Two Ideas I Love

I've seen some great ideas in cyberspace recently, two I think worthy of sharing.

On my travels over Christmas I found a link to this tutorial on the site Always A Project. It is called Hoopla & is a tutorial to make a fabric container using an old wooden screw together embroidery hoop to provide the stability & hanger for the basket.

I thought that was a great idea, stored it away for later use and forgot about it until I looked at the blog of a new visitor to my Friday Night With Friends post. Brenda saw this idea too but took it 100 steps further. She made a heap of the containers, colour coded the bag liners to match the main fabric colours, hung them all on a rod on the wall and now has the best & prettiest scrap storage solution around.

(photo courtesy of Brenda at Ladybug Dreams)

Is this not ingenious? The purple scraps go in the purple basket, the orange in the orange one etc & what a great wall feature. I don't have wall space like that but I can see them looking just as good in small groups like on the kitchen rails from IKEA or even on individual hooks. Brenda even covered up the wooden hoops to make them even prettier.

Thanks for letting me share the clever use you made of the Hoopla tutorial from Always A Project Brenda! I can always do with ideas to make me a little tidier & to make using scraps easier. Go visit Brenda at Ladybug Dreams for more pictures too. On the latest post on Ladybug Dreams check out all the 2.5 inch squares Brenda cut during Friday Night With Friends.

My second find is the latest Missouri Quilts Video Tutorial for Phoebe's Quilt. Being a stitcher who makes lots of small projects I am itching to make a couple of quilts & who would have thought - ones without stitcheries or applique. I am yet to make myself a bed quilt or a snuggly lap quilt for on the couch in winter. I think this tutorial might just be lovely for my lap quilt. I haven't done a lot of piecing & roller cutting for hours is not me either so this looks like a good quilt for me.

Now my only problem is what fabrics to use. I have a gorgeous jelly roll just waiting to be used in California Girl by Moda but nothing for the sashing, borders & binding.

But I am also thinking a winter quilt so maybe I should use my long stored stash of Robin Pandolph 'Roses de Noel' - delicious. I would need to buy something for the sashing where Jenny uses the solid grey but it would be a very pretty & wintery quilt. But ALAS is my heart still in these fabrics, I do so like the fresh, summery fabrics with the white backgrounds... 

Lets face it - I'm not one to rush so no immediate decisions need to be made. I will no doubt change my mind a dozen times & then be dazzled by the next Missouri Quilt tutorial and decide to change the pattern too. We are spoilt for choice in our crazy, fabricy world!

I'll leave these fabrics on my cutting board for the next week or so & see how they speak to me in that time and decide whether they will find a place in my winter quilt or back in the storage bad for them.

I had a brilliant day at the WAQA Applique Group Sunday & have almost finished my next SKOW block. That means I can piece a few squares in between and have another row done. The ladies of the group do phenomenal work, 2 are teachers & work in quilty shops, one has won best in show and the others were doing elaborate William Morris appliques - ekk! but all had lovely things to say about my SKOW as I was lamenting my pre-school level needleturn skills. I was told a couple of things to watch for so hopefully my shattered confidence is slowly back on the upward trajectory again. Quilters can be such top class chicks!

Have a great week all. I'll be at work but at least I will be loving the very chilly air-conditioning.

Tracee xx

FNSI My Friday Night Sew In

While watching the footy (bah humbug Dockers!) I finished my house block for the SKOW stitch a long, only 3 more blocks to finish by the end of the month to be up to date.... It's a little boring compared to most of the other blocks. I love how some stitchers were clever enough to use fabric for the lawn with small flowers on it, they look great.

Then I started stitching the first part of Val Laird's Lilac Love Trio Set, except mine is raspberry love...

Once the footy finished, I jumped into bed with a cup of tea, slice of marble cake, little Brun & the DVDs of the 2nd series of the Eagle, a Danish crime show. My craft item was my knitting, a hoody for the beautiful baby girl I will meet in June.

Knitting & TV with subtitles obviously don't mix when you are staring out on a pattern. I started this project while watching the first series of DVD's and as I had mixed up a row somewhere, started out last night by undoing about 8 rows. Now I have the 4 row pattern in my head & it is going much more smoothly. I'm sure I miss 30% of the dialogue though but am still loving this series. Two episodes, followed by a bit of a read & it was lights out.

Happy stitching
Tracee xx

Some Kind of Wonderful Progress

Doing a happy dance, finally up to date with my Some Kind of Wonderful quilt I am doing as part of Chookyblue's Stitch A Long blog group. This is the first time that I have been up to date since it started back in October.

It definately looks like progress seeing we are sewing the blocks together with the borders as we go along. The only problem is getting reasonable photos.

There are three more rows to go & the top borders. I have done the bottom borders but they are hanging at the back of the quilt hidden from sight.

In row 1 my favourite block is my travel block;

And it's not hard to figure out what my favourite block is in row 2 - kitty coffee cup!

I had some wonderful emails today from blogging friends;

First Lori from Canada. Lori must have been up late as it was like being on Messenger with emails flying instantly between Canada & Australia. Check out Lori's latest quilt on her blog, it's a masterpiece. Lori is doing the SKOW too.

Secondly my dear friend Leanne in Tassie & I have been planning some mischief of the quilty kind. Check out the swap she & Wendy in NZ did - so much pretty things, but that's the norm on Leanne's blog. I'll have what she's having is my motto when it comes to Leanne. Our tastes are so similar I think she could pick out my quilt fabrics & furnish my house & I would be very happy with the result.

Happy days in Quilt Kittyville!
Tracee xx

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