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My Last Post.... from St Charles

It cant be my last post ever because the reason I started this blog was to keep in touch with friends from the US.



Last week before I gave my machine away I started a new project. I decided to do a small log cabin quilt.

Yes Nancy I can see you look in horror. I am paper piecing. I started with 1 inch strips and I am not the most accurate 1/4 inch sewer so I decided to go the paper piecing way. This project has been put away in the shipping boxes never to be seen again. Seriously I hope to see it again but who knows when the boxes will arrive and how long it will take to unpack my sewing stuff.

The movers arrive tomorrow. I am not looking forward to the next few days. I hope to post occasionally on our travels.

2nd installment

So Nancy and Miss Nancy had a surprise planned for me. First though the wrapping paper. It was wrapped in some fabric that I love. What a great idea.














A long time ago Nancy gave Miss Nancy and I a block to stitch each. We did it and gave it to her. I then forgot all about it. Well my surprise was a wall hanging made with all 3 blocks- one stitched by each of us.

Isn't it great and the perfect present as it has something from each of us. Although I had to point out to them that this means that they made me work on my own present lol. I have had such a great time getting together with these 2 over the last 3 years.I will miss them although of course the Internet makes it a very small world.

Here is a close up of the 3 blocks.

1st installment

Yesterday I got together with the Nancy(s) for one last shopping trip. The morning started with Miss Nancy giving Nancy and I a Christmas gift. We got the same thing with different fabrics to suit our different tastes.

As you can see we got some gorgeous coasters, a Christmas tree pot holder and a notebook cover. Mine is covered with coffee travel fabric- perfect for me. Miss Nancy sews beautifully. She is the Monk of our group!

Stay tuned for a very special gift!

Edit: When I say the Monk of our group I mean the Mr Monk as in she is a little obsessive about things being just right. I would like to be more like her but my skills do not match my expectations lol.

Why?

This is my favourite quilt!
It is for me!
Why did it take me months to sew on the binding?

No Sew

My DD Brittany loves wolves. There are a lot of great kits around for wolf quilts but who knows when I would actually finish it. By the time I make the quilt she may have grown out of this phase. The solution is a fleece panel.

I cut a piece of fleece the same size for the back, cut a 3 inch fringe on both pieces and tied them together. It looks great and she loves it.

Schnibbles Parade

Don't forget to go and check out the schnibbles parade at Sinta's and Sherri's blogs. There are some great quilts to see. Unfortunately I did not do a schnibbles this month. I could not get the pattern locally and decided that I would find it hard to finish it. I will not be able to do the next 2 months as we will be travelling and moving.





But I did do something today. I made a travel pillow. We have shorter flights this time. Only 10 hours from Hawaii to Sydney instead of nearly 14 hours from LA to Sydney but I think they will come in handy. I bought this gorgeous fleece which is super soft. I love it and have enough to make one more. I was very good and only bought as much as I need. Now I wish I got more.

I cheated

Even though I love the bandanas I did not want to spend a lot of time and effort making something with them. I decided to sash them with black Kona. I then sewed the top right sides together with some black fleece without batting. I top stitched the edges. It was very quick and easy and a lot of fun!





I am giving my machine away next weekend so I should be finishing off projects but no I started a new one today. It will be a mini. I will show it before we leave, finished or not.

Brittanys first (and last) stitchery

It took a long time but my DD Brittany finally finished her Australia stitchery. I must admit, it took me a little while to make it into a cushion.

She tells me she would like sewing more if it didn't take so long.

A Party

My daughter wanted to have her 10th Birthday party at home this year. What should I do to keep 10 year old girls busy. Why make jewellery of course.

This was a very easy party to organise. I cut the memory wire long enough for 3 loops around the wrist. I made small loop on one end of the wire, put the beads in the middle of the table and let them loose. I gave them each a paper plate to collect their beads on. When they had finished I looped the other end. If they wanted a bead to dangle at each end I added that for them. The girls really enjoyed it. Some made 2, others got sick of it before 3 loops so I cut them off where they were. I think they were all happy to take something they made themselves home.

I have my good friend Julie to thank for me even thinking of doing this. She made the most beautiful jewellery and taught me the basics. Now she is too busy running the amazing "Handmade Canberra's Upmarket". I cant wait to go to these markets when I return. We wont be living close to Canberra but I think it will be worth the effort to visit!

My Quilt is here!

My Quilt from Geta finally arrived. I was getting a little impatient. It looks gorgeous in the photos but as for most quilts it is even better in real life. Geta is incredibly generous and is having another giveaway at the moment. I haven't entered this one as I thinking that would be greedy. Believe me I want to be greedy and try but am resisting!




I also received this pattern I won from Celine at A Few Loose Threads. I was trying to win the Quiltmakers 100 blocks magazine and won this great pattern. I am actually better off not winning the magazine because of course I will buy it and now I have a pattern too

I finally put the binding on this. My son helped (?) me take the photo.

A Simple Move

In 32 days we fly out of St Louis airport for the last time. It is bit of a hike.

The distance from our house in the USA to our house in Australia is

8964.19 miles or 14 426.47 Km.

