Friday, November 11, 2011

11.11.11

Apologies.
Again.
Internet was out for a couple of days, then I had an unwell child to contend with. She's still unwell, but luckily sleeping for now, so I'm sneaking in a few words on this auspicious date.

Is auspicious the right word? In some context or other, I'm sure it is.
Sorry, late night ramblings. I just wanna go to bed.
I think I will.
Goodnight.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

... 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!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Mittens, not exactly Santa-coloured

My version of block 2 of the Celebrate Christmas Quilt-Along:

Mitten quarters were foundation pieced. The quarter-square-triangles were supposed to be as well, but I nutted out how to rotary piece them instead.

It's called Santa's Mittens, and designed by Jennifer Rodriguez.

The original block had red and white where my blue and yellow are. Yellow is the closest I could get to white in my chosen palette. You might think it's unusual to make a xmas quilt and not have any white (snow! lovely snow!), but it's summer at that time of year here, hence the flowers instead. Besides, I hardly ever use white.

So far, 23 blocks have been published, of which I have completed 16.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Celebrate Christmas Quilt-along

Have you heard about the xmas QAL over at Quilting Gallery? Basically, it's 36 designers, contributing a block design each, stretched over 12 weeks (so we get 3 per week to do). With a xmas theme. Oh, and there's some "super deals for quilters" too, like 40% off certain fabric lines at certain stores, that sort of thing. Doesn't really apply to me 'cos it's all overseas, so any savings made would be negated by the killer shipping costs. :(

The three focus fabrics
I'm taking part, despite not having a giant stash of xmas fabrics. At first I thought I'll just use some reds and greens, and a bit of cream thrown in for contrast. But then I found in amongst my greens, some olivey flowery prints which I bought last year mainly because of the price and not because they were lovely fabrics. But there's enough (I hope!) to use as the background/focus fabric. All the accompanying prints and plains match -- I used the coloured spots on the selvedge to match them up. Close enough, anyway!
The fabric palette
The first block was designed by Pat Sloan, called Pat's Red and White. My version is sewn in slightly different colours...
Pat's Red and White --- Raw-edge applique for the basket in the centre, blanket stitched by hand (only because I feel I have more control over my hands than I do my machine).

At the time I write this, I am stitching Block 12. Fifteen blocks to date have been published. I'll show block 2 tomorrow.