Monday, March 29, 2010

Another weekend away....

You would think that after a wonderful weekend away hand stitching I would be content but circumstances occured which meant the next weekend I was up at The Patchwork Angel on the Sunshine Coast doing a two day machine quilting and raw edge applique workshop with Kellie Wolfsohn of Don't Look Now! You can see all her beautiful work on her blog. We started on Saturday doing the raw edge applique on our practice piece and on Sunday we started to quilt it. Here's Kellie showing us how to keep our quilting lines flowing.


And some demonstrations of how to follow her tecnique on a machine.

And at the end of the day here we all are with our practice pieces finished - taken inside the front of The Patchwork Angel. Thanks to Kellie and Penny of The Patchwork Angel for a wonderful time ( and Penny's husband for the yummy lunches.)

And for once I didn't come home and put my work in the UFO pile - I jumped straight in and made a cushion the way Kellie does. (My poor little bird doesn't have an eye yet though)



And here's the back complete with the zip I put in, which is explained in Kellie's patterns. It works well - you can hardly see it.



So now I have lots of new things to try and techniques to experiment with - I had a great time away but now I have to knuckle down and finish a few things.
The Patchwork Angel website - www.patchworkangel.com.au
The Patchwork Angel Blog. - www.patchworkangel.typepad.com/blog/

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Girls Day in the Country - Nundle

There's gold in them there hills. Nundle used to be a gold mining town. I think I'd have better luck finding gold at the end of this rainbow ( faint though it is) than anywere else.
Here's the pub (hotel) where we stayed. (my partner in crime Cheryl did the driving)

Then it was time to settle down to work ( well, fun really) ..... Our tutor for the day was Anni Downs.
Anni and the hard working Kerry had wonderful things waiting for us.

But we had to stop for morning tea...

These were the projects - a little fabric box


















and the inside - sorry about the sideways photo









A pincushion made out of beautiful wools

And a fabulous needlecase, which I can't wait to start making. (Oops, another sideways photo)
























And of course there are all the blogger girls.


A great time was had by all. Thanks Kerry and the gang. Yep, I'm already planning next year.


Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Jelly Roll Quilt Along....


There has been quite a lot of talk on blogs about the wonderful time we had in Nundle at the Girl's Day in the Country. I will post about it next time because I want to get this out of the way first.

I decided to join in on the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along and this is my first block. It had been ironed but I packed it away in the box with all the other fabric and it got a bit squashed. But I needed to photograph it to get it into the Flicker pool before the next one was released so it looks creased. I'll be a little bit more careful next time. The fabric is Fig and Plum and I got the jelly roll in a Moda scrap bag back when they were bigger than they are now. It isn't my favourite but I am sure that it will turn out very pretty when it is done. The other thing was that I had some yardage in my stash so I am shopping from my stash as well for the borders and backing. Perfect!
Lots of people have been joining in and it is fantastic to see the variety of blocks due to different fabrics. I am enjoying this one a lot.