International Quilting Weekend

Well! Who knew that the weekend close to St Patrick's Day has been proclaimed by some as International Quilting Weekend? Well that's the best excuse I heard of yet! So, I finished Quilting a lap sized, scrap quilt made of four inch squares surrounded by two inch white sashing. I quilted it on the diagonal using white thread and a twin needle. The squares are all smalll prints in soft blues, pinks, yellows. greens and reds. I used two colour binding in white and yellow. I just need to join the binding and stitch it down. The two coloured binding is sewn onto the back, then folded over to the front to be machine stitched down. The second colour in the binding creates a flange effect. When stitched carefully, using monofilament thread, the stitching on the front is difficult to see. A line of stitching can be seen on the back of the quilt. I pin the binding carefully to make it as neat as possible. I cooked a yummy baked leg of lamb with roast potatoes, carrots and mixed steamed veggies with gravy! Yum! Tomorrow I'm going to help my daughter with baby Jay again. His new medication seems to have kicked in. He now only cries instead of screaming in pain. Hopefully he will be more comfortable, and we can attempt to get him to sleep in either his bassinet or cot. Cheers Emmbee! 💜

17 projects in 2017

Earlier this year I joined a challenge to complete 17 projects in 2017. Well, thanks to an exceedingly hot summer and the untimely demise of our ducted air conditioning unit, I haven't done very much at all. With the cooler days, which arrived with the beginning of autumn, I've finally managed to get into the sewing room without melting into a puddle. In early 2015, I was involved in a scrap swap with a group of seven friends. We each had to make millions hundreds of sets of scrappy 2" squares, sewn into sets of three. The result was enough sets of three for each of us, to sew into rectangles made three wide by six squares long. These were then combined with 5" plain squares set on point, to create Bonnie Hunter's scrappy 'Rick Rack Nines' quilt. The pattern can be found on her blog 'Quiltville Snips and Bits' @quiltville.blogspot.com or, check out the quilt on Pinterest. I decided to use up some 6 1/2" machine embroidered red work squares I had made several years ago for a long forgotten project. When laid them out, I discovered that I needed another 21 embroidered squares. Well, I've finally completed all of the embroidery. The stabiliser has been removed, so now they just need to be trimmed to 5" then laid out, ready to be sewn together. I found a small print fabric with a maroon background which can be used for the setting triangles and either a border or the binding, depending on the quantity available. This project is on going, but I've made another step towards completion. Savoury mince with mashed potato for tea. Cheers 💜