A dry-ish January

in sewing terms, that is.  I've been nursing badly pulled muscles around my shoulder blade all month, and only managed a little sewing in the last day or two.  I had hoped to have this finished for A Lovely Year of Finishes, but there's no binding on it yet.  I guess that can roll over to next month!

It's not immediately obvious, but I quilted just to the edge of the bias binding.  I used an invisible thread to help cover my wobbles - I was driving left-handed!

The wobble on the left hand there is really bugging me.  It's only obvious (I hope) in person, but it looks awful here!

Another post, another goal

So, another goal.  I finished this top

a couple of years ago and it is, as yet, unquilted.  As my aim this year is to tackle some of the UFO, I've picked this to be finished in this quarter.  I'm ignoring the fact that I haven't picked up a needle yet this year due to badly pulled muscles all round my shoulderblade...

Edit: and I see due to sitting around I've missed the linky party.  Oh well, goal still stands.

Long time, no post...

I've been keeping up with my page on Facebook, so am encouraged to try blogging again.  I'm going to try out a Lovely Year of Finishes, to see if that helps me keep up the blogging habit.  To that end, my goal for this month is to quilt and bind this wallhanging:

I made this long ago, and stalled when it came to quilting it.  In the absence of anything else, I'm going to stitch in the ditch around the outlines, just to get it moving on.

See you soon!

Procrastination

I've been very bad at blogging lately. (Again.)  First I lost the cable for the camera, and then Mum had an appointment and I got back in the holding pattern of just waiting.  Well, cable is found, and the appointment was just a check-up.  Everything is fine.

And I've been busy!  I have a show and tell thing for a women's group in a couple of weeks, so have been making things for it .  

 ...needs a binding...

 ...yet to be quilted...

This last one is a sample for Karen in Fiddlesticks fabrics.  I really like the pattern I came up with for this, but I'm not sure that these fabrics show it as well as I'd hoped for - you see the on point squares?  Well, there should be chevrons to either side (pink to the sides, blue top and bottom).  I might remake this just to showcase that, but I'm still happy with this - very scrappy feeling and so easy.  I wish I had a close-up of the quilting as I spent a lot of time on it, but I only finished the binding on it on the way to the shop on Saturday (I was heading there to teach FMQ) so this had to be taken in the shop!  It'll come!

I have some baby quilts to make.  I'm not really in the mood as I have other things in my head, but they're ordered.  I'll post some photos of things I got back from Fiddlesticks to bring for my show and tell.

Incidentally, I used a Curvemaster foot to piece together my apple core!  Really useful - I didn't use a single pin!  Quite freeing in a certain way, I must say!

I also have a couple of projects - long term projects that I won't get started for a while - in mind.  I'm loving Quiltmania's Mystery Quilt, and Vignette in Stitches!  I have the fabric for the latter, but not enough for the former.  Well, not sufficient colours as I have plenty of wovens.  Excuses for shopping, aren't they great?!

Not getting much done these days as I'm juggling farming, tutoring and other stuff!  Still, I got those lovely bright fabrics cut:

Yes, there is a kaleidoscope quilt being planned!

I pre-washed these.  The cats helped iron them (!) afterwards.

I spent most of the weekend trying to quilt this baby quilt:

This is one of my new favourite ways of quilting, unfortunately my sewing machine kept skipping stitches.  Grrr.  So I've set it aside for a few days and hope the machine gets over its hissy fit.  This is the back:

How cute is that!  I'm having a real yen for yellow and bright colours at the minute, which explains why I'm currently working on these:

I've known for ages what I wanted to do with them, I just hadn't got round to it!  I was in Fiddlesticks yesterday, where I spotted someone working on this

one of my patterns!  I love the fabrics she's used - completely different to mine.  It's so lovely and soft and feminine.  Rather chuffed to see it!

Bag and birth sampler

Two presents to go out to America finished a day or two ago.

I made up the bag pattern as I went along - hope it doesn't show!  Quite pleased with the birth sampler, even if my drawing is what is frequently called "rough and ready" here (i.e. a bit dodgy but does the job)!