Art Gallery by Patricia Bravo

Ooooh, I've been busy quilting lately, but I will share with you all once I get the bindings sewn down.  Sometimes that takes me sooooo long!  In the meantime, I have recently added these charm packs to my etsy store here or ebay store here.  Oh my, I cannot tell you how wonderful these fabrics are in person.  They are absolutely gorgeous in color and in feel.  I cut some of these for myself as well and I am planning to pair these with some solid Kona Coal and make something out of them with half square triangles.  Totally in love with Patricia Bravo fabrics now!

What we did for Christmas...

We had a quiet Christmas at home this year.  Since the kids are so young we didn't feel like going anywhere or doing anything too elaborate for Christmas and it turned out perfect.  Alexander had his first real experience of opening presents and was so excited!  He LOVES cars and trucks and bikes and tractors.  I'm not sure if his love for wheels came from going with his dad in the mornings around the farm on the bike, in the truck and on the tractor, plus going with me in the car to town...  Or maybe it is just a boy thing built in.  Anyway, all Christmas day he was so excited about the cars I got him and he was just beside himself!  Oliver is not in the photo because he passed out half way through the present unwrapping.  Alexander was very generous too, every time there was a clothing or boring present he would say, "Ollie",  meaning he thought that the present should be for Oliver!  We had a nice feast during the afternoon of turkey, ham and vegetables with cherry pie for desert.  After canning over 20 kilos of cherries, we deserved some cherry pie!!!  How fun Christmas is when you have little kids!!!  Next excitement up, my dad is going to come to visit and meet his only grandchildren very soon (Jan. 5th)  and is staying for 3 months too!

And Pillows Too!

Since my husband was around the house today, I managed to finish the matching pillow cases to go with the quilt for my mother-in-law tomorrow.  I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out and am thinking I should make matching pillow cases for all my large quilts!!  I'm happy I've managed to get a lot done this week including canning 20 kilos of cherries as well as organizing most everything for tomorrow.  Just have to cook the turkey tomorrow and then enjoy Christmas.  Have a Merry Christmas everyone:)

Finally FInished For Christmas!

I FINALLY finished this quilt today that I have had in the making for years.  This will be a Christmas present for my mother-in-law who mentioned several times as I was making the quilt that she liked it.  The colors go with what is in her apartment.  The fabrics are Moda's Blackbird Designs in a line called "Nell's Flower Shop".  I really liked the fabrics at the time and I still do appreciate them, but I'm more into modern style fabrics now.  I designed this quilt myself and centered the design around the home being in the center.  There is one huge mistake in this quilt and you will be able to see it if you look, but I decided to leave it there as a reminder to myself to double check my blocks before sewing!!!  Ha ha.  Oh well.  This quilt was sent to the longarmer and is a large queen size.  I plan to make some pillow cases to match if I find the energy to do it tonight:)

Kaffe Fassett!!!!

Limited supply available here (Etsy) or here (Ebay)...

Cobwebs and Cobblestones Quilt

I've been quite busy this Christmas season, but still I'm managing to get a little bit of quilting in to keep progressing along.  These are some photos of my latest finish that I've named Cobwebs and Cobblestones because of the quilting pattern I decided to do on this quilt.  The fabrics are by Lizzy House called Castle Peeps.  They are such fun fabrics!  Nothing traditional about this quilt!  I started this quilt before Oliver was born and just finished yesterday.  I'm not sure what inspired me to quilt the spiderwebs over the octagons other than the idea that castles remind me of things long ago and the pebble quilting is meant to resemble the cobblestones of Europe--which reminds me of castles.  Make sense?  Hmmmm....  If you like this pattern, it was a free one by Tula Pink for her Nest line.  It's quite an easy one to do as well.

Playing with Parisville...

First of all, I had to post some pictures of the boys. My boys are growing so fast everyday. Alexander finally has really started trying to talk and is learning new words everyday. His favorite word by far is "CAR". He also likes to say, "TRUCK" and "TRACTOR". Yep, he's a boy! Oliver is doing well, minus the fact that he has started teething. It's drool drool drool all day long and lots of fussing and crying and not resting as well as he had previously. Oh well, you get that! I still get so much more sleep with Oliver than I ever did with Alexander. He used to get up every hour through the night at this age!!! I don't know how I put up with that for a year??? And then willingly decided to have another??? Awwww, but they are so cute!

