Thursday 31 August 2017

Roll the Dice ......

I have been working on catching up with ModaBlockHeads, and once caught up I didn't know what to move onto, as I have so many UFO's.
Some months ago a blogger friend of mine Jenny, mentioned in her blog about rolling the dice to decide what to sew next. Great idea..right! Well, I had so much difficulty trying to work out which 6 UFO's to put on the list, that it has taken me this long to work it out, but here it is
  1. Caravan Quilt top to quilt
  2. Brown Bag Mystery to finish
  3. "???" baby quilt to start
  4. Row by Row top to quilt
  5. Halloween Mystery to finish
  6. "?????" baby quilt to start
As you can see I have two quilts to start, two quilts to finish, and two quilts to quilt. Happened by accident, but still I think it will be a good idea to keep this pattern. I will still be doing Farmers Wife blocks by hand, and Moda BlockHeads each week, as well as any other mystery quilts that take my fancy, but when not doing these I will be choosing one of the above, and if I can't chose I will roll the dice.
Also interesting with the above, 1, 2, 4 and 5 are all Simply Colorful mystery quilts or inspired  by Simply Colorful.
So, as I have caught up BlockHeads, I am going to continue with 2. Brown Bag Mystery.
This time last year I was in the middle of this mystery and two things happened. One, I needed a fabric panel that was difficult to find in Australia; and two we booked a last minute Trans-Pacific Cruise. OK, I'll find the panel in Hawaii, or so I thought. No luck, so move on. The half complete quilt has sat in it's box on my sewing table for a year.
A few months ago while walking through Spotlight 
(OK, deliberate visit to Spotlight to buy more fabric that I don't need),
I came across a purple graduated fabric, so as it was like the panel I needed, I bought two metres. Now I am ready to go - after I find the final clues - and start pinning all the templates onto the purple fabric - woo hoo!! Luckily I saved all the clues so spent a great deal of the afternoon tracing and pinning the labels onto the fabric.
 
Once labelled I cut each piece and I'm ready to go onto finishing Clue three.
The only problem now is the pattern is so complicated that I need to adapt the English Paper Piecing to make the blocks more machine user friendly. To do that I need a printer, and ours is out of ink. So to wait for Peter to come home with new ink.
Maybe I'll cut out some Farmers Wife pieces for hand sewing on our next trip.





Saturday 26 August 2017

Quick catch-up

Most of the last six weeks have been looking after our granddaughters from England, so it has been pretty full on with lots of visitors. With a family wedding on Fraser Island and so many 'comings and goings' I am only now able to get back to some sewing. 
I have managed to do two more ModaBlockHead blocks and sew a mattress protector (along with adjusting bridesmaid dresses). Today I should be able to get a lot done - sewing wise - before going back to cleaning and tidying the house, then we are off on another adventure.

BE QUICK FOR THIS ONE

However the aim of this quick post is to let you know about a free pattern to download, but you must be quick.
Today (26/08/2017) Craftsy has a free download of a Caravan and Camping Quilt Pattern.
Get it quick if you are signed into Craftsy, if not become a member and join it is free.