Love Dr Seuss!

I've just spent four lovely days at my WAQA retreat in the lovely Swan Valley. My main project was to make this bag in the lovely Dr Seuss fabrics I showed you in an earlier post. Here are some of the pieces getting prepped.

Of course I spent more time sewing than taking photos, so I did manage to finish the bag.

Ta Da!

Here it is in all it's Dr Seuss loveliness. This bag is for a friend of my daughter's who's having a baby at the end of the year.

I did work on one or two other things - but will have to post about them later. Back at work this week and working extra shifts. Will pop in to say hi when I can.

Wildflower Season

Something pretty to look at while I'm away at my retreat.

A little sewing...

Aside from hemming pants, I have managed to do a few little bits of sewing. I made these little padded sleeves for the weights for the pull cords for our vertical blinds. Now that the surfaces are painted so beautifully, we did not want these weights to chip the walls. I've pulled the sleeve down a little for this photo so you can see the plastic case for the weight. I've made the sleeve snug enough to just slide on without being tied on.
I've also got three of my pieced borders for this quilt done. This looks good enough to be it's own beginnings of a quilt, but I will resist starting anything new for now.

I've also washed and ironed these lovely Dr Seuss fabrics. One project for this fabric is a nappy (diaper) bag for a friend of my daughter's whose baby is due in January. I will make the bag at the retreat I am going to next weekend. I will also make a small quilt with the panel. Should be fun.

So my camera is at the ready and I will catch up with you all after the retreat.

Multiple Blessings and a Giveaway

Look at these yummy fabric squares I won from Caroline Simas from her blog Designing for the Soul. Caroline is an artist and designs fabric as well as other art works. At the moment she is having a giveaway for a skin for an ipod 4 (for those of you who know what that means. My mobile phone is about 5 years old and is showing signs of failing (sigh) and I can't even begin to imagine breaking in a new one.)

These fabrics are from Caroline's line called Finally Free from Robert Kaufman fabrics.

One of the things I really like about Caroline is that she shares her inspirations for her designs. She is a woman of faith who walks with God and she shares her wonder and amazement of His glorious creation through her art. We should all be so inspired!

Food For Thought

My guild (WAQA) had a quiltlet challenge with the theme "Food for Thought" in honour of our 35th anniversary as an association. The girl on the swing quiltlet that I did was my entry and I titled it 'Fantasy Picnic'. Here are the quiltlets. I did try to take some close-ups but between poor lighting and focus problems they are a little 'iffy'. So have a look and have a laugh - some are quite amusing.

Colour makes all the difference...

Check out this blog to see how fabric choices make the same quilt look so different. I had to look twice to see they that were indeed all the same pattern. Karma Quilt is the blog of Maria, who lives in Denmark. Near as I can tell, these quilts were from a local quilt show.

Colour

I'm working a lot of extra shifts at the moment so not much to show. A little colour for you to look at instead. I picked these up recently for a dollar each. Coats No. 8 cotton.

Not another shirt!

I'm trying to clean and tidy a little each week (outside the normal housework). This week I decided to sort through old clothing destined for the op shop. After making this quilt, which included a lot of synthetic fabrics, I thought I would never make another quilt out of shirts. However, when feeling these soft, 100% cotton shirts, I decided to salvage them ala Bonnie Hunter. I also get a lot of inspiration from Julie.

So I snipped off buttons and de-constructed the shirts eliminating all the seams. Each shirt easily yields more than a half metre of useable fabric. 25 shirts in all. I will probably work with them next year (a starting year). Unless of course my resolve weakens...

Have you ever made a quilt out of shirts?

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