Happy Father's day and Winter Solstice

Today it is not only Father's day, but also Winter solstice. Both of these make me happy. 

To my husband who has been an excellent father to my girls, I say thanks and well done. And to my father, I also say thanks and I will phone you later as you live thousands of kilometers away.

I hope all the fathers out there are recognized if they too are good fathers.

Winter solstice is equally exciting as the sun is now coming back to the southern hemisphere. I am now bored with winter, it is too cold and dry. I have so much static in my hair, I am starting to resemble our brown cat who in winter seems to walk around with things stuck to her fur.

I found a few winter quilts which I thought would be fun to share.

Hope everyone has an amazing Sunday and have a project to keep your fingers busy. 

Have a good one

Next project started

I

Taz thinks maybe a bit more quilting needed

have unpacked a UFO and it is appropriate as the quilt's name is Oh my stars. My youngest and I did it together in to 2011 school holidays. It is machine stitched and does not have the accuracy I normally achieve in my hand pieced quilts.

Taz has found the centre of the quilt

I decided that this needs to be quilted. I have not decided what to do next, so while ideas swirl around my head I will be doing this quilting, thereafter I will add some bias binding to some of the quilts that have a fold over.

Hopefully at this point I will know what is going to entertain me for the next year or two. This is the start of the quilting. I have decided to just have a bit of fun with the quilting. With the granny's garden I stitched around each of the hexagons.  

The end result was that the whole quilt looks like a collection of yoyos stitched together. With this one I will probably do quite a few rows of stitching to make it all hang together.  It is freezing here today and this quilt is really small. I got spoilt with the largeness of the previous quilt

Taz is pleased with his efforts

in which myself and the cats could cuddle under the quilt whilst I stitched.

Hope you have an amazing Sunday and keep either warm or cool depending on which half of the earth you live.

Have a good one!

Granny's Garden done and dusted.

My Granny's garden is now done and dusted. It has taken me a year and a week to complete this quilt. This is quite fast. I needed a quilt to use all of the gorgeous Jelly rolls that I have been given as presents. I found this a great way of using up the fabric, though this was supposed to be a subtle pastel quilt. It is quite soft but not what I had envisioned when I started this project.

I started quilting on this on the 4th of April, so the quilting took me  71 days. The picture below shows my thread before and after the quilting process. I used up a whole sheet of needles and seem to have lost my thimble.
        

I used a butternut binding. I draws out the yellow. The whole quilt is hand pieced and hand stitched. I used silk batting and the quilt is amazingly warm due to this. 

Tomorrow I will start on quilting a poor quilt that has been ignored since 2011.

Have you have an excellent weekend.

Have a good one.

Just in time June..

May sped past at quite a rate. I spent some effort and joined the quilt festival. It was great to see so many beautiful quilts. There really is an amazing amount of talent out there. I have been busy quilting my Granny's garden.

 I have completed quilting all of the flowers and have started on the borders. I have completed the one side and done about 90% on the second side. I still need to finish the edges and then add the bias binding. The worst thing is that I am working against a deadline that I will not make.

I started this quilt on the 7th of June 2014 and it would have been awesome to complete it on the 7th of June 2015. We have a public holiday to the 16th of June, so I recon that is probably when I will complete it. Let us see. I also am finding it hard going doing the border. It is just a tad boring.

Oh well, stitching does that sometimes.

I am still on the hunt for my next project. The next thing I am going to do is quilt a smallish quilt that has been waiting to be quilted since 2011.

The weather is still bearable. The only time it gets really nippy is first thing in the morning. I am sure it will soon be very cold.

Hope you have an excellent project to work on and the weather is neither too hot or too cold; in other words let all hope for bear porridge weather that is just right.

The quilt was draped over a chair so that I could take the pictures. A short while later I saw a bit of movement and this is who had sneaked in for a quick nap.

Have a good one.