October's goal

September left without my realising it and without achieving my goal to quilt my "Overlapping Octagons" for the UandU QAL.

All was going well until inflammation in my right shoulder put pay to machine quilting two weeks ago. Although the shoulder is less painful now and I'm sewing again, I haven't dared to try quilting. It was probably heaving the quilt through my machine that caused the injury in the first place.

So far I have quilted about two thirds of the vertical blue sections. I've been using a quilting ruler and foot for the first time and there are lots of imperfections. I can live with them; you have to start somewhere! Once the vertical sections are finished I can start on the horizontal and then the red squares; let's hope I get this finished this month!

My goal for October is to finish my Overlapping Octagons.

I'm linking up to

 

Click on the button to see more October goals.

Happy sewing

Marly.

The last purple bow ties

September's rainbow scrap colour is purple. I showed a few blocks earlier in the month, but made these three this afternoon, at the eleventh hour, as it were. These were three of my haul from the "uglies" table at a quilt bee a few months ago.

I think the top right will have to be on the border between pale blue and purple in the final layout; it hasn't yet decided what colour it really is! I haven't seen October's colour yet, but I think I have enough bow ties, and I'm starting on the layout.

Have a good week!

I'm linking to
 
Click on the button to see more purple scrappiness.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Some purple bow ties

Angela posts a colour every month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and this month's colour is purple. I thought last month's colour would be purple, so while I was waiting for Angela's post I jumped the gun and made one at the beginning of August. It may even have crept into one of last month's posts, but here are all my purple bow ties so far; both for August and September!

I wasn't planning on doing brown or black, but I do need to make a few more blocks to get a satisfactory layout, so maybe grey will creep in next month too, as well as some of the colours I've already used.

I have another scrappy project on my design wall at the moment:

No planned colour scheme here!
4.5" shoo fly blocks for the 2019 Leaders and Enders challenge organised by Bonnie Hunter. If you're interested in the challenge, or just in the concept of leaders and enders click here.

Another scrappy project that's just come off the wall:

Overlapping Octagons is ready to be layered and quilted.

I'm linking up to 

      and  

Click on the buttons to see more scrappy delights.

Happy sewing

Marly.

One Monthy Goal for September

September is a short month, so here's a short post with my goal.

inspired by a quilt (In Dialogue with an Anonymous Quilt, p.18) in Roderick Kiracofe's book "Unconventional and Unexpected, American Quilts Below the Radar 1950-2000"

Overlapping Octagons should become a quilt. This is my first make at the Unconventional and Unexpected QAL hosted by Sujata Shah.

Quite a few other things are in progress, so here's hoping!

I'm linking to:

Click on the button to see more September goals.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Circles quilt

  My goal for August was to make progress in hand quilting my circles quilt.

 I've made progress in quilting round about 160 of the 180 circles. 

Ready to quilt on the lavender coloured background yesterday evening.

Most of the circles left to quilt are along the edge, where there isn't enough fabric to use the frame.
I've discovered that I can quilt without the frame if I stabilise the the outside edge of the quilt with big machine stitches first. That's enough to ensure I don't pull the fabric sideways while sewing.

Still to do before this is finished:Add the label

1. Quilt the last approx. 20 circles
2. Bind.

I should manage that in the next week or so. Now to choose a WIP or UFO for next month's goal!

I'm linking to

 Click on the button to see more goals achieved.

Happy sewing

Marly.

some pale blue bow ties

For August the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pale and bright blue. I only had two pieces of pale blue large enough to make these two 6" blocks.

They look so washed out, and that isn't because it's raining so hard the whole world looks washed out from here, but because there isn't enough contrast between the pale blue and the neutral fabrics (and the weather doesn't help!). Maybe I'll only have two representatives of pale blue in my quilt.

I have some bright blue, but I used that in the "dark blue" month.

Are the two blocks on the right of the bottom row "dark blue" or "bright blue" ?

I also have these blues:
 

which I would have used in June, but find the print too big for these 6" blocks. They are bright in my opinion, but the print is still as large as it was in June!

And finally, still hot from the iron, my first 4.5" unfinished shoo fly block for the 2019 L&E challenge:

I'm linking up to: 

  

 Click on the buttons to see more scraps at work.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Happy sewing

Marly.

One montly goal for August

This month I hope to make progress on quilting my Circles Quilt, made during the Quilty 365 QAL hosted by Audrey in 2016. I didn't make 365 ( i.e. one a day) circles, as I ran out of room on my design wall in the middle of August, and decided it was large enough. Up until then I had been adding circle to square using the needle turn appliqué technique every evening. The first, on 1 January 2016, took me 3 hours to complete; the last, on 17 August less than half an hour. Practice makes perfect! and quicker!

180 4" (finished) blocks joined in three sections ready for quilting.
Photo from August 2016.

As the circles are all appliquéd by hand I decided to hand-quilt it too. It's taking forever! That's not really surprising as I've only being working on it one evening every two months at the Bee meeting. So far I've only quilted a dozen or so blocks.

although I did stabilise the quilt by machine quilting in the ditch first.

So this month will see a blitz on this quilt. Let's hope practice makes perfect in the hand quilting department too. It's rather too warm at the moment to sit with so much fabric on my lap but I intend to persevere, if necessary sitting on the balcony with the weight of the quilt on the bench next to me. At least the light is good there.

I'm linking to

Click on the button to see more August goals.

Happy sewing

Marly.