I thought I would show you what I've been making with the Parisville that I got recently lest you think I just chop it up to sell and not to use!!! I still don't know about this fabric. I keep wavering between absolutely loving it and then feeling lukewarm about it. Wierd, I don't know why I waver about it. Actually, I'm like that about a lot of Tula Pink's fabrics. Slow to warm up and then gung ho! Same with Anna Maria Horner... I am hesitant at first and then I fall totally in love. Hopefully I will get these blocks sewn together soon and the love will grow:)

Winner!

I tried that Random Number Generator to get the result for the winner of the charm pack of choice. My only problem is that I have no idea how to post it to my page like so many other bloggers do. I'm still computer illiterate so if anyone out there knows and cares to explain how they do it, please let me know. Anyway, the number came out 10. That means our winner is:

Jeannette said...

I am a follower! I love your quilts!

November 28, 2010 10:46:00 PM GMT+11:00

I just discovered Jeannette recently-- she just so happens to have the same name as me and spells it the same way too and has the same tastes in fabric! Thank you to all who entered:)

Katie Jump Rope--Hop Skip Jump is Done!

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That title sounds like a Dr. Seuss book. Hmmm... I've been reading far far too many Dr. Seuss books to the kids lately--I start talking funny. Speaking of Dr. Seuss, my Dr. Seuss quilt has had a bit of a glitch which I will share with you later. In the meantime I do want to show you my latest finish. This one just needed the binding sewn down and a wash. Can you believe that I actually made templates from Denyse's free pattern to make this quilt? You can find it here. It was actually quite a pain and next time I wouldn't bother--I would just free form it. I mean, after all, it's just strips sewn together with a gentle curve, but I really really wanted mine to look as similar to hers as I could--so I made the templates. And then it took me forever to figure out which fabrics went where. Her original is made with Flea Market Fancy--I used Katie Jump Rope even though I considered using some of my FMF to make the quilt. I didn't have enough of the browns though... I call this the daisy quilt because I also free motion quilted daisies on it as I was inspired by the daisy prints on the front:)

Tonight I will pick the winner for the giveaway, so you still have a few more hours to get your comments in! Good luck!

Parisville Charm Packs!

For those of you who would like just a bit of Parisville by Tula Pink, I've cut some charm packs of 5 inch squares of the entire collection. You can find these either here on my Australian ebay site or in my Etsy store here. :)

Tufted Tweets Quilt Finished!

Wow! I am in love with this quilt and this fabric! In case you are not familiar with it, it's called Tufted Tweets by Laurie Wisbrun for Robert Kaufman. Hopefully you can see in the photos the close up of the free motion pattern I did on my sewing machine. I'm really really getting into the whole free motion thing now. I just I had more time and energy to do some more! I can only get to it at night and usually I am just too tired. Most of my days are spent being quiet with one child while the other one sleeps, or just playing or feeding or making dinners and cleaning. When I have had any free moments, I've been cutting fabric for my etsy store (because I can do this quietly). That is my life in a nutshell. It's all going so fast too! My baby Oliver just rolled over yesterday and he's only 3 months! He'll be off and running soon. Wah, you want them to grow up, but at the same time they are so cute and wonderful while they are small.

Journeys by Kathy Davis

So, I thought I would share with you a fat quarter bundle of fabric I recently acquired from Fabric.com! I love this fabric and am surprised that it hasn't seemed to be very popular or at least popular from what I can tell by my internet searching. It is called Journeys and is by Kathy Davis for Free Spirit. Can you tell from this photo that these are based on a watercolors? I love the colors, the design and everything else about these prints and I can't wait to find a project to make with these. I'm thinking of pairing these fabrics with a light grey color solid. Is it me, or does anyone else think that the fabric styles out there are moving into the 80's time period? When I look at these or Tula Pink's Parisville or Innocent Crush by Anna Maria Horner I immediately think of the 80's.

I'm loving all the comments on the giveaway post! For one thing, I love checking out who is reading my blog and looking up your blogs to see what you do. Second, I've finally learned what people use to follow blogs with! I had been using bloglines and was in a bit of a panic how I was going to read my daily list when they were planning to shut down. I now realize I've been living under a rock (or somewhere in the bush on a sheep farm) and that everyone uses google reader. So much better!!! Thank you for that!