Back to the Background

After taking a break from it for a week or so, I felt like getting back into the quilting on my Berry Delicious quilt, rather than tackling Celtic Solstice.

So I did a bit of pebbling in the background of a couple of blocks:

and some leaves in a couple more:

And now I'm that much closer to finishing it.

Road to Maryborough

What a fantastic day out! The sun shone all day, but wasn't too hot. Our destination was Golden Textures, the biennial contemporary art quilt exhibition at Central Highlands Art Gallery in Maryborough. But two quilters on a road trip had to visit a couple of quilt shops along the way.

Our first stop was Threadbear in Castlemaine, who are celebrating their 25th birthday with a 25%-off sale. We may both have picked up some bargains there. After some morning tea at a local cafe we headed to Maldon and the Village Patch. Again, some purchases may have been made. A couple of other local shops also benefited from our visit, including a newly-opened French cafe where we lunched on baguettes.

We finally made it to Maryborough and Golden Textures:

One corner of the exhibition, with three of my favourite pieces. On the left is a work by Susan Mathews, the small one in the centre is unmistakably by Dianne Firth, and on the right a work by Margaret McDonald.

Close-up of part of Susan Mathews' Ode to Banksias #5:

Beautiful quilting on my favourite piece; Margaret McDonald's Flow: The Parched Land:

One of a collection of small machine embroidered pieces called Doorways, by Cathy Jack Coupland: 

You can see a few more pictures of the exhibition, and of Maryborough, in a post on Jacaranda's blog here. But if you can, get there yourself before it closes on 26th March!

Chain Blocks

Pinned up some of these blocks to get an idea how big an area they cover:

I decided I only needed a few more blocks, so I cut the extra units out of lighter fabrics because this lot seem lacking in value contrast.

Now I need to make decisions about setting triangles. In the published pattern (Bonnie Hunter's Carolina Chain) all the setting triangles are darker blue fabrics. That might not work with mine. What colour/s would you use?

Autumn

Nearly a week late hanging the autumn quilt in the hall:

Lions' Quilt-In

Attended the Lions Club of Quilters Quilt-In at Brown Hill, Ballarat, today. A highlight of the day was a talk by the creators of the Lions Centenary quilt:

 And the chance to get a close look at some of the details:

There is a lot of symbolism in the quilt design, and the workmanship is amazing.  The quilt has been touring around Lions club meetings, and will be going to Chicago in June for the 100th Lions International Convention. Its eventual home is intended to be a museum which is still in the planning stages.

Star Dust

Preparing for a quilt-in tomorrow, I dug out a project that I started in July 2015, but which I can't find any previous pictures of on this blog:

It's an EPP (English Paper Piecing) project, using a pattern I found on the website of Lies Bos-Varkevisser, Kosmosstoff (Cosmos Dust). I've printed her pattern 2-to-a-page, so my stars are a lot smaller than hers. But this collection of stars I've made don't yet cover an area of 30 x 30cm, so I've got a bit of star-making ahead of me.

In case you are wondering, there are other pieces which will fill in the gaps between the stars:

Lucky Me!

A couple of weeks ago, Jodie Ric-Rac had a week of give-aways on her blog to celebrate the release of her latest collection of fabric, Sewing School.

Last week, Jodie advised me I had won one of the prizes, but I had to wait until it arrived to know which one. And today it arrived!

Fat quarters of each colour of the little girl prints:

 Plus her super-cute Spanner pattern:

Hooray! I will have to see if there is some way I can make Spanner to match Dot's colours, because it reminds me of her a bit.

 This was the original give-away. Thank you Jodie for your generosity!