Finished Sajou Mini quilt

I have finished my first sewalong with Lori from Humble Quilts.  Here is a link for you to visit - Humble Quilts and I'm sure you will enjoy a visit to her blog.  Two of my friends have said I should make this bigger, but then it turns into a WIP and I'm not sure I want that.  Much nice to say it is finished.  Hoping to quilt it over the weekend to be properly finished of course.  What do you think?

Best of all, it has all come from my stash.  Making some inroads here (she says positively).  LOL.  Have a great weekend everybody.

Hugs and blessings
Clare

I'm linking to Humble Quilts Here  as well.

Been busy ...

Trying to make some progress.  I see I forgot to put the photo of Travis in my last post...hmmm maybe I was worse than I thought...lol.  Here he is trying to fit into Kerry's slipper - such a daft cat.

Travis has an absolute fascination with shoes and we have to keep our good leather shoes out of his way.  He likes to sharpen his claws on them and he has already lost at least three of his lives in regards to my lovely (expensive) shoes.  Travis lives a very dangerous life indeed.



















I also made  big decision regarding Danielle's quilt.  I made (or tried to) another two blocks and no matter how hard I tried, these blocks would not behave.  It is one of the reasons I have put off finishing this particular quilt.  So these blocks below -

have now been unpicked and we have gone back to the drawing board.  I had an inkling I had seen a pattern in one of my scrap books that would suit all the HST's and triangles already cut out.

There were a lot of them, plus quite a bit of extra fabric available.  That's when I remembered my fabulous book by Amanda Jean Nyberg...

Yay, looked through this fabulous book and look what I found...

This gorgeous quilt uses HST's in five different sizes and I already have two sizes cut.  There are enough left over of the 2.5" ones to be able to cut them down for the smallest size.  I only need to cut the two middle sizes or could leave one out as I don't want to make the quilt too big.  Happy, happy, got 20 done yesterday!














Plus I have made a start on the medallion quilt using my new method of 15 minutes (or thereabouts) at a time.  I'm very happy with how this is starting to look.  My biggest problem is I fuss over colour choices, so that choosing time is not going to be included in the 15 minutes,  Hehehe it probably took me about 30 minutes at least to choose this one little frame,

The photo has come up very dark, but it's not quite as dark as this and the outside blue has little gold dots on it.  All from my scraps - yippee.




















To finish off, I found my collection of thimbles.  These were put away when we moved almost four years ago.  The biggest problem has been "where do I put them."  Guess what my Mothers Day gift is from my DH?  He is making me a cracker little shelf set specifically for them.  I'll keep you posted.

I think there are about 90 something in that container!!  Maybe I have a bit of a problem.  LOL














That's my lot for now.  Thanks for stopping by and I will talk with you again soon.  Have a great time in your sewing rooms.

Hugs and blessings,
Clare
who is linking up with Oh Scrap here - check out Cynthia's blog. Great scrap quilts and more.

Decision making

The layout has finally been sorted for my Applique Affair quilt.  Once I have them all sewn together I will take it to a couple of LQS's in search of a suitable frame and border fabric.  Needs to be quiet and yet enhance my blocks.  So glad to have got this far with it.  I wrote that about two weeks ago... the only progress has been the blocks are now in rows. 

Then I took Angie's (of quiltingreadersgarden.blogspot.com) advice, and will turn this spare block into the beginnings of a small medallion quilt.  I'm quite excited to get started on it, and hopefully it will  not become another WIP.  Angie's advice also included the wise words of just spending 15 mins a day on it and it will soon be finished.  I'm going to try that!

Apart from that I have spent a lot of time recovering from getting extremely tired after events happening for three weeks in a row.  It's been a learning curve for me about how my tiredness can build up on itself it I don't allow enough recovery time.  I also allowed myself to get very dehydrated which is also a bit of a no-no for me.  Oh well, we learn from our mistakes - all is good and Clare is much wiser - lol.

To finish off here's our daft cat Travis trying to fit into Kerry's slipper.   LOL.

Hopefully back sooner than last time.  Thanks for dropping in and take care.

Hugs and blessings,
Clare

First Quilting finish for the year and a birthday party

I have had to start back at work again already, even though it is our hot summer time here in New Zealand.  We have our bi annual Wine Country Quilts exhibition coming up in mid-March and entrants need to have their quilts in by the end of February.  That is not so long when you have three quilts to custom quilt.
Being so organised (ha!) I have finished the first one.  I have only given you one photo as it is going to be in the exhibition so cant spoil it.

It was like quilting a garden with this quilt and Sue made a wonderful job of all the appliqued flowers.  Had to work hard with the eyes with such a dark navy background and my So Fine blue was almost too good a match.  I used a Magnifico blue down the centre of the feather fern and in the veins to give it a lift.  Thanks Sue, I enjoyed getting back into the swing of things with your awesome quilt.

