Little Robin's Egg quilt

While digging through a basket of stuff in my sewing room, I found a small stack of 4" squares in browns and blues which I forgot I had made from a charm pack I had received - so I went ahead and sewed them together! The piece is intended for a blank space on the wall in Sarah & Olivia's room:



which has similar colours. I still have to quilt it, of course, but now that I've remembered its existence, perhaps it will get done soon!

Music in the Air

Yes, more ATCs (I make a lot of these at night, while watching telly) - these ones for a swap with a music theme. Everything on these cards, except the music themed tissue tape, came from a guitar magazine that my nephew left behind in the recycling (and which I promptly pinched back out again!) when he was visiting last year.

Spring trees

Some ATCs for a tree themed swap. A red velvety background, which doesn't scan at all well; variegated pink thread and then sequins for the leaves and flowers. I actually made four, but they are very similar, so no need to show them all...

Pretty in Pink

Three ATCs (very similar) for a pink themed swap I am hosting on ATCs for All.

More disappearing four patches

So, I took the block lotto idea, and decided to use it to get rid of a few more scraps - this time I used pre-cut 5 inch squares in browns and blues. I had intended to make 12 for a small quilt, but when I went to sew them together, I realised I had made 13, so I set them on point instead and used a very old piece of brown calico someone had given me for the setting triangles. I will add a small border to it in the same brown, then send it along to a friend for her group to turn into a charity donation as well. Still not much of a dent in the little drawers of 5 inch squares, though...

Another row

Up to 5 rows now - two more rows to go and then, I think, a black border.

Block lotto, revisted

So, here are all nine of the blocks I made for this month's block lotto - I like these and wouldn't mind winning them; they'd make a fun quilt.

I also made a load more for Clare's Quilts for Leukaemia challenge (she's sent me the code for a blog badge - I really must put that in my sidebar, or at least in the posts I make on the subject!) which I will send off to her next week some time. Not quite sure how practical 22 blocks are, but I'm sure she'll manage to do something with them!

Tarot Card ATCs

These done for a swap with a Tarot (Major Arcana) theme. I'm not particularly into Tarot Cards, but I thought the subject matter would make for an interesting set of swap cards...

Ransom Notes

Another set of swap ATCs - these for a "ransom notes" theme - i.e. they had to have some sort of slogan or message on them, pieced in letters cut from magazines or newspaper - like the stereotypical ransom note (I'm guessing most ransom notes aren't cut from Fibre Arts, though, which is what this came from!).







I used pre-printed papers for the backgrounds on all of them - it was time-consuming enough cutting letters!

Disappearing Four Patch

This is a great block, which is this month's block over on the Block Lotto - I have made more than two of them, but as I haven't taken a photo of them together, I thought I'd just share a couple. I have some more to finish, but I have enough cut out and started to make 9 for the lotto and still have a good handful left over to send to Clare for her Quilts for Leukaemia challenge.

Cross stitch update

That time again - time to show what progress has been made on the cross-stitch with the tiny linen (actually, I'm getting used to the small count - not that I will necessarily ever do it on this small a count ever again, but at least I can finish this one without having to go completely mad...).

There's a lot of white in this one (ok, it's not technically white, it's DMC 712, a kind of pale oatmeal colour) - I'm trying to intersperse some of the colour in with the white rows. But I'll be glad when the snow is done. At least it's small!

Lighthouses

You'll never guess the theme of this ATC swap, which I completed a little while back. I used torn paper and transparencies (acetate). Acetates are frequently becoming one of my favourite media - they are just so good for layering...

Some more donations

Here are a few more quilt tops I have pulled out to send to friends who are involved in charity work. This one is going to go over to the Emerald Isle to my friend Cathi and her quilt group - it's 37" square, so will make a nice baby quilt. There's nothing wrong with it, but I do have a lot of baby quilt tops and it's not one of my absolute favourites, so I think I can part with it for a good cause.



This is one that's annoyed me for a long time. It's 51x72" and was done quite early on in my fabric dyeing days, when I overdyed a number of commercial white on white fabrics. The problem with this quilt top is that I've never really liked it. I like aspects of it a lot, and other aspects not so much. So it's been sitting around for ages. Far better it go to a good home than sit around even longer! This one is going off to Sherry, who practices her frame quilting on donation quilts...



And finally, this one, which is 32" square. This is another of those pieces I can't decide if I like or not. It looks strange in this photo because of the colour shott fabrics (which look one colour from one direction and another from a different one) but it looks different head on. This will go to my friend Karol Ann for her local Project Linus, along with the two other small tops I originally showed on the blog a few weeks back.

I also have a stack of blocks of one sort or another to send to another friend, Sarah, whose quilt ministry uses all kind of miscellaneous stuff (very useful, that!).

