Spring time

We seem to be past the worst of winter - which admittedly isn't very bad at all with daily high temps 15+degC and no night time frosts. Here in Northland, our climate is classed as oceanic/subtropical, which means winters are pretty wet so nature is very green (most of the native vegetation are evergreens). The magnolias are more or less finished blooming, as are the invasive Taiwanese cherries. I am looking forward to the temperatures just rising a little more so I can get the veggie garden started.

On COVID-19, after 102 days without any cases in New Zealand (bar some citizens returning from overseas who were tested in managed isolation), August saw a new outbreak in Auckland which brought with it a swift Level 3 lockdown for Auckland, and Level 2 restrictions for the rest of the country. Locking Auckland down (1.5 Mio people - or there abouts) has had considerable impact on other parts of the country, especially up here in Northland, the only region north of Auckland. Some people described Northland as an island, and while the economic impact is hard for many businesses, the swift action also means that our communities up here are kept safe. The restrictions were partially lifted as of Monday, and we have had many travellers return to Northland, so I am checking the news daily, hoping no cases are being exported out of Auckland into the regions. Sadly there were two more deaths this week, a total toll of 24 cases for a country of just over 5 Million.

Masks are now 'a thing': They are compulsory on public transport - except there is very little public transport in our region. For other places, they are recommended when you can't socially distance. Just prior to the official announcement coming out, I started a bit of mask-making, just in case, and I have since added a few more to the collection:

These were made with a pattern by Tea Rose Home

DH has to wear masks in his teaching so the four on the right are made from the Apple + Fig Got you covered pattern

The Apple + Fig pattern seems to work quite well for wearing glasses when you include the wire (in this case pipe cleaner).

Neither the younger boys nor I have needed to wear masks just yet, but oldest DS apparently wears his away at uni, I'm rather relieved about this as he has T1D therefore is immunocompromised.

Bursts of progress

My Pfaff QE 4.0 has been plagued with problems this winter: For the second time in 7 years, the knee lift has worn out (still waiting for the replacement); after a service it intermittently turned off during sewing; the thread cutter was out of place. Luckily we have an amazing technician that services our local area, and my machine runs again as it should (touch wood). At the same time work resumed its usual craziness, so my sewing progress has been somewhat limited over the last few months. However, for once I have a few items that are finished (you might have some of these pictures before):

Rainbow - Arco Iris

A selection from my stash...

... rows of HSTs...

... pieced into rows...

...with sashing...

... and completed!

Some detail of the ruler quilting...

... and more...

... and improv straights lines in the background...

For the back I used the last of this Spotlight wide backing

All fabric came from my stash, thanks to ScrapTherapy I had plenty of solid batik squares to create a subtle Arco Iris or rainbow. Batting is cotton/polyester mix from Spotlight, I haven't used this type before, it is 'puffier' than my usual 100% cotton. Aurifil 50wt top (cream) and bottom (white), quilted on my HQ SweetSixteen using my various quilting rulers. It was great practice, I feel a lot more confident, definitely with straight lines, also some of the curves. If it wasn't so expensive, I would love to get some sets of arcs and circles.

Pohutukawa - Kiwi Christmas

This has come back from Brisbane months ago but I finally hung it up today: I will watch for a while if the wonkiness comes out in our high humidity climate, otherwise I will block it again:

Aotearoa

My ScrappyAppliqueQuiltAlong top is finally finished and ready to be put up. Youngest DS hasd been nagging gently encouraging me for a while to get it done, and as it will beis right next to his door, he must obviously like it ;)

Patchworkcity2018
With all the kerfuffle with my machine, my current block, by my count bonus block 10, is almost finished:

Bonus block 9

That leaves me with just two more blocks to go to reach my personal goal of 30 blocks - not long now!

Me & You Challenge

I have sadly still gotten nowhere with my piece for this MQG challenge which is a real shame, I was lucky enough to get some of the material from them. Unless a miracle happens and I get a suitable piece completed by then, what do I need to do with the material, do I return it? I feel rather bad, someone else might have missed out and could have made something amazing???



So where does this leave me in regards to my previous goals?

• Bind, label & add hanging sleeve on Aotearoa: DONE
• Quilt VQR on S16: Still working on it
• Continue quilting Metro Rings on S16: No further progress yet, but now that the baby quilt is out the way, this will be good to alternate with VQR
• Prepare the next set of Rainbow at Sea blocks: Papers are all prepared, but I still have to prepare the next fabrics
• Continue on #Patchworkcity2018 blocks: Just half a sub-block to piece to finish block 28 of 30, then two more to go.

