Taggies, Kaffe Quilt and Pot Mitts

In a burst of energy, I created a stack of taggies. I have so much Minki to use up. There have been a few babies born to staff at work, grandchildren and acquaintances etc and these are the best little gift to share.

Another job that had been hanging around was the finishing of the binding for one of Rivka's quilts.

I had been staring at the quilt for a couple of months. Half the binding was on, but the last few stitches just never seemed to come.

Here it is, not fully stretched as my husband's arms just couldn't reach all the way to the ends.

Last of all, a pair of pot mitts. My son is moving out with some friends and they just had to have some pot mitts to use in their new kitchen. Every thing in their kitchen is cream and plain so I made these mitts with the plainest linen I could find in my stash. I couldn't resist using the mustard backing though. The glasses are so perfect for my son. He must have lost or broken a dozen pairs of them and although he is far less forgetful these days, they just remind me of him before he grew up and left home.

More Blocks from the Shirts

Over the week I have had snippets of time where I could cut and pin some more patches for the shirt quilt. I was a little unhappy with the first batch. They looked rather dreary but with the addition of 8 more blocks, it is starting to look a bit more lively.

Besides that,

I've been reading Kaffe Fassett's Book

'Dreaming in Colour.'

It is quite a good read!

I  bought it for the colour, the inspiration, the pictures but have found the story that goes with it is very entertaining.

Bonus.

Titan Arum Opens and a Quilt Top Finished

I went back to the Royal Botanical Gardens on Boxing Day. I asked a friend if she would like to walk around the tan, which is a gorgeous running track around the outside of the gardens and make a little side journey to the flower. We arrived early and there was already a queue forming and TV crew inside filming the event. My friend was very patient with me and waited to be allowed in. We were not disappointed. The flower had opened and fortunately for us, it had not begun to smell yet!

With that done, a walk in the glorious sunshine followed by a cup of coffee at the Observatory cafe made the outing complete.

I have been enjoying my holidays and have been walking every morning.

It had been very quiet at home with my 3 sons overseas, enjoying their uni holidays until the youngest returned early with a bought of glandular fever. He had actually been away for nearly a year having a gap year before starting his first year of university so I was very happy to have him home and have someone to care for. He is mending well and in between the doctor's visits and catch up cleanup I have had to do, I have had a lot of time for sewing. Most of it has been finishing up projects however I was asked to make another quilt top for my friend Rivka.

She came over with all her fabrics in tow. We cut, ironed and pinned and then I sewed it all up. It only took a couple of days to get the top done.

3 more days and I am off to India.

Can't wait!

A Colourful Post

I was just playing with my wish list on Amazon when I accidentally hit the buy button and that was that! Oops I thought, I really didn't need to spend all that money. Too late, I thought. But 2 days later I received an email to say that my credit card was wrong and and could I update the details. At that point, I could have cancelled the order (but I didn't) and so just a few days later 2 out of 3 books arrived on my doorstep. 

I'm not really into autobiographies but having met Kaffe and loved his work for so long, I think I might find it interesting. Of course, if all else fails, I can just look at the pictures.

On the completed list this week was another shawl made from a single ball of wool.

This one is called Holden Shawlette by Mindy Wilkes and you can download the pattern from Ravelry for free.

It is a good one for beginners.

Way back, I stitched a quilt top using mostly Malka Dubrawsky fabrics.

I was very lazy and did not pin the rows together and they ended up being rather warped.

I bought the fabric a year ago but it was so badly put together I don't think I took any photos of it and certainly didn't look at it again until now. I get like that with work I hate. I can't bare to touch it until it is fresh and the failure is forgotten because it becomes a chore if I have to keep fixing it.

Anyway today I unpicked and restitched it up and I am much happier with it.

So here is the other colourful part of my post.

In the shade

In the sun

Playing with the Dresden Template

I never really liked the Dresden style of quilt until I saw a fabulous cushion cover made by Louise from Amitie. I've linked her name to her Flickr account but unfortunately she hasn't put the cushion cover up yet. She has made some great stuff so it's worth visiting her photostream. 

Perhaps it was all the hand stitching that scared me. The little ties can be stitched on the machine but I hand stitched the whole piece onto the grey background.  Anyway I loved the concept and on the weekend I had a go. Here is the top so far. The hand work is not so bad if you only have to make one.

Besides that I've made a few pot mitts,

and some more taggies.

Capri's Blanket

I have been working on this for a while but it is now time to put the back and binding on because the stitching is finished.

It is for my great niece Capri, cousin of Summer.

The blankets are like twins.

I'm not sure how practical the loose monkey arms and lion ears will be but time will tell.

I also received a delivery from the postman today.

The main reason I put in a order was for the Kaffe woven cotton on the bottom of the pile.

I tried to buy some in Melbourne but no one seemed to have it.

Unfortunately postage has gone up so much from the US, I decided I had to fill my allowable weight with more fabric so most of it was stuff that I needed. 

The coffee pots will make some oven gloves I hope.

