repeat QAL - finished top

Its time to link up my finished top in the Repeat QAL being hosted by Patty over at Elm Street Quilts.

I finished the last of my letters a few weeks ago and then someone said squirrel and that was it !!

So here are my final letters s, r, l, and t

and then I made the star block - I love this fabric - its Blueberry Park by Karen Lewis for Robert Kaufman - its the fabric I started with and its why I made all of the letters in pink !

 

the next day I had sewn all of the letters and star together - its so fabulous !

and then this week I finally put the borders on !  I was taking photos of the finished top to do this blog post and discovered that the word quilt was quite uneven !! it was a bit like my handwriting and curved up at the end - hah !

I thought that it might not look so bad when it was all quilted but of course the more I thought about it I knew I'd need to fix it so I unpicked the l and t blocks and remade them and sewed them back in.  I'm really pleased I fixed it and it didn't take very long - my unpicker and I have a very special relationship !!

so with that issue solved I've finally got a quilt top to link up !! I really should have had it quilted but the quilting always stumps me - I'm thinking I might do pebbles around the letters as I really want them to stand out and then I might do straight lines - I'll think about it a bit longer but I've given myself until the end of August to get it done !

so without further ado - my finished quilt top !

If you want to check out all of the Repeat quilts - visit the linky over at Elm Street Quilts.

work in progress on a Friday !

Tuesday was the Australia Day public holiday and I also had the Wednesday off work so took the opportunity to do some catch-up sewing.

I made the last scrappy nine patch blocks so I managed 56 blocks in 56 days ...

when I decide what sashing to use I'll sew the top together - I don't want to use white sashing in this quilt - I'm thinking charcoal but I'll probably end up using a silvery grey!

I've also finished one of the pillow tops I'm making for mum and dad - hope to get it quilted this weekend.  I'm using 6" jacks on six blocks for this little pillow - love the secondary star pattern - mum and dad picked out the fabrics when they visited last November.

and I finally sewed together the Pack Patch Mini Quilt Along blocks into a top - it was a Flickr quilt-along hosted by Chase of Quarter Inch Mark and I finished the little blocks almost a year ago !!

I'm going to hand quilt this one so it will be a while before its finished.

I also came across a mini charm pack of Bonnie and Camille's Happy Go Lucky so on the spur of the moment decided to make Moda's Love Quilt - its only a 12 1/2" block so I'll probably add some borders and make it into a pillow.

have a great weekend !

happy New Year !!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and fabulous New Year - I started back at work this week which is a bit of a shock to the system after a luxurious eleven days off and lots of peace and quiet !! 

I managed to do a little bit of sewing but my main focus was organising and documenting my growing pile of quilt tops and WIPs - after only 7 years of quilting I seem to have amassed a huge pile of both - eeek !

I'm putting my list on its own page as I didn't want to clog up this post but the upshot is that I've got quite a list of projects which includes at least 31 quilt tops and about 60 works in progress - there, I've said it out loud !!

This is a photo of the bottom of my linen press and the top row is full of tops waiting to be quilted - on the bottom row there are two tops ready for basting and the fabrics on the left hand side are backing and binding fabric for projects not even made yet !! did I mention that my planned quilts list is almost as long as my WIPs list !!!!

I'm planning on concentrating on doing one of my WIPs at a time to try and get the list at least half done by the end of the year and rather than picking projects for a finish along I'm just going to go at my own pace and not stress :)  I'm actually giggling that I just wrote that as I'm currently working on five different projects !! I'll see how I go - the main thing is to get some of those quilts finished so I can wrap myself up when winter arrives, which isn't that far away for us Aussies !!

Even though I'm trying to get my already started pile down I am adding some new projects too !

Amy at Stitchery Dickory Dock is doing another Sugar Camp BOM which I'm going to join and you can too - all the information on the free BOM is here !  I'm also doing Jen Kingwell's Green Tea and Sweet Beans as a long distance sew along with my Mum.  The other new project I want to do soon is to make a cover for my beautiful Bernina that I've now had for 2 years - its overdue !!

oh and I'm also going to try and blog on a regular basis - I've been sucked into the Instagram vortex for a while but I really miss having more detail and photos that only happens with blogging.

and just to add one more to my WIP list, at the beginning of December I decided to make a nine patch quilt by making one block a day and using only scrap fabric - Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts has all the details of this sew along that she did a few years ago on her blog - and I've been keeping up mostly - over christmas I was sorting the scraps and cutting out the blocks and then I'd chain sew a few blocks at a time.  I'm more than half way through so I will have another top to add to the list in no time !

linking up to the first 2016 Work in Progress Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced !