Light Bulb Moment

I have put together my final borders on the Mariners Quilt which was my NewFO in May and it is ready for quilting. I have scoured Pinterest for inspiration and put together some ideas on my design printouts but that pieced border was getting the better of me. I just couldn't think of any way to quilt it.

 It finally came to me last night. Like a light bulb suddenly being switched on. I wasn't even thinking about the quilt and suddenly....wham! there it was. Starting in one corner I will move towards the middle creating a swirl and come out of the swirl and move towards the opposite corner.  Doing it this way will make it easy to continue into the next rectangle. My drawing is a little messy as I have drawn over another design which I did not completely erase.....so eager was I to try it out!

I tried several ways to quilt the blades but I have decided on a simple wiggly line with a swirl at the bottom end. Must remember to make the swirls go in one direction though. I saw this done on another Mariners Compass and I liked it.

 I have a design that I will mark onto the corners of the inner square and hopefully I will be able to follow the lines easily.

I bought some blue variegated thread for this while on the Quilters Trail last month but I will be sticking to a neutral colour in the creamy areas. My quilting is not good enough yet to showcase using a different colour on negative space.

 Yes, it is coming together at last.....today I will start the quilting process.

Linking in to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times



 

TGIF and FNSI with Teddy Bears

Is it Friday yet? I have been asking myself that question all week. Do you ever get weeks like that, when you lose track of what day it is? I have been doing that since Monday! It got to the point that I was worried I was going to miss Friday and wake up one moring, only to realise that it was Saturday already. So I say, Thank Goodness It's Friday! And of course this Friday is FNSI so I wonder, do you have your needle threaded?

I actually started preparing a few days prior to today by putting together the binding for two quilts. One was this one for my Mariners Compass which I am teaming up with a dark blue peeper. Its actual name is a 'flange' but I hate that word so I call it a peeper

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The other prepared binding is for the Teddy Bear Tea Party quilt that I finished quilting last month.  I was wanting to sew some ric rac trim peeping out under the binding but after visiting all the shops on the Quilters Trail and not finding any ric rac that fit the bill, I have decided to just bind it in the pink that I used within the quilt.

Today, I put aside the Mariners Compass binding for the time being and instead put the pink binding on the Teddy Bear quilt.

Have I told you how much I love my binding tool?  It takes the guess work out of joining the end of the binding just right. No measuring or pinning the end.....the tool gives me an exact cut and join.

I have spent this evening stitching the binding down.  There was nothing much I wanted to watch on the telly this evening so I watched a DVD while I stitched. 

  

 Three out of four sides have been completed but I need to attach a hanging sleeve so will do that before completely finishing the quilt.

Why not pop over to Sugarlane Designs and and see how everyone else spent their  FNSI

ps......yes, I know it is SATURDAY now and this post was written last night when it was still FRIDAY......well I hope so anyway :)

Back to Nature

It's amazing what you find in your own 'backyard'.  Today we drove a short distance to Walkabout Creek, near The Gap, here in SE Queensland. Hubby had found out that they have animal feeding sessions every Saturday and Sunday at 11am so he, Miss M and I went for a little excursion.  As soon as we got there I remembered that I had been here once before, almost 20years ago, on a Kindergarten excursion with Miss M who was 4 at the time.  I actually remember it well because at show and tell, when they brought the (python) snake out and placed it on the carpet, I was jumping onto a chair to get as far from it as possible while my 4 year old was quite happy to touch! She couldn't recall the experience at all.

We first heard all about the resident Spotted Quoll and watched as he, very shyly, came out to eat his chicken neck feast.  These little native marsupials do not have extended lives due to them being prone to chest infections and other, quite horrible, afflictions.  The males usually only live for 9 to 11 months while the females can live to 2 years.

Next we entered the Aviary and fed the Tawny Frogmouths.  These have to be one of my very favourite native birds.  They are actually very docile birds and I just had the strongest urge to reach out and stroke his feathers.  Look how big her eyes are......

Some of the other critters were ( top to bottom ) L to R: Tawny Frogmouth pair, Curlew, Eastern Dragon, Red Neck Wallaby, Green Treefrog and a very elusive, sleepy Wombat.

