My Creative Space

I have a few projects on the go at the moment, but I thought that today I should catch up on my Bee blocks. I have been procrastinating about this one because it is an improvisational number and I was a bit worried about running out of fabric. However after picking up some more supplies last weekend, I poured a Margarita this afternoon and set to work. What I like about this block is the complete freedom to do whatever you like, with the only rule being to make the block a minimum size of 8.5 inches. So my contribution was to add a kennel with a Dalmatian inside and put a fanlight above the door. The end result is not particularly wonky except for me forgetting to make the 'lawn' extend between the two structures. I hope it will do!

Our Creative Spaces

This week was all about getting out of my comfort zone.  For Lisa's Bee Bold Bee Brave Bee Helpful quilting bee block, she chose an eight pointed star, which filled me with dread as it requires precise matching of points to give maximum effect.  This isn't really my thing and I have been procrastinating about attempting this since receiving the fabric in early November.  However, I was determined that I was going to finish this and give it to Lisa at the last Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild sewing day for 2012.  As I spent most of the day talking and eating, this didn't happen, but the last seam was sewn last night and I posted it off today.

I did need to get the seam ripper out a few times but this was mainly due to using the wrong side of the background fabric (it was quite hard to tell the right side at times) and joining the composite pieces into triangles instead of squares.  But in the end, I got through it and while not perfect, I'm pretty happy with the result and hope Lisa is too.

The lesson here is to be confident in your own abilities.  I will promise myself that next time I am set a challenge, I will jump right in fearlessly.  And carry this through in other areas besides sewing.

Time out

Today is the culmination of two great Aussie passions - sport and a day off.  Our horse race is known as the one that stops the nation; well, Melbourne at least.  I have always loved this public holiday - when I was studying, it was an opportunity to take a long weekend and cram for exams, and now it is a sign of the end of the busiest part of the year for the day job.  So unless we have an invitation to a barbecue, it's a great day to sleep in and chill out.  Today I gave the gym a miss but took the girls out for a long walk, visited the smallest nephew and his very chilled out cat.  It was great!

After watching the race and catching up with R & C, we have a quiet night in planned with fish and chips for dinner.  My other job for the day was to put together some of my blocks for the Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild "Bee Bold, Bee Brave, Bee Helpful" Quilting Bee.  It's my turn in November and I have chosen Elizabeth Hartman's Roller Rink quilt as my project.  However, never one to follow a pattern completely, I've gone the scrappy route:

Once made up, the quilt will look much better on the Hans Wenger couch that the rug Stos put there.

I hope you had a winning day as well.

Sunday Snippets

Sunday Snippets - pictures without words.  Thanks Tinnie Girl for hosting this great series.

Sunday Snippets

A big week of music, dining and crafting.

Early morning reflections.

 Antony & the Johnsons performing Swanlights with the MSO.  Wow!

 Gorgeous lilac - only here for a moment

 Output from the Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild Super Sewing Saturday.  The first of this years Bee blocks - this one is for Kellie.

 A sunny spot for a lazy girl.

 A spectacular sunset to close the week.

Thanks to Tinnie Girl for pulling the Snippets together.

Our Creative Space

Wonky star quilt blocks, a photo by AndreaAMM on Flickr.

All the madness of the day job is officially over today. Well, the half yearly madness is at an end. Now I have to get through things that have been put on hold over the last 8 weeks. Sigh.
But the upside is that I get my evenings and weekends back so will now have  more time for projects. This one has a deadline for early December as a birthday gift. I mentioned a few weeks ago to Stos that I would make a gift by this date and his question was "Do you have time?" Quite reasonable, in the circumstances but it has turned into an unintended challenge that has spurred me on to squeeze in some sewing at a time of year that involves lots of late nights and weekend work. 
Two of the blocks are shown above.  This is going to be a Wonky Star throw, inspired by Rachel's Wonky Star blocks for the Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild "Oh Beehave" swap. You can see Rachel's fabulous finished product over here. She had a irregular sized blocks arranged as a reversible quilt in red/cream and cream/red with the quilting around the stars showing through on the lighter side.    My plan is to have 12.5 in blocks, with star blocks interspesed with plain squares, set out alternately on the reverse side so a blank block will have a quilted star pattern from the work on the other side. I'll do the quilting in red so that it show both on the black and white blocks.  I hope to get a lot more done on this over the next few days and I'm dying to see if it looks like my vision.  If so, I'm not sure I will be able to give it away.
For more creative spaces, head over here.

My Creative Space

Yet more MMQG bee blocks, this time for Marg.  I was a bit scared of the task set - to incorporate flying geese, squares and half square triangles but was provided with a set of good tutorials that would produce a block of the required structure and size.  Naturally, I picked the what I thought was the easiest but it only had three fabrics and I had to try and fit in five.  So I adapted the tutorial for the final block, having done a practice version in red, and instead of a single centre square, pieced a four patch square to squeeze in the other two fabrics.  But all of those seams were a challenge both for me and Grandma's jolly Janome.  This has been posted back and I hope Marg likes it.  Assuming it arrives safely, unlike Rachel's blocks!

Gonna make you a star

On my last "creative space", I was doing a lot of thinking but not a lot of doing.  That changed over the course of the following weekend and I finished off Rachel's wonky stars for the "Oh Beehave" quilting bee. I was quite happy with how these turned out.

 I did get off to a poor start with these.  Initially I had misjudged the sizes of the pieces required for the blocks and ran out of fabric.  I got more from Rachel but as a result was running a bit late in sending the blocks out. But it seems like my bad luck has continued.  I posted them nearly two weeks ago but hadn't heard from Rachel via the Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild forum that she had received them.  Maybe she didn't like them?  So late last week, I sent her an e-mail to ask if they had arrived and they hadn't!  She was going to see if her flatmates hadn't passed on some mail, but as she still hasn't posted pictures on the forum , it's not sounding good.

Day 366: My Creative Space

It's all about the MMQG "Oh Beehave" blocks again this week.  March is Rachel's month and she wants us to produce wonky stars.  I like the idea of wonk but making stars is a more precise exercise than the wonky log cabins made in earlier rounds.  Fortunately we have been provided with a very easy to follow tutorial, but even so, matching up seams is tricky.  The real thing will be two blocks;  a ruby star on a sand background and a sand star on ruby background as the quilt will be reversible.  The blocks are also to be different sizes and I'm curious to see how it will be constructed. The intended recipient should be very happy with this as it will be a striking piece.  I haven't finished the actual blocks, but have made a practice block to see if I could do it.  It's not bad but one of the seams isn't lined up properly. 

For more creative capers, have a look here.

Day 331: My creative space

I've been a bit hopeless with my "Oh Beehave"  MMQG quilt block swap and was well and truly behind on the November and January blocks.  Even once we moved back home, I had no time to sew and was a bit apprehensive about making "wonky" log cabin blocks.  Anyway, a week ago I got my act together, pulled out the sewing machine and fabric and have put together blocks for Gina and Anna over the last two weekends.  Verdict - wonky log cabin blocks are brilliant! They are a forgiving construction method for people (like me) who aren't very good at sewing straight and muck up measurements, as they are meant to be a bit crooked and you can just add on bits if you measure up too short, which I always seem to manage to do.  Both blocks went in the mail on Monday and here's a shot of Anna's, which had "Moroccan" and "spicy" as the theme.  I am quite pleased with it and I hope Anna is too.

For more creativity, head over here.