New Fabric

I was trawling around other people's blogs a few weeks ago and stumbled upon a new supplier of fabric on the web called Wondrous Woven Fabrics.
On their site I found a lovely fat quarter set that captured my imagination and I promptly tried to order it. They had never had an order from Australia before and so I emailed them to see if they could help me. I had a response within a very short time and a new button for international shipping was set up. The service was amazing!
So less than a week later these Robert Kaufman fat quarters arrived.

In the bag I found an extra half yard that was thrown in as a gift.

They don't have a huge range of fabric on offer but they do have prompt, accommodating service. 

Thank you Wondrous Woven Fabric.

The Customer is Always Right

Another one of Rivka's quilts has been finished and it is ready to go to a new home. The brief was 'colour madness' and this is what the customer is getting. Can't say I am in love with it, although it was fun making.

I'm a sucker for binding though, and this one looked so good with the Fassett backing.

Markets and other things

Markets were the order of the day on Saturday and I visited Magnolia Square and a mini market in the City Library. Magnolia Square was it's usual high quality experience. Although it's petite, it always has very clever, creative products with the friendliest stall holders. I just had to buy this little lavender heat pack from Memi Designs. She prints all her own fabric designs on linen.

The City Library was a little disappointing. There were only about 12 stall holders and the products were varied. One person had made some great little quilts out of op shop hankies but overall it took about 5 minutes to go through! In one of the other rooms they had a fun exhibition on the history of shopping in Melbourne. They had some great old photos and paraphernalia from days gone by. Worth a 'look in' if you are a little bit old like me and actually remember some of the places.

Sunday was for sewing. A mum of one of the teachers at school came over and we did a swap. She tried to show me how to follow a crochet pattern and I gave her the start on how to make a quilt block. My crocheting is pretty pathetic - so much so, that there are no pictures! Her block is off to a better start than me. 

Later there was a little bit of free motion quilting happening which I was really happy with because the triangles can make quilting very stretchy and hard to sit flat but the free motion made everything much more accommodating.

And some more coasters were made using some of the fabric I bought last week.

All Potted Out

Pot Mitts are small.
Pot Mitts use lots of scraps.
Pot Mitts make great presents.
Pot Mitts only take a couple of hours to make.
But after 10 hours of making the little blighters, I'm going potty!

I played around with ways to make them today because they are fiddly and it did make them a little less painful but I made too many and it took the fun out of it. It's just that I have a market to prepare for and the time is running out so...

1 down

12 to go

Another little boy quilt is finished. Almost the same as the other but with different backing and binding.

So I guess it's been a good week for making.

Making Things Weekend

Today was a day for all sorts of things.

Finishing boy quilt

Making a very large mug rug

First attempt at some linen coasters

And cleaning Phil's home (our class pet stick insect)

Go Magpies!

Firstly I have to say I am in a very good mood. Yesterday my footy team won their 15th premiership. It's been 20 years since the last premiership and the team certainly deserved to win. Last week was a drawn Grand Final so both teams had to come back to play a second time with a week's break. Lots of people hate the Magpies. Maybe they are jealous, maybe they just can't help it. It's almost a thing that Melbournites are born with. You either hate them or love them. I ask them, "Why do you hate us so much?" and the reply is, "I don't know, I just do!"
When my Grandfather immigrated here over 60 years ago, he was very ill and a family, hearing of his plight, took him under their wing. They basically adopted my parents when they followed to Australia and we were part of their family when we were eventually born.
They barracked for Collingwood and took my oldest brother to the game every week. When my next brother was old enough to know, he announced that he was going to barrack for Melbourne, to which the eldest replied that he had better follow the Magpies or he would bash him up. He was big on bossing  us young ones around!
One of my earliest memories of childhood was brother number two saying to me that I had better follow Collingwood or I would be 'in for it!' So the decision was made for me to preserve family harmony and I happily stuck by it.
I sat with my younger sister two inches from the TV and hooted with delight as our team romped through the final. My husband and boys were watching either at home or with friends but they all barrack for Melbourne so they just can't really be in the zone. I am not sure what the neighbours must have thought with all our screaming and crying out but I just need to say one more time till next year, " Go Pies!"

Later that night I actually did some sewing and stitched up the striped tablecloth. Looking very cool but so much smaller than anticipated.

So it was back to the drawing board this morning to add on a row and a column.

This time I let my son lay out the triangles before I stitch them up. He was really annoyed with me last time when I rushed ahead without him but I didn't want it to end up too planned.

Stripes

I just could not wait to cut into my new striped fabric. I decided to make a table cloth similar to Fassett's one in 'Passionate Patchwork' and on the reverse side I'm going to try something similar to Stripescape in his 'Simple Shapes' book. Cutting triangles in the method described in the book was new to me and after cutting the strips of fabric I had to actually cut out the triangles. It's probably the way to get the fabric to behave properly but I don't really get the whole bias thing. Any way I cut as it was written and quickly started to lay out the triangles.

These were just put down as I cut them so they are not in any order but they were already starting to appear to ripple in light and dark spots.

To actually lay them out properly seemed to be a massive job and being ridiculously impatient I thought that I would make squares up and then try to place them in some sort of design.

These stripes are just so exciting to play with.

I have 48 squares completed and 30 to go.

When you start cutting the triangles you get a mini triangle at the end of the row. These started to pile up. I trimmed them and sewed them together as well and here are some of those.

I'm not sure what they are going to become. Maybe a border for the table cloth or maybe something on their own. First those 30 big squares need to be made.