spirals

I ran out of thread. Ordered some online and the postage was almost the same price as the thread. To be fair, if I’d gone to the store I probably would have bought a coffee, a treat and a magazine which would be about the same amount.

It took me a while to work out a design to quilt in the red hexagons on this quilt but in the end I decided to quilt a simple spiral. Where the star points meet are rather bulky and I’m using a wool/poly batting which has a higher loft than the cotton or the bamboo/cotton in more recent quilts.

At least some progress is being made. Hopefully, before I finish the spirals, I will have an idea of how to quilt all the sashings.

I’ve got time. We are in lockdown until 25 October. Sigh.

tricolour

 

Time to start working on the next quilt top in the pile.

Except for the sashings, this top is hand-pieced using the English paper piecing method. 

The design was inspired by a series of antique quilts which featured in an issue of American Patchwork & Quilting magazine from years ago.

I also liked all the patriotic quilts made by my online quilting friends that have featured on their blogs over the many years we have been sharing our projects. 

Although Australia is best known for green & gold the Australian flag is actually red, white and blue.

The stars are Crux, a constellation in the southern sky and the large star is the Commonwealth Star - it’s seven points representing the five states and two territories that form the Commonwealth of Australia. Finally, the Blue Ensign, with the crosses of St George (England), St Andrew (Scotland) and St Patrick (Ireland). 

I’m using my Westalee rulers to quilt it - the quilt that is, not the flag. 

I think I’m going to run out of thread and as we are not allowed to travel more than 5km from our homes, a quick trip to Spotlight is out of the question.  Let’s see what happens. 

rsc2017

 

I think you can guess from the name of this post, when I started this quilt. I joined So Scrappy’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge for 2017 and she hosts them every year.

Most participants make several different projects from their scraps but as I already had a few projects on the go, I decided to make just one for the challenge.

The pattern I used is called Handy Andy published in Homespun magazine June 2013.  My quilt measures 65 inches square. 

A special thank you to Joanne, from Canuck Quilter who sent me fabric for the aqua coloured block as it was the one colour I didn’t have in my stash at the time.  

Another UFO off the pile. 

Happy Stitching.

delicious

 

My dear blogging friend and amazing quilter, Love, shared her favourite recipe for raisin oatmeal cookies (we call them biscuits) and they are delicious! Thank you Love. 💕

Ruth, from Country Log Cabin, another special blogging friend and fabulous quilter asked how I created the quilt design on the sashings of my RSC2017  quilt.

Here’s a closeup. The design was made by overlapping the Spinning Wheel No 6 (sorry, photographed the wrong one) ruler from Westalee. Took a couple of goes to work it out.

These are the three rulers I used on the quilt. All the arch work in the borders were done with the 12in arc ruler and the design was inspired by long arm quilter Natalia Bonner.  She has lots of interesting videos on YouTube and is very generous to share her ideas.

In exciting news (well, exciting for me), the binding fabric arrived from Berrima Patchwork in the New South Wales Southern Highlands. How delightful is their packaging?!

Berrima is an historic town about 130km (83 miles) from Sydney and before the pandemic I would visit the Southern Highlands regularly. Morning tea and a good browse in Berrima Patchwork was a must and I’m looking forward to visiting again.

Now I can add the binding to my quilt before I set up the machine in preparation for my next project.

Happy Stitching,

pause

 

This is the design I settled on for the corners. It works okay I think. I had a lot of fun, some frustration, trying different ideas with the quilting rulers.

Most importantly, it’s quilted. Now there’s a pause because I don’t have binding for this quilt.

I’ve ordered a purple print to pick out that colour from the backing fabric.  So until it arrives, the quilt shall be set aside and inspiration on how to quilt the next UFO needs to be found.

A cup of tea and a browse of the interwebs for ideas are in order.

Happy stitching