Small and Intimate

My local friendly quilt shop, The Country Yard, hosts an exhibition each year, inviting customers to display quilts that have been made from items purchased from them.  Kerryn's house is the venue, a lovely old farm house, which showcases the quilted items beautifully.  It's not a large and blowsy exhibition with millions of quilts of all different genre - it's small and intimate... casual and friendly, a time to catch up with friends over a cuppa and a nibble...

I've exhibited quilts for the last three years... and desperately wanted to get my Berries and Bluebirds quilt finished in time to exhibit this year.  Nothing like a little bit of deadline pressure!  Yay... I did it!  My green thread arrived last Thursday, and I quilted the green border Friday afternoon.  Then the outer printed border was quilted over Saturday and Sunday in a feather design in the same thread.  Monday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons were spent binding, and Friday afternoon cutting threads.  All ready to be displayed on Saturday.



It was such a delight (and totally blew me away) to have my quilt chosen as the Viewers Choice this year! You can find more photos on The Country Yard's facebook page here.

I also exhibited the Japanese Ladies quilt which I sold to raise money for Dylan's ski trip for school.

 


It was such a fun day.  Thanks to the lovely ladies at The Country Yard for making it such a successful event.  Now... what can I finish for next year???

What a difference a day makes

Charm pack all cut up and spread out... mixed up with the blenders I had pulled... and it's all going to work.  Yay!  Now I can get into chopping up the background triangles and putting these units together.  My best advice for dealing with charm packs is to do a dry run with the placements first.  It is just too easy to put together your favourite combos... and end up with seven green fabrics at the end that you need to transform into a pleasing block.  It's all about blending - including some of those favourites - but have a few ugly or clashing combos too. 

The hot sticky mess that is my design wall at the moment... I chickened out of putting up any more of the blocks over the Modern Sampler ones.  Hence the design floor takes up the slack :0)

And finally - the pattern inspiration.  Constellation by Katy Jones from Monkey Do.  I think this is a really clever layout - and could easily be adapted for other designs... not just stars.

In other news, my LQS shop The Country Yard, has an annual exhibition, which is coming up towards the end of the month.  They run a challenge each year - this year being an item (less than 50cm in size) made from black and white fabrics, to include a black button that was provided.  I wasn't going to enter, but somehow found myself sewing this up on Wednesday, so that I could drop it off on Thursday, and attach the button while I was there.  The 2" honking big button sits just nicely over the white circle - just as planned.  You'll just have to imagine it!

A little bit of hand stitching adds a nice bit of detail and texture... I echoed the block lines and around the circles.