Bloggers Quilt Festival coming soon!

Hope you've all got a quilt ready to showcase in this great bloggers event organised by Amy. Can't wait to see the lovely quilt eye candy!!

Nicey Mail today!!

It's a bit of a dreary day here today but my day has considerably brightened up since the mail arrived.

Lovely Nicey Jane fabrics by Heather Bailey! I have coveted this line as soon as it was released, so when Lara offered it up for sale so she could free up her fabric buying budget, I didn't hesitate. Thanks so much Lara!

I love them all but this particular print is my favourite and in every colourway! I don't have a specific project in mind yet but I'm sure these fabrics will inspire me sooner rather than later.

As I said before its a bit showery here today but in between showers we are having lovely sunny patch's. We made the most of these patch's this morning by taking the girls down to the netball courts and having a mini game of netball with just the 4 of us. It was fun but also a good workout! Early this morning we were woken up with lightening and thunder then heavy rain that turned into hail. Our forecast for today was for more of the same and I was secretly looking forward to that because that sort of weather always makes me want to hibernate in my sewing room and get creative. I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels like this. My husband is the complete opposite, he gets cabin fever easily.

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend! I'm off to get creative!!

A finish!!

As you can see it has the royal seal of approval! Finished it yesterday but we had heavy rain all day so was unable to take a decent photo. Today was fine and sunny so I have some lovely shots taken outside in my garden. I think her highness likes this quilt as she followed me around trying her best to get in each shot. She won in the end! Perhaps she just wanted to feature on my blog!

Here it is in all its technicolour beauty! I used most of the leftover strips from my string quilt but still have a few left for another quilt that I've designed myself this time.

I machine quilted along each seam line and tied the centre of each block with matching embroidery floss using 3 shades of the block colour and also tied where corners intersect.

And this is the back. I know, quite dull after the front but hey its made up of old fabrics from my stash that needed to be used up to make way for some fresh modern ones!  The green check binding was leftover from a previous quilt although I had to make more for this quilt. For now this quilt is going to hang out in our lounge to snuggle under on cold winter evenings. If you want to make a  'quilt as you go quilt' you can find the instructions over on Penny's blog. Thanks Penny for great instructions and hosting this quilt along.

It's here again!!

This coming Monday is giveaway day organised by Sew Mama Sew and I'm participating once again. These giveaways are so much fun so be sure to come back on Monday and sew what I'm giving away!

Fat quarter swap

I participated in Sew Mama Sew's fat quarter swap again this year. I love doing swaps, the anticipation of what you'll find in the mail, getting to know your partners and choosing fabrics for them and finding new blogs to read and add to my ever growing list of must reads.

My swap partners were:

1. Cat a fellow kiwi
2. Elizabeth from Portland, Oregon
3. Kriste from Texas
4. Dana from California (her blog is set to private)

As you can see in the above photo I received some beautiful fabrics, a handwritten poem, and a sheet of cute owl stickers. I wish I'd taken the time to photograph what I sent but Elizabeth has blogged about it beautifully here.Thanks ladies for being such great swap partners!!

Nearly there....

This is the backing side of my 'quilt-as-you-go' quilt all pinned and ready to quilt in the ditch of the seams but can you see my mistake? So... um.... yeah those pins should be on the right side of the quilt shouldn't they. Great! I thought I was being clever by laying down the backing first so I could make sure it was nice and flat then the quilted quilt top on top. Not a major mistake but before I started quilting I had to take out the pins and put them on the right side.

The actual quilting didn't take too long as it was just long straight rows down all the seams. I have the binding all ready to go so hope to have nice show and tell tomorrow.

A 3rd cushion for Mother's Day

Whipped up this third cushion for Mum yesterday afternoon. I'm very pleased with how these cushions have come out especially this one. Like the other two I machine quilted in the ditch and I think that was all that was needed. They are very traditional blocks and I remember them taking a bit time to piece together. It feels good to make something useful with them and know they are going to a good home. Some of the fabrics I've used in this particular one were from the very first quilt I made and which I gave to Mum anyway.

I'm going to wrap them up as well but just thought they looked good stacked from biggest to smallest and tied with some ribbon.

Wishing all the Mothers out there a happy day!!