Red Bits

 The RSC colour for July is red, so I whipped up a couple of red heart blocks:

As I was putting them away I realised I never posted photos of the orange blocks I made back in May, so here they are too:

I didn't make any hearts in June because the colour wasn't something I needed for this quilt.

I had a look around the garden for red things, but there isn't much happening at this time of year. This coprosma cultivar has red leaves all year, but they look particularly good when the sun shines on a winter day:

Reddish leucadendrons:

Correas:

Salvia hanging on through winter so far:

Flowering quince getting ready for spring:

I finished assembling the last charity quilt top:

Regular readers may notice the odd green block is missing. That was my guilty secret - I decided not to use it. And then I went to our quilt group meeting and was handed several squares that someone else had "left over" from a top they had assembled. So now I have this lot of odd blocks:

It looks like there may be one more LAST quilt top to come, if I can think of a way of making these work together.

Another red thing - this "mad cap for skiing"I saw in an exhibition at the Bendigo gallery last month:

Sadly the date of the magazine isn't in focus, and I can't remember what it was exactly. Do I need to try and find the pattern and make it?

I wrote most of this a week ago, but left it as a draft and didn't get back to it. So I will link it to the next SoScrappy RSC link-up, rather than last week's.

And here is the link-up: Scrap Happy Saturday

Good-bye June

Here we are at the end of the June already. 

At a sit and sew day I was handed some more blocks for the charity quilts. Most of them I could pass on to other people to turn into quilts, but I ended up with 10 blocks left over. I decided to make a few more myself to sew up just one more quilt. Here they are pinned up after I had made a few extras:

And here they are today, with still a few more required to make a quilt top:

I'm worried about that green one in the top corner. I don't think I can make look like it belongs. Perhaps I will end up with one block left over after all.

 

A few months ago it became obvious that this tree beside the garden-water tank had died:

The guy in the hi-vis vest is one of 2 men who came to take down the tree before it could fall and do a lot of expensive damage.

Not a job I would want! I couldn't even watch most of the time.

Fortunately the job was accomplished safely, with no damage to people or property. 

There's not a lot of colour in the garden at the moment. The last autumn leaf has fallen since I took this photo:

We haven't had enough frost yet to knock back the salvias, so this eastern spinebill is one of the birds still enjoying the nectar:

And the first of the bulbs are appearing:

Jonquils above, snowflakes below.

Happy end of the financial year!

A Finish

 Plaid-ish is quilted and bound:

I haven't managed to finish much this year, but it felt good to cross one project off the list!

If you are interested, Plaid-ish is a free pattern from Kitchen Table Quilting. It is a real exercise in value - you have to get your lights, mediums and darks right to see the pattern. I can see a couple of mediums that were a bit too dark, and some that were a bit too light in mine. But overall it came together well I think.
 

Finished

I've finished my WOOFA (Working on, or finishing a....) project for this month. Hooray, that's 3 months in a row!

Here it is hanging on the line to dry:

My "left over" Frolic. It has been a top for just over a year, and now it is done. I needed to give it a wash as it got a little bit of machine oil on it during the quilting. The cotton batting shrank a bit in the wash and gave the quilt the wrinkled-up look that some people prefer. 

It is very overcast today, so the quilt looks much greyer than in real life. I'm planning on handing it to our Quilts of Love coordinator tomorrow, so probably won't get the chance to photograph it in better light.

Linked to Cheryll's end of the month WOOFA Party: Check it out.

Next month's project: Trail Mix, which has been a top since October. (Although I did get it basted earlier this month, so that gives me a head start.)

X-Plus Finish

Today the quilt guild held a meeting in a park. It was our Annual General Meeting which should have been held last August. We know why that didn't happen (hint: pandemic). It had been scheduled for last Saturday, but our snap 5-day lockdown made that impossible too. So today it actually happened, even though current rules meant that only 20 of us could attend.

Early this morning I finished sewing down the binding on my x-plus quilt, so that I could hand it over today to the co-ordinator of the Quilts of Love project.

At the meeting I got someone to hold up the quilt so I could get some photos. The back so you can see the quilting:

And the front:

Rather than crop the photos, I'm showing a bit of the context. We sat in a big circle, keeping 1.5m between each of us so that we didn't have to wear our masks. Some people even did some sewing! (But not me).

A Finish

I think this is the first thing I have finished all year, which is quite shocking, but then it hasn't been a great year so far.

Broken Herringbone quilt, made as a donation for the guild's "Quilts of Love" program. It was assembled in April, basted in June, and then sat around in my sewing room. A couple of weeks ago I gave myself a kick up the backside and sat down to quilt it. I finished the binding last night.

In bright sunshine above, which washed out the colours to some extent, and in too-dark shade below.

Back view:

I used some fabrics for the back that I didn't think I was likely to use on the front of a quilt any time soon.

The quilting isn't very clear in any of these photos. I wasn't feeling very inspired, but I needed to do something, so I went for overall large stippling, and a chain of leaves in the border:

I used up one of the few plasticy labels that were left, remembering to zig-zag it to the backing before basting the quilt. Now it is attached firmly with no hand-sewing required.

It feels good to have actually finished something!

June So Far

On Tuesday I went back to work after voluntarily staying away for 10 weeks. I think they were happy to see me again, as I was presented with this bunch of flowers:

On my way home after work I popped in at the home of one of the guild members, and collected batting to use in a couple of donation quilts. Today I got the first of these pin basted:

It is the "Broken Herringbone" quilt I assembled in April.

