Tagged!

Hillbillies and Motherships have been tagging me while I was sleeping. (I had a headache, and got Simon to come home early and look after James and Eleanor while I slept.)

So here is why I blog:

1. Because fellow quilters AJ and Helen nagged me to, to share my quilting.

2. To show off my quilting!

3. To show off my gorgeous children!

4. Because it's fun.

5. It is a great way for me to record my quilty progress. I had always intended to journal my quilting, but was just too slack (until a lovely quilting journal came my way in the DIN05 Mummies' Secret Santa on EB!). And it's great for keeping friends and family a bit more up to date with how James and Eleanor are growing - when I get around to updates!

I tag my fellow quilters AJ, Helen and Joy

The sum of 372...

Hello whoever you are in Minnesota! I keep seeing you've come to this post. and I'm curious! Drop me a line and say hello!


...is hopefully more than 372 in this case.

This is my Round Robin centre. I used one of Paula Nadelstern's snowflake patterns, from her Snowflakes & Quilts book I bought many years ago because I just loved the cover, and without knowing if I would ever attempt one myself. I've enjoyed reading the book several times. As she says in her book, 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts'. I agree.


So here is the 22" hexagon, just needing the setting triangles to complete the 372 pieces.

Some of the pieces are less than half the size of my little fingernail, which is why I have included some closer images - and I've left them bigger than usual, so you should be able to click on the image to see them in more detail.

UPDATE: HERE is the quilt when it returned to me I'll add more links when I have better photos, and when it's finished.

WAAAHHHHH!

I have been so busy all weekend, that I forgot to go and use my eQuilter voucher before it expired :(

Winnie the Pooh fabric

So many people have asked after the Classic Pooh fabric I bought recently, that I thought I'd post here that I got it from eQuilter. Click on search store and search for Pooh (or the exact phrase classic pooh - if you don't choose exact, you will get hundreds which have the word classic in their description, but nothing to do with Pooh!)

And now I can finish

Although that's a long way off just yet! I have to confess to a fair amount of relief that the others agreed to an extension!

Yesterday and today brought the remaining 2 orders of fabric. All 77.75y have arrived. Much of is is going (or has gone) straight into commissioned quilts, but my stash is now a healthy 718m.

More for the Round Robin (the navy is the background):

Still more for the round Robin (the bottom two are Paula Nadelstern prints)

And a couple more Paula Nadelstern prints, this time with two helpers!

I can start!

The main fabric I needed for my round robin centre has arrived (along with a few others) So while Eleanor is having a nap, I'll try and cut a few more of the 372 pieces.

This will soon have little holes all over it:

As will a lot of these; fabrics from which I'll select the palette, and the carefully sorted templates:

My little helper with my new pins; I'd better keep them away from her!My little helper with some of the new stash:And Emma, here's some you might be interested in:

Ellie's quilt

Well, actually it's meant to be for Ruby, but Ellie handpicked a lot of the fabric, and I'm not sure she'll be able to relinquish it when it arrives! Anyway, Ellie, here it is. One of the blocks up close, and all 24 laid out in position.

But it's going to stay like this for a while. The backing for Leia's quilt has arrived, and now I've done most of the piecing, it's easier to move this off the sewing table to sandwich and quilt what I have ready and waiting.

The rest of this week's mail

It's still coming! I've had several more deliveries this week, enabling me to get to work on most of my projects. Unfortunately what I ordered for the round robin hasn't arrived, and I'm worried I won't meet the first deadline; how embarrassing! I'll have to sew really fast, as I'll have about a week to turn nearly 400 (small and mostly fussy-cut) pieces into a quilt centre.

While I was photographing these, I had an assistant who wanted his material photographing as well:

Monday's mail

Here's what postie delivered this morning:

Some for me, some FQs for the birthday swap, some for my commissions, some for my raffle quilt, and some snazzy Quilters' Socks (not sure why they're quilty, but I couldn't resist!):

And, recognise some of these, Ellie ?

A little mail

Thursday - no fabric mail, but while getting Adds' Birthday FQ, I picked up these:

Friday's mail (for the quilt Kelly commissioned for Eva; from Moda's A Little Romance range)

(Helen - She saw these in the quilt you made and loved the colours!)

7 months

Eleanor is 7 months old today.

