No Camera just a few odd Photos left on the PC

I'm sort of cameraless at the moment. My youngest just finished his final year of high school and has decided to take the year off and go overseas before going to university. There goes my camera! My no.1 son has an awesome camera which he is happy to share with me but it has about 1000 photos on it and they will stay there until he buys his new PC - soon I hope. I took some photos with it but it took so long to load them up that my laptop went to sleep.
So here are a few meagre items to show you left over from the holidays.

 Although I haven't finished all the stitching, I just couldn't wait to get the binding on. I really love the stripes.

The chintz Philip Jacobs quilt is also not quite quilted but the binding went on. I was so happy with the match and so tired of all the hand stitching I had banked up that I unfortunately decided to machine on the binding and missed in a few places. The front looks great because I carefully stitched in the ditch but I missed catching some of the spots on the back. I hand stitched those bits down. Only I know it's not quite right but it's disappointing. In retrospect, if I had been more careful stitching the front on at exactly 1/4" it would have worked better.
The last photos on my camera (which I won't see for a whole year - if ever again) were of a bag I made from a denim mini skirt that I never wore because the legs just don't look so good anymore and the kg's have stacked on since I bought it. The skirt had been lying around in a cupboard for ages. When I squashed a plum in my regular school bag I decided it was time to get the skirt out. Not much thought was made in putting it together but I can say that it is working quite well and although the old one washed out perfectly, it has been relegated to emergency use.

New Fabric, New Blocks but Problems Ahead

I bought this beautiful fabric from Amitie

Lucky me, it was on sale!

And started to make some blocks.

I had bought a roll of linen from Spotlight months ago and used it for all sorts of projects. Unfortunately I have run out of it with half my blocks unfinished. A dash to Spotlight was unsuccessful as they had run out of the plain colour. I now have to wait for a new shipment and of course the dye lot is bound to be different.

Meanwhile I started hand quilting my Snowball Quilt. I had meant to machine it but the machine has been playing up big time. I think it needs a major service but I have no idea where to get one. Last time I found a wonderful man who comes to your house, has a cuppa and lovingly cleans and revitalises your machine. Alas he is nowhere to be found.

I am quilting Snowball with perle 12 as it has a thin batting and I wanted it to be a bit more delicate. I got out the trusty freezer paper, traced some plates to make circles, ironed my stencils on the snowball and sewed around it. Freezer paper makes great templates. I would never draw on the quilt in pencil, which is what I saw a lady do in a store. She said that she washes the quilt afterwards and the pencil comes out. My templates can be reused lots of times. The only pain is that I have to keep getting up to iron another few on.

The granny squares have been progressing too. They are so portable and easy to pick up for a few minutes that they are my school day time filler (not that I have much spare time).

I'm just going to keep going with these till I run out of wool. Actually they are more bamboo than wool. Really soft. I bought 8 balls for about $25. They had a great sale on and as this was a first time project I didn't want to spend too much. Wool is so expensive these days. 

My issue with these squares is that you have to sew in all the loose ends (boring) and also my tension is terrible. Sometimes it's nice and tight and sometimes really loose so the final sizes of the squares are all different.

Snowball Stress

I've had some Philip Jacobs fabric sitting around for about a year now. I really didn't like it when it arrived and didn't know what to do with it. So yesterday I started cutting it up to make a snowball quilt. I sewed for hours and at the end of it realised how disgusting the colours were that I had chosen. Not the Philip Jacobs but the pink and eggshell blue corners I had sewn around it. It really was awful. All hideously pink and baby blue.

As I slept on it, the family tiptoed around it in disgust. 

Today was unpicking day. Most of the pink and blue had to go. It was replaced with browns, greens and denim blues. 

The unpicking took hours. It was so wasteful but worth it. It's still not my favourite but at least I can look at it!

I hated all the waste from the chopped off corners so I've started sewing them together to add a border.