... and here's Block Three...

This Little Light of Mine, designed by Melissa Stramel, is Block #3 in the Celebrate Christmas Quilt-Along.

Here's mine...

The central blue fabric is hand-dyed calico.

 And a closer look at the embroidery...

When I first saw this block design, I immediately thought of The Little Match Girl.

Another block tomorrow. Yes, I really do mean it this time. I'm taking part in National Blog Posting Month - NaBloPoMo for short (see the box over on the right-hand side). I'm the 683rd person to sign up for it. I will endeavour to post every day for a month.
Starting... yesterday!

Flowers

Even though I've had a break from blogging, I haven't had a break from sewing. While watching TV coverage of the natural disasters occurring around the world, I was busy with a needle and thread. Various things have been worked upon...

This pic I took in February - the last "official" border on the Patchwork Posse round robin. I've actually added another border of my own devising since then. I'll show you that in a day or so.

Border of flowers, embroidered and appliqued

Pretty cool huh? Each flower centre is unique, and all made from leftovers of other fabrics used in the quilt.

Yellow flower on the left will have a button in the centre, after quilting.

What I've learned today:

It's not always a good idea to work on more than one project at the same time.

There is the above quilt, which I'm itching to get quilted (first have to get/make the backing). And there is also a quilt I began early last year, which my daughter was going to have to keep warm with last winter (i.e. June - August). Then, the goal was for xmas. Now, the goal is her birthday - which is in one month.

I'm trying, I really am. (In case you're wondering, I've yet to show any pics of it.)

It doesn't help that I've "misplaced" two blocks. Instead of wasting time looking, I've decided I'll make a couple of replacement blocks.

That's bound to make them turn up.

Two down, two to go...

So these are the butterflies I was talking about in yesterday's post. Blanket stitch on the wings, running stitch on the body sections, and back stitch on the cute curly antennae.

And these are the other two. Each butterfly has a different colour body, which I've matched with embroidery floss for all the stitching on that particular butterfly.

Crazy patch blocks, to be sewn with the four butterflies, to make a crazily colourful border.

What I've learned today: Do the daily blog post earlier in the day. At 10:51 pm, as I write this, I'm too tired to think up wonderful prose.
Good night.

Mail call

Here we are, into February already. Gosh January whizzed by. So fast.
So now if I mean "a few days ago", I could actually just shorten it to "last month", and if it's more than just a "few" days, I'm covered.

So. Last month, I received some goodies in the mail. First, there's this cool Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks magazine, and a pattern for a Winding Ways quilt. I won these back in December, as part of the Patchwork Posse round robin adventure. Reeze from Morning Glory Designs sent them to me, all the way from the USA, yay! Thanks, Reeze! The quilt is her design, and she has a block featured in the magazine: #106 - Rising Star.

And I can't wait to begin the quilt, although I guess I'll have to start collecting fabrics first. I want to make it scrappy and colourful. But I'd better finish a few things before starting on anything else. Although there's no harm in having a small bin ready to receive ideal-sized scraps.

The other parcel I got in the mail was also something I won; this time on Trade Me, which is NZ's version of eBay. (Although I don't know why they say you "win" an auction; you still have to pay for it! Yippee, I won the right to spend money! Funny thing, online auctions.)

So, what I won/bought was an embroidery floss box, with over 70 threads, all wound onto bobbins and labelled. Not brand new, but I don't mind. I don't do cross stitch - and have no plans to ever try it - but these will come in mighty useful in the hand applique parts on quilts and suchlike. Lots of colours I didn't already have. Yay!

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In Cat News, the flow of bumblebees has seemed to stop. I got somewhat tired of being woken up in the morning with the cat pouncing on the bed, playing with her latest prey. So I pulled out a couple of offending plants. Some people, I guess, would call this weeding.

First there was a thistle plant. It had grown huge. I was letting it grow, truth be told, because I wanted to do a dyeing experiement with the flowers. Beautiful pinky-purple, they were.

But alas, the bees loved the flowers, the cat loved the bees, and she didn't even mind/seem aware of the risk of being pricked or bitten. So out it came.

The bumbles were still hanging around though. On the other side of the house, right outside my bedroom window in fact, I have a lot of mint. It started off as a single mini-plant, but boy did it take off! And it flowers, and the bees come, and so the cat comes to see what all the buzzing is about.

I felt bad, pulling it out. And not just feeling bad as in I'm getting a sore back from all this bending over in the hot sun, but bad for the bees. Sure, I know there are other flowers, in other people's gardens, but I've heard that bees are on the decline. Which is not good for Planet Earth as a whole.

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What I have learned from this is that the best way to pull out an overgrown thistle bush is to do it in parts. Get the secateurs, and cut it into manageable pieces. Then throw them in the bin. No, I don't mean the compost bin, I mean the rubbish bin. If that's wrong, in an eco-way, then I guess the Compost Police will be after me.
I'll let you know if they visit.

Round Robin

Last month I joined in a round robin over at Patchwork Posse. Starting with the centre block, a different designer adds a round every couple of weeks.

The theme is "Whimsical", and it's a whole lot of fun!

The centre block is a mix of embroidery and applique, in a gorgeously cute garden scene.

The second round (well, two sides actually) features more flowers, with more applique and embroidery.

What I learned today was that I need to figure out how to crop photos. Toe shots aren't cool.

Quilter's block

This is a quilt that I made for my daughter. Or rather, for her toy cats. It was an experiment, and a lot of fun to make.

Instead of following a pattern, or designing it first, I decided to just start from the middle and work my way out, adding pieces as I went. No overthinking allowed.

The centre square is unbleached calico, embroidered with lazy daisy stitches. I know they aren't uniformly even and perfect, but I'd only recently learned how to do them. The next round was from some leftovers from a fat quarter I'd used in another project (more on that in a future post). The next round features border strips, recycled from an old skirt. The skirt had been pleated, which shows alternate strips of worn/new colour. I could've turned it over and used the even colour on the "wrong" side, but the subtle stripey effect appealed more. Lastly were some triangles of more calico, with appliqued stars attached with a single strand of embroidery floss. The buttons were an afterthought. My first instinct was to not have them, but then I reminded myself that there were no rules to follow, so just go with whatever felt right!

For the curious, the backing is calico, which shows up the quilting rather well (I was just pleased to achieve straightish, even lines!). The outline quilting around the stars is done by hand, which I unexpectedly enjoyed.
The batting is low-loft polyester.


What did I learn from this?

• I really like handstitching;
• small projects are quick and easy to do;
• "letting go" every once in a while is very therapeutic if you're like me, and tend to plan everything down to the last detail before even picking up the rotary cutter;
• and looking at it now, I'm not drawn to the plain colours - the next one will feature more prints.

 I don't know if this can be classified as a true quilt, as it measures only 13.5" square. But if it does, then it's my entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

First time entering anything anywhere. Yay!