Chookshed Sewing Party....

I started playing at Chookyblue's weekend party on Friday....

(I do like to be early!)

Our Saturday road trip was cancelled due to weather predections of a severe system coming through... Parts of Brisbane are having heaps of rain but over her it's a bit of a non event!

But it is damp and cold enough to HAVE to stay indoors and sew!

I wanted to get more sashing done on Sylvia's Sampler blocks - I think I got through about 40 of them and got them trimmed back...  they are not sewn together but looking promising...

Before

After - all that wall on the left is still to fill - about another 34 blocks to be sashed

I am linked to an OMG (Organic, Modern, Graphic) group on Facebook run by Helen Godden who does a lot of art quilting.  I am trying to do her challenge each month to stretch my imagination and work on shape and colour.  Helen posts up a picture and we make our own quilted piece with it as inspiration.... Just very hard for me but I am having fun so will keep up with it...

This is quilting the one for April...

It is a small piece - 4 1/2" by 6 1/2" and I had it all ready for binding.   I haven't invested in the special binding clips one sees - these $2 ones from the cheap store are way cuter I think!!

The smaller pieces with tiny quilting take a while and I find I bend and the small movement tires my shoulders.... so I need regular breaks.  I borrowed these books from our local library ... fun to look through though the patchwork prisoners is a lot of information as opposed stories of the women involved. Interesting but a bit academic for me!

Here is my finished work.... not sure I really like it but I got some shapes and dimension which I wanted....  The silver tubes are done by 'couching'... putting thicker yarn through a special couching foot on the machine .

I started working on reindeer for a table runner a couple of weeks ago and there is progress.  I was silly and stuck the applique on the right side of the fabric for one and the wrong side for one - you can see the difference in the picture though it doesn't show it as well as it is in real.

Anyway - I didn't want to make a new one and throw the other one out (I had done some stitching!!) so I made two new ones, one right and one wrong and so there is a heaaaaaapppppp of sewing to do now I have two sets!!!  Getting there slowly and last night I satin stitched holly berries

Righto, Gotto Go... fire needs rebuilding (no I won't do that but some people should be supervised), coffee needs to be made and sewing machine turned on....