Sheds, babies and projects

This summer in Northland has been one of the wettest in known history.  Not the greatest conditions to try and finish one's quilt shed!!  We finally got the roof on... after hubby had a bout of covid, and the rain and wind decided to behave itself.

Doors, windows and roof...

Once the outside was done, it was time to look at the interior.  First a bit of a clean up of construction rubbish...

Much cleaner!  We decided on mdf panels for half the flooring, and foam tiles for the other half.  This worked out to the cheapest way to cover the floor space in the most useful manner - a work area and a basting area.  

Then it was time to outfit it with all the important stuff I had accumulated in Sewing Shed number one, but had got too out of hand to be able to find anything, so the storage solutions were the most important element.

I ended up placing the sewing table on the right hand short end to avoid afternoon sun in the eyes... and plenty of storage for smaller items in this zone... quilting rulers, patterns, small scraps etc.

The back corner has a new cutting table and my old shelves were installed above, the ironing board is just to the left.  

A batting covered design wall covers the entire back wall...

The left hand short end is filled with cupboards and open shelving.  I have fabric cupboards, and WIP cubbies... a bit of a book shelf... still a work in progress but the piles on the floor are getting smaller.

Swinging back around to the front, we have the front door and that is my sewing shed!!

One of the projects/sew alongs that I have been patiently waiting to start was Corey Yoder's new Sunny Patches mystery sew along which uses a jelly roll and assorted yardage.

I have this Flowers for Freya jelly roll with a few of the matching fabric in fat quarters...

Then I pulled a whole heap of fabric from my new stash containers...

And this was the first mystery block.

It wasn't long before the design wall had projects on it... this is going to be a new The Country Yard project... using a range called Sun Washed.

And I pulled out last years rainbow challenge and have been plugging away filling up the empty spaces.  I just have two more star blocks to finish, and to the right you can see the start of the Mystery quilt with the jelly roll creating setting blocks.

Little Amarni is not quite so little any more.  Being about 4 months now, she is quite a character.  Here she had just worked out how to get her thumb in her mouth.

She came to visit me at work...

Just generally looking cute :o)

More News from 2022

 Other exciting things happened in 2022 that I don't think I have ever shared.  My local quilt shop - The Country Yard was having a bit of a change around of staff and I offered to work one day per month to help things along.  I got offered the opportunity to create a new project!!  Woohoo, my dream job.  Jumping straight in the deep end we decided to offer the It's A Lot Quilt as a BOM project with three different colour palettes to choose from.

This was my original selection - what we called Retro Vintage.  Based around a Basic Grey print from the Cidar range... I don't think all the prints are shown here but you get the general idea.

We broke the quilt into a basic nine patch so each month was a square made up of various simple units.  This quilt is a scrap quilt - so the challenge was to recreate the scrappy vibe within the BOM programme and not be too prescriptive.  What I do love about it is that everyone is going to end up with a different quilt - we have suggested people add to their fabrics from their own stash... so potentially there could be some VERY different versions.

I fused the applique pieces onto Block 1 to illustrate how it could potentially look but these were never blanket stitched.

The second palette was a dreamy blue and brown version based around the floral prints shown on the left by Lella's Boutique.

This gave a more restful overall feel... although it has higher contrast.

I have just started blanket stitching adding the applique elements to the Retro Vintage version. Although the pattern uses needleturn applique I am doing fusible applique with machine blanket stitch - using a mid grey aurifil thread for all the elements.

It really does add an extra depth to the overall design. 

The only problem with sewing along to create a shop sample is that you actually have to finish things!!  I am onto the fourth block so I am counting that as a win.  Although I start back at my day job tomorrow... and we are already planning 2023 shop projects... hmmm, will have to see how that goes :0).