Where Does The Time Go....

Nine days without a post & the days have just rushed by. I seem to be achieving things in other areas but blogging & machine sewing has missed out. It has been a good start to the year at work, busy but plowing through things. There is great excitement as we are expecting a new baby girl (at work that is - Regina may be the mother, but it is now a group thing). Now we know it is a girl expected in June, baby gift making plans can be made.

On the home front, I am a terrible pack rat (thanks mum!) so slowly & quietly I have started having a bit of a sort - a box for Freecycle, a box for the op shop, a useful box to keep & another box to keep 'just cause'. It's the 'just because it might be needed one day' or' just because its too good to get rid of' or 'just because it has emotional ties ' boxes that are the problem. As long as more is going out than coming in then I am having a win.

Little Brun & Honey have to sort through their toy boxes too & donate some to the kitties that don't have forever homes yet. Little Brun is very well after his operation with the hydration & antibiotics resulting in him not looking a day over 110 in cat years any more, not bad for a boy who will be 140 on April. He enjoyed a bit of ice cream during recuperation but decided while mint choc chip may be muma's favorite flavour, he prefers vanilla.

I'm licking not poking my tongue out at muma

On the hand sewing front I am making progress. I now have 3 blocks finished from the Some Kind of Wonderful Stitch A Long for the My Favorite Things quilt with one more just needing the words stitched on. My green suitcase needs travel destinations so rather than use what Anni loves I'll put my own favourite places. Another block features 3 patty cakes & I am going to try drawing a nice big slab of cake instead to substitute as my favourite sweet thing. It was a sad day to learn I'm not that good at needleturn applique but by the time the 24 blocks are done, I will be a lot better at it than when I started. I hope to do some of the piecing that goes between the applique blocks on Sunday, can't wait to see them put together.

I am slowly entering the world of free motion quilting to satisfy that goal this year. So far I am still at the drawing stage & watching as many videos on the subject as possible. However, a stack of quilt sandwiches are made & the darning foot needs to go on real soon so I can put thread to fabric like a real FM quilter.

My mug cosy for the Keeping It Cosy Challenge on the Facebook page 'I Don't Have A Problem, I Have A Well Rounded Fabric Stash' page is now done. It doesn't photograph well on the mug so here's the result flat. Sorry, I have stretched the truth a wee bit too - I have never met a jelly bean I didn't love!

And finally, another new quilty area currently being pursued. I go to a Thursday quilting group here in Perth & last year four of us brought copies of Electric Quilt 7 design software. Mine went untouched until last Thursday when the four of us met to start our self-training in digital quilt design. We covered the basics on making a quilt from the blocks already contained in EQ7, assigning fabrics to the pieces, getting the fabric requirements list & ending up with a personalised block quilt.

Today three of us met again & we worked together (one on keyboard, one online & one reading from the Drawing book) to draw our own quilt from scratch. We used as inspiration a pattern Marie had that she wanted to extend & change to fit a King Size bed, so drew the blocks, changed dimensions & coloured in fabrics to match those she wanted to use & added borders. It was fun to do all this, then to redesign, change sizes & fabrics so that we got something that was possible with the fabric amounts on hand, to match the existing bedroom decor & so all the pieces were straight forward to cut & not all 1/8th measurements . It was brilliant & together we prevailed & tamed the scary software dragon. Now to fit in time to do some real designing for fabric I have on hand. First I might see if I can design something spiffy for my Ruby layer cakes & yardage that is better than what I have in mind already. That fabric really is too nice to cut up small so some big blocks would be pretty.

The only sad news at the moment is that after a month, my Secret Garden fabric I ordered from the USA (Etsy) for the SewHappyGeek quilt a long hasn't shown up. So block 5 is now released & the blocks uploaded to the Flickr group are amazing & varied but I haven't started yet. I picked some fabric from my stash last night to use but will wait one more day to see if it shows up tomorrow as it was so pretty. Fingers crossed!

Now I just need to put aside some time to read blogs & find out what you have all been up to!

Happy stitching

Tracee xx Little Brun xx Hun-bun xx