Let the fun begin.  |
| Flamboyance |
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| Not Here Thanks |
In an effort to get as many people as possible to send in a photo of their finished block/s I decided that I would do a draw periodically from everyone who sends in a photo of their finished projects. The prize... why more patterns of course.
Well I have been away for the past two weeks and so am running behind in selecting the winners for the two recent competitions which ran through this blog. 
After clearing that draw up I then did the next draw and Fran C from Aussie is the winner of one of the collections from my Raconteur patterns.
Another beautiful quilt was this one, which if I remember correctly is an Anne Summerland reproduction pattern. It has also been a while in the making but will definitely be worth the wait when it is finished. 
Here you can see his block of units on the RHS of the road and his office on the LHS. This photo was taken just to show how far it is he has to travel. If you look in the distance you can see a red roofed building. There are traffic lights there and if he wants to go to work during rush hour, say between 8.30am and 9.00am then he has to walk all the way up to the lights and then back down to his building. Needless to say he doesn't go to work until 10 so as to avoid the traffic! 
While we were visiting it was Paul's birthday and so Richard proudly gave him a true Norwegian souvenier... a HUGE ceramic moose head. Just what one needs when flying..huge and breakable. He suggested we could take it in our hand luggage but I thought it might be considered a weapon die to the weight and size. Luckily Wilbur survived the flight home and now has pride of place in the pool room (refer "The Castle").
While we were there he took us to see Pitt-Rivers Museum. The artifacts in this library were donated by Pitt-Rivers onthe condition that they be displayed in the same manner he had displayed them. Consequently there are thousands of things all crammed together with his original tiny hand written labels.
In this cabinet you can see some shrunken heads and the labels. Did you realise that it was only the heads of important people that were shrunk? They scalped the head off the skull and then filled it with hot sand(?) or something until it shrank and then filled it to regain the correct form.
Xmas in Australia happens in Summer and that is also when much of our fruit rippen. Unfortunately we live in a fruit fly area and these 'darling' little fellows decimate just about every piece of fruit that hasn't been sprayed, even if the fruit is picked while still green. This year my husband decided however that he wasn't going to spray the fruit fly every two weeks. After some web surfing he discovered that many home gardeners now bag the fruit to keep off the fruit fly. Yesterday his parcel arrived from China, amazing how much cheaper it is than buying locally, only $16/100 including postage. In the $2 shop they are usually 2 for $3. 
My original plan was to make the block in colours similar to the layout just above and to the left but couldn't find the right yellow for the background. Yes I know it doesn't look yellow on the web, but in real life that is yellow. I included the layout on the right just to show you the difference colour can make.
My third layout was my first plan for the medallion layout. This one would be perfect for someone who likes applique with all those open spaces near the middle. However as I personally don't do applique it would be the design I am least likely to use.
And if you, like myself, have way too many UFOs but still want to try out this block why not make a table runner. Three full blocks plus two quarter blocks with a small border makes a table runner a bit under 50inches in length and approximately 16in wide. Perfect for Xmas..... just had a thought check back later.. say tomorrow and I should have uploaded a Xams table runner for those who like red and green that is.
Well it's almost my big day for the 100 Blocks blog tour. My post will go live just after midnight on Wednesday Sydney Australia daylight savings time, that is +11 hours GMT so if you are here and my post isn't posted yet then please check back. Although each day's targeted blogs are posted at 12.01am on Quiltmaker's Quilty Pleasure blog not everyone lives wherever Quiltmaker is based. Previous posts there have been people like me who have attempted to guess when we should go live to line up with Quiltmaker but this time round they have decided it is best if everyone simply goes live at 12.01am local time. So if you are here before Australia's midnight kick off please check back in a few hours.
I have been working hard lately to release patterns from my latest quilt, Raconteur - The Storyteller's Collection and to celebrate finishing many of the patterns I have donated a set of instructions for this wallhanging from the quilt. 
I had been told a couple of weeks ago that my block was going to be in this issue but I didn't realise that November would arrive so quickly.
A couple of years ago I used to dye my own fabrics, but after a relatively short time period I worked out that I could either dye fabrics or make quilts there was not enough time to do both and so I gave up dyeing. 
In an attempt to get rid of my hand dyed fabric, my appliqued quilt with the black muslin background I knuckled down and finally finished the quilt, only took about five years.. it could have languished in the UFO pile for an eternity. 
So what did I win? You guessed it $250 of dyeing products:( I figured dyeing silk scarves had to be less messy than dyeing cotton and so purchased some silk scarves with my winnings.
Since finishing this collection I have been playing with how to finish off the whole thing. If I leave it at just one block then what you see is all that there will be but I have found a great way to join several of these collections with what appears to be a spiral.... so if the interest continues you may in some time in the distant future see another development... or then I might simply move on and finish some other quilts.
Although the first two blocks aren't identical you can see that they are almost the same. Doesn't the dark frame add a class to the block. Or perhaps that is because, being civil war reproductions it was a more serious time and the fabrics reflect this and are more sombre. Whatever the reason the change gives a different feel to the block.
The second pair or blocks are both at odds with the rest of the blocks in their respective collections. This block, Crystal Dreams, appears quite soft when made in the pale green of the civil war fabrics. It will most likely be in the middle of the collection being the 'odd man out' of that collection. 
Funny when I was looking at the separate fabrics there appeared a stronger contrast between the two fabrics. Another lesson learnt that in miniature it is important to look at every piece of the fabric. I still liked the finished block although others haven't been as keen on it... but then again it is my quilt.
The blocks in Snippets are the same size as those of Raconteur but in a different range of fabrics and values. In the original Raconteur all of the backgrounds were light and the outer borders were the same, whereas the main design sections were pastels, or what I saw as pastels. For Snippets I have decided to border the block in the same fabric as the main design. As is obvious from just this block the change is quite dramatic. 
Well the fabric became a PIG (Project in Grocery Bag) until last year I met Megan at the Sydney Quilt Show. As we started talking I told her about my fabric and plans to 'one day' make something small. Megan was wonderful and explained how to do it. She even had samples there to show me the different stages.
