Back to working on my Get a life quilt. Just the one block this week, Country Path.
The photo’s not the best, it’s difficult to get the colours showing in artificial light, but I wanted to post this tonight. Back to work tomorrow 
The first of the year, so time to look back on the last year. It started off great with a visit from friends from Australia. Then on the night they flew home, I flew to Iceland for 2.5 days.
Unfortunately after that, work took over. But in August I decided to claw my life back. And I started crafting and blogging again. Got quite a bit done too. On both the sewing…
and knitting front.
There’s another knitting project I did this month that I can’t show you yet, because the friend I made it for hasn’t got it yet. Ok, I haven’t posted it yet. I was waiting for the xmas – new year postal break to be over so it didn’t go missing.
And of course there was the big decision to change career path. So that wraps up 2011, and 2012 is looking to be a great year. So hopefully, in a year’s time I’ll be here showing you even more craft and have had a good 6 months or more under my belt in a new job, new town, and be very happy. Happy 2012 all!
I’m linking this up to Fresh Sewing Day at Lily’s quilts again.
I haven’t been quilting for a couple of weeks, and it’ll be sparse the next couple of months too. This is mostly because I have some winter knitting to do. I have a couple of cardigans, a throw, some mitts and some socks that I really want to make before we hit the cold months of jan and feb. No idea if I’ll get all that done (probably not), but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. So for those of you who are more interested in my quilting than my knitting, I thought I’d show you my first 5 (and only, so far) quilts.
1. Moonglow
I started this quilt back in 2002. I found a photo of it in a McCalls Quilting mag, along with the website to go and buy the kit. This quilt is by Jinny Beyer and she originally designed it as a block of the month project to teach new quilters. The plan for this was to completely hand sew it while doing my PhD. Well, I got the first three blocks done in 2002 then no more. Life and my PhD got in the way. I picked it up again last year, and decided to redo those first blocks if I had enough fabric. I did, so I did. Since then, this seems to be something I’ve only really worked on when I’ve been on holiday, so I still haven’t finished all the blocks. But I did do all of “month 12″
And during my last holidays, “month 1″ to “month 8″.
I have to do two each of “month 9″ and “month 10″, then one of “month 11″ – the mother of all star blocks: mariners compass. So far I’ve mostly done those first two.
Maybe I’ll finally get these finished and the next ones done while on my xmas break.
2. Bear Paw
Somewhere between 2003 and 2005, I started a classic Bear Paw quilt. I decided this one was going to be done on the machine, so spent a large time cutting out the hundreds of pieces. I even started sewing some of them. I probably could have gotten this progressing nicely, if I didn’t keep losing the bags with all those pieces. I’ve since decided that I’d rather hand sew my quilts, so will continue by hand. Maybe even redo some of what I did by machine, depends if I like how it looks. I’d show you a pic of what I have gotten done, but I’ve lost it again. I know that some time in the last year I’ve seen the bags with their pieces all cut ready to sew, and the printed pattern, but I currently have no idea where that is. I looked in a few most likely places this morning, but nope, it’s vanished back into the twilight zone. So instead, here’s a pic of the fabric I’m using. A nice deep blue batik and solid white.
3. Blue-Green Dino Quilt
Early 2009, I decided to make a quilt that I could raffle off for charity. I had some great dino fabric that had originally been purchased at the Brisbane quilting show to make a cot quilt for my niece’s first baby. It never happened, but I loved the fabric so went hunting for more to make a full quilt. This one was whipped up by machine. I don’t have a photo of the back, but it’s the same fabric I used for my dinoPad.
And as I write this I’ve just remembered that I used left over fabric to make a cot quilt for my boss’s new baby. But as I have no photographic proof of this, and this post is called first 5 quilts, not first 6, lets just keep forgetting about that one 
4. Orange Dino Quilt
At the time I was hunting up more dino fabric for quilt number 3, I discovered it came in another colourway. So I bought enough of it to make a quilt too. Also whipped together by machine.
This one I didn’t end up raffling off, so it’s still sitting in my closet waiting for a good home. But it does mean I could take a photo of the back.