The Parson Gray is to compliment the blocks I've already started for a new project.

I do like getting postal deliveries of fabric. It feels like my birthday. I could get addicted to it so maybe it is lucky US postage is increasing and local fabric prices are decreasing.

The Block for the Star Quilt

I just put a quilt up on Facebook where I follow 'Kaffe Fassett Collective'. There were a couple of people interested in how the design was put together. I took a couple of photos and these should help.

 This was the main block which we made from remnants of Kaffe's Wheel of Fortune quilt. I had lots of diamonds and squares left over because they were colours I ended up not using. The measurements of the shapes are the same as in his book.

 This is how the corners fit together together although in the end I put more red into it.

The red is just 4 squares measured like the yellow ones in the middle of the block.

 Here it is with more red square blocks

Here are part of the edge pieces.

I bordered it all with more of the blue diamonds.

It was a pain to get the diamonds to sit nicely but that was because I put it altogether with a sewing machine rather than by hand but the hand quilting was very forgiving and no one will ever notice!

Hope this helps.

Working on a Dream

I've had Laurie Wisbrun's Tuffted Tweets fabric in my stash for ages now but I never knew what to do with it. I checked out her Flickr photos and got some ideas and flicked through all my Kaffe Fassett books for inspiration and then slept on it. There is a design in Kaffe's Country Garden Quilts that has always fascinated and terrified me because he has marked it as being difficult. I like to dream about designs and work out patterns as I fall asleep. It is a lot better than thinking about all my worries and sure enough, in the morning I started to play with my dreams.

The shapes turned out pretty easy to cut because although Kaffe's book used templates, they were easily cut using a rotary cutter.

This is his quilt:

And here is the first part of mine because I haven't put the border on yet:

I'm really happy with it so far. When I started placing it all down on the floor I realised that I had to sew it all together as it lay on the floor because I would never remember where all the pieces went. I pinned a block and sewed it and then worked on the next block. There was a fair amount of unpicking too as I mixed sides up. I got through 3/4 yesterday and finished it just now. I forgot that my family is coming over for dinner tonight and the carpet I work on is actually where we move the dining table to so it all had to be finished today.

First Free Day

Today was my first free day of the holidays, if you don't count taking all three sons to their three respective jobs, at different starting times and at different locations.

So of course I had to visit my two favourite patchwork shops along the way.

Patchwork on Central Park were just unpacking bolts of Kaffe Fassett shot cottons. They have a huge range now. I love the shots. They are so much more interesting than the plains and seem to fit into a lot of the things I am working on like this:

This is not the final layout. I am just trying to make enough blocks to join together to fit the back of this tablecloth so it can be double sided.

I also visited Amitie to get some more perle cotton (they have every colour you can imagine there) because I finally decided how I was going to quilt this:

The fabric on the right is the backing I bought from Spotlight.

I guess I am very lucky to have so many places to go shopping when I need some fabric but after taking stock of what I have got going on at the moment I have realised that I have to stop spending, and start finishing so that is the plan for my holidays.

End of Year Prezzies

School is over for the kids and I just have 3 official days left. These days have been filled for me with a Math's professional development day with my favourite guru Michael Ymer,  an anaphylaxis course and a full day first aid course. I am not sure when they expect me to clean out the classroom so I guess I will be working for a few extra days but it's all good because in my head I am already on holiday.
I made a few end of year presents for my co workers. We are not big on giving presents at school as we would have to buy so many but as I already had a few bits and pieces made, I thought I would.

I decorated t-towels with hexies.

Put together some little Pocket Purses made from scrappy strips.

The fabulous fasteners come from Nikki at You Sew Girl .

They are really easy to put in and super strong.

Lastly I made some Xmas decorations for our amazing secretary who works for a dragon (almost) and still finds a way to do everything and have a smile on her face.

She said her tree was going to be blue and silver this year. Apparently she changes the theme every year.

Today is Sunday but that did not stop my special order from Japan arriving this morning.

It's called All my thanks and Love to Quilts by Goke Keiko.

I first saw this book at Cathy's house and just had to get my own copy.

I know it's all in Japanese but the pictures are brilliant and I do have the advantage of having a son who speaks and reads Japanese but the book seems to be mainly photos.

My camera is not the best to show off these amazing quilts. They are embroidered and quilted and totally wild. I will try to borrow my son's camera to give you some better shots.

Lastly I have been experimenting with some shot cottons. I am building on all of these blocks and will rearrange them a 1000 times but I am enjoying this new project.

Diamonds are Finished

All finished and already in great demand. The Kaffe inspired diamond quilt is finally in use.

To all those dads out there. Happy Father's Day.

My sons decided at 1am in the morning to create a little scavenger hunt for their dad. They had him hunting all over the house with post it notes giving clues for where to look next. It was hilarious to watch. Shame they were all tucked in and slept through the fun as teenagers are prone to do on a Sunday morning.

The funny spelling on some of the notes were puns on shoes where about 5 of the notes were hidden.