Bound together

With winter finally upon us, last Saturday morning was so chilly you might have been forgiven for dubbing our depleted St Mark's Quilters 'the frozen few'.

But hot coffee, Michelle's yummy chocolate Florentines, and a cosy heated hall soon had us properly warmed up. It was just the weather for sitting with cosy quilts over our knees, the conversation flowing freely while we carefully hand stitched the bindings on our Blankets of Love and kindy quilts for The Marcia, a kindy for autistic children.

Susie was binding this kindy quilt.

Margaret was binding another kindy quilt in similar bright fabrics. 

Di B was a step behind, machining the binding onto a baby quilt in her favourite colour combination of blue, yellow and white.

Gail had a sweet Blanket of Love warming her lap. Dots, chevrons and gingham checks in aqua create such a fresh, clean look, and she has the skill it takes to use a check for the binding, keeping it accurately lined up.

Gillian (left) and Michelle (right) sat together.

Gillian finished off the binding on two Blankets of Love, one for a boy and one for a girl....

...while Michelle made progress with her doggy-themed strippy quilt.

Di C machined the binding to her quilt, but then (like most of us) couldn't resist playing with a new selection of fabrics and sketching and planning her next quilt. 

She and likes to plan her quilts thoroughly, and has a wonderful feel for colour.

Liz was also enjoying the excitement of starting on a new quilt, opening up and ironing a stack of Japanese style fat quarters ready for cutting. I can't wait to see what she does with these😊.

And apart from floating around taking photos I (finally!) started stitching down the binding on my Economy Blockalong Quilt that's been lurking in the background for a few months. It's an I Spy quilt with novelty fabrics fussy cut for the centre of each block, and will go to a little person at The Marcia once we have enough quilts to warrant a delivery.

Di B and I were delighted to report to the ladies that we'd recently delivered 46 Blankets of Love and several dozen knitted beanies to our other mission, the Royal Prince Alfred Newborn Intensive Care Nursery.

I've updated our Blankets of Love and Kindy Quilts galleries too, if you have a few spare minutes to take a look.

Back in the hall we were feeling more comfortable as the day went on, stitching, nibbling and chatting. 

Outside it was warming up too. 

By the time we closed the doors and headed for home the sky was blue, the few remaining leaves on the trees shone like little gold flakes, and our band of happy quilters had earnt the description, 'golden girls'!

My 2014 Word for the Year, and the journey begins 

Well, my year has started on a reasonably (for me) productive note, with a growing stack of Economy Blockalong blocks waiting to have their bunny ears trimmed off and be cut down to size.

 

I like to chain stitch them, first pinning the triangles in place and stackng them beside the machine ready for the assembly line.

Then on a bright a summer's day last week it seemed appropriate to use some of my very favourite, sunny Kaffe Fassett fabrics to make these padded coat hangers.

Speaking of hang-ups (how's that for a segue?), have you seen this woman lately?

She used to be so adventurous, hugging tigers in Thailand, riding camels in the Middle East, roaring through the Arabian desert on the back of a clapped out ute following in the steps of Lawrence of Arabia...

But after seeing a precious life extinguished in seconds, she's so conscious of the fragility of life that she's becoming afraid of her own shadow.

You've probably realized by now that I'm talking about myself, a bit of a 'cowardy custard' these days without my man.

So when blogging friends started writing about their Word for 2014 and asking me for mine I felt it was time to take a good hard look at myself and decide on a characteristic I'd like to embrace this year.

COURAGE

That's it. My Word for 2014. And I'm going to need a humongous dose of it.

As I write this I'm sitting at a departure gate about to embark on a huge adventure, I'm on my way to Africa to visit my friend Wendi, a quilter, in Zimbabwe for a few days, and then I'm Botswana bound, to see Sarah. She lives in a country where, as far as I can gather, deadly snakes, spiders and scorpions abound, rhinos charge, baboons will abscond with your groceries, and roaring lions prowl the bush at night. I'm not sounding very courageous yet, am I?

On my way, traveling alone for the first time, I have to negotiate airports I've never been to before, and learn to cope with take-offs without anxiously grasping the arm of the surprised stranger seated beside me.

My phone is loaded with recordings of some of Boak's sermons, so I can listen to his wise words, and Di B has made me some pretty luggage tags.

Another friend has given me a new jacket in my very favourite colour to keep me dry in the tropical downpours Southern Africa is currently experiencing.

I have my hand sewing packed in a gorgeous Korean quilted satin bag that my daughter-in-law's mother gave me.

And Sarah and Wendi are forming a texting cheer squad to encourage me on the journey. I feel surrounded by so much love!

Best of all, I have this promise...

.

..

Economy Blockalong with all the trimmings

This time last year the Scrappy Tripalong was taking the worldwide quilting community by storm. Every second blogger, it seemed, was slicing up scraps and machining them together to create spectacular Trip Around the World quilts, many of which were definitely more beautiful than the sum of their often 'ugly duckling' parts.

Oh, how I wished I could join in, but I had a house to empty, two cats to relocate and a new home to find for myself and Chester the Wonderlab.

Those issues sorted, I could hardly contain my excitement when the Instagram quilting community began to spread the word on this year's craze by Katy of I'm a Ginger Monkey and Brenda of Pink Chalk Fabrics - the Economy Blockalong.

Instagrammers, just search the hashtag #economyblockalong.

I thought very carefully before committing to the Economy Blockalong, asking myself several important questions…

Do I like to create scrappy quilts? {Sure do!}
Do I have enough scraps to make this quilt? {Are you kidding?}
Do I have enough time to fit in another project? {Insert slight eye-rolling and nonchalant whistling}

 These Economy Blocks are so darned addictive that I'm going to have enough for a bed quilt in no time. Who needs to sleep anyway?

With every round of triangles needing to be trimmed down along the way, my pretty pile of strings and threads is steadily growing. I've completed 15 blocks so far.

Mine finish at 9.5" before being sewn together, but if you'd prefer even bigger blocks Katy of Monkey Do has a tutorial for a 12" finished block, and a downloadable pattern for a foundation pieced version of the block.

Rita of Red Pepper Quilts has a tutorial for her small-but-perfectly-formed blocks finishing at 5". There's also a downloadable pattern for the foundation pieced version here too. These are so sweet, but right now I just don't have either the time or the patience to make such tiny blocks.

How about you? Are you coming on board?