Happy New Year.

When colouring in becomes sewing

This little sewing project was finished out of necessity.

My youngest son needed a bag for his clarinet music. He has been colouring this piece of Pokemon material on and off for a few months and decided it would make a good bag.

It is fully lined it with a great flame fabric, so if we need to or want to it is fully reversible.
Now E just needs to finish colouring. 

This is OPAM 8 for December.

See you soon.
Debra

A pillowcase for you & you & you

I decided the children on my gift list would receive a personalised pillowcase this year as my boys love the ones they received last year.  So after a few text messages with the Mums we have 6 pillow cases for 6 special people.

L-R Blue LEGO FAN, Purple girlie girl, Blue camping girl, Orange piano player, Green bike loving boy & Green LEGO fan.

The LEGO pillows were the hardest as Lego fabric is hard to find in my part of the world, so I ended up printing colourful silhouettes on fabric & appliqueing them on. I think they look cute.

I do particularly love the photo of them all wrapped & stacked.

Handmade Christmas.

A goodbye of 'note'

December the month of 'lasts' and farewells every year. We live in South-West Qld and many people transfer through town for work.

Our teachers are often on the "transfer trail". This year it was the Instrumental music teacher, Me Bensley. She had taught both of my boys for 3 years so it was a hard goodbye. (1 plays Clarinet and the other plays Saxophone)

What's a quilter to do?? Make a quilt of course, a music themed quilt.

Quilt specs: Bali Batik Jelly Roll from Wacky Jackys

Music Silhouette patterns from Patchwork at the Bay Window

And a music definition print I stumbled across somewhere.

Quilted by me on  "O-me".

NOVEMBER OPAM

(I am posting this from my phone. I'm  not sure how it works.)

Only one finish in the Outback crafter house this month.

This cross stitch was started & finished in a week. A fairly intense week though.

It was gifted as my secret santa for my UFO Craft group. The mystery recipient loved it.

I received this cute hamper  of goodies from my secret santa too.

Aussie Hero is October Finish #1

I am so excited.  My 1st October finish was finished on 3rd October.

The Aussie Hero Quilt is going to a soldier somewhere in the world.

He wanted a quilt that was 'darkish colours with the convict broad arrow symbol'.

(The broad arrow is the symbol of his unit)

 

Since I started sewing to AHQ, I have sewn words or messages into the quilts.  These are the  messages sewn into this one.  Can you tell what they say? (The quilting is is variegated thread, so it sort of occasionally dissapears)

 This quilt is super simple in design, but I really like how the colours came together.

I hope he likes it, but more importantly he knows that someone in Australia appreciates what he is doing for our country.

Till next time...

September OPAM #4

This finish was one of those projects that has sat around for not particular reason.

I had a deadline... so it got finished (only took about 12 months)

This cushion belonged to a friend and the original cushion was eaten by the washing machine - the grey fabric behind the dog was melted int he washing machine & the cushion un-usable.

So I offered to fix it.  It was about a 1 hour job including stuffing and stitching closed & there was no reason for it to just 'sit around'.  Luckily I was going to a wedding with the cushion owner, so it was good motivation to finish it and deliver in person.

Thankfully I was able to rescue a panel from the cushion to applique to a new cushion.

Owner is happy & cute doggy is not sitting sadly in my house.

September OPAM numbers 2 &3

 Well September was a month of deadlines for me and with 2 weeks of school holidays & impending travel, I had to be organised.

This Aussie Hero Quilt & Laundry Bag are for a "Wallabies" lover.  He is also part of 7RAR and their mascot is a pig, so I appliqued a pig to one side of his laundry bag and a Wallabies logo to the other.

His quilt was loaded onto my trusty quilting frame and O-me and I got to work.

(On a side note, I love that Wallabies fabric in the middle of the quilt - it is from 2 doona covers I purchased a couple of years ago.  I will be very sad once it is all gone)

 

 And as usual.  Messages were stitched into the quilt.

