A finish!

Sharing Time -
[Apologies in advance, it's a gloomy day today and the photos aren't very 'sharp'].

Sewing Angels, by The Birdhouse



Raewyn's been making hexie-flowers again.

And doing a bit of applique.. and stitching.

Isn't she just lovely?

Whoop whoop first ever feathers on a quilt!

I really enjoyed making this quilt and am happy with the result. It's going to be a shop sample at my local, aka The Country Yard.
And just out of interest;
In her comment to this post, Suz questioned how necessary black tulle and a silver sharpie were for the method of stencil transfer (onto dark fabrics) practised in April's FMQ challenge. Here is a photo showing white tulle and black pen and black tulle and silver pen - interesting - in this case, both would have worked equally well.

And look what came in the post - the lovely Melody sent YD a surprise parcel last week, for being a 'new generation bear maker'.


Lovely mohair, bear shoes and one of her fabulous scissor fobs.
Cant think where the cute little chocolates have gone..?

YD was very excited and overwhelmed by the generosity of one of my 'bloggy friends'. Thank you Melody.

Here's to a fun and quilty week - happy stitching every-one,

Weekend Diversion - Someone to Love....

I thought it would be nice to join in with Leanne's Someone to Love, Something to Do, Something to look forward to post on her blog.
Here is her inspiration -

"Happiness is pretty simple:

someone to love,

something to do,

something to look forward to.” ― Rita Mae Brown,

 

 She has a Mr Linky up so you can join in if you like,, or go and see what other bloggers are up to.

Someone to love....

This has to be the MOML - (Man Of My Life) - hardworkworking, funny, patient, tolerant and ever forgiving of me and my addiction :-)

One to hold on to, this one.

(Yes he has pulled his cap down over his face for the photo!)

Something to do....

The Crossword!! Our daily paper has changed its format, publication time, etc, this week. When we didn't get the Friday night Jumbo Crossword last night I was worried... whew... it's appeared in Saturday's edition :-) It's the one I look forward to every week.
 (Maybe I should have zoomed in on it more in case I need help with the clues...!)

Something to look forward to.....
-Spring - yes these little daffs are a sure sign that spring is on it's way.... trouble is we're only halfway through Autumn!!!

Have a nice weekend every-one!

Tulle and Feathers - April FMQ

It sounds a bit like a recipe for a wedding dress doesn't it?
Here's my report on the April FMQ Challenge, being run by SewCalGal.
This month's tutorial by Don Linn (see it on SewCalGal's blog) demonstrated a method of transferring quilting designs using tulle.
I've been able to use the technique to help me with a quilt I am currently working on.
Firstly I drew up a design to fit the space I will eventually quilt. I used a Flexi-curve to get a nicely flowing spine shape, then free-hand drew the plumes.
I taped tulle over the design and used a sharpie to draw it onto the tulle. Don tells us to use a hoop to keep the tulle nice and taut but I don't have one on hand that is big enough so I used my trusty masking tape to tape the design and tulle to my desk.


Drawn design, tulle and Sharpie

Then I pinned my tulle to the fabric and used a Clover blue marker to go over the design, transferring it to the fabric.


Removing tulle from fabric. The design came through pretty well. I went over
it in the odd spot. Pleased with how the little plumes at the top end came out.

Next step - sew it!! The photo below shows my Raewyn-version-cheap-as slippery slider. I've taped my applique mats to my sewing table to help with moving my quilt around (yes, used my trusty masking tape again!) (If you don't tape it on you are likely to sew it to your work (does that sound like the voice of experience to you?!). It also shows the mini-tutorial on bump-bump feathers which I printed off Joanne's blog (Threadhead) and pinned it to the wall to remind me which way to go. I haven't tried many feathers yet so thought I would give this method a try.[Thanks Joanne, I find your mini-tutes and notes very handy :-)] [Isn't blogland great?]

You can also see the foot on my machine. I suddenly realised that all this time I have had this machine and thought I was using the BSR function that I wasn't!!! I had it plugged in but not turned on! SO now I'm using the foot without the bulky BSR mechanism on it!! (Sorry about the overload of exclamation marks but I am such a GOOF!)

Here is the end result -

I enjoyed this method - I see it as another technique to put in the tool box. Regular readers may remember that I used it recently to transfer stitchery designs.Next hurdle is to put these feathers on the quilt I am doing. As the block I am quilting is dark, I will need black Tulle (check) and a silver Sharpie, so I'll be looking for one of those in town later on today. Then it will be more feather fun - wish me luck!

I took this photo of our driveway yesterday, showing the Autumn colour here. In Northland there are a lot of evergreens planted (and native bush) so we don't tend to get the same beautiful autumn scenes as seen elsewhere. Also, because we don't quite get the cold snaps the trees often don't tend to suddenly change colour.  We are trying to plant a few more deciduous trees as they really are lovely when they do change.
Happy sewing everyone - thanks for popping in,