60 Degree Diamonds Quilt Top

Years ago a friend gave me some French Souleiado fabric offcuts that were left over from curtains she had made.  I collected other fabrics over the years that I thought would play nicely with the offcuts.  I've finally done something with them...

I'm now in the process of stitching all the rows together, carefully pinning, then machine basting to make sure all the points line up, then finally sewing them together.  I hope to have this finished in the next day or so.

Meanwhile, my youngest son (11 yrs) has finished school for the year which was a mixture of sadness and joy.   He is starting at a new school next year and leaving the most wonderful teacher and great friends.  He will still see his best friends, just not every day.

Back to pinning and sewing.

Happy stitching,

Rowena

My First Quilt

Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville had a post recently asking quilters to post a link to her blog of their first quilt.  Well I missed that event but I thought I'd still post a picture of my first quilt here anyway.  It was from a pattern in a patchwork quilt book put out by a craft magazine.  I cut it out with scissors after marking the fabric using cardboard templates, the first couple of applique hearts were sewn on using whip stitch until the owner of my local fabric shop showed me how to do a proper invisible applique stitch.  I wasn't too careful with the seam allowance and ended up having to cut the blocks down so they were all the same size so it went from a single bed quilt to a large cot quilt, lol.  I made it 18 years ago.  My daughter still loves it, bless her.

I did hand quilt this but never quilted the border.  I finally put a label on it a few years ago.

Thankfully I've learnt a lot since then.

Happy stitching,

Rowena 

Civil War Blocks Catch Up

I spent some time over the weekend catching up my Civil War blocks.  My momentum stumbled on Block 40 Order Number 11 where I had to applique.  I have learnt to really enjoy applique over the past few years but I ended up fudging and fiddling with the size of the pieces of this block and I wasn't really happy with it so I kept putting it off.  I finally bit the bullet, got on with it and so thankfully broke the stalemate.  So here are the blocks I have recently completed.

Block 40 Order Number 11 (the beastly block that finished up satisfactorily)

Block 42 H Is For Hospital

Block 44 Union  

Block 45 Port and Starboard front of block 

Block 45 back of block with seams pressed open.  I've been doing this quite a bit lately with blocks that contain a larger number of pieces hoping to avoid lumpy seam intersections causing problems when machine quilting.

Block 46 Apple Tree

Block 47 Dixie Tea

Block 49 Yankee Puzzle.... totally messed up here.  

I think it was when I realised I was going to have to unpick this for the fourth time I thought I'd better put it away for the night!  I will sort this out but I'm posting it as is, to say it's done....sort of. 

I'm really not half witted!!  Let me say in my defence (this is a really simple block after all) I only had my computer for a few minutes to get the measurements of the block pieces because my 11 yr old, who has recently discovered the joys of online chatting to his friends, was using it and was making it nearly impossible to take uber quick peeks at the instructions.  He did ask what all the cursing was in aid of and did apologize for hogging the computer later on. 

So, now I have only one block to do to be completely caught up.

I have also made a couple more of the Rosette blocks in the gorgeous Luna Notte range, love that fabric, mmmm.

As the Civil War quilt along is coming to a close in the near future I am considering a couple of projects that have been occupying quilters in blogland (Wild Geese from earlier on this year).

  

Farmer's Wife Sampler

Wild Geese quilt along bloominworkshop.wordpress.com

Like all quilters I have a collection of patterns and projects I plan to make "one day" and of course I'll continue to be tempted by all the eye-candy on quilter's blogs, in magazines and quilting books.  What joy!!

Happy stitching,

Rowena