End of month scramble

At the end of last week I suddenly realised that we were racing towards the end of the month and that I had committments to meet! I was sure there was still another week left in April!
First up, my One Monthly Goal (kindly hosted by Patty D of Elm St Quilts each month).
My aim was to pull out my Friday's Garden quilt and make some progress on the quilting...... hmmmm...... after precisely 3½ weeks of procrastinating I have done a little more on it.  I wasn't really sure what I was wanting on it, a bit of something but nothing too intricate. To get my brain cells working, I cleaned and oiled up my machine and continued on with a wee fill I'd been doing when I left off many months ago. At the time I wasn't too fussed on it but I've decided to carry on and I'll see where it leads me.

I know if I hadn't signed up for OMG, this quilt wouldn't have been touched so I call it a bit of a minor success; at least it's out and under the needle now. It's likely to be next month's OMG too so hopefully a few more gaps will be filled next time I report on it!

Another commitment I've had this month is my 'List of 12 item'. Some friends and I have made up lists of projects we'd like to work on throughout the year, numbering them 1-12. Each month a number is drawn and we work on the corresponding project. This is our first month so we're all bright eyed and bushy tailed!
#6 for me was my Omigosh! quilt (designed by the late Sue Garman). Started in 2016 as a way to use up the smallest of my scraps, I haven't seriously thought about it for a while.
This was one of my last shares; I'd sewn a few bit together to see how it was going to look.

Since then I've sewn (many) strips together and thrown them in a box (!!). This has been one of my leader-ender activities.

A box full of bits!!

You can see that I prefer to sew and trim later. When you are making 1½" (finished) sized 9-patches that is definitely the easiest way to go, although it does look rather messy.
From time to time I've done a bit of pressing and made a few 9 or 4 patches. And trimmed. But really, it was a whole jumble of bits.

This month I've made an effort —

Wow look how tidy they are!

Fancy pic of the day.

This morning I realised that I hadn't seen the pattern while I was sorting these this month so I had a little hunt... I found it in another container with a few more finished 9-patches plus a few cut pieces! Too many hiding places. These were the ones I made right at the beginning when I was making the 9-patches from one colour only. I'm making them more 'jewel-like' now.

And I've sorted these out for my next leader-ender sewing. Sewing triangles to the 4-patches —

For April's OPAM (One project a month) I have two pairs of happy pants to put on the list. One for YD and one for her hubby. After mending cheap and nasty K-mart pants earlier this month (one ripped after the second wear) I decided they needed quality mummy-made pants.

And I have another flimsy to put on the quilting pile! (Oops, once I've embroidered some nostrils and a 'nose seam'.)

I have built Eeyore to a decent cot-size so the calculations can stop. 

I'm hoping these notes will make sense when I put another quilt like this together this month —

This past weekend the Whangarei Patchworkers and Quilters Club had their biennial show. It seemed to go really well with plenty of lovely quilts to look at. I spent much of my time there on The Country Yard's stall so, sadly,  really only had a rushed look around.

The Country Yard's stall

Luckily for us, Leeann of Quilt Whangarei has put up 3 posts (so far) of photos for us to drool over.

And so the month ends, thank you for reading along, and here's hoping you all have

happy stitches,

Autumn-ness

I love this time of the year, the crunch of the leaves as I walk outside, the last minute blooms and fading garden as the season changes.

The autumn harvest and associated gluttony, apple cakes, filling the freezer —

[Are those bananas you spy in my pile of garden produce?]

[Yes, they are...check out our banana palms this year. After a truly sub-tropical summer we have bananas galore - the best ever. I counted 9 bunches yesterday!!]

Late summer is the time for firewood too, a good excuse for some family time —

******

In amongst it all, a bit of time for sewing.

Eeyore has his first borders.

And some more pattern testing for Juliet of Tartankiwi. A fairy wren for her On the Wire pattern club

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If you think those legs look tiny in this 6" block - they are! But the beauty of foundation piecing is that you can achieve legs like this relatively simply.

Sewing at YD's hemming her curtains —

Ahh the joy of a SewEzi table; moving my machine from window to window so we didn't have to take the curtains down!

I've also done a little more crochet in the evenings, - not sure where I'm going with this small blanket - the design is definitely a wait and see one! 

I hope to be back soon to share more action...until then,

Happy stitches,

Sewing with paper —

I had a fun Friday Night with Friends this month, spending the evening sewing at The Country Yard with a lovely group of ladies.

We had pads of printed papers which are designed to go with either Layer Cakes or Charm Squares. Once you've sewn on the dotted lines, you cut along the solid lines, ending up with a tidy pile of Half Square Triangles.

I was using a Layer Cake and each sheet of my pad (and 2 x 10" fabric squares) yielded two large HSTs and 10 small ones.

There are block and layout suggestions given. This is what I have started putting together —

I didn't do all of this on Friday night as I had previously started the project so it could be a class sample. I spent my evening sewing the rest of my paper units.

Kerryn chose a charm pack so used a completely different set of papers, and a different layout.

Pretty isn't it?

I've read about Triangle papers (and so on) before and thought they were a bit of a have - dare I say it - but am very impressed with how quick and hassle free it has been to make all these half square triangles! Although I still have to sew them all together, I do have a lot of very accurate little units to start with :-)

Thank you to Cheryll for hosting Friday Night with Friends. If you want to have a peek at how others spent their Friday night you can visit her blog *here*.

I know the sensible thing would have been for me to continue on with this over the weekend but Saturday afternoon saw me pulling out a completely different project. I'd started this during the week and really wanted to make some progress. I had already sewn the tricky eye sections so a few hours' work saw it done.

I found this Eeyore pattern on Fandom Stitches. There are a lot of this type of design there - all foundation paper pieced like this one. I enlarged mine slightly so it's finished at about 13" rather than 10". I'm please I did, there are some quite small pieces in there! The pattern may look like it's not for the faint hearted but it went together quite nicely...you just have to be patient with these sorts of things and you get there!

I've also put my thinking cap to come up with a One Monthly Goal project for April and have decided that it will be to make some progress on quilting my Friday's Garden quilt. This was a fun QAL from 2016! High time it was finished. I see, after doing a blog search, that it was a June OMG project last year as well... I don't think I did anything on it then so perhaps I can do better this time?!

I think I got stalled on quilting ideas so I am hoping that looking at it with fresh eyes will help! Thank you to Patty for hosting OMG and giving lots of us that extra push to complete or work on something. You can visit the link-up on her blog *here*.
I hope you're all enjoying the weekend. We're having another lovely autumn day so I'm heading outside for a bit of gardening once I push the publish button. After lunch I plan on an afternoon here in my Palace, sewing again.

'till next time,

Happy stitches,