I didn't take any photos of the snakes (eeeww!) 'cos I don't want to look at them and I didn't take a photo of the Platypus simply because he was constantly on the go and racing around his tank so quickly.  We watched as he was fed live Redclaw and it was fascinating to see him hunt them down to eat. Interesting to remember they are blind in the water so depend on vibrations to find their prey. Most people lost interest after the platypus feeding so hubby had the ranger all to himself to discuss the snakes.  I was just relieved they were not part of the feeding session and stayed in their glass cases. 

Afterwards we had coffee and muffins at the Green Tree Frog Cafe. At this point, I should inform you that it was freezing cold.  Last night we had our coldest night for over 100 years in Brisbane. Yep, the temp dropped to 2.5degrees overnight. Time for a walk to warm ourselves up.

We decided on the 5km walk that circled around the Enogerra Resevoir thinking that we would walk for a bit and turn around and walk back.

As we started walking, we started spotting some really gorgeous birds.  Hubby is a keen twitcher so we ended up walking the whole 5km's and saw quite a few species that I have never seen before. Of course, they are really quick so I missed out on snapping them with my camera.  So I have put a collage together of internet images so you can see how pretty they are. We also heard  the 'ting ting' of the Bell Birds.  They are a particular favourite of hubby's. I have known him take a 4 hour trip just to listen to the Bell Birds.

Top L to R:  Hardhead Duck, Grey Fantail, Coot
Bottom L to R: Rose Robin, Azure Kingfisher, Scarlet Honeyeater, Golden Whistler

Here are a few photos from our walk

a trail through the trees

Enogerra Resevoir looking towards the back of Mt Cootha

looking back the other way.....north west.....of the Resevoir

looking up at a rather tall gum tree

Hubby and Miss M birdwatching

The feeding session lasted for about two hours and our walk took us about the same time so this really was a day trip. We all really enjoyed the feeding session, the walking and the birdwatching so Walkabout Creek has made it onto our list of special places to share with visitors to our part of the world.

 

FNWF - Got there in the end!

I really wanted to spend the DAY stitching.....you already know where I am going with this....it is a recurrent problem......darn hormones! I was not the only one under the weather.  Lila, my sweet puppy girl wasn't feeling herself either, much more subdued than normal and she has spent the whole day in her bed. She is still eating and isn't vomiting or got any bowel motion issues (I think I put that quite delicately, don't you?) but I am keeping an eye on her anyway. As for myself I have spent most of the day moping around while nursing a headache, residue from a migraine I had on Wednesday night, but when it got close to 3pm, I decided it was time for us both to get some fresh air so we all headed off for a, shorter than usual, walk. And would you know, it worked......headache gone!

On returning I was sure I could squeeze some block preparation in before needing to feed those at home on a Friday night and then I would start making some more blocks for the exploding block quilt that is on my design wall at the moment.

Looking at it there, it seems to be mostly pink and orange, so I will add the yellow and I also hope some green will balance it out a bit more.  I picked a green fabric from my stash that isn't part of the FQ range selected for this project but I think it will work.

I had to stop for teatime......you gotta feed them when they are hungry.....and then got around to sewing some more. I am so glad I got there in the end and stitched with everyone else.

The quilt has grown but it is too dark to photograph my design wall now so I will snap a shot tomorrow before blogging this post.

So here it is.  I am not sure I like the colours butted straight up together like that so I am going to add another round. Here is one I made earlier with an extra round. What do you think?

Now for my favourite bit.....heading off to see what everyone else got up to. Click on the button to take you to Cheryll's place at Gone Stitchin'

I Read This....About Kings and Queens

There may not have been a whole lot of sewing going on in my neck of the woods over the last month but I think I eased the reading drought.

Here are a couple novels I can add to my Shelfari bookcase as read

During May I read UNEASY LIES THE HEAD by Jean Plaidy.  This book follows the life of Henry VII and his Plantaganet Queen, Elizabeth. I had watched the TV Mini Series, The White Queen, adapted from Phillipa Gregory's novels so reading this book seemed like the next step in the saga.

I had already half read this book but soon realised that I needed to start again, thinking I would be able to skip bits and quickly catch up to where it was bookmarked but found I remembered very little so reread it all. The book also follows the young King Henry VIII as he grew up in the Royal Nursery. I really enjoyed this book and was really keen to get my hands on another Jean Plaidy novel.

This time I picked up a novel about the life of King John Plantaganet. THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS by Jean Plaidy. What a thouroughly nasty, vindictive king he was.  Self indulgent and taking pleasure in other people's misery made him an extremely unpopular king. He ditched his first wife to marry a 12 year old girl whom he abducted from the home of her betrothed.  He was so besotted with the girl, spending all day in bed, he neglected his Kingdom and King Philip II of France took advantage of this and reclaimed French land belonging to the English Throne. Philip was poised to invade England as well but the Pope stepped in and John was able to hang on to his crown.

