Repro Fabric Swap Siggy Square

I am doing a fabric swap with a few ladies in the USA. We are swapping 1800's Repro fabrics. As part of the swap we are doing siggy squares as well. It was my first go at doing Flying Geese. I think they turned out OK. The swap block is 6" finished.

Here are most of the fabrics I am sending. We are swapping 16 Fat 1/8's. I already had some, so this is the rest.

I tried to get a variety of colours and patterns. Can't wait to see what I get in return!
And while I was working on the above blocks, I had some other ironing to do. I picked up some really cheap, good quality fabrics. Bit of a bargain. And Miss Hattie decided they looked very comfy!

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Productive Quilty Weekend

Overall, I had a pretty productive quilty weekend. No finishes, but alot of progress on several projects.
First off, I got a start cutting out all the light segments from my Omigosh Redux quilt. It is the same pattern but at a much more manageable scale than the original. In addition to getting all the triangles and strips of the light fabrics cut, I got about half of the darks done. Enough that I could get started on the HST. The first picture shows Miss Cleopatra "helping". Someone wanted some attention. The second photo shows the actual HST.

I am taking part in a Fat 1/8's swap, so I will be able to use some of these fabrics in this project as well.

Secondly, I finished up a heap of 30's Repro Nine Patches. I always have a heap of pre-cut white and repro fabric strips sitting ready to be sewn. I don't have any particular project in mind, but there are soooo many ideas for nine patches, I can never have too many! These are great when you have a spare 5 or 10 minutes to sew, as they don't require much prep or thinking about when sewing. As you can see, they are being supervised by the lovely Cleo, who loves to help!!

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Newcastle Craft Show

So the big annual craft show was on last weekend. I had hoped to go on Friday but there was no way I was getting a day off work! So Saturday it was. It was blowing a gale, I actually had a head wind walking in from the car park.

There was a good variety of stalls across lots of crafts. I had a short list of things I really wanted to get hold of and I managed to get most of them.

Below are some of the fabrics I picked up. I got some more shirting fabrics to work on a 1800's Repro inspired quilt. Also, some Fat Quarter brights to match a Fat Eights pack I got at the Sydney show. The Eighths packs are great, but they don't go very far! I also found a few fabrics I hope with work with the Gatby fabric I have. I am confident on a couple, but will need to test the other two. And finally, got 5 flannel FQ's, to got with the Fat 1/8's pack I already had. I was hoping to get some more but flannels are just so hard to get here, which is understandable as we just don't get that cold.

And I got some really great tools as well. A bit more of a money investment, but they should save me heaps of time, so they will pay for themselves in the long time they will last.

I've toyed with getting the Gypsy Gripper for a while, boy is it worth every cent I paid for it. Even as someone who doesn't have any hand strength problems, it really helped my cutting when I tried it. It may have in fact contributed to me getting a bit carried away cutting up my shirting fabric. I have WAY too much for the project in mind. But I'm sure I will come up with a use for it.

I have also decided to join the Hexagon revival but don't want to use bought templates or sit and cut them out myself! So a couple of hexagon dies for my Sizzix machine. They are scaled so I can use the smaller one for paper, larger for fabric or just use both for cutting templates. And finally, a small, rotating cutting mat. This one will be used for squaring up smaller projects. This one has two solid bases. Other rotating mats just have the swival in the centre and they are uneven and don't turn easily. This one works great.

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Craft Show Plan and Quilt Ideas

Granny Blocks 2 and 3

So starting tomorrow there is a big craft show starting in my town. It goes for three days and is the biggest craft event of the year. Since I hit the Sydney show in a big way this year, I don't have much on my shopping list. Most of what I am looking for is based on specific projects I want to do. So here they are:

Deco Japanese Cross and Plus 

I found this pattern via Pinterest, but you can see the work in progress picture that caught my eye on the Periwinkle Quilting and Beyond page. I like the subtleness of both the fabric and the pattern. It's been sitting there for a while but no idea what fabrics to use. The other week, doing my fortnightly check of Patchwork Products I found a great Fat Quarter bundle of Gatsby fabric. I've been thinking about how to use this and thought about the Japanese Cross and Plus. I think the geometric nature of both the fabrics and the design will work well.

• Find Dark fabric for crosses. Should have a deco or geometric feel with minimal or tone on tone pattern.

Country/Autumn Flannels

Again in my effort to use what I already have, I had a bundle of Fat Eighths of Flannels that I had picked up somewhere along the way. They are quite plain, tone on tones with about 5 fabrics each of green, purple, red, yellow, orange and creams. Again, I had to find a pattern I could use them with. As there a number of issues to keep in mind when sewing with flannel, I decided on a simple, traditional pattern for them. As I was roaming around the web, I found a great video tutorial for a Quarter Log Cabin block.


2501: Quarter Log Cabin Quilt from Quilt in a Day on Vimeo.

It's a really simple and fast technique that gives you a huge variety of setting options.

•   Find cream/tan flannels for the light section of the Quarter Log Cabin Block

Yarn Dyed Japanese Fabric

I've recently discovered these fabrics. I love the subtle colours and gentle texture of them. I bought a few FQ's at the Sydney Show,  but I need a few more to be able to make anything of a useful size. I know that the company I bought from previously will be at this show, and hopefully a few more places will have some as well. No specific project in mind for these ones, though I did see a great mini-Granny square quilt made from them.

• Japanese Yarn Dyed Fabric

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Granny Block Three

Another Granny block for the pile!

Not much sewing this weekend, it was more about the preparation. I've been adding to the stash alot recently and it has started to really pile up. All of it is washed, but not ironed. So the rainy weather on the weekend was perfect to get that done. Got all the smaller sized pieces done, just the yardages to go.

I also picked up some batting for the pink and green disappearing nine patch. Not tried this brand before, so I hope it is ok. Also cut up some white strips for making some 1930's Repro nine patches.

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Granny Block Two

I was doing this as part of the Great Granny Along,  but I found out I was doing it wrong! Apparently the Great meant they were 7 squares across the middle, not the 5 I was doing, so I wasn't able to post to the Flickr group for the along.

So now I'm just gonna go it alone and keep making them. They are REALLY quick and easy to make and I am really enjoying the way it is turning out. I have pre-cut the entire Sunkissed Jellyroll I had, but I don't know if that will be big enough for a useable quilt. So far, half of the roll has produced 8 completed blocks.

I want to keep this one for myself, so at least lap size will be required. But I do have two Sunkissed Charm Packs, which I don't have solid plans for, so that may get cut up as well for this project.

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Pink and Green Disappearing Nine Patch Progress

I managed to get quite a bit of quilt stuff done this weekend. I got a few Granny Squares done for the Great Granny Along. And I finally got my donation fabric sorted and bagged ready for postage (an embarrassing number of FQ's off to better homes!!).

I also put my Pink and Green Disappearing Nine Patch blocks together. I was a couple short, but it was the work of minutes to make up the two i needed. It's only 4x4 of 12" blocks, so its a bit small. I am thinking of a plain white 4" border around the edge. This is the size of one square in the original nine patch. I think I might use the left over cut sections as corner blocks? I'm open to ideas about how I can enlarge it without too much extra work. It was only meant to be a quicky project and I want to get it done so it doesn't get added to the UFO pile! I think a little bigger will be fine as a lap quilt.

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