This didn’t happen over night!

Hi all,

This year has been a crazy year, in February my oldest son was diagnosed with Asperger’s. His diagnosis took about 6 months from the time his grade 1 teacher let us know something might be wrong, he had diagnostic and IQ tests at school before he was referred to a pead for the diagnosis.

In June our youngest son was also diagnosed with Asperger’s. And my husband who sees a psych for depression has been told that he more than likely has Asperger’s too.

I am just telling you this to explain why things have slowed down on the creative front. The diagnosis doesn’t change who your child is, they are still the same, it gives us options for therapies and school programs. It also makes life busier!

However, I do have two finishes to share today! These have been months in the making….there are weeks when the sewing machine doesn’t even get looked at!

This is my mini for Christine’s Scrap Challenge. It will be auctioned in early October, I will let you know the details when I have them. This was started in July and it has about 550 pieces, a lot for a quilt that is only 25” square.

  
I asked for quilting ideas on Instagram and Bree suggested diagonal cross hatching. I love the texture it gives the quilt!

The quilting on the back looks great too, almost a double sided quilt!

And my other finish actually never touched the sewing machine….just needle, thread and the hot glue gun!

This is a pincushion. I used a free stitchery from Red Brolly and the timber bowl was turned by my uncle.

 
I don’t know if I want to put pins in it, it is too pretty.

 
I hope I haven’t overloaded anyone with information, it actually felt good typing it and I considered deleting it all but I am putting it there because the more I talk about it the more I find others in similar situations and it is good for us all to know that we are not alone!

Til next time,
Jess :)

Playing with quilt as you go

Hi,

I have been inspired to try improv quilt as you go…see here and here! I actually just found those pictures but I wanted to give you an idea of what I have been seeing around blogland and pinterest.

I thought I would try some hotpads first…they were something I needed too, so you know two birds with one stone!

I was also trying to do a bit of scrap busting…but I am afraid to say that I didn’t even make a dent!

These led me onto something else we needed which was an Ipad mini cover. This time I used some trims and featured some selvedge's.

I used elastic at the top, an experiment in the search for something that won’t scratch the ipad when it is pulled out. I think it works but I do need to make it a bit tighter.

I made an effort not to make the cover too girlie but apparently I failed. I did add some V8 fabric and boys playing with rockets but no, not good enough! LOL I love it though!

   
That is one thing I can tick off my list for this quarter. So I will link this post to the Finish Along when the linky opens!

Bye for now, Jess

Progress is being made

Hiya,

I have been making some progress on a few of the quilts I am working on. The first one is a long term project…I work on these while we watch TV, at the moment we are watching our way through the Star Trek Voyager series so I am getting some serious stitching time!

Block 6 of the Afternoon Delight quilt by Sue Garman.

And block 8.

Next up is the Easy As ABC QAL over at Blossom Heart Quilts.

I have made D now but E is still to be done, hopefully this afternoon I can get E finished.

And finally my quilt for Christine’s scrap challenge. She gave us a bag of scraps and we have to turn them into a mini quilt, we can use some of our own fabrics too. All I have added is the brown and red solids.

This is going to be a mini scrap vomit quilt. My squares are 1.5” cut size so 1” finished. Four blocks down only about 14 to go!

I am getting called to make Vegemite toast by my sick little guy so I better get back to my no. 1 duty!

Bye for now, Jess

My plans for Quarter 3 of the Finish Along

Hiya,

I have decided to add some older projects to the list this quarter. To try and tick off some of those projects that would other wise just keep hanging around.

First up though is the Marti Michell BOM.

I found this half finished apron, how hard is it to make an apron? well this is no ordinary apron.

I haven’t touched this since before we moved to this house, which was before kids….so probably 9 years! Time to finish it!

This skirt was supposed to be made for last summer. Well that season came and went, maybe I’ll finish it for this summer.

I have had trouble deciding how to quilt this gorgeous stitchery….I think I have a plan now, so hopefully I can finish this.

     
This small convergence quilt is half quilted but my thread kept breaking so I gave up for a little bit….I will try using my new setup and see if that works better.

This is a small Schnibbles quilt that I made a couple of years ago, I just need to quilt it.

 
Christine has organised a scrap quilt challenge and the quilts are due to be finished in September so I need to get moving on this.

And finally a cover for our Ipad mini. I also plan on making a matching pouch to carry extra things. 

This seems like a lot, 8 projects and I may not get it all done but I will try to stay focused (LOL who am I kidding?!). I am also working on long term projects too – a double wedding ring quilt and the Afternoon Delight quilt.

Linking to -

Bye for now, Jess

The triangle quilt

Hi all,

This has to be one of my fastest finishes ever! For a quilt that is. Started and finished in 2 weeks!

While trying to decide what to make for an upcoming engagement party I came across these left over triangles, scraps to anyone else! They are left over from this quilt. Which is still not quilted BTW. I seem to have a pattern of using up the leftovers before the original project is finished.

This picture got rave reviews on my FB page so I went with it!

I trimmed the triangles to 6” sides. I pretty much made it up as I went along, there are loads of tutorials for these quilts but as long as your triangles are all the same size it should work.

I quilted straight lines following the edges of the triangles, the lines are pretty organic and I changed direction here and there.

For the back I used some Heather Bailey Pop Garden with a strip of Bella Raspberry which I also used for the binding.

Stats – Triangle Quilt
No Pattern
Size – 54” x 46”
Fabric – Leftover triangles, Bella Etching Slate, Bella Raspberry and HB Pop Garden.
Quilting – by me in straight lines.

I am crazy about Scraps!

Hi everyone,

I have to admit that I am kind of crazy when it comes to scrap collecting….I have shoe boxes, drawers and shopping bags full of scraps!

Probably only half of these scraps are actually from my own projects, I have adopted scraps from my mums stash and multiple friends stashes too!

Today I came across Bonnie Hunters new leaders and enders challenge….Tonight I have started preping!

I love leaders and enders! It should put a dent in my scraps (hopefully) and it feels like you are making two quilts for the price of one!

Now, what do you do with those little triangles that get cut off when you are making Flying Geese and similar units?

Well I know it is crazy but I save them….I have heaps of tiny Half Square Triangles sewn together from the X and + blocks.

And I have some from the QAL we are doing at the moment….

This is a block I made with the HST’s I made from leftover triangles from Jess’ Pieced Star blocks. Plus a couple from an earlier block too. The corner squares are cut from the scrap rectangles from my St Louis Star block.

This block will be 8.5” finished. I think I will hold onto it and see what other scraps come out of this quilt!

Nothing is wasted!