Inspiration

I love being inspired by the wonderful quilts and quilty things bloggers make. It's so fabulous to have this blogging world at our fingertips and to have our senses assailed with colour, pattern and design on a daily basis! Earlier this week I was at a friends house, and was once again inspired by two of her quilt creations which I will share with you! Deb made these gorgeous quilts for her teenage son and daughter and they have been well loved by them.

Jayne's quilt was made from a pattern called Hopscotch designed by Bit's n Pieces. Deb has used the stunning fabrics from Prints Charming, a range called Follow Your Imagination that was released a few years ago.

It's such a bright, happy quilt and makes me feel good every time I see it! Doesn't it look fabulous hanging on the green gate?

The stripe binding finishes off the quilt beautifully.

Deb pieced the back of the quilt as well, I love a pieced back!

Deb asked me to quilt Jayne's quilt for her, which I was thrilled to do.

I used a loopy flower pattern in the larger squares, a square spiral pattern and a stipple in the smaller squares. So quick and fun to do and the fabric was so soft it was like quilting butter!

Tom's quilt is made from a pattern sold by Amitie called Flea Market Dash.

Deb and I had a fun day wandering around Amitie choosing the wonderful, more 'manly' fabrics for her quilt for her son. I love the rust red colour amongst the blues and tans.

This is such an eye-catching pattern, I would love to make it in Kaffe's one day. Deb quilted this one with straightline stitching in a cross-hatch pattern which suits this quilt so beautifully.

Deb has backed Tom's quilt with flannel, it's so cozy and warm!

Thanks Deb for letting me show off your fabulous quilts, they are beautiful and very inspiring to me.

I have been doing a little stitching here and hope to have something stringy to show soon! xo

Back Home and Catching Up

Wow, don't holidays go so fast? It has been wonderful to have time off work, to spend quality time with the family, to be at the beach, and to rest. Alas, I have somehow lost all our holiday photo's (aarrrggghhh!), so I can't even show a pic of those darn kangaroos who loved to unzip the tent door and make themselves at home with a loaf of bread!!

Now I am back I'm looking forward to seeing what sewing adventures 2010 will bring. The first thing I have done is to catch up on my Material Obsession Sue Ross block number 4. Once again I made a practice block in Kaffe fabrics...

and then the block that Material Obsession sends me in the pretty range....

I was putting off this block for a while because it had lots of inset seams, or Y seams. I have never done them before and I was very nervous about it. My first try was a bit of a disaster with lots of puckering.

I'm not so good at learning new things from the page or the written word, so I found a great little tutorial on youtube to show me how to do these Y seams properly. And with much better success!! Yay for tute's on youtube I say!

Block 5 is already here and is gorgeous with lots of applique so I'm looking forward to hunkering down to get this one done. I've started to choose my Kaffe block colours and I'm having fun with the mix pattern, colour and pretty shapes.

I hope to visit everyone over the next few days and say Hi. Holidays are wonderful but it's great to be back and catching up with you all again. And for all the Aussie's, have a fabulous Australia Day tomorrow. xo

Image from Youth Central

On Holidays

Tomorrow my family and I are heading off to the East Coast of Australia (Pambula) for a little camping holiday. We will be away for almost 10 days and we are very excited at the thought of setting up our little camper trailer and spending lots of time together at the beach. So I say a little farewell here for a couple of weeks, and I hope to have some handstitching to show on our return. I am packing my Kaffe blue and white hexagon quilt to work on, as well as a few Jacob's Coat blocks. I have been madly trying to prepare these blocks amongst the packing and cleaning and generally getting ready to go away!! They do take some preparation but will be worth the effort in the long run.

Blue & White Hexagons in Kaffe

Jacob's Coat blocks, glued & pinned & ready to applique

Tell me though, does it seem a little obsessive to be taking my lightbox camping with me? I need to place a lot more leaves on my grey background and need the lightbox for that. I always wonder where to draw the line with what to take when going away on holidays. I did ask hubby if I could take my sewing machine but he has put the foot down at that suggestion!!! We do have a powered tent site though, so I think I will have to sneak my lightbox in somewhere!

Well, I will have a lot of catching up to do when I get back so that I don't miss out on what you are all up to. Stay well and see you in a fortnight! xo

Love, Romance and Tumblers!

Border 2 is now finished. I wish I could take a better picture to show these gorgeous fabrics off to you, trust me when I say it looks really good in real life, I'm very happy with it!!!

The squares on point have made a fun border and they sewed up pretty quickly. I love the distraction the Amy Butler solids bring to the quilt....to give the eye a small place to rest from all that Love-ly busy-ness!

The next border will take some time with a lot more applique to be done.

Check out what arrived in the mail this week - a beautiful parcel from Jackie over at Canton Village Quilt Works. Jackie has a wonderful online shop, which is where I saw this fabulous idea...pre-cut tumblers in Kaffe!!!

What a great idea for a very quick and easy quilt, they look great all laid out together don't you think? There are even some Kaffe's in here that I don't own yet! Jackie even has some gorgeous Aunt Grace 1930 tumblers in her shop at the moment, I'm being tempted! (I love that these come already cut out, sometimes it feels good to have the cutting done for you!).

 Thank you Jackie, and I love the selvedges and pattern you sent me too - beautiful!