New goals until the end of the year

• Quilt, label, bind VQR
• Finish all quilting of Metro Rings
• Piece one more set of Rainbow at Sea blocks (which will take me to half-way)
• Finish remaining Patchworkcity2018 blocks

Guess who has been visiting my place of work in general and our Raranga Matihiko classroom in specific?

Happy Sewing!

A little bit of rain, a little bit of sun...

Back when the kids were little I used to take them to Mainly Music, and one of the songs was "It's a Rainbow" - perfect for this weekend (and last...). Officially spring has sprung, and while there's blossoms outside, it's still rather grey, cold and generally more miserable than I would like. Or maybe that has more to do with the cold I picked up?

"A little bit of rain, a little bit of sun, when they come together they make rainbow fun, it's a rainbow!":

Start with 5" and 6" 'solid' batik squares from my scrapthereapy-ed scraps...

... turn them into HSTs...

...group the HSTs into colours and randomly spread them across a 61 1/2" long column...

...then piece the columns with 1 1/2" wide sashing

The result is a bit larger than I had expected, 47 1/2" by 61 1/2" is more a throw than I baby quilt, but that's just the way it ended up - I definitely won't add anything else to it :) Now to decide on a quilting design - somehow I'm not keen on my usual 'all-over'; any suggestions? At the moment I'm thinking about making the coloured triangles standout more against the background. Given baby is due late spring, I'll back it with cotton rather than flannel or minky.

My Pfaff machine is still in sewing machine hospital (but due to come back soon), so the lovely Diane at our local sewing shop All you Needle lent me a little Janome which coped very well with the batiks - win!

I had spent a bit of time online, looking for the more fabrics to go with the Me+You Indah Batik Fabric Challenge. It was quite a challenge in itself to source the extra fabrics to go with what was supplied, but my selection of FQs finally arrived yesterday:

The four supplied F8s on top, my five solid FQs below

Not quite more normal colour palette, we'll see what happens... Nothing in the T&Cs indicates you can't blog about your challenge entry, but I might keep it a secret just in case :)

As for my goals from the last post:

• Bind, label & add hanging sleeve on Aotearoa: Nope, no progress yet (Mstr 14 asked me about it today actually...)
• Quilt VQR on S16: Working on it
• Continue quilting Metro Rings on S16: Trialled my new Surefoot with this, seems to work as the regular foot but at much less risk of the ruler slipping under the foot, exactly what I wanted yay :)
• Prepare the next set of Rainbow at Sea blocks: Papers are all prepared, now I have to cut the fabrics
• Continue on #Patchworkcity2018 blocks when my Pfaff has recovered: All pieces for the next block are prepared just need piecing.

Now to brave the weather and head into work to pack up the equipment I need for next week...

Happy Sewing!

#zenstudioqal - Finish #5

Queen's Birthday weekend, winter has started - time for sewing! I'm glad I had posted those goals at the top of the last post, I almost forgot about them 😮. They were:

Plans for the next six weeks or so:

1. Finish #zenstudioqal in time for baby shower (date tbc)
2. Continue piecing #patchworkcity2018 when blocks are posted
3. Continue piecing Rainbow at Sea
4. Finish #scrappyappliquequiltalong
5. try to not fall into too many other rabbit holes!

I'm happy to report that 1) #zenstudioqal is finished and will be handed over at the work baby shower this coming Friday :) (I'll be teaching at that time, but someone will hand it over on my behalf). I'm really happy with how it turned out, I just LOVE Malka Dubrawsky's Simple Marks of summer line 💕. It wasn't easy to document the quilting from the front, so there are a lot of photos from the back:

I've posted this one before...

... and that one...

Using the shapes created by the blocks as inspiration (thanks, Suzanne 😘)

Straight-line quilting (ruler) in the 'negative' space

Using the 60deg angle as inspiration for the quilting in the border:
Again I'm using my rulers but keeping it varied to stay true to the nature of the fabric line.

Seems overexposed (can you even do that with digital photography?!) but shows up the quilting nicely

Finished: Texture in the winter afternoon sun...

... borders and faux-piping binding...

... and from the back :)

2) #patchworkcity2018 on IG has been sitting at block 17 for a while, with my three bonus blocks my personal count is 20 (of 30 I hope to make). This is a little mockup I created on Pic Collage a few weeks back:

The cream lines between the blocks have since been replaced with black sashing.

To get back into the swing of things, I will make a list of the blocks in the book I have not used yet and start making more bonus blocks until Joe @manhandledthreads is ready to post more in the actual SAL.