 We took this quilt to the nursery for a photo shoot too.  Here is is being quality controlled by a couple of corrugated horses.

  

Both large mustard panels feature stitched messages of encouragement. 

I love these simple but striking quilts.

Until next time.

 

September OPAM 1 of 4

Wow, another month has come to a close.

I missed the end of September / 1 October due to a wedding and here it is the 3rd October already.

I have sewn this month.  Sewn a bit actually 4 finishes. 

So here goes #1 of 4

Ryan & Rachel's Wedding quilt.  Like all good quilts, a labour of love.  Unlike many quilts I make a surprising challenge.

The bride requested navy & white.  Now these guys live on a farm with lovely RED dirt, so you can understand why I was worried about white.  But I got over that after I got the design together.

The quilt started out at 9 x 10" squares across & down.

 

I laid it out on my bed & hated it, so we played with some other ideas.

Maybe adding smaller blocks between the 10" blocks?? - NO too busy.

 

The thought what about smaller blocks?   Ahhh, much more pleasing to the eye.

 

Mathematically much more sewing.  

The quilt went from being 100 nine inch squares 

to 421 four & a half inch squares. 

That is a huge psychological difference.

However I have recently learnt how to 'web' quilts together, so it was joined in a matter of hours (6 approximately)

  

Before I could quilt I realised my backing was rather scrunched up so I had to work out how to iron the 2.75m2 piece of material.   Thankfully my bed doubles as a great ironing board.  A bit low, but very helpful in this case.

 

 Next up was quilting.  After giving O-me a good talking too, I decided on an allover swirl with loop design within each 4.5" row. 

I was posting sneaky shots on my Facebook page and didn't want the bride to see too much, so I posted the 'sketch' image.  She had no idea.  (The 3rd photo is "the last stitch")

    

I like to quilt messages into my quilt.  So in the squares near the bottom right corner I quilted... 

Ryan & Rachel (shown here in 'magic pen' to make it easier to read)

and on the next row the date of the wedding  1 Oct 2016

This quilt finished 89.5" square & I really like it.  I would happily keep it, except our names are not Ryan & Rachel.  LOL

  

Bound in the navy 'quatrofoil' print used in the body of the quilt it has a striking edge, and of course a personalised label.

 

My boys & I took it to our local nursery for a photo shoot.

I love the photos.

 

  All packaged ready to gift.

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the quilt with the newlyweds but I did get go give it to them personally.  They love it (always good) and they've promised to send me photos of it on their bed. 

Till next time.

Add to Anti-Banner

I MADE SOMETHING

I feel like a creative fraud at the moment. I am spending hours at work and struggling to make anything, this week I finished something.

I have no idea if this will post as I am in my phone but...

A hand quilted mini made in a foundation piecing class with the talented Joanne Wearing and the girls from Sew this & That @ Morayfield.

I like it.

I have 3 deadlines for this month,  here's hoping I get them done.

February Finishes and an impending deadline

Oh February, the month when you realise the year has started and you are already lagging behind.

This was true of my February.  School had gone back, after school commitments had started and I realised I had approximately 6 weeks to make / finish / plan a Quilt Show.

 So I started some frantic binding...

binding...

 Complete.  A quilt show exhibit & Aussie Hero Quilt to boot.  :)

 An ambitious plan to make an entire new quilt before the Quilt show.  (in hindsight a bit too ambitious)

 Valentines day morning tea with my boys at the local nursery.  Isn't this cheesecake just gorgeous.

 Arrival of a new 'gift to self' for me sewing room.

 This laser cut record says "sew thankful"  It is from Broken Record in Brisbane this is the link to their Facebook page.  She does great work and takes your design & cuts it into reality.

I love it, but I also love that you can tell it was a record.

 Then onto more frantic planning and sewing for the Biennial quilt show of Roma Patchwork & Crafters Inc.  Showing of the Quilts was to be held over Easter 2016.  I was coordinating the show with another member and we had heaps of work to do.  And I mean heaps.

 Back soon with March updates on my completed sewing - gotta love a deadline....  :)