but have 3 more to do, so thats the plan for the weekend!

The trouble with leaving the sewing for 2 weeks, I thought I had done more than I had! Bah!

I also managed to finish off the Baby Quilt I was making for my sister’s Great Grand-daughter Skylah, so she could take it home with her for the baby. This will be great for the wee one to lay on the floor on, but will also fit on her first bed.

 

Thanks for dropping by as I have been so slow with my blogging this year!

happy days…

stitching with my grand-daughter.  I am happy to say that  after having 5 grand-daughters I was despairing that none of them had the sewing gene, but hoorah one of them has. :-)

Jenna aged 9 stayed with me the other day  when I had the builder here, and my MIL ( who needs care) . All Jenna kept saying was…Grandma when are we going to sew on the machine. So, after choosing some fabric we decided to make a cushion.

Didn’t manage a photo of her sewing the cushion – phone was flat, but I took one of her later sewing a sleeping bag VBG! for her toy puppy.  

Anyway back to the cushion – she chose the fabrics and sewed the straight seams. We then added a J stuck down with vlisofix. I buttonholed around it, then did some meandering. She then sewed the backing and front together. It was a fun project, to make ch together.  The cushion was a bit fat for the cover, but after she leans on it a few times, I’m sure it’ll be OK.  Before that we did some baking and made Peanut butter biscuits. 

For morning tea she managed to convince Grandpa to make his speciality – Omletti ( Italian word) which is the same as Crepes Suzette. Paper thin and delicious. I won’t learn how to make them, as its the only cooking he does. He is slowly teaching which ever grandchild wants to learn how to make them.

All quiet today on the home front – still have MIL here but we have been watching the Australia Open Tennis. So good to watch. Now to stitch down some of my Mrs Billings hexies.

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Cutting, Marking, Stitching

my way through approx. 112 of these beauties plus any others I decide not to use


28 done – 84 to go
On a roll now, and this is a great way for me to keep a record of when I did this quilt.
Thanks for dropping by and keeping me boosted along. :-)

Which border??

Trying to work out the best colour for the 2nd border.
The Blue

or the red.

I want to keep the brown borders and the red at the top of the photo as this is going to be for my hexagon border, and I bought the fabric especially for it. Everything else is out of my stash ( bought with this quilt in mind) as I go.
Thanks for your help

Happy New Year!

I have been so slack with my blog – I see its almost 2 months since I wrote anything. A lot has been going on including a trip to family in Western Australia for Christmas, then when we got back home, we had the painters, builder and Tiler in doing some refreshing of our home inside. Its so good to get these jobs done as we built the house 25 years ago, and some things were left as we ran out of money. You then get used to it, until one day you decide that's it - time to sort it out!
The hardest part was getting my sewing room painted. Its happening in a weeks time, so I have to dismantle it – unbelievable job!! It’s a very small room and I’ve ended up sewing in the lounge and using my sewing room as a bit of a storage area ( only for my patchwork, knitting wool and the odd bit of ironing. So much so that I can’t really find anything thats not in a storage bin!  Here are some before photos  - I must say I’m  ashamed! Haha!
The main reason for this post was to show the progress I am making with my Mrs. Billings quilt. I am determined to finish it this year, and am hoping to get the top pieced ready for hand quilting by Easter! Fingers crossed!







 

Now I’m not sure about the blue border. It may be too bright - in keeping with the French Generals I am mainly (but not only) using I have been auditioning the next two borders and I think its going to be too multicoloured which I really dont want.
My centre hexagon is not stitched down as yet, and I think I’ll be changing that also.
Got to be careful I don’t over analyse it. :-)
Thanks for dropping by