We are moving from this:

To this

Gotta love Minis

The nancy(s) and I all made a mini quilt from this tutorial by Oh, Fransson for scraps at Sew, Mama, Sew. I blogged about it here. I decided it is time to just do it and complete some things including the quilting. I often think I am done after I have pieced the top. Minis are great as they are quick to complete and the perfect size to practice quilting. I decided straight line quilting would be good for this one. You know if I make a miniature version of every quilt I would like to make, I may actually get 5 % completed!

Sewing with Nancy(s)

I had my sewing day with Nancy and Miss Nancy yesterday. They surprised me with a birthday present. This must be the longest birthday ever. Not that I am complaining. Although I did not mention my birthday until the day before so they would not have time to get a gift as they just got me going away presents and made me a signature quilt with our redwork group. So this is the card which looks like it is stitched. It isn't stitched ( I checked the back and it is a Hallmark LOL).Here is my present.Some great batik fat quarters!!!

These are my favourites and I want to find a little project to do with them and make a kit to send in our air freight in case I have any spare time when we first move into our house.

I wanted to make a gift for the Nancy(s) as I have enjoyed sewing with them so much over the last 3 years.

I made this for Nancy. I got the idea for the pattern from a quilt she pointed out in a magazine and chose some fabrics I thought she would like.( I just realised I cut off the binding-it is black)

The back.

For Miss Nancy I used some Australian fabrics I thought she would like. Her son is living in Australia at the moment. I made a simple coin quilt.

The back.

I did wavy line quilting as my free motion is not good enough for so much solid colour. When they arrived I told them I was doing some hand sewing for the day. After I gave them their presents I showed them the labels I had written ready to sew on. I ran out of time! Lucky they saw the funny side. Especially since they had to tell me how to make the labels!!!!!

Bandanas

Yesterday when I was in Hobby Lobby with Brittany I found some great Bandanas. I remembered seeing a quilt made with 4 bandanas sewn together on a blog so I bought 4. When I got home I wasted a lot of time trying to find this blog but was unsuccessful so I sewed them together quickly to see how they would look.

I like how they look and it would make a great quick quilt that the kids could do anything with. I could just quilt it and bind it in black. OR I think maybe I should put some black sashing between the bandanas and then a larger black border. What do you think?

When I sewed them together I did not remove the hems so I will have to resew no matter what.

I Don't believe it

I won again and it is another great giveaway. I think I will stop entering giveaways as I feel a little guilty at winning so much. I won the kit to make this amazing quilt. I love it and cant wait to start but I will have to as we are moving to the other side of the world next month and will probably be a little busy.
This is from Emma at Sampaguita Quilts. She is a very talented quilter you should check out her blog for some ideas and inspiration. I particularly like this one.

I won I won I won

I love winning giveaways. It is great to win fabric, patterns or anything involved in quilting but nothing compares to winning a quilt!!!!


Isn't this amazing? Not only is it a beautiful quilt, it is one I could never make. It is about 13 inches. I cant wait to put it on a wall. I won the latest competition on Getas' Blog. This blog is great. She is incredibly talented and very generous. Her work is gorgeous and I love to just look at all the things she has made. There are lots of tutorials and she sells patterns and instructions for quilts like this. Maybe in 10 years time I will try one!

Giveaway

A great giveaway at Sew-Fantastic from Hawthorne threads. See the button on my sidebar.

October Schnibbles again

I hope these photos are a little better but I think it is wishful thinking. I decided not to add the two borders and I will bind it in navy. The fabric is really nice and looks good but doesn't show up in the photos.

Here is a close up but for some reason blogger turned it around and I have no idea how to change it. Sorry
I am looking forward to the next parade of schnibbles!

October Scnibbles

After the last Schnibbles parade I won the October Schnibbles pattern and 3 charm packs from Havasu Quilts.

But I decided to save these charm packs for another schnibbles. One of the reasons I joined a year of schnibbles is that I love charm packs and patterns using them.

But I decided to use fat quarters for this one. Go figure!

Sorry it does not photograph well inside and it is still raining!!! Here is a close up. I will try to take another photo in a different room and see if it is better.

A Day with the Nancys

Miss Nancy, Nancy and I try to meet on the second Tuesday of each month for a sewing day. We usually meet on a different day and do more talking than sewing. We met last Tuesday (it wasn't the second Tuesday but it was actually a Tuesday) and decided to do this tutorial by Oh, Fransson for scraps at Sew, Mama, Sew!.

We actually managed to get a small quilt top done.

As you can see we have very different tastes in fabrics.
This is Nancys'. This will actually be made into something for her grand kids. She will reveal it on her blog when finished

Miss Nancy used some gorgeous Japanese fabric for hers

And I of course used batiks. Most of these were scraps from this quilt. We have made the same pattern several times and it always looks very different. That is one of the things I like about the Year of Schnibbles- seeing the same quilt look totally different.

Birthday

Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes. I had a very nice 2 days! Yes we started last night as it was my birthday in Australia and continued all day today. And yes I got my camera!! It is perfect for me. Nice and small so I can carry it easily in my bag.