Patchwork on Parade Booth at AMQF

Well, tomorrow it starts.  The Australian Machine Festival will be kicking off at some ungodly hour with a full day Ricky Tims seminar. 

Today three lovely ladies in high vis vests and I (also in high vis)  turned this.....

 

Into this......

 

 This is Mum's booth at the festival, so if you're in Adelaide, pop down and say hello.  The festival will be on all long weekend from 10am - 5pm on Saturday and Sunday and from 10am - 4pm on Monday at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

 

Ok, off to bed now, so tired it hurts to blink and I have to be up in 5 and a half hours to get the kids off to their Nana's so I can go to see Ricky.  There is a moderate chance that I may slip into a quiet coma during the day - I hope Ricky won't be offended.

APQ - Tipperary

Today when I got home from work I had a large parcel waiting for me.  It was this quilt....

I had sent it off to Australian Patchwork and Quilting and today they sent it back to me along with a copy of the magazine in which it features.  It was all a bit thrilling for a Monday afternoon.

The edition my quilt is in is Vol 21 No 11 and should be in newsagents this week.  I called the quilt Tipperary because I had started out working a design around the Road to Dublin block but I chopped and changed a few things and then altered the way the block went together to come up with a different design entirely.

 

And I always loved the song Long Way to Tipperary.  When my Grandma was living in a nursing home, after she developed dementia, my Nana and I were visiting her one day and Grandma started singing Tipperary from start to finish.  It is a special memory for me

Thank you so much to Elaine and everyone at Australian Patchwork and Quilting for the opportunity to have my work published in such an esteemed magazine.  I am off to celebrate with a block of Lindt Orange Intense.

As usual I am linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced....

Half Square Triangle Blocks

At the Australian Machine Quilter's Festival next week I am going to be doing some demonstrations.  One of which will be the myriad things you can do with HSTs.  Today I have been working on some sample blocks and here they are dangling from my clothesline....

This is a Carpenter's Wheel that I've made with the scraps from this quilt....

Some kind of HST block made from the scraps of this quilt....  Does anyone know if this block has a name?

I am going to turn them into cushions.  I was hoping to have that done before Festival, but the probability of that happening is dwindling every day....

Here are some 8" blocks made out of my 30s stash.  I love them.  This first one is the Simple Flower basket block...

Anvil....

A modified Castles in Spain block.....

And one of my all time favourites, Baby Bunting.....

Here they are dangling in the breeze.  I plan to make them into a sampler once I've finished them all.

This little scrappy number was made with my 22.5 degree dresden ruler to create tumbler blocks.  I am also going to turn it into a cushion for my son's room.  The likelihood of this happening is slightly higher.  Very slightly...

 

Now I am off to turn these......

into this.....

By Monday.  Wish me luck.

WIP - Butterfly Quilt

This post is going to be big on photos, low on written content.  I have retyped the opening sentence about six times and I just can't get my brain to work, I need me some sleep.  To cut to the chase - next week at the Australian Machine Quilting Festival, Mum's booth is going to be the home to the Accuquilt Go! Baby and it was my job to make a sample.  A while ago I had pinned this quilt and this week I made it using the Go! Baby Critters cutter.  I loved the original quilt so much that I even used the same fabric, Marmalade by Bonne and Camille - they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

I cut out and pressed 5" squares of visolene to the back of a charm pack, then took them for a spin through the Go! Baby.

Look how cute it is!

Pretty soon I had done the lot.  I used all 42 charm squares from the Marmalade charm pack...

Here they are all laid out.  It took me a while to work out how I was going to attach them without marking the background fabric.  I was afraid that by ironing the pen marks I would make them permanent.  So in the end I cut a piece of fabric 44" x 50" and ironed a crease of 4" around the edges to create a border and to give me something to line my ruler up with....