This is a glimpse of one of the other quilts I have to get done.  I laid it out on my work tables to try and get some inspiration for the quilting designs.  Tyson decided to give me some help and is studying it closely LOL.  Thankfully Catherine knows this boy and I'm sure she will give him the 3rd degree when she sees him next.  It's a lovely round robin quilt that Catherine participated in a wee while ago and the colours are gorgeous.














Then it was off to Wellington for the weekend to celebrate our youngest granddaughter's first birthday.  We are both amazed that this year has flown so fast.  We had a wonderful celebration with Marceline's Mum and Dad - Kea and Richard, Kea's folks and some friends.  Wellington put on the most beautiful day that required sunscreen and all.

This is my cool Tonka Front End Loader that Mum and Dad got me.  I just love it and played for ages with it. Poppa is giving me some driving lessons while Mum looks on.

Gran Gran bought me this gorgeous new dress and was showing me some photos of myself.  I love playing with the camera and am happy to pose for you.  Nana took this one of me with Gran Gran (well just Gran Gran's knees actually).








We all had a yummy chocolate cake but Nana forgot to take a picture of that one.  Gee Nana.








Sunday we all went down to the Farmers Market at the Waterfront.  After buying some fabulously fresh fruit and vegetables, we checked out all the food stalls and had brunch.  The only thing with that is it takes me forever to decide what I'm going to eat and then I end up last!

This is me (Marceline) just hanging around with the oldies!




Please note, not a cloud in the sky and it's Wellington.  Love it.

Kerry and I decided to go look in Te Papa National Museum before we left for home and saw the Dream Works exhibition. It was great.  They take you on a dragon flight and wow, it was exciting.

On the way home we stopped in at Sawmillers Quiltery which is run by my friend Yvonne situated in Te Marua, just north of Upper Hutt.  Lovely fabrics and great conversation.  Next door is the Stonestead Devonshire Tea Shop.  Yummmmmm.

 Isn't this a most flattering photo of Kerry.  These made on the spot scones are absolute delicious.  Kerry had cheese while I went for the date, plus jam and cream of course!!!

My last gasp is this....7 little blocks, and I mean little!!!  I made the mistake of reading on Cynthia's blog quiltingismorefun that housework about this mad 365 day challenge.  You make a block a day for 365 days and at the end have this awesome quilt.  Hmmmm. Not all the blocks are 3" - these are the first border around the centre medallion.  I have also decided they must all come out of my stash.! Well so far I'm up to date with two blocks cut and ready to sew tonight which will probably end up being tomorrow as I ended up here instead which makes 15 blocks.  Let's see how long I can hang in there on this one. By the way, there are over 12000 quilters joined up...wow.  (It's free too)

So there you have it...life in the Moore household is still ticking along.  I hope those of you on holiday are having a great time.  Those who have worked through I sympathise with.  Those who dont work ....yippeee I wanna join you!  Mind you, I don't think there is anyone who doesn't work in some way or other.


Bye for now and thanks for reading all the way down to here.  It seems a long way to me too.  I need to stop talking so much maybe but I don't know, the words just keep coming out.  I will see you again soon I hope and take care.

I'm linking with Cynthia at Oh Scrap here.

Go over and have a look at her lovely blogs with lots of tempting scrap projects.  Actually I am blaming Cynthia for my falling for the above mentioned 365 Challenge, lol.

Blessings to you all,
Clare

Autumn Medallion Quilt

Here I am at last.  In all the moving around of the "stuff" I lost my cord for getting my photos onto the computer. Of course I found it when looking for something else!!  Isn't that always the way?

Been working hard trying to catch up on my customers quilts.  This beautiful medallion quilt of Maria's is a wedding gift and is going off to Australia.  Although it seemed like the never ending quilt for a while, I am so thrilled in the end with how it looks.  It was only a bit of a struggle because I am still in recovery mode.  The colours are superb.  My photos are not.  Sorry about that.

It was very hard to get a photo in a good light and these first couple were taken at Maria's place when I delivered the quilt.  They do show up the quilting well though.

Some of the border treatments.  The thread is Superior Magnifico 2063 - a lovely gold colour that really highlighted the gold edged leaves in the focus fabric.  In the cream backgrounds I used So Fine 405 which worked perfectly.

 I had to do the on point triangles using Plan C.  Plan A & B were too difficult with my smaller 18" throat.  I was actually really happy with this plan and it probably looked better that the first plan...lol.

Because the focus fabric featured beautiful leaves and berries, I used these images in the quilting.  The feather border uses the leaf style of feather and I was delighted with how it came up.  Only the second time I have tried this one.

Using continuous curves on these wee 3" 9 patches made them quilt up a lot faster.

Used the leaf feather in this square and another border of cc.

Thanks Maria, it was such a pleasure to quilt your lovely quilt.

One last pic...this is my most beautiful great granddaughter who lives in Perth, Australia.  I am praying hard that I will get to meet her at the end of the year.  She will be 3 in October and is called Tiana.  Dad Wiremu loves her so much and they spend lots of time together.

Take care and I wont make any rash promises about being back....just will do my best to chat with you again soon.

Hugs and blessings
Clare