My stack of unquilted tops is getting much more manageable now. There's a small handful of wallhanging sized pieces, which are waiting for the right occasion; some baby quilts, which again, are waiting to be needed (they are easier to store before they are quilted, and don't take long to quilt - though I might quilt one or two up in preparation for those times when DH only gives me a month's notice that someone is going to go on maternity leave from his office); a handful of pieces which will have to go to the longarmer because they are too big for me to manage (though I think I am down to about 3 or 4 of those!) and the rest are things I can do myself on my machine, when I get around to it.

I don't intend ever to get to a point where there are no quilt tops waiting to be quilted, but it would be nice to get to a point where I had maybe 5 or 6 baby quilt tops and only one or two other things hanging about. I don't think that will be 2011, but it's progress nonetheless...

Spring ATCs

My plan to quilt my mother's oriental fabric quilt was scuppered by it being a really lovely morning, so we went out to do something outside while the sun lasted. Although we got home in early afternoon, and I did try to quilt her quilt for her, my machine was really disliking it - I think that was because it had puffy polyester batting - so I gave up and she will quilt or tie or somehow fasten it herself at home.

Instead, here are a couple of examples from recent sets of ATCs related to spring - I did a set of four different cut outs for one swap, and four different collages for another...

Some more stuff

An inspiring title, I know! I did a handful of miscellaneous stuff today, some which I still can't show as it was to do with block lotto blocks for March. I also added another row to this stained glass quilt - I have a few more blocks made as well, but not another complete row.



I also helped my mother get her quilt pinned (well, she did the pinning, but I helped lay it out and make sure it was going together the right way). I offered to quilt it for her if she wanted (she did) as a birthday present - which means, that's what I'll be doing tomorrow. It's around 50" square, so it won't take long to do...

Bye Bye, a few tops

I'm having another good clear out and am sending some quilts off to quilty friends and acquaintences who make things for charity. This one, from Spring of 2006, originated in a block swap in neutral colours on the Scrap Quilt Forum on Delphi forums. I've donated it to Ali, whose group is going to finish it up and use it to fundraise for the Princess Alice Hospice. Whether they will raffle it or auction it is not yet known, but either way, it should be able to raise a little money. And I was probably never going to finish it anyway.





These two small tops, one from my recent blue scrap destashing and one which I made from some strips of fabric which came in with my Christmas Booty Quilt (2008) from Toni as part of the packaging (plus 4 strips of an Amy Butler fabric which is not the same range, but just about matches enough to work). The problem with this top after finishing it was that at 24" square, it was too small for a baby quilt but too big for a mini-quilt, so I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. So I sent it, along with the snowball top, to Mary, whose group makes quilts for a number of charitable causes, including privacy quilts for a NICU unit - so the small size is fine.

In future, I will probably continue to make small quilt tops, especially scrappy ones, which will go to charity, but I do hope to get to a point where if I make a larger top, I manage to find something to do with it myself! There will be more quilts going off to new charity projects, but I haven't sent them along yet - I will blog them when I do, though.

Little Tree

Now that the ALQS5 is (more or less) finished and quilts are arriving at their new homes, I am able to show not only the quilts I made, but the ones I received in return - one of them is upstairs on my wall and I need to take a photo of it, but the other one, I have a photo of - this little gem is from Vreni in Singapore and I just love it. I especially like the texure of the piece, from the 3D flowers, to the linen background used - it's just superb. And I'm happy! (The other piece is nice as well - will show that when I get around to taking a photo.)

My mother's quilt

While my mother has been visiting, I've been helping her put together some blocks for a quilt - she really liked this oriental fabric we found in a shop we went to on our visit this summer, and wanted to make something with it. We started with simple squares, though at a later stage, we did trim them at a slant, which is why some of them look like they aren't square - they aren't. She also wanted a random design rather than something more regimented. Next step is to get it sandwiched up - not sure how she's going to quilt it yet (not by hand, but otherwise, it's a bit up in the air).

I did lots of sewing as well, but I can't show it, as it was all stuff related to the next month's block lotto, which is a secret until March, unless you had the sneak peek, like I did, of course!

Cross stitch update

More progress has been made on the cross-stitch Winter House - the whole house is done bar the chimneys and a lot more of the snow is finished, as well as some of the path. I will probably move on to some of the things in the snow next as I'm getting very bored of DMC712...

Fantasy World with Dragons

Amazingly enough, I got four different sets of ATCs made today for various swaps - we spent the whole morning just hanging around doing very little... I also helped my mother work on the quilt she is trying to make - more on that later; I keep forgetting to take any photos of it in progress!

This ATC set is for a fantasy theme, so I've tried to make the backgrounds for the dragons as otherworldly as possible...