a winter furtle ...

Happy July ! its now the middle of the year and the world is still in the midst of a global pandemic and I still haven't finished my Midnight at the Oasis quilt ... but I AM getting closer !!  so its time for a little furtle around ...

I did hope to get the top done by the end of June but I've adjusted my plans - we're all probably getting pretty good at adjusting plans these days - and now I have a new plan !

I finally finished the orange peels and then finished sewing down the appliqued circles on the centre piece - I also changed out one of the triangles in the centre piece as well. I've now sewn the centre block and the orange peel border together and I've added the applique border too !

Now I have to finish sewing down the stems around the corner basket blocks and also applique the flowers to the baskets - I'm hoping to get that finished by the end of this week.

then its onto the Churn Dash blocks - I need to sew another 40 odd 4 inch blocks - I've made a few and its been fun playing with all the fabric combos - how many fabrics can I use in one tiny block ?!?!!

As I've already finished the checkerboard border and the final courthouse steps border, once I sew all the churn dash blocks I can sew all the borders together - so my new plan is to have the top finished by next month's Furtle post - if I can stop changing and rearranging that is !!

Thanks for popping by - I hope you are staying safe and well and enjoying life as much as possible in these crazy times ! I'm constantly thankful for this creative outlet that I love and that I can retreat into when it all gets too overwhelming :)

Linking up to Archie the Wonderdog's monthly Furtle

 

welcome 2020

and what a start to the new decade here in Australia - I took this photo the day before new year's eve in Hobart - no filters needed.  Its amazing to think we're already 10 days into the new year and it feels like there's a hush over the whole country.

I had plans for a roundup post in January so I could link up to Helen and Archie's Furtle Around but over the Christmas - New Year break the bushfires, already burning in parts of Australia, turned up a notch and so those plans were put on hold.  By Christmas Day there were bushfires raging in every part of Australia.

photo - https://myfirewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au/

The town of Tumbarumba where I lived until a few years ago had fires at the edge of town on New Year's Eve and lost the mobile phone tower that night - by Friday the town was evacuated.  Such a scary situation to be in.  Thankfully no lives were lost.

Its such a tragic situation that its hard not to get drawn into the hopelessness. I'm listing a few places if you would like to donate directly.

Red Cross Australia

Wires Animal Rescue

Australian World Wildlife Fund

so instead of planning projects for the new year I started sewing pouches for wildlife and this week I worked on the first challenge for Season 11 of Project Quilting which I'll post about later.

I'll still have a roundup post to show off some of my makes from last year including my finally finished Double Wedding Ring quilt that I started five or six years ago - there are so many Finish Along posts about this quilt its probably the most mentioned quilt here - I might check the stats on that :)

and I'll also post my plans for this year which include finishing my Midnight at the Oasis quilt !

so a belated happy new year and cheers to another year of creativity :)
 

a little progress !

at the beginning of January I posted about my UFO/WISP plans for 2017.  I’m concentrating on a handful of projects at a time to try and get some finished.

I was thinking a quarterly update would be fine but then I thought that I should do an update each month to keep these projects uppermost in my thoughts as I've discovered I'm very much an "out of sight out of mind" kind of girl !

I'm happy to say I've actually made some progress on most of the UFOs on my current list !

1. Bubbles block info

I’ve made another block and have three more to do - my deadline for these is March !

2017 quilt project planning

It seems a lot of quilters are planning their goals for this year and like me are taking a different approach to goal setting !!

With so many projects on the go and after a few years of planning and not getting things done or planning and then doing totally different projects I've decided to do things differently this year and only plan a handful of projects that I'd like to get done.

I'm hoping that by having a list with only a few hand sewing and machine sewing projects on it I might actually get some finished which might just motivate me to keep going - I'm also allowing myself a couple of new projects so I don't think I'm missing out altogether !

First on my short-term short list is the Bubbles Bee - this is a Flickr bee and its my only commitment this year - I only have four more blocks to make for this Bee and one of them is already overdue from November !!