Weekend sewing

I spent time at the weekend making 2 cushions for Cheryl as it is her birthday this week.  I am in the process of making her a quilt.  She is paying for all the materials and I am making it.  The top is complete and now we need to go shopping for the backing and batting.  She wants a flannel back which limits where we can look.  There is a distance factor too and I live in Waitakere and she lives at Stillwater.  About 50 kms from me.  I made the cushions to match the quilt in fabric.  the design is different.  They are identical with a side of each shown.  I hope she likes them. 

My next project is a large cushion for Stuart for when he comes out of surgery next week.

Day off

It was my day off yesterday and I finally managed a whole day of sewing.  I made this tablerunner  out of charm squares for my penpal in Australia for her birthday.  I did as my book said and put on some nice music, set myself up comfortably at the sewing machine and quilted.  Free motion quilting is fun!!!!  I have to keep telling myself.  Other than lacking imagination on what to quilt it came out pretty well.  I hate the pattern that says "quilt how you like". 
Back at work today so no more sewing until the weekend.

UFO's

I decided to make a list of all my UFO's yesterday.  That was rather scary as it is longer than I thought it would be.  Last year was supposed to be my finishing projects year, but from the list I didn't achieve much.  Hopefully I will have paid off my new sewing machine by the beginning of February and then I hope to start quilting some of the tops I have waiting to be finished.  In the meantime I plan to finish some of the smaller projects and keep up to date with the block of the month I am doing presently.  Of course a lot of projects get interrupted by work, agility and the need "to do now for presents" as birthdays, etc appear.  If I was more organised I would be more prepared.  Enough rambling from this tired worker who has just completed 9 days working in a row.  I now need a week to recover and I have a whole 3 days.

McKenna Ryan

Back on the 27th Nov 2009, I was lucky enough to be able to attend both the " Meet McKenna Ryan" session and attend the workshop at Quilters Dream.  I have "Storybook Farm" and "When Friends Gather" which I got as blocks of the month.  I had made the pig block in Storybook farm and laid out the main panel with the house and clothes line and then decided it was all too hard. 

Seeing McKenna Ryan's quilts was amazing.  She is a lovely person and gave a great talk about her life and her designing.  She is such a talented lady.  We were able to touch and photograph her lovely quilts and then in the afternoon we put together one of the roosters from "All Cooped Up" called "Dawn Patrol".

It was great learning how to lay it out and how she sews them in 1 step using monofilament thread.  I went home all fired up and although didn't manage to sew it that day, I did finish it and it looks great.

Crossstitch

Over the years I have tried  lots of crafts.  Until I found patchwork and quilting, I used to do a lot of cross stitch.  I still have kitsets to do but these days it takes years to do the large ones I like doing.  I made this Tatty Teddy in 2008 and didn't finish it until 2009 as I don't really enjoy doing the back stitch.  I was pleased with the result and framed it myself for a friend as a Christmas present. 

I have other Tatty Teddy cross stitch kits to do as I really love them.  I have a Teddy Bear collection and believe you can't have too many.

Here goes!

 Stuart's ipod bag

 The tablerunner I made for a friend's birthday

This is my first attempt at a blog. I set up one earlier in the year and then didn't know what to write. I thought it was a good idea to show and tell with some of my quilt work.

I made this quilt called "Hanging the Lights" for Christmas 2009. I bought it as a kitset and was rather pleased with the outcome. It is the start of my free motion quilting experience. I have attempted free motion quilting before but decided I was a "Patchworker" not a "Quilter". I can't afford to get all my work professionally quilted now so I am attempting to enjoy the quilting experience. My husband gave me a instruction book on quilting for Christmas and since then I have made some other small tems and quilted them myself.