Wild Women Don't Get The Blues - Finished quilt

I spent the end of my holidays (last week) quilting in preference to any other artistic pursuits and I am so happy to report that I got my quilt finished!
I started it in a class with Karen K. Stone on 31st January last year. Here are a few photos of its progress, and you can read more in all the posts HERE.

Once I free-motioned the centre blocks, I needed lots of different ideas for quilting the triangles, so I made myself a wee sheet of ideas - if you can draw it without lifting your pen off the paper, you can free-motion quilt it

My quilting threads were a plain light pink rayon (no brand noted sorry) which I used for the light triangles and in my bobbin - and the gorgeous variegated which is a Victory Rayon called Provence (these threads are available HERE in Aus - and HERE in NZ). Here are some close-ups of my block free-motion design stitching - click on any photo to see it larger

And when it came to binding, I decided to keep it colourful with the same feature fabric from the centres

And finally - here's the full reveal :

Now I'm ready for a new quilt project....determined not to spend 15 months on the next one! But first, I've got a lovely Play Day with friends tomorrow, and Mother's Day on Sunday, so I'll talk to you again next week. Happy creative weekend.

Farewell January

When I unclogged my spray bottles recently, I found a few that had hardly any colour left. I decided I would start my next daily journaling spread by using up some of that just by dipping and spreading with a paint brush.

In my last daily journal post, I shared photos from our lovely holiday in New Plymouth. The first thing I needed for this spread was to capture our memories from the other 2 days. Decided I would be best to do that with photos, and some simple stencilling

The camera stencil makes me smile and I'm happy with how that film strip turned out. The darker blue/yellow is from a gelli-printing session on clear packing tape. I ♥ including these lovely arty bits. The colourful paper beneath is from another gelli-print session - useful to cover up the printed words in the background which can become very distracting.
On the opposite page, that purple was rather dark so I decided to lighten it with some white Dylusions spray through a stencil, and mopped up the excess on some other coloured card for future use (never like to waste any paint/ink)

On our way home from New Plymouth, I called at a favourite store where I picked up these bargain stamps for half price.

They looked like layered fun, and indeed turned out to be so. It's nice to have a journal to try these things out :-)

This past week I've enjoyed discovering Brene Brown - see her TED talks at that link from her name, & I've been reading this book :

A lot of what she says makes sense to me, and I think this is another area where I can do some personal growth and transformation (my word for 2016) this year.
I shared my quilt top of "Wild Women don't get the blues" towards the end of last year :

Said it would be a holiday project to quilt this, but I only recently got it basted (backing, batting and top layers sprayed and pinned together) and started quilting yesterday - exactly a year since I did the class with Karen K. Stone. The photo I took for my daily journal shows my fabulous new sewing machine and my awesome new purple adjustable desk chair (Christmas present from my man) - they are both making the quilting such a pleasure.

I am so happy that I have finally begun this stage. I am not going to beat myself up that it's not done yet. I find it really difficult to focus on one thing when I enjoy many different art forms. And I'm not going to lose that enjoyment with "shoulds" :-)
So that's my last week, and here's my daily journaling spread.

You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE. Our new school year started today so we'll be adapting back to school term routines. Happy February - hope to see you again soon.

Quilt top

Just had to pop in and let you know that as well as catching up on a number of Life Book projects during the school holidays, I also got my quilt top together.

I'm thrilled that after sharing my start in February, I'm now ready to layer and quilt it.
Hope you are having a week that includes sunshine and creativity :-)

Quilt blocks complete and Cards from scraps

In the middle of June, I started making a spiked border a day for my "Wild Women Don't Get the Blues" quilt. When I started, I knew that if I stuck to my plan I would have my 25 blocks ready to put together by 5th September...happy to report that I completed my last block on the 14th August, and now I'm ready to share them all up on my design wall. Click on the photo to see it larger.

Next step is to do some rearranging until I am completely happy with how they all look together, and then to find time to sew them together to make the quilt top. I've loved how they've come together.
At the end of that stage of the project I've got a small box of tiny scraps I knew I could use for a further project

I bought a pad of board from the dollars & sense store (only $2.50) and started to make some cards. I just used a free-motion foot on my old Janome machine to stitch the fabric scraps to the card

I like their simplicity

and now they only need some stamped or found words to personalise them for occasions that arise

I'm sure there'll be more of these to share with you again soon. Which one's your favourite?

Spiked-Border-A-Day challenge progress

You may remember that a month ago I shared my idea for making progress with a quilt. I challenged myself to make one spiked border a day towards my "Wild Women don't get the blues" quilt. When I first thought of the challenge I had made 4 blocks :

In the first week, I'd made my 7 borders, so was motivated to find the time to complete 1 more border so I could finish 2 more blocks.

When I did my mid-year review of projects a week later, I was on track :

Then I got to school holidays. I was dragging my feet a bit not feeling as enthusiastic about my colours. Then I wondered if I was being too "matchy" with my block construction and I looked again at photos I'd taken of Karen Stone's original quilt in class :

Sure enough, I was right. I immediately took the block I was working on

and swapped out a couple of the borders to make it more interesting

Loving that and loving that top fabric so I wanted to use it immediately in another block

Really excited about these looking so good and I kept stitching more than a border a day in my second week of school hols....The momentum gathered, and I decided to added a few fat eights to increase my palette of oranges - those smaller cuts work well for variety without costing a whole lot

These led to another afternoon of stitching blocks. Here are a couple including the new fabrics - don't they look cool?

and because I have been making such great progress, that engenders more enthusiasm. I now have completed {drum roll} 
19 Blocks!

My original post estimate was that I would have 25 blocks all finished ready to put together by 5th September. Tomorrow we're back to usual term routines, but if I go back to my original plan of one border a day, my past history indicates I'll actually complete 8 borders and finish 2 blocks per week.  I should be ready to assemble the quilt top 9th August! Will share again when my quilt top is complete - excited!

On A Lark

I did 2 quilt classes recently with Karen K Stone - quilter extraordinaire. My first was called "Wild Women Don't Get the Blues" - I shared some of Karen's quilts and the beginnings of my quilt HERE. My second class was called "On a Lark" - this is Karen's sample from the class

"On a Lark" by Karen K. Stone

As you can see it is a riot of colour and fibres - very fun. Since I want to complete my "Wild Women..." quilt as a full size project, I decided to go smaller with this second class. These were my stash gatherings :

And my piece progressed quite quickly on the day:

Adding loads of fibres is great fun. They totally change the look of the piece, and feel lovely to touch as well - I used a variety of sheer and fancy ribbons, wools, and sari ribbon.

I'm not working on a regular shape and you'll see why at the end. Once home, I added many more fibres from my stash and things progressed along. We have just had a long weekend in New Zealand, and I managed to complete this project : 

Some close-ups to show the gorgeous textures

Love the way the sari ribbon frays as shown above. Then I trimmed the piece ready to put it together

Here's the completed fabric folder -  I used the same variegated thread in the top and bobbin, and went around the raw edges and joined seams with a machine satin stitch. Click on the photos to see them larger.

Front view closed

Front open

Back

I could have attached a cord to it and used it as a bag, or I could have gifted it to a friend, but I'm using it as a lovely home for the individual art pages from my Life Book lessons until they are ready to be bound at the end of the year.