A new month, a new project!

I can't believe so much time has gone by... I've been busy!
If you've been following my adventures, you'll know that we moved house in August. So much work! My arms still ache from lifting boxes...oh wait, maybe it's from my suitcase!

 In mid-Sept I went to NY with 3 friends and had a great 5 days, sightseeing.

My friend and I visited Victoria of Bumblebeans. She has the most amazing studio, and was kind enough to show us some of her beautiful quilts.  Here are Victoria and Mary:

 While there we went to the Garment District. I tried to be restrained, but  I bought at least 20 lbs weight of fabric which I heaved with me to my next destination, England.  Ten days in England, and I'm home at last, with arms that must be inches longer from the weight of my suitcase!

Now back to the quilting!

I'm linking to Lily's Quilts Fresh Sewing Day. Why not look at what all those great creative people have been doing?

I have two finishes to report, Flower Fairyland and Fishy Tales. They've both gone to their new owners.

Since both were framed rectangles I couldn't wait to do something different. I'm working on an I Spy quilt.

I decided to use a 9 patch form, and then I thought to go with the alphabet to sort things a bit. There are some very difficult letters to find! I expected U, X, Y, and Z to be problems. I was surprised at N and O and J. I've collected everywhere I've been, and have nearly finished the alphabet squares. Then I'll make about 20 9 patches that aren't sorted by letter and start putting things together. Fun!

I'm also linking to Lily's Quilts Small Blog Meet. Sometimes it's hard to meet other bloggers, so this is a wonderful way to share my ideas, and read what others are thinking and doing. There's so much variety and creativity out there! Click on the link below to read what other bloggers, small in size but big in ambition, are doing!

Till next time,

Sue

I Spy more blocks!

There are several quilts lurking in the back of my mind waiting for fabric and/or time . I'm working out the form for my I Spy quilt to take. Shall it be formal (diamonds. or disappearing nine patch) or shall it be a mystery even to me? I'm waiting for the squares from two exchanges which brings me up to about 500 squares, give or take.  While waiting I bought a few more fabrics at my LQS- and favourite QS- and I'll take a square out of each one. There's sure to be another exchange in my future for the rest of each piece.

Just look at this fabric! Isn't it great?!!! It's called Parrots of the Caribbean, and it makes me laugh every time I look at it! Those parrots are modelling themselves on Johnny Depp!! I bought a piece of two of the fabrics in the line. To do it justice the square has to be larger than the 4" that many of the other fabrics are cut into. Well, I'll just work it out. Maybe the by-the-seat-of-my-pants format for this quilt will be best after all!

On another subject, don't you just love Kate Spain's designs?  She's so original! One of my WIPs is using Central Park. She has a Christmas line of fabrics called Flurry that I really like. Sometimes I'm not sure about Christmas fabrics, they can so easily look either overdone or old fashioned. Do you feel that? No such problem with Flurry. Melissa is having a giveaway of Flurry, 28 fat quarters and a panel, unbelievable! Check it out on her blog at Happy Quilting

Till next time

Sue

Fresh Sewing Day

                                                       

Today is the first day of June, and a chance to look back at the projects I worked on in May. This is an idea from Lily's Quilts, I love it! It's a chance to admire what other quilters have been making, and to reflect on my own quilting projects.

If there is a word to describe this month's quilting it would be "stalled", as in run out of gas during rush hour traffic!

My Flower Fairland quilt is still waiting for a half yd of fabric to finish the last 3 squares. The missing fabric is on the way, but if it doesn't come today or tomorrow it may get caught up in the threatened postal strike, oh dear. It could be stalled for a while. I've sashed about half of it, and that's as far as I can get.
Here's a picture of a few rows, as you see the centers of the blocks are 2 different shapes, so the sashing will deliberately not line up. I hope it looks OK when all put together, it's my own creation!

                                       These are pictures of some of my favourite blocks:

                                      Central Park is stalled too. Here's a picture of it so far:

        I've run out of the ivory background fabric, the quilt to date is 11 squares wide and 8 squares long. I calculate it should be 11 x 13, so lots more to do.

I'm also collecting fabric for an I Spy quilt, that should be a lot of fun to do! Here's a pic of one I saw at the Quilt Festival:

                           doesn't it look great?   Makes you want to play I Spy right away!

Until next time,

Sue