It's been a while

A lovely bloggy friend emailed me to ask if I was alright because it has been so long since I last blogged. I was shocked when I realised how long it has been.

I am fine, just busy with study, which takes up lots of my out of work time.  My quilting time has been cut back severely, and in line with that, so has time for things like blogging.

The picture is a project I've taken out and looked out a couple of times recently.  It's a row quilt from a swap a few years back... probably 2006.  It has some lovely Oriental prints, and I love the deep colours.  It needs some more rows and probably some sashing to pull it together.  One of the rows, the second from the bottom is longer the others so I will have to tweak that.

Potted colour

A gift for a friend, thanks for something generous she did for me.  I planted these petunias in an old copper kettle.  Very pretty.

And another block on my star BOM.  This is block 7 on the pattern.  I skipped ahead because I was impatient to use the green.

Making a list, crossing things off

A couple of months back I scribbled a list of UFOs on a piece of paper and it was alarmingly long.  I thought I would only have a few, or maybe 6, because about 18 months ago I donated a lot of tops to various groups making quilts for charity.  Alas there were 13 projects on the list.  And to be pedantic there are now finished tops on this list because they  are "out of sight and out of mind" down with the quilting machine.

Now it seems like time to do something about the list so I started assessing some of the projects.  I decided I was never really going to make pink shopping bags (using up the fabric leftover from a Christmas gift to my sister 2 or 3 years ago) so I filed the pattern, put the fabric back into stash and crossed the project off my list. One down!

Assessing projects turned out to be very worth while.  It turned out one of the tops was actually finished... so off to quilting with it, and it is off my list. Two down!

Then I came to the quilt described on my list as "Blue/lime panel" with a note "covert to bag".  I dragged it out, decided that it didn't really need to be a wall hanging displaying my ability to quilt different textures on different areas of a panel that I had stitched different sized borders on.  So before I could fold the fabric back up I found my favourite bag pattern and CUT IT UP.  I added some of my own hand-dyed fabric for lining, and used 95% of the panel.  This is the result.

That makes three down!  Only 10 to go - if only they could all be so easy. 

Progress and something to make you smile

I have made some progress on the forgotten star quilt.  These are the next two blocks.  They are interesting blocks to make.  3 down, 10 to go!

Last year I participated in a Quilters Christmas Stocking Swap and one of the gifts in my stocking was this pansy pincushion made from felt.  It makes me smile, it has such a cheerful look.

How did this happen?

Whilst I've been on holiday I've attempted to do some tidying up.  In the process I found an interesting bag in the back of my quilt cupboard, neatly packed with fabric and some printed intructions.  It puzzled me for a while until I unpacked enough of it to realise it was fabric for a queen sized quilt.  I bought this fabric around the time we moved house, which was a little over 3 years ago. This wasn't a simple kit purchase, oh no.  This involved trips to quilt stores in Wanganui, Upper Hutt and Wellington, and I had to print out the instructions from a Blog over the course of a year.  How could I forget this?  How indeed?

About a year ago my friend Sarah (who accompanied me on the Wellington trip) asked me... "Don't you have another quilt that you're making, remember, we bought fabric in Wellington?", and I said "NO" because I couldn't remember what she was talking about.  Now I do!

This project is now top of my list for 2012

Happy New Year

May 2012 bring all that you dream of.