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01 September 2014

around the world blog hop


Last Monday I was tagged by Linda from Flourishing Palms to take part in the Around the World blog hop - Linda is an awesome quilter who lives in Florida, USA, and makes wonderful quilts, does amazing free motion quilting and is very active in social media !  I'm hoping to get to meet her in person very soon !


This blog hop is a kind of get to know you for quilters around the world with with same questions but a whole range of different answers (just like quilters) so lets get to it ! 

What quilting/sewing thing am I working on?

As my WIP and to-do list is sooo long I’m usually working on a few things at once !  I also take part in bees and swaps and I'm doing a couple of block of the months this year so I make quite a few blocks but don't seem to get that many quilts finished !

on the weekend I made some blocks for our Care at do.good stitches circle and I also nearly finished the swoon pillow top that I’m making for The Great Pillow Fight swap


I had a fairly productive weekend and also finished another couple of hexys that I’m making for the Hexy MF quilt – I’ve been making these hexies on and off for a couple of years now but I’ve only got 12 more to make and then I can lay them out and start sewing them together however I'm thinking it could be another year before this one is finally finished !


and yet another slow progress project is my double wedding ring quilt – I’m hand quilting it and I’ve quilted a few blocks over winter so I'm hoping to get it finished before the weather starts warming up too much.


How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I'm not sure if my work does differ greatly – maybe my use of colours makes a little difference – I love pink, orange, and lime green and love those colours together – I love saturated colours so I don’t use much low volume in my quilts - my Totally Groovy Quilt and Pezzy Mod Pop quilts are classic examples of my love of big colour and I’m more than happy to mix all the colours !


Why do I create what I do?

I work in a pretty hectic job so I love the calm of creating – although as I’ve always got so much on my to-do list, my creating is pretty hectic sometimes as well but I just love it – I love the excitement of pulling fabrics for a new project and seeing scraps of fabric become something tangible made with love !

4. How does my creating process work?

I’m pretty much influenced by what I see ... my friend Linda talks about the movie UP and how Dug the dog is distracted by any possibility of a squirrel ...and I’m very much distracted by the latest shiny thing too – I think that’s why I have so many works in progress, I want to make all the things, however unlike Linda I'm not a big finisher ! There are so many amazingly creative quilters in the world its hard not to want to join in all the fun !

I’m happy to follow along with patterns and might put a different spin on by using my colours or making it bigger or smaller !

I saw a photo of a pixelated heart quilt on instagram which was from a free pattern by Blue Elephant Stitches (available at the Robert Kaufman site) and I loved the idea so made a mini out of it – the original quilt uses 5 inch squares but I made mine using 1 ½ inch squares - I love making it so much I've made three !


I made the purple one for the Pantone Quilt challenge in March and love it so much I made a pink one for my mum for Mother's Day and I made another one into a pillow for a fundraiser on instagram !  they all have matchstick quilting which I love doing and I'm wondering if its one of the reasons why I love making this little mini !  Lately I've been thinking about doing more in other colours - mmm more projects for the to-do list !

I also have no qualms about redoing blocks or unpicking if I’m not happy with how they turn out – I know some people think I’m a little crazy for doing that but I always think that if you’re not happy while you are making something you won’t be happy with the finished quilt !

I've joined in doing the globetrotting mystery block with Pat Sloan this year and after making a few blocks and then laying them out together I recently decided to remake a couple of blocks.


when I decided to make a swoon pillow for my swap partner I thought I'd do some test blocks and make a mini – the swoon mini uses 4 – 8” blocks and I picked out the colours I thought would look good but after making a couple I realised that some of the backgrounds were a little dark so I changed colours then I couldn’t decide which ones to use (or what I'd do with the ones I didn't use) so I made some more blocks and I’m going to make a 9 block quilt – it will be a little bigger than the original mini but I’m hoping it will look fabulous !


If you're still reading ... thanks so much for joining me !

to continue the hop I should be tagging some more bloggers but I'm afraid I've lucked out on that front - seems this blog hop is just a little popular and a couple of the bloggers I asked to join in were already "tagged" by others !

If you google "around the world blog hop" you will find so many amazing bloggers who are joining in the fun - I intend to visit quite a few and I'll probably find more sparkly shiny things to be distracted by :)

It really is an amazing world we live in now that we can have friends around the world to share our love of quilting – gotta love technology and social media !!

2 comments:

  1. love love love the totally groovy and mod pop pezzy quilts.

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  2. Hi Leanne. It's funny, I'm doing my post for the Around the World Blog Hop later today and have had the same trouble finding someone to tag! And I love the mod pop pezzy quilt too - saturated colours are so happy!

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