Fingers Crossed

Look what popped up in my inbox last night:

I went out on a limb and submitted Steamy Dreams for consideration in an AQS exhibition. So the quilt that is currently hanging on my wall may wing it's way from little Wellington, New Zealand and make it to America before I do...

Now I just have to wait "patiently" to hear if it gets selected.

Cheerio.

No longer a no-reply blogger

After much swearing and creative use of expletives, I am no longer in no-reply purgatory (I hope). Google+ does NOT make it easy to get out from under their nanny-ing umbrella.

Short post tonight, just wanted to share a pic of the lovely mum and daughter duo I am teaching to sew. They are working on doll quilts. Mum is a wee bit of a perfectionist so daughter is much further ahead!

S has almost finished quilting while J has just finished piecing her top

Mum is going to love foundation piecing I think..

I've been tittering around with a Dresden plate ruler too. Not 100% sure what it is going to be yet but I have some ideas.

Enjoying working with a different palette

Cheerio.

Guild night!

I'm so excited, I've joined my first online swap. The Quilting Gallery summertime memories mug rug swap (if you are curious, click the badge over there ---------> )

I'm looking forward to getting to know my swap partner and curious to see what I'm in for!

But for now tonight is Wellington guild night and Short Critic #1 is coming with me. He is going to his first meeting, now that he is a fully paid up junior member of the guild. That is not all the things I'm looking forward to for guild tonight. Our guest speaker is a blogger I have been following for a while. The lovely Adrienne from The Windy Side. Adrienne was a member of our guild for a while before switching to the Capital Quilters. To be honest I don't blame her, there seem to be a heavier contingent of modern quilters at Capital. Wellington tends to be more traditional.


I wish I had the time and resources to join both.

This month's block of the month was a lovely Autumn leaf block

Fiddly stalk, but fun!

I was given some lovely fabrics by my guild-mate KM to play with. As she is away for the meeting this month, one of these will be going into the draw with her name on it. Good luck K, but not too much luck as I would love to win this one.

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Does anyone else follow Megan on The Bitchy Stitcher? She has decided to make a Laughter Quilt, asking for blocks with things that make you laugh written on them. Here is mine:

Toddlers wearing Mum's shoes

I had to re-think as "Things shaped like penises" has already been done. Now to send that off to the States.

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New pics to post soon of my latest students, a lovely 8yo girl and her mum have been coming to see me every couple of weeks to learn how to sew. They have almost finished a little doll quilt each, and I'll take a pic after their next session. As a thank you for teaching them, Dad picked me up a couple of goodies when he was traveling to America for work:

I think my geek banner flies high!!

That tin at the back is going to be perfect size to transport my next take everywhere hand sewing project, I'm so spoiled.

Right, off to get ready to go out.

Cheerio.

Oops I almost missed May!

I have been so busy working hard, I had completely forgotten that I hadn't posted anything in here in a while.

I have been working on binding Fente (after re-reading some of the books, she is definitely Fente), and man alive I did not make things easy on myself. Even though I made my apple cores quite big, it is a sharp corner on each turn of the edge of this quilt.

Just to make life more fun, I have gone with putting in a ric-rac peeper along the binding. This means that after you make the binding, you have to tack the ric-rac along the raw edge of the binding in just the right place so that when you sew it to the quilt juuuuussst the right amount of ric-rac pokes through, then you have to make sure you sew your binding on with the right seam allowance so your don't completely screw up all your hard work. 

Ric-rac basted to the edge of my binding

All nine metres of it.

I'm using 7 times as many pins as I ever use pinning the binding down to sew it! And helper #1 IS NOT HELPING. He has decided that the best thing to do on a cold winter afternoon is to hide under the quilt I am trying to pin and attack my fingers until I let go of it enough that he can roll over in his nest, rolling it off the side of the table, and this is the view I get under the table:

He has done this to me more than once....

I do love the look the hard work is giving me, but I am still not decided if I like the "LOOK AT ME" of the white binding. I want it to frame the quilt and draw attention to the shape of the edge, but may still change it for another colour...

But doesn't it look fabulous?

Cheerio.

Quiltmaker blog hop

I love blog hops.

Not just because you get sent to all the "official" blogs, but I love clicking on random comments for the posts.

You never know where you will end up!

Quilty Pleasures Blog Hop Has LOTS of giveaways.

Cheerio.

Wrestling with a monster

No matter how much free motion work you do, nothing really prepares you for wrestling with a big quilt.

I usually work on up to single bed size when doing free motion work. Even then I usually find ways to break the quilt doing into smaller sections to join together later when fully quilted.

Can't do that for my dragon and as she is queen sized....

Back to red-wine quilting for me. I do my best work when I have something that will stain horribly sitting beside the machine. Red wine has the added advantages of helping keep the old shoulders relaxed and after a few, I do a lot less unpicking (Fuck it, no one will see that, I'm not ripping it out!).

My least favourite job, burying ends

My dragon needs a name too. She is not a girly/princess dragon like the dragon in Shrek, nor is she an angry hoarder like Smaug.

She is more like Tintaglia from Robin Hobb's Liveship series. But she is the wrong colours.

She could be Fente, one of the young RainWild dragon queens from Dragon Haven. But what about other books/mythology? Lets make a shortlist.

Fente, from RainWild

Evelyn, just because

Path (a Pern dragon), ridden by Mirrim of Benden Weyr

Malachite or Olivine (for the shades of green in her)

Violet (for her wings)

Boudica, named for Queen Boudica of the Celts (a fairly kick-ass gal)

I'm leaning towards Fente. She is a young queen, and can be quite social and chatty with humans but other dragons piss her off, especially if they are beneath her physically or mentally. As such she has a wee bit of a temper on her.

Cheerio!

Giveaway Winner

As promised, today is the day to do the giveaway draw for hitting 1000 page views for my little blog.

I had 4 people comment on my post:
1. AM
2. CH
3. LD
4. HB

So with the help of Random.org, our winner is....

Number 2 - Christine!

Congratulations Christine.  I will contact you to get your address and send you a lovely little squishy parcel.