The Last Piece

Aurifil Designer of the Month

Howdy all! Here's a fantastic program I'm involved with this year for you to check out. The Aurifil Designer of the Month is a whole bunch of awesome designers making a block each every month for you all to make and play along! AND those generous peeps at Aurifil are giving away amazing prizes as well to make all that stitching even more enjoyable. 

All the designers will be stitching with gorgeous Aurifil Lana or 12 wt and using Sassy by Moda as our feature fabric. This line is new for Fall 2011 so you should be able to find it at your local or online.

January's block was made by Roseann Kermes, you can read all about her here! And this is her gorgous block.

Rosann used Aurifil 12wt for this project, here are her colours:

2260 – red
2692 – Black
2975 – dark gold
4182 – turquoise
4663 – variegated turquoise
4671 – variegated brown
5006 – lt turquoise

Cute huh? I'm going to have to get myself organised and decide what colours I'm going to stitch in - after all you can't be involved in something like this and not make all the beautiful blocks too can you??

You can hop on over to the Flickr group to see what everyone has been up to. There is a prize to be won EVERY month, and everyone who doesn't win goes into the draw for all the other months too, so you have heaps of chances to win. Make sure and get a block posted asap because the January prize will go off soon and not many people have their blocks finished! 

AND tomorrow I'm going to update you on the other awesome program I'm playing in this year, the Bloggers Block of the Month which is run through Canton Village Quiltworks. I've almost gotten all my blocks up to date and I'm ready to share! See you tomorrow...

Things People Make

I love it so much when people send me things they have made that were inspired by my patterns. I've been saving up a whole bunch I've been meaning to show you, so I'm going to release them all in a flood. My apologies if I have forgotten some of the names or gotten my tags mixed up!

Deb Robertson from Christchurch has made a Coming Up Roses (Material Obsession Two) quilt to commerate the earthquakes in NZ last year. 

That's her little daughter there lying on the bottom so you can see how big it is!

I'm ashamed to say I can't remember who sent me this little beauty - I have a feeling it belongs to Rita at Red Pepper, and I right Rita? It's called Peaks and Troughs and it's from Quilting: From Little Things. 

Therese has been hard at work making my Flutter By quilt.

Such pretty fabrics!

A group of ladies in the UK have all been making quilts based on my Seasons quilt, also from MO2. Here is Kay's Summer Wallhanging:

Jackie's Season's quilt:

Margaret's Season's Quilt:

And Eric'as Season's Playmat.

And here's what Dorothy has been doing with the St Ives fabrics she won in my giveaway!

Sharon has been making a lovely version of Jungle Boogie (MO2)

Margaret and the girls in my class at Calico and Ivy have been hard at work too. Here's Margaret's Whirligig quilt:

Rosalie's Down the Rabbit Hole quilt:

And Linda's Sandwich Short of a Picnic!

I can't wait to get back to classes this week and see what everyone else has been up to. What have you been making?

I'm Going to New Zealand!

Hey here's some more exciting news! I'm going to be in NZ in May of this year thanks to Fenella and Shiree! I've never been to New Zealand and I know there are all kinds of amazing quilters over there - I read New Zealand Quilter every month :) Here's where you can find me:

Stitch in Christchurch on May 3

Quilt on Winter Retreat in Methven on May 5 and 6, 8 and 9

The Rowan Tree in Twizel on May 12 and 13

You can put your name down for classes and find out all the details through either Fenella at Stitch or Shiree at The Rowan Tree. May is only a few short months away so be quick like bunnies!

If you're not in New Zealand you can come and take a class with me here in Aussie land too :) I teach my usual classes fortnightly and monthly at Calico and Ivy and Cottage Quiltworks which are great fun. Both shops are just beautiful, the ladies are so friendly and nice (hi Sarah, Jann and Chris! ::waves::) and class numbers are intimate so you get solid personal attention from me. Classes are booking NOW for first term so make sure and give the girls a call and get your name down. In the first part of this year I will also be at:

Amitie in Melbourne April 11

Patchwork Orange in Orange NSW April 14

Precious Time in Toowoomba QLD April 21 - 22

Steph's in Moruya NSW May 25 - 26

Phew! Keeps me off the street and out of the pubs. I'm so looking forward to meeting all of YOU out there who will come along. 

If you're looking for a project to start you off for your quilting New Year have a look at my Scoot! quilt in this month's Quilter's Companion...

(Thank you Belle for the pic - I don't have a copy of the mag yet!) I made it using my mate Aneela's fabric range Sherbert Pips, and there's a bit of an article I wrote about her in there too for good measure. 

ALSO - I have had a LOT of emails recently asking where to buy St Ives meterage from.

I'm trying to get a full range of stockists from the distributor so I can put it up on my website, but in the mean time if there is something you just have to have, please email me and I can sell you the meterage you are after myself. Just give me the codes from here and I can help you out. 

The Made In Cherry quilt will soon be in Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Australia. You can see what the Quiltalong girls have been getting up to at the Flickr group, there are some fantastic versions of the quilt there. Here is ImaGingerMonkey's version:

and quiltyhabit's one too:

I still have one or two kits in all the four colourways available for sale at the website. 

Kick it to the Curb

So we are still wandering through the end of our renovation, having run out of cash but not ideas. I wanted a small cabinet for the boys bathroom - it's not a big room and there is only one small over the sink cabinet for keeping everything in. Budget being $0, when I drove past an side table by the side of the road a few weeks ago, I thought, why not?