Yesterday I finally got back to my 3) Rainbow at Sea quilt, just quietly plugging along with sewing more FPP blocks to piece into the larger blocks. There is still lots of blocks to go on this project, but by breaking it down into the individual parts, the task seems a little less daunting.

I also pulled my 4) #scrappyappliquequiltalong back out, added more swirls to the background quilting. It's been several weeks so I forgot what tension I had set for the invisible thread in the top. I ended up with a few small spots of funny tension that I ripped out but overall the aqua batik is quite forgiving to the invisible thread - grey bobbin combo.

On the 5) don't fall into another IG rabbit hole: I have been tempted more than once, but so far work has been keeping me far too busy to seriously contemplate getting into anything else!

So here are my next 6 week goals:

1. Finish #scrappyappliquequiltalong (quilt, bind, hanging sleeve)
2. Piece more #patchworkcity2018 bonus blocks
3. Continue piecing Rainbow at Sea quilt
4. Continue quilting Metro Rings quilt

That gives me two goals for piecing and two for quilting, one of them 'finishable' and all the others likely to remain WIP for some time to come. I better don't go looking for rabbit holes on IG...

Happy Sewing!

Taking stock

While 18 (soon 19) posts for the year so far really aren't bad for me, it's been a month (!) since I last posted! As expected, work has been just go-go-go, and the weekends are filled with utter exhaustion - and housework :(

[I had just written my goals at the bottom of the post, but that's where they get lost so I cut & paste them right here at the top, so there's no excuse lol]

Plans for the next six weeks or so:

1. Finish #zenstudioqal in time for baby shower (date tbc)
2. Continue piecing #patchworkcity2018 when blocks are posted
3. Continue piecing Rainbow at Sea
4. Finish #scrappyappliquequiltalong
5. try to not fall into too many other rabbit holes!

This is what I've been working on lately:

Firstly, Mstr 14 had requested a new cushion cover as the old 'Very Hungry Caterpillar' ones had disintegrated. He requested 'a sunset with elephant silhouette'. After some online research I drew up this:

Seams just suck up material - I had to add a row and then some to make it fit across

4th finish for 2019

He says he likes it - the highest praise a mother can get from a 14y old 😏

IG is for me like the rabbit hole for Alice, and I fell into yet another QAL:

Shannon Brinkley runs the #ScrappyAppliqueQuiltAlong; I liked the idea of using my scraps for this...

I bought her Globe pattern, but I didn't like the idea of NZ at the bottom right end of Globe 4 😮.

I toyed with the idea of my own world map but decided to go a bit smaller for now:

Aotearoa New Zealand, right here on my design wall :)

Mistyfuse-backed green shapes cover the outline; not sure I would go for the same fluffy pellon again?

Excuse the odd colours; Te Wai Pounamu (South Island) and Rakiura (Stewart Island) are fused to the background.

Aotearoa all fused down

Zigzag in variegated green to stitch the edges down; next time I might either try invisible thread or a full satin stitch.

FMQ stipple for the land...

A first, unsuccessful attempt at quilting the background - everything was wrong, colour, scale, shape...

Feeling much better about this one - 

- so I'm now fmquing the background all over, using a invisible (white) thread in the top with a grey 50wt Aurifil in the bobbin.

My other IG QALs are also progressing:

We have a completed flimsy for the #zenstudioqal!

It's not that easy to match the vibrant colours with a different line of fabric, I bought a bubble minky in red for the back but it looks too pink with the way the light reflects off it, thankfully the lovely Suz parted with a warm red flannel so one of these days I will sandwich and quilt it. My go-to for baby quilts is an all-over pattern, after talking with Suz I am toying with the idea of treating different areas of the top differently but we will see how much time I get before that baby is due ;)

The #patchworkcity2018 QAL is also still going, I have now completed 16 blocks plus 3 bonus blocks.

The moment when you realise a minion is watching you from your design wall...

Week 16

The blocks for Week 17 have already been posted, I better get onto those soon :)

I'm rather excited for a parcel I'm expecting, I ordered one of Judi Madsen's 'Celebrate' panels from Honest Fabrics when there was a sale recently, after watching it being moved between various Los Angeles shipping facilities for a fortnight it has finally arrived in and departed from Auckland, so with a bit of luck it should be in my hot little hands this week. While I'm still a bit ho-hum about the 'polyester blend', I want to use it to give my quilting rulers a work out.

I have just updated my Quilt Planner:

- and now I have moved my goals for the next six weeks to the top of the post where I simply CANNOT overlook them 😇

Happy Sewing!