I finished my Trip Around the World quilt just in time to enter it into Capital Quilters recent exhibition.   I've called it Last Christmas because I've always loved Wham, and each December I pump this song out  regularly. I used Edyta Sitar's pattern and method and I found it very good.  If I decide to make another Trip Around the World quilt I would certainly follow her method again.    You can read my first blog post about this quilt here. I made this quilt over the Christmas break and found all these fabrics in my stash. I hand quilted it using a ..read more

Wow! It's been two and a half years since I worked on this quilt! But I'm going on holiday soon and I need some hand stitching to take with me.  My quilt. The full finished quilt designed by Wendy Williams I have 4 tea cup blocks and 4 coffee cup blocks all prepped and just waiting for me to applique the flowers on. So this week I've been cutting circle motifs out of fabrics and appliquing them to the wool felt in the evenings. I'm just building up a collection at the moment and will decide which flowers to put on each block when I have a good range to choose ..read more

After promising you I'd always do my blog posts on Friday nights NZ time, I slipped one in on Sunday, so if you missed seeing my Purple Zone quilt you can click back and read about it here.  I've got more quilts from the exhibition to blog about, but first on to my shopping from Capital Quilters' exhibition last weekend.  We had five retailers at the exhibition and I think I bought something from nearly every one of them.   my haul from the exhibition First up was this very interesting fabric from e bond for Free Spirit Fabrics.  It's unlike anything I've p ..read more

There's nothing like an exhibition to make you hurry up and finish a quilt.  This recent finish is a combination of two Jen Kingwell designs.  Back in 2019 I started Jen's Marshal Mystery Quilt published through QuiltMania.  I was very proud of my central motif when I finally got it to sit flat, but as time went on and more and more of the quilt got released, I didn't feel inspired to finish it according to the pattern.   But I've always hung onto this centre piece and I knew I'd find a way to use it one day.   Last year another Australia ..read more

It's only one week until our exhibition!!! It's going to be great because we have some very talented members at Capital Quilters.  I've entered seven quilts.  Yes, SEVEN.  One is a 12" x 16" challenge, so that hardly counts. Two you've possibly seen finished here on my blog or in person. Two others you would have seen progress photos of, but not seen them finished. And the final two are total surprises!! These are quilts that I've completed without showing them on social media at all.  Not even my friends know about them.  And I'm not going to give any clues now ..read more

Do you remember my Licorice Allsorts block of the month designed by Wendy Williams? I barely remember it myself because it's been so long since I worked on it. But last Saturday I made a quick trip to Auckland to support my mum for a few days.  As I was throwing a few things in a suitcase I suddenly remembered that she had asked for my help with some of the trickier blocks in this quilt.  When I first saw this block of the month advertised at Material Obsession in 2021 I knew that we would both enjoy making it, so we both signed up.  Mum has finished all of the embroidered blo ..read more

At Easter I went to Tekapo in the middle of the South Island of New Zealand.  The mountains and lakes are amazing there and the weather was beautiful.  The place we stayed at had great views and a big deck off the lounge.   I took some quilting along because our Capital Quilters exhibtion is fast approaching and I'm not ready!! I still have two quilts in progress and this is one of them.  It's the Trip Around the World that I started in January.  You can read more about it here.   It's quite a bit colder in the South Island than the North Island and ..read more

I'm busy finishing three new quilts for our Capital Quilters exhibition in May. Plus I want to enter at least one of the challenges.  So I'm quilting every day but I can't show you any of that just yet.  However, in the evenings when I collapse into my chair I pick up my cross stitch and I've made good progress on Shades of Indigo by Nicole of Northern Expressions Needlework.  There's just one more border to go now. Of course mine isn't stitched with indigo threads.  I've chosen my favourite greens and blues.  The problem is that when you deviate from the pattern ..read more

You probably thought you'd never see this day, but my Pandemic Sampler is fully finished and ready for framing!! I had most of it finished in April 2022 (almost two years ago), but I still had all the back stitching to do, plus my initials - which were the real sticking point.  The back stitch took about a week of stitching just in the evenings.  The pattern is 20 pages of A4 paper so there was a fair bit to work through.  My initials were an issue because "W"s are wide and I had to figure out how to fit them in.  In the end I came up with a dainty, subtle solution th ..read more

I've got exciting news to share.  Capital Quilters are having an exhibition in May 2024 in Lower Hutt.  It's going to be on Saturday 11 May and Sunday 12 May which is also Mothers' Day.  Wouldn't be lovely to take your mum to a quilt show on Mothers' Day? You can look at the quilts together and then stop in at the on-site cafe for a bite to eat.  Of course we're going to have merchants too so you'll have to allow time for shopping too.   The Lower Hutt Events Centre is the lovely modern facility where we've held our exhibition twice before, and where the Symposi ..read more