Class Work

About 18 months ago I enrolled in a Craftsy class, Continuous Line Quilting, taught by Ann Petersen. I even bought the kit of shot cotton fabrics to go with the class, because Craftsy had a sale on and the Australian dollar wasn't as low then as it is now. I think I even watched a couple of the lessons, while I was waiting for the fabric to arrive. And then a whole bunch of stuff happened, and I never made the quilt for the class, and never watched the rest of it.

A couple of weeks ago I came across the fabrics. Today was nice and quiet with no chainsaws and machinery, so I made the top:

Including a couple of appliquéd shapes! Deciphering the pattern was a little tricky, as the cutting instructions called the pieces "A", "B", etc, and the layout diagram had them marked as "1", "2", etc. And as I discovered, there was not a logical correspondence between the two systems. (ie "A" did equal "1", but "D" did not equal "4".) Of course I added to the complexity of the task by cutting in metric measurements. At least the top is made now, rather than being a collection of fabrics in a box.

Wildlife Spotting

This Gumleaf grasshopper landed on the road in front of us while we were walking last night:

Amazing camouflage! Not on the road of course, but it looks just like a dried gum leaf. The "hole" near its head looks very much like caterpillar damage on a real leaf, but the last gumleaf grasshopper I posted on this blog six years ago didn't have that. So maybe something tried to take a bite out of this one.

Straight after that a wallaby hopped by, but I couldn't get my camera back out again quickly enough. Here is Jack, standing up trying to see the wallaby over the long grass:

Today as I was driving through Lal Lal township, I was surprised to see a koala on the ground beside the road. He jumped into the nearest tree and climbed up to about head height before I parked the car:

That's not even a live tree! He seemed happy enough to sit there while I took a couple of shots, but as I walked behind him to see if I could get a better shot from the other side,

he quickly headed up higher. Glad I had my camera handy!

Tree Moving

When the land for our house was cleared last March, the tree-trunks were heaped into two large piles, which have sat there ever since. Since the house was finished we have been trying to get someone to come and cut up the wood. At last we found someone, and this week it is happening:

Dale picks up several smaller trunks, which he moves to a spot further from the house. Then he cuts them up with a chainsaw. It will be our job to turn them into neat stacks of firewood.

Larger logs he drags off the pile with a chain:

It seems the job is going to take much longer than we thought. After a day and a half he is less than half way through the first pile.

Earthmoving

We have a man with a bobcat working here for a few days to sort out a couple of things. His first job was a bit of earthmoving. Here's the view across the "lawn" last night at about 7:00pm:

And the same view at about 5:30pm today:

Two large piles of dirt left over from excavation works, smoothed out! It's amazing the difference it makes to the feel of the place as you walk around, having them gone. They don't look like big piles in the photo, but it took nearly half a day to get rid of them both. The remaining pile at the left of the shot is the topsoil, which we will spread around once all the heavy machinery is finally over and done with.

Blocks in a Top

Ready to sew the last seam:

to put together the two halves of Allietare! I'm a bit late for the link-up this week, as I've been busy making a few more blocks to turn my quilt into a square. No borders yet, but here it is hanging on the line:

As I explained in the post where I chose my colour scheme, the colours are based on the view from my sewing room:

I tried to get a photo of the quilt and the view, but there is even less blue sky today than when I took the above photo in November:

But apart from the lack of blue sky, I think the colours represent the landscape fairly well.

I'm not sure what I will do about borders. Because of the measurements I used (3cms to Bonnie's inch) my blocks are about 20% larger than the pattern. So this quilt is about 1.8m square. I don't want to give it a very wide border. Not even sure what colour/s to use for the border/s. What do you think?

Some years ago I formulated "Vireya's Law of Scrap Quilts", which states that no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you will sew two pieces of the same fabric beside each other. Here's the proof:

In fact, if you look closely, that same neutral fabric appears in three different blocks in this photo!

And here's a little something I added to my quilt:

The central block has red corners, to represent the crimson rosellas which visit my birdbath every day.

Go and check out all the beautiful quilts at the Quiltville link-up this week. This has been a fun mystery, and everyone's results are wonderful!

Blocks on the Floor

Blocks all assembled, everything but the corner triangles spread out on the floor:

At this stage it is roughly 1.3 x 1.8 metres. There is meant to be a narrow blue border, then a wider grey one. Now I have to decide whether to sew it together like this, or make more blocks to make it square. I probably need to look at the photo for a while to decide, because I can't leave the blocks on the floor!

Very Happy New Year

Mystery reveal! At around lunchtime today, Bonnie Hunter posted the final instalment of Allietare, this year's mystery quilt. And I didn't even realise, as I hadn't expected the next clue before 4:00pm at the earliest.

Her final quilt looks spectacular!

After completing last week's clue I did some calculations, and this is pretty much the layout I was expecting. I discovered I needed to make a few extra of various previous units to have enough to complete a layout of 4 x 3 of those star blocks, so I made all of them earlier this week. I considered doing enough for a 4 x 4 layout, but decided to wait and see what I thought after the reveal. I'm still not sure. I need to see how my 3 x 4 version looks first.

I cut out the block centres (it was surprising that they didn't have to be pieced) and jumped in to assembling the blocks. It didn't take long to completed my six "middle" blocks:

Not showing them yet!

Then the "star" blocks - I carefully selected units so that no fabric appeared twice in any block:

Clips holding the components for each block so I don't get them messed up.

Started webbing them together:

By dinner time I had all but two of them webbed together:

Piled up, ready for pressing. Once I've got these all assembled, I'll lay them out and decide if that is enough or if I want to add an extra row to make it square.

When we were out walking the dogs this evening we met a teeny-tiny horse:

Is it a pony or a miniature horse?

A flock of yellow-tailed black cockatoos flew over:

It was a very nice start to the year!