5. Farmer’s Wife Quilt
And that brings us to the most recent quilt I’ve started, my Get a life Farmer’s Wife. This is being done by hand as I’ve decided that’s my preferred method. I’m doing this with a friend and we’ve both been distracted with winter knitting lately, so this may not get another look in this year. I decided to limit my fabric selection to less than 10 colours of a batik from the same fabric line (I wanted the same shading effect in the fabric and only the colour to change). Here are my first 22 blocks.
Despite thoughts of “ooh, I should have done them all like this” as I complete the blocks, I think I’ll like how this will turn up. And as I still have 89 blocks to go, I’ve got plenty of time to balance out the colours.
So there you have it. My first 5(ish) quilts. And now you see why I still very much class myself a beginner.
This week I was in the mood for jewels twinkling on a dark background. And I really like how my FWQ blocks turned out. I really need to use this theme in a full size quilt.
First up, corn and beans. Lots of pieces, so this one took ages to do. My blocks are just finger pressed, so although it looks like it in the photo, none of the points are cut off. This is one of my favourite blocks so far.
Followed by country farm. I’m not completely happy with my points in this one, but I’m not redoing any of my blocks, even if I make really messy ones.
This puts me past 20 blocks in total, but I can’t think of the exact number. Will count and post a pic of them all together next weekend.
After not doing any sewing for the last three weeks, I decided to put down the knitting needles this weekend and pick up a sewing needle.
First job, another dinoPad. This one is for a friend and will be popped in the post tomorrow.
Then I thought I should finally get back to my farmer’s wife quilt. This week, my blocks were all about subtlety. For each I picked a contrasting background, but the two colour forground pieces were chosen from fabrics that are clse to each other in colour. You really have to look for the difference.
Last night, I made churn dash.
And this morning, contrary wife.
I was feeling a bit grumpy Fri evening so looked through my small fabric stash. I found these red and purple sparkles from Timeless Treasures that I forgot I had (not the best photo).
I’ve washed it ready to start, but I couldn’t start the new project today as planned, as I need to shrink the templates.
Ok so it’s Friday, and my farmer’s wife post was supposed to be in sunday. The one just gone, that is. I sewed them then, am just getting to post them now (finally picked up a camera adapter for my ipad last night, so I no longer have to wait until I bring my laptop home to post pics).
First I pieced together century of progress. Remember how all I got up to last week was cuting out the pieces? Well they are all together now. But I played around with the colour layout as the book’s version just looked wrong to me.
So that was my blocks from the previous week done. Then I started the new week’s blocks. And did checkerboard.
I picked out the fabric for churn dash then decided to make this week a one block week. I may go back to one block a week for a little while, I need to chat with Nicki about it as we’re doing this project together.
Very late this week with a FWQ update. I was distracted last weekend, working on Jaali, so didn’t get my blocks finished. I did get one done, Cats and mice:
But Century of progress is still in pieces.
Tomorrow is FWQ day again, so the plan is to sew together this block and do my two for this week. Hopefully, I won’t be distracted by knitting again, because this yime I don’t have a deadline I’m working towards.
Yesterday was again the day for sitting down to some fun of picking out colours and making two Farmer’s Wife blocks.
First up, buzzard’s roost.
Then, calico puzzle.
Putting me at 15 blocks.
The photos aren’t too great as it was back to work for me today (booooo!), so I needed to use artificial light when I got home. I should have taken the pic yesterday when I finished them, but I wanted to pick up my knitting and continue watching season 3 Castle episodes instead
Yesterday was Farmer’s Wife day again, so I got to give my needle calluses a work out. Yes, you can get a callus from hand sewing. If you do a lot, and I’ve definitely done a lot of it these holidays.
First up we have block 13, buckwheat.
And the second block for the week was butterfly at the cross roads, block 14.
That makes 13 blocks done now, with 98 to go. No photo of them together this week, will post one next week when 15 have been completed.
Sunday’s FWQ blocks were all “broken”, so I guess it made sense that they each had a few pieces to them.
First was broken dishes. I decided I hadn’t used enough green, so green was up.
Next was broken sugar bowl.
And here are my first 11 blocks, leaving a nice even 100 to go.
