Some time for me

Another crafty friend has organised a craft day today. What a lovely day for it. It has been ages since I have had a few hours of uninterrupted sewing time just for me. So what is on the to-do list?

Believe it or not, I have the final blocks for Tori's Paintbox Quilt to finish and then I have to lay it out and decide where the colours will be positioned. Best done in a room full of other crafters!

I've been chipping away at this project and it has probably taken far too long, but I am happy with the block choices and every few weeks I would come across another great monochromatic fabric that I wanted to include in her quilt.

I also have a great idea for some scrappy patchy monogrammed pillows for her bed from some gorgeous Jelly's that have been sitting for far too long on my shelf.

I have no expectations of achieving anything except sewing and chatting.

Sprout Blocks for Paintbox Quilt

Managed to get another batch of blocks done for Tori's Paintbox quilt. The deadline is looming ... September 16th is her 3rd Birthday and I want to get it done by then. I still have to sash each piece and I have ordered minimum of Kona White and Snow to see which one matches my colour scheme from Pink Chalk Fabrics.

If you have ever worked with the Kona brand of solids, you'll understand why I am going for the more expensive materials for Tori's quilt. Lovely quality, tight weave and it just triumphs all over the "homespun" that you normally purchase for patchworking.

The material for these blocks are an Australian designer, Sprout Designs. A bit on the expensive side but good quality printing and fabric, and so a "joy" to work with.

The Sprout toy bikes were easy to work with, evenly spaced and I have lots of fabric left over from a 25cm cut to do other things with. I matched this print with some Kona Indigo, nice and dark and almost black.

The Sprout Owls in a Row were a bit more fiddly, but I think that the blocks worked out well. Again, enough to make a pillow with from the minimum yardage that I purchased.

The giraffe's were a pain to do. The design was probably much too large for the Paintbox Blocks and I had to do lots of fussy cutting because the design is so large. Not sure I am happy with the block on the right .. but I will hang it up on my bookcase and look at it for a few days before I decide to un-stitch.

I'm thinking that when I get her quilt done, I might do a little mini-quilt from the Sprout fabric for the shop.

I purchased all my Sprout Design fabrics from the lovely ladies at Kelani Fabric (fast service!). And my Kona Solid Jelly Rolls originally came from the Fat Quarter shop ages ago!

I also managed to chase down a Kona Solids Color Card, so I am hoping that it arrives soon so that I can start to colour match some of the harder prints that I have for the Paintbox quilt.

Nearly there ... such a long project, but it is going to be so worthwhile to see her face on her birthday (crosses fingers that I get it done by then).

More material for Tori's Paintbox Quilt

Tori's painbox quilt is progressing slowly ... the great thing about patchwork is that you get through the project one block at a time. I finally got around to making the blocks from the Sprout Design fabric that I got a while back.

Looking through all my blocks, I noted that I had a lot of generic patterns. And since Tori responded so well to the Sheep blocks, I thought I would buy some more Sprout fabric to fill in some of the gaps. I think I am about 10 sets of blocks off finishing enough to start sashing.

So I ordered more more fabric from one of my favourite online fabric stores Kelani Fabric from some of my favourite Aussie Designers, Sprout.

First, some Orange Toy Cars ...

Then some red Owls in a row ... we have lots of red blocks in the quilt, but one more won't hurt .. will it?

And some Toy Bikes ... again, we have two other navy blocks but this one I will sash in dark indigo fabric.

And some Giraffe's ...

Lots of fussy cutting required to make these designs work in the Paintbox Quilt, but I think that they will set it off quite well.

Have you made a paintbox quilt?

Grey over Grey

I have a handful of Kona strips that have been kicking around in my handbag for a while now ... grey, teal and fuschia.

Three glorious colours that I can't find appropriate matching monochrome prints for. Most of the prints I have found have other colours in them and for Tori's Paintbox quilt to work properly, they need to be monochrome prints. Whilst I want to finish Tori's Quilt as quickly as I can, I do want to make sure the prints I choose are fitting and look good.

Enter .. Kelani fabric online store ... I found this print .. isn't it gorgeous!

I bought a fat quarter of this fabric, I should have enough to do the blocks for Tori's quilt and maybe some other cute things! But wait ... look at all the other lovely prints by this Aussie designer, Sproutdesign.

These prints are expensive ... but how gorgeous are they!

Can I just say that unlike some other Australian Online fabric stores ... Kelani was very prompt in their delivery and the fabric was lovingly wrapped with a cute little thank-you note!

As for the subject line of the blog post, are there any other Banco de Gaia fans out there? I love listening to this music while quilting away. A friend introduced us to Banco (thank-you Mr Edwards), and in particular the album "Last Train to Lhasa" one night while sitting in car at Kangaroo Flat waiting to view a total eclipse.

Ever since then, I have loved to listen to Banco and we were at his Melbourne concert (or more specifically, performance) at the Northcote Social when we realised that we were pregant with Tori.

Paintbox update

I finally found a few minutes to sit down and make some more blocks for the Paintbox Quilt-a-long that I am meant to be doing. I am not quilting as much as I should be because I am busy doing writing and school stuff at the moment. My goal is to get it done by winter .. we are slowly edging towards winter and I am about 75% of the way through the "block phase".

I am WAY behind on where others are, but I will get there eventually! So here are my latest blocks, I love the colours (especially the middle one!) and I want to make a quilt full of these colours!

This is where I got the colours from .. look at these jelly strips! Aren't they gorgeous!

The colours come from the "Hello Betty Retro" collection from Chloe's Closet, a Moda Jelly roll. I recently got this jelly roll from Green Fairy Quilts, fast delivery, professionally packaged. Have you seen the Moda Bakehouse, a good quilting site to add to your RSS feeder.

Paintbox Update

As of late, other projects have taken me away from Tori's Paintbox Quilt. But last night I managed to do 4 blocks. I shuddered at the thought of a brown block, but since it *is* a paintbox quilt, I need one!

The thing about patchwork, is that when you do it one block at a time, it doesn't seem so bad! I did these yellow ones a few weeks ago, but forgot to blog about them.

To make myself feel better I laid out all that I had done to see what colours I still needed to do.

Tori couldn't help herself, she wanted to be in the picture. She did help me lay out the coloured squares!

I have some lilac, hot pink and light green blocks to do and then we need to purposefully fill in the gaps rather than just using what I am finding in my stash. Getting there, one block at a time.