 

I'm hoping to get busy with some prep work over the next few days cause on Thursday we are going camping for 9 days, yay!!! I will pop in here before we go. See you soon xo

Nicolette's Gift & Book Win

Happy first day of the New Year!!! Did you manage to stay up til midnight? We got to sleep around 1:30am so I'm dragging the chain a little today!

We have constantly had friends staying with us, or been visiting friends so from the start I apologise for not visiting all my blogland friends (you!) lately. I really miss chatting with everyone, and hope to get back to it soon. Anyway, I'm finally able to show you the beautiful table runner that Nicolette from Dutch Comfort made for me for our SSCS gift.

Isn't it gorgeous? I love the bright colours she has used (she discovered on my blog my love of bright fabrics), and the gorgeous snowflakes she has appliqued onto the table runner.

On the back Nicolette has used a gorgeous linen that really highlights her quilting of stars and snowflakes. It's finished off beautifully with a multicoloured binding, made up of the fabrics used in the quilt top. Great idea.

Thank you so much Nicolette, I appreciate the time and effort and love you have put into this gift for me.

In receiving a gift in Chookyblue's SSCS, you also have to make a gift for someone else. I made this lap quilt for Nancy from Patchwork Penguin blog. It is such a wonderful feeling to make something for someone else, someone you haven't even met!!

And talking of gifts, I received this beautiful book Liesels Funfecke from the gorgeous Sarah of The Last Piece. The book is written in German, but the pictures so beautiful and the patterns so clear you don't need the instructions to make the quilts. They are all paper-pieced which I adore.

It is written by Hilde Klatt and Liesel Niesner and I'm definately going to make the gorgeous quilt on the back cover called Mandala. Thank you so much Sarah for a fabulous book and more inspiration and ideas!

We have spent most of today entertaining different visitors, as one family left, another family arrived, been busy, but so much fun! We now have some of our sons friends around so I'm off in a minute to go and feed them all. How have you spent your first day of 2010? xo

Terri's Sale

One of my favourite online shops, From Here to Quilternity is having a fabulous sale! Terri has a wonderful range of my favourite fabrics...Kaffe Fassett, as well as others, including a wonderful Amy Butler fabric, recently re-released....wallflower in cherry!

Her sale finishes on Wednesday night (US time) so there is still plenty of time to rush over there and snap up a huge bargain. Oh, and did I mention that she is selling her fabrics at 35% off? That means this gorgeous cherry fabric is a mere $6.17 per yard (US dollars), how amazing is that? At prices this low it's a great time to buy backings don't you think? You can mention Cathy's blog in the comments section so she will know where you have come from.

I hope to get back in the next few days to show you the gorgeous table runner Nicolette made me for the SSCS swap...been very busy with visitors from Brisbane, so haven't had a chance to take a good photo yet!!! I hope your week as a wonderful one as 2009 comes to a close. xo

Love & Romance on Christmas Eve

My last post before the big day tomorrow. I promised I would show you my finished first border on Kim McLean's Hearts and Flowers quilt that I am making with Amy Butler's new Love fabrics.

I decided to change it a little from Kim's original design. Using these beautiful fabrics certainly makes for a very busy quilt, so I am leaving out all the smaller applique shapes, and using only the larger applique shapes that Kim has provided.

I am loving how this quilt is turning out so far, Amy's fabric is so inspiring and Kim's pattern is so wonderful....beautiful applique's and lots of gorgeous borders. I've started to cut out the squares for the second border, hope to work on that soon after Christmas.

But for now....a wonderful & safe Christmas to all tomorrow!

End of Colour Week

Black & White Monday

It has been a fun challenge that Kendall has given us, to take photo's of different colours each day for a week. Today is the final day....black & white! I didn't think I would have much to show for black and white day, but I found a few things lying around! Firstly my newish black and white heels...I adore that red buckle and these shoes are SO comfortable!

The black and white lamp on my bedside table, many books read by this light.

My pretty black and white vase a lovely friend gave me for my 40th birthday 2 years ago (...oops, now you know how old I just turned!).

Black and white polka dot binding, makes a very colourful quilt look fabulous I think!!

So that wraps up colour week for me. Thanks again Kendall for hosting this week, I loved visiting the other colour week blogs to see what colours they found!

I also want to say a huge WELL DONE to my youngest son, he starred in our Christmas production at church over the past two nights. He played a wiseman called Harry and did a brilliant job, as did the rest of the cast and crew! Fabulous.

In the next day or two I will have a photo to show of my Hearts and Romance quilt, I have now finished the first border and I'm very happy with it!!! See you then. xo

Red Sunday

Wow, I'm loving seeing all the Christmas decorations around blogland at the moment, aren't you? And for us Aussie girls, it's a treat to see a white Christmas, even though we cannot experience that here.

For Red Sunday I had to include a few red Chrissy decs...a red bauble...

A red, handblown glass heart....

And Nicolete's beautiful bird that she made for me....

My red Matryoshka Dolls look great at Christmas time...

A pretty little red jug, made in Copenhagen...

Red toenails for a summery, Aussie Christmas!

Lastly, a big thank you to Joan over at Wishes, True and Kind, thank you for your lovely words, you have made my day!

Back tomorrow for black or white Monday (the last day of colour week). Actually I think mine will be black AND white!!! Don't forget you can see other beautiful colours here. xo