Another check-in

Where does the time go?!    I mean, wasn't it New Year just yesterday?  And lo and behold, the next New Year is just around the corner!  

My old/new news:  still working from home, and I am still enjoying it.  The world is still trying to figure out how to live with Covid-19.  I am grateful to have been vaccinated.  Four stitches in the finger that got in the way of my scissors - all healed now.  My son is visiting us from the UK for an extended period while he completes his studies.  My grandson started Nursery in Wales, and he is a constant delight.  My mobile phone went for a swim in our pool - have new one but it's not as nice!  Luckily managed to get all pictures and data off the old one but only if plugged into a power socket!

Well, sewing... I am satisfied with what is getting done!   A quick summary of the year:  21 quilt tops pieced or assembled, pieced 9 quilt backs, 11 quilted and bound (8 in the past month!)

I play along with Angela at So Scrappy and this year aimed to make at least one top from random/orphan blocks in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) colour of each month, happy to say, goal exceeded!  In August I had a light-bulb moment (don't laugh), why not piece backs from less loved fabrics whilst the quilt top is still pinned up and being admired- best idea this year!

The reasons I used-to-have for not wanting to go near the quilt frame:

•   No backing ready 
  
•   Throat space quite small (9") on machine - starts at 6", diminishes to 4"  work space.
  
•   Batting not at hand, or needs to be joined
•   Thread always breaking, both top and bobbin
•   Rather be fondling fabric and piecing
  

I think (I hope) I have overcome/learnt to live with these problems.  My Pfaff Grand Quilters are not long arm machines, just fast straight stitch machines (great workhorses for piecing) and without stitch regulators.

• Next year will be the Year of the Backs!  Will make backings each month in the RSC colour and prep bindings
  
• Looking for and trying out 4" height free-motion quilting designs - keeping the designs very loose
  
• Bought WIDE batting;  I keep yearning for the fabulous bamboo I got in Australia, but making do with local polyester
• Thread problem resolved:  using a bigger needle 90/14 - polyester thread in bobbin (has a little stretch) - and using cotton quilting thread on top.  Last eight quilts, only one thread break!
• Fabric - always time to play!

In September, under the prompting of my very good friend - The Quilting Co -  challenging us to get UFOs moving, I listed all (100) of mine.  Am glad to say that has already reduced to 92.

Aah!  Just discovered that I have access to (some) pictures without uploading from my phone!  These are three of the finishes.

My niece and her two daughters, getting the baby's quilt.

Folded hexagons, zig-zagged together, and bound with left-over bindings:

 

Curvy Squares:

The jacaranda tree in the garden of the new house that will be finished next year.  It was severely trimmed three years ago before the building started and is now glorious:

That's all for now.

A Pink Quilt

I am always fairly optimistic at the beginning of a new year, my head filled with what I believe I can/will achieve.  The feeling will last at least another week, until my summer leave is over!  But meantime I have been playing with old blocks and bits.

 

For many years I have carefully trimmed all of my crazy accumulated scraps in Bonnie Hunters Scrap User's System and filed them away in appropriately marked boxes.  Then for the past few years I have participated in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, with Angela's enouragement to us to use our fabrics with her declared monthly colour.  What we sew is our own choice, and so I had made a variety of different blocks, and these too got filed away!   Am linking up with her today,

 

I have now started to use some of these blocks, if only to make way for more. 

 

Postage stamp quilt number two.  Using the 8-inch blocks, this was one of the draft layouts back in early December.  When I was happy with the layout I stacked the columns ready to sew.

 

 

This was the start of assembling the columns on New Year's Day.

 

 And it became a finished top.  48-inch by 64-inch

 

We have been making a "row a month" blocks with my monthly quilt group.  These cute 6-inch sailboat blocks were for December's row.  

I find it very hard to resist Bonnie Hunter's year-end mystery, and these are the 60 sashing units for Grassy Creek.

 

 

I have two storage boxes with parts and sample blocks, and a couple of times in the past I have tried to organise these into usable groups.  I have made a couple of quilts in a mixed row style, but struggled to get some cohesion from the variety of blocks, sizes and colours.  After seeing what Cathy managed to do last year with her Creature quilts, the light bulb moment hit on Wednesday, and so sorted all of these units into separate colours.  Pink being January's colour, started by playing with a layout in anything with pink .

And, today, by adding in some longer strips, had this top complete!  51-inch by 71-inch.  The memories of some of those units stretch back to the 1980s, from left-over blocks won in local guild challenges (the others were made into a quilt for my late mother-in-law), to Block Lotto winnings, to extra blocks from quilts for two nieces, to fabric from skirts.  And there are still quite a few pink blocks left for next year!