This was the first time I had read about this earlier family of Plantaganets and I really want to get my hands on the other novels in this series that follow John's brother, Richard Lionheart and his father, Henry II.

I can never read these historical novels without getting waylaid by people or events in history and usually have a pile of historical refererence books on my bedside table as well just so I can relate to the true facts surrounding them.  

And believe it or not, a map of London to find the areas that I am reading about. My trusty little travel map is very helpful. Of course it has all changed so much since those days but many areas have names relating to the old sites like Moorgate [Tube station], for example, which was the name of one of the gates of the walls once surrounding the City of London.

For now I think I have satisfied my thirst for historical knowledge of my homeland and my next book will take me on a very different journey.

 

New FO - A Trio for June

It's JUNE....even if I am a bit flat, there is still so much to love about June. The weather is just the way I like it..........COOL! (Actually a bit COLD over the weekend)...and it is also that time of year when the Quilters Trail is happening.  The last two Wednesdays saw me and my like minded friends travelling all over South East Queensland visiting shops, learning some new techniques and picking up free patterns.  We visited the same shops as we did last year which you can read about here and here. .............If you want to

click the pic to find more NewFOs at Cat Patches

 With so many ideas and patterns floating around I thought it would be a good idea to get started on some of them and so here are my NewFO's for the month (note the plural NewFO's)

Firstly, while we were at Heavenly Patchwork in Clontarf,  Lisa introduced us to the EXPLODING BLOCK by doing a quick demo with a layer cake.  There were no handouts so I wrote down the name of the block to google when I got home.  You can find the YouTube video from the Missouri Quilt Co HERE.  I didn't have a layer cake handy so pulled together some fat quarters and gave it a go.

This is one of the easiest blocks you will ever come accross and so quick to sew up.......if you haven't heard of this one......go and take a look.

I haven't had many days at home since I started this so here is what I have so far. It is the sort of thing you want to start putting on the design board as soon as they are sewn.

This won't be a very big quilt but please note how different it is from my usual colour scheme of blues.

My next start this month was a little stitchery pattern that I picked up at The Country Quilt Co in North Ipswich.  This is a lovely little shop set up in an old Queenslander house with lots of inspirational quilt and stitchery samples hung up on the walls.  When I saw this Teddlywinks stitchery, I just had to have it.

It came in handy this week when I went along to my 2 chat and sew groups because I didn't have any work to take along except this preprinted pattern so all I had to do was pick up a needle, some thread and scissors.  EASY! It will be my chat and sew project until it is finished.

 I mentioned that we were given some free patterns on the Quilters Trail and Marilyn came up with the idea that we ( with Lorraine, Zita and I) should get together to try one of them out.  We picked the Mug holder and spent the morning trawling through the instructions and preparing all the pattern pieces..........so many pattern pieces!

I had problems from the start.....the pattern requirements were two fat quarters but I couldn't get all my pattern pieces out of the fat quarters without piecing some bits together, then I wasn't paying  attention and accidently cut a notch out of my main fabric. I was not sold enough of the compressed fleece so had to borrow some from Marilyn........at least we could giggle about it all. We stopped for lunch and then started sewing  the project, step by step, together.  The instructions (with pictures) had lots of mistakes and were so hard to follow but we muddled along until we got to the part where you have to insert the compressed fleece pieces and then it all fell to pieces as we all found the pieces too big to fit together.

We all persevered and top stitched the wadding into their sections but I just knew it wasn't going to work when I had finished.  Zita's wasn't too bad but Marilyn and I had the same problems (so it wasn't just me). By this time I also realised that there were problems with my machines tension again so, even though we had a wonderful social day sewing together, when I got home I started reverse sewing and removed the wadding pieces. I trimmed them up a bit until I was happier with their fit and redid the top stitching.....still not perfect but so much better.

Then I got to the strap........oh, dear! I just couldn't manage this. My sewing machine couldn't handle the thickness of the fleece and the strap was so narrow that the feed dogs couldn't grip it.....when I broke a needle, I gave up so there will not be a handle for my Mug Noodlebox.

I was planning to add this finish to my gift drawer but I have since changed my mind and I will definitely not be making this again.