I sanded it, and took the horrid handles off the drawers:

The bathroom is painted a soft apple green, with white tiles and a latte, dark blue and white shower curtain. The towels are all dark blue and brown and the fixtures are shiny silver. I painted the cabinet a latte gloss:

Then I Mod Podged some Anna Maria Horner fabric onto the drawers, added some shiny silver handles and voila! New furniture.

Next I'm tackling our TV cabinet, which is looking a bit old and sad, and two footstools.... I'll keep you updated.

In other news, did you know that Quilting: From Little Things is now available as an ebook for Kindle? You can even buy it in chapters, which gives you a technique, a dolly quilt and a full size quilt for only $3.59. If you have a Kindle this is a total bargain. The covers for the ebooks look awesome:

This one is for The Night Garden - it teaches you step-down piecing, and this one is for Whirligig, which teaches you Appliquing with Bias Strips. 

All the chapters in the book are available this way. Cool huh? 

A Few Cool Things to Direct Your Attention to

Well there's an unwieldy blog title if ever I saw one. There were more than a few cool things I had to tell you though, and it seemed appropriate. 2012 is shaping up to be an exciting year in more ways than one - and I'm starting off with a bang.

These amazing blocks were made by all of YOU, isn't that incredible? Yep, these are some of the blocks you all made for Amy and Anabel. For those of you who didn't participate, the blocks are supposed to look like the bass lines on a stereo, to commemerate Amy's late husband Dan. There's something about seeing all these blocks together and thinking of all the people out there caring about Amy that brings tears to my eyes every time I look at them. You are all so generous of spirit and wonderful.

These blocks are for Anabel's quilt, they are light and fresh and pretty just like she is. I know this quilt looks huger than king single, but it isn't, it just looks that way on the design wall. Would you believe, I had just enough blocks to make the two quilts, with two spare? I think that's amazing, serendipity.

I am now looking for someone in Australia who would be willing to donate the machine quilting one one or both of the quilts.. please contact me if you can help.

For the last few weeks I have been head down, bum up working on this.

What was going to be a quick, fun project for an upcoming issue of Quilters Companion turned into a bit of an epic.... I just fell in love with the fabrics (they are all 100% Italian cotton shirtings) and decided to hand quilt it to within an inch of it's life.

The things I do. I put the last stitch in the binding today ready to Express Post to the editor tomorrow. Sorry to be so slow Clare.... however I was held up by slipping on a piece of discarded pizza in Westfield shops before Christmas, nearly breaking every bone in my body! Bruises are gone finally :) 

Thought you may like to see my able bodied helpers. Here's Damo the Sherpa holding one corner, Charlie fled in horror from the other end at the suggestion he might be on the blog again. Sorry dude.

A fewo other cool things to direct your attention to - the Made in Cherry Quilt Along. 

Chelsea at Pins and Bobbins is running this using my free pattern for the St Ives collection I did this year for Lecien. You can get all the details at her blog. Due to popular demand, I have some more kits for the quilts (which you can see at Chelsea's blog too) on my website for sale using all the original fabrics. The kits are $180 AUS and contain all the fabric for the 80" square top, and the binding. You don't have to use my fabric for the quilt along of course, but if you want to you can - and I am also happy to work up kits in the alternative sizes Chelsea provides in St Ives as well. Just drop me an email to [email protected].

Also on the website at present are new patterns available in PDF or hard copy, notions including my applique kits and templates for quilts in Material Obsession Two, Quilting: From Little Things and for my Bangles quilt (in this month's Get Creative magazine), my books and also my applique DVD. If you can't find something you're looking for, just shout!

Recently updated (like, today) you will find in the sidebar my dates for teaching this year... and in the next few years too. I will update this as often as possible. If you would like more info on any of the classes, please let me know. I'm so looking forward to going to all the amazing places I've been invited, as well as getting back to normal teaching at Cottage Quiltworks in Mona Vale and Calico and Ivy in Balmain. There are currently places available at both shops for the term - and also a few spots left for a one off class at Quiltsmith in Annandale on January 23rd. Please let me know asap if you are interested!

Quilting Daily has put out a free downloadable quilt block book, featuring 6 different quilts previously published in their magazines... and one of them is my A Dotty Garden quilt. Want to make it? Hop over to Quilting Daily for the pattern.

Surely that's all the cool stuff for now? I'd better hold some back so I can blog it later in the week, in case I run out :) I'm off to the studio to stitch some more of those beautiful blocks together. Adios!

PS. One more, cool and awesome, fun thing. Amy and I are launching our new 2012 project soon - nope, not Dolly Quilts this year, a BOM instead. Stay tuned!!!

Hiedy-Ho

Happy New Year everybody! Seems like weeks since I blogged, and well, I guess it is. Truth is, although I love Christmas and everything the end of the year brings, this year it just all got the better of me a bit and I needed a proper break, so I've not blogged, Twittered, Facebooked or Pintrest-ed for a while. I feel strangely free.

Instead I've been quilting a lot less than I should of a quilt I have due, and reading a lot more than I should of some great books.

Aussie Christmas is a different experience to the snowy ones experienced by so many of you. My Aussie Christmas is all about the heat, the bright colours, the summer flavours and the beach. I got plenty of all of them this season....

As well as plenty of family when all 13 of us sat down for Christmas lunch and my (mercifully!!) very moist and tasty turkey!

A wonderful few weeks filled with salt, sand, and a beautiful boat trip on my Dad's little ferry, and happy, happy kids.

1, 2, 3 - jump!

Yep, it was rough. 

Back to life, back to reality...