X-Plus

This may look the same as in my post of 7th April, but there has been some rearrangement, and now the blocks are all sewn together.

Completed Herringbones

On Monday I showed the herringbones all sewn together,and said I would probably square them up next. Yesterday, rather than just trim off all those triangley edges, I got very brave and sliced right through the top vertically, then sewed the two sides together. Then I sliced through horizontally, and sewed the bottom to the top. And didn't think of taking a photo until I had nearly finished the last bit of sewing:

In the photo above I have three more short seams to sew to finish the horizontal join; between the brown stripe and blue stars, between the two purples, and a very short one to finish off at the edge. You might be able to see that I stay-stitched the cut bias edges before tackling the joins.

This photo is just before I sewed the last short section:

Today I added a border to it. If you look very closely, you might be able to see evidence of the vertical and horizontal cuts. The same fabric appears directly opposite itself, at the sides and also at the top and bottom:

In the bottom left-hand corner you can see two pieces of the same orange fabric touching each other. One started off on the right-hand side before my "slash and join" exercise. Now this quilt complies with Vireya's Law of Scrap Quilts, first formulated in 2011; "No matter how careful you are about layout, you will always find two pieces of the same fabric beside each other after you have sewn the whole quilt together."

Herringbones

All one piece now:

It ended up about 90cm square. I'll probably square it up and add a border to control all those bias edges. When finished it will be donated to the guild's Quilts of Love program.

The colours are a bit washed out in the full sun, but I like the back view with the sun shining through it:

Twenty and Twenty-One

Here's the 20th of the charity quilts, quilted and bound:

You can't see the quilting from either side, but it is done in an all-over "feather meander" design as taught by Angela Walters. Doing this I learned that all-over designs are very boring to quilt. I'm sure it was good practice, but I had to force myself to sit at the machine to get it finished. No more all-over designs!

And here's lucky last, the 21st of the quilts that came about through our sewing bee last year. Photographed half in the sun so you can see the quilting:

I might even bind this one as well, just to celebrate getting to the bottom of the pile.

Quilting Number Twenty

Before the new mystery quilt starts I've got a few projects I would like to clear away. One is the last couple of charity quilt tops made during our workshop last year.

This is the twentieth, and second last one to quilt. This top is one that can be seen in the linked post. I'm quilting it with a yellow and orange variegated thread, which is very hard to see against these vivid fabrics. I will be glad when this one is finished!

Nineteen

Finished quilting the nineteenth quilt produced from the sewing bee last year:

Looking back at that post, this top is one that appears there as the maker was deciding how to arrange the blocks.

Here's a quarter of the back so you can see the quilting a bit more clearly:

Lots of wishbone quilting, in various places and different sizes in this quilt.

Two more to go!

Purple and White

This morning I finished quilting another of the charity quilts I basted last week:

That's number 18 done.

It isn't easy to see the quilting on either the front or the back, but here's a closer view of one corner so you can get a bit of an idea.

I'm not fond of the cotton batting I used for this one. The guild purchased a big roll for use in donation quilts, but this is the first one that I've done using it. But it seems flat and lifeless in comparison to the wool/poly blend I usually use.

For something completely different, almond blossom:

The almond started flowering just after I did my monthly round up, and now has quite a lot of open blossom.

As I've been quilting over the last couple of days, I could see that a small shrub in our native garden bed had flowers open. This afternoon I finally went to have a close look:

Unfortunately its tag has gone missing. But from the shape of the flower it could be an eremophila, and from a google search it is possibly Eremophila lehmanniana. It is pretty, whatever it is, and hopefully the flowers will attract insects which will in turn attract birds to the garden.

Seventeen

It looks a bit dull because the sun disappeared behind the clouds just as I finished pegging up this quilt to take the photo:

But that is the seventeenth top I've turned into a quilt since the charity sewing bee I organised last year.

Close-up of the quilting:

I stitched in the ditch between each square unit, then did these large herringbones wishbones across each one.

And now I know exactly how many remain. There are four more tops to quilt.

Basting Times Three

A bit of work piecing some backings, then I pin-basted three more of the charity quilts I volunteered to quilt:

Once these are quilted, there will be only two tops left from this batch. Soon I will be able to quilt some of my own quilts without feeling guilty about how long these have been hanging around.

Numbers

Every time I have finished quilting one of the charity quilts I've been working on, I've looked at what was still remaining, and it always seems as if there are about 3 more tops to quilt. After taking the one I finished on Tuesday to the person who is going to add the binding, I decided to count exactly what is still to do, rather than guessing there was "about three more".

I found that in fact I have four more completed tops to quilt, plus there were a random set of left-over blocks, quarter blocks, and re-assembled blocks. I worked out that if I made one more block I would have enough pieces to assemble all those left-over blocks into one more top. So yesterday I made the block, and today I put together this quilt top:

 And now I have a total of five more tops to quilt!


Stash at the end of July:

Thread:
Two spools emptied, none added.
Year to date - down 10 spools.

Dress fabric:
None used, none added.
Year to date - down 3.25m.

Quilt fabric:
Used 3.45m, added 5.1m. (Spotlight clearance sales are a trap.)
Year to date - up 3.7m.

Another Leaf, Another Quilt

The leaf I posted about on Saturday has grown:

And now it looks like two leaves.

But look what I found this morning:

Another leaf! This one is from a plant with large flowers that look blue in my photo, but may have been more of a purple colour?


This afternoon I finished quilting another of the charity quilts:

Number sixteen done! Zooming in on the quilting:

I didn't get fancy with this one, just big diagonal squiggles.