I then lined my ruler up with the creases and working on a 6" grid placed and ironed my butterflies down.  As you can see by the end I had a ridiculous set up with rulers on my ironing board but somehow it worked.  I could only see a small section of the butterflies at any one time and was worried that by the end of it the line of them would be curved up like my handwriting does when I write on a blank page.

I then secured them with some very basic raw edge applique.  I started off doing a blanket stitch which looked gorgeous but it was taking too long and this baby needed to be finished in two days.  So I decided that raw edge was more funky and it only took a couple of minutes per butterfly, which clinched the deal!

And here it is hanging over the bar of my mum's longarm machine waiting patiently to be quilted.

With any luck I'll be back in a few days to show you the finished product.  I would have liked to custom quilt it like the original pin, but time is of the essence so it is going to get pantoed.  Is that even a word?  Bedtime I think!

As usual I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced and Quilt Story, so head on over and spread the love!

Operation AMQF

Many of you know that my mum is a longarm machine quilter.  What I probably haven't mentioned before is that she is Sharon Parkinson, one of the convenors of the Australian Machine Quilting Festival.  The festival kicks off in less than two weeks and behind the scenes it is go time!  This weekend Mum, me and a handful of our friends got together to prepare the registration bags for all of the Festival attendees.

Here is a close up of the bag that those who have registered for classes at the festival will receive.  It is a lovely laptop bag which is embossed with our sponsors names - the front of the bag is a lovely green and purple with the AMQF logo.

 There are three hundred of them!

 

Here are Barb and Mum getting everything ready for operation bag stuff...

We had quite a production line going and below are some of the goodies that we put into the bags for those who bought the festival package....

Cop that thread!  We have had some very generous sponsors....

All stuffed and ready to give out to students....

 

 

Speaking of stuffed - here are the crack bag stuffing team stuffing their faces with fish and chips after a hard morning's work.

After the bags were stuffed it was on to phase two of Festival preparation for me....I went home and over the course of the weekend (and about 32 cups of tea) cut up and folded hundreds of metres of fabric for Mum's booth.....

I still have about 6 bolts of fabric to cut up but am now too knackered to pick up a rotary cutter.  It's a sad state of affairs, but as Scarlett O'Hara says....tomorrow is another day.

What did you do this weekend?

Secret Stitching

This week I have been busy finishing the binding for an upcoming project for Australian Homespun Magazine.  So I don't have much to show you except for an extreme close up of the binding and a bit of Mum's quilting.  I chose Baptist Fan's for the quilting pattern because I lurve them, unfortunately Mum hates doing them so I don't think I'll be getting them done again any time soon.  I am hoping that in time she forgets the pain they cause her because I would like to make this quilt again and want it quilted exactly the same.  I may have to rub her feet but it's a price I'm willing to pay!

I laid the quilt out on my bed to fold it ready to send off to Sydney and the Liz took her opportunity to rub herself all over it.  How is the evil look she's giving me?  She knows I'm about to pull the rug out from under her.  Literally.

She then tried to cutesy up but I am hardened to these kinds of shenanigans.....

Nice try Lizzie Liz.

The Royal Adelaide Show

It's showtime here in Adelaide and Mum and I made our annual pilgrimage on Sunday with the kids.  Here is our day in picmonkey collages....

Our day started off with fondling some cute animals in the Learning Centre....

 

And we followed that up with some pig diving (as you do on a Sunday)...

 

 

Then it was off to enjoy some fairground attractions....

 

My husband then came in to pick up the kids so Mum and I could nanna-up and enjoy the crafts and cooking displays in the Goyder pavillion without any whinging....

These magnificent floral displays were by David Ruston....

 

Here is a sample of some of the winning quilts.....

 

 And of course no Australian show would be complete without some prize winning pumpkin scones, some lamingtons and a jam roll.

We also ate like Vikings while at the show but am too ashamed much of a lady to show you that carnage, which may or may not have included many hot donuts, an oversized baked potato and some kind of curly, deep-fried potato on a stick.