She has a distinct hate of taking a bottle, and we have had no success with it so far. She just screams and refuses to even try sucking. I hate wasting precious EBM, so today I got some formula. She's happy enough to have a bottle with water (but doesn't suck, just chews on the teat and drinks what trickles into her mouth) so this evening while she was happy, I made 60mls of formula, and gave the bottle to her to play with.

As you can see, she was quite happy to play with it. But not much went down her throat. Plenty soaked into the quilt and her clothes, and it dripped over her face. She kept going back for more, but would only chew.

Even watching James have his didn't help (although we thought it rather cute!). I'll persist doing this once or twice a day for a while. I don't mind if the formula gets wasted. The intention is to get her to have something from a bottle properly. Then when she starts at child care in a month, hopefully she'll drink the EBM happily. Otherwise we're stuck!

She gets herself anywhere she likes by commando-crawling and rolling, and we often see her rocking on her hands and knees - real crawling isn't far off! Her greatest delight is being held upside down, grinning and laughing in our faces. And she loves James' rough play (mostly!).

Serious stash-building

Although most of this is destined for commissioned quilts, there is some for me on the way. I am keeping the postman busy, with plenty more to come.

Monday's mail:

Tuesday's mail:

Wednesday's mail:

Stash update when the last lot arrives.

And Ellie, here is what your quilt looks like for now:

James loves discovering parcels in the letter box. And as well as these, there have been letters for him the last 2 days. He did some lovely paintings on Friday, then folded them, put them in envelopes, decorated them with stickers, and put them in the post box for Gran, Nanny and Pop, and Elaine and Andrew. And now he has some thankyou letters!

The last one, which is on his wall (he was losing interest by this point!):

Quilt top complete!

Being fussier than ever over my accuracy when cutting, piecing and trimming paid off big-time. When it got to sewing the strips together, all the seams abutted beautifully, which was very rewarding.

I then had to race out and get some piping cord so I could complete the borders this weekend. I hadn't tried this before, but it wasn't too hard. The worst parts were my machine oddly skipping a lot of stitches with the needle to the far right, and getting the tension right on 3 layers of fabric, when one wasn't quilters' cotton. The corners ended up being relatively easy. Because the outer border is a stripe I needed to mitre the corners. Not my favourite task, although I am getting faster and neater at it. But it conveniently meant no fussing over the piping around corners. Even better, I managed to get the stripes to match at ALL four corners.

The quilt top is now pressed and folded neatly, waiting for the backing to arrive in my big order from eQuilter.

I'll take my machine in for a service on Tuesday morning - and hope they're quick with it. I can't be without it tomorrow, as it's child care day for James, which means I can sew while Eleanor sleeps!

Speaking of Eleanor, she has been commando-crawling for a couple of weeks, and now gets up on hands and knees. She can keep herself happy for ages on the floor now with a few toys and me sitting nearby pinning quilt blocks. I'll do more of an update next week when she hits 7 months.

Books and Quilts

I've had a busy week. I have transformed Leia's quilt from over 600 pieces first into 30 blocks (plus the feature squares and setting triangles):

and now into 12 stips:This weekend should see the strips joined and borders added. I've decided to try a peeper border, which could be interesting. I have to get some cord to fill the peeper, as I don't just want a little flap of fabric, but don't know quite how I'll manage it until I get to it.

Six of my seven new quilting books arrived yesterday and today. I expect the last one tomorrow. I have read most fo the novel and browsed a few of the others so far.

I also picked up a long-coveted floral rotary cutter. I was sick of swapping from new to old blades to cut foundation papers and template plastic, so now I have my ergonomic cutter with new blades, and will keep this one with an old blade for non-fabric cutting.

The postman won't get a rest though, because I've just ordered over 40m (Yes, that is right. 4-0 metres!) of fabric from 5 shops for several commissioned quilts, a raffle quilt, and a few irresistables for my stash. (Well, they were from America, I may as well fill the envelope and make the most of the postage costs!) The sad news is that I managed to resist a few Classic Pooh prints, and a new commission has requested them, so I'll just have to go back and order some!

I have also started using my lovely quilting Journal for my notes. It's so nice to have everything in one place. So far it is nice and neat, but I am sure that won't last, with jotted lists, quick sketches and more!