Taking stock

The trouble with doing too many lots of projects at once is the feeling of moving in slow motion - nothing seems to be progressing. I know I'm spending hours on it... but where exactly ...?

So I gathered the projects for a quick stocktake.

Here is my Stars meet Hexagons - not looking much different but it has got larger since last report, and there is a lot prepped ready to sew. I am aiming for lap quilt size and still love the fussy cutting.

Here is a quilt I started in my monthly quilt class and posted about here in December - a wedding gift for my niece ( I'm calling it my Double X or Lucy's quilt). It has been all machine pieced in class with one flying geese border ready to add. I've learnt a lot about machine piecing in the process but still don't enjoy it as much as hand work, so it largely only gets worked on in class.

I'm just about to start Block 5 on the Benjamin Biggs BOM - and here are the fabrics selected ready.

There has been progress on my Ann Randoll reproduction - but lately some of it backwards. I'm really enjoying the challenge of this quilt but might need a little extra hair colour added this month (to cover the extra white hairs that Ann has contributed!). Three minor hiccups ...

• Glue stains. After the pinwheel border comes an applique vine border with an large sawtooth edge. Here is the border attached with the sawtooth completed ready to add the bias and leaves of the vine.

The placement of the bias vine is fairly tricky - so it lines up with the corner feature and there must be enough room for leaves either side - see below.

Well - I decided on my first attempt to try glue (Roxanne bottled glue) to attach the bias strip to the border background ready to applique. But once it dried I found my placement was wrong so removed the bias - only to find some truly nasty glue stains were going to be visible. I washed/scrubbed/soaked it every way possible but they would not come out! So that border had to be scrapped and started again. And the lesson learnt ? extreme caution if anchoring applique with glue! I went back to pins...

Here is the stained reject:

• The hole - when I unpicked a seam to adjust it (another story). A patched repair.

A patch inserted

Not too noticeable in the scheme of things...

• Running out of fabric. I realised part way through appliqueing the vine leaves that I had very little of this fabric left and it was not a good feeling as I know it is long out of print. Not easy to work out how much was needed for the rest so I just plodded on regardless. With the help of my lightpad and the back basting prep technique for applique I managed to to wedge the leaves into every skerrick of the remaining fabric, leaving the tiniest seam allowance for needleturn - and just made it - phew!

Pinning for back basting prep on the leaves

some leaves ready for back basting stitching 

nearly finished the vine leaves

Now measures 55 inches square

Plenty more borders to come - just in case anyone thought it might be finished! No rest for the wicked? Next is a wide border of clamshells.

There has been some secret knitting: 

There's been a teeny bit more machine quilting of my Medallion quilt ....

So that's the stock take done - no finishes but lots of "nibbles" of this and that. 

 Autumn has been especially colourful in the Southern Highlands this year. Here is part of my garden.  Yes - am loving the colour of the maples, grapevine and golden ash, but am not loving the colour of the lawn! Actually it is very green under that bird netting :)

The reason for the netting is a desperate woman's defense against a flock of crows who have adopted our hill as their territory. They are usually quite harmless but at the moment have been ripping this lawn to shreds in search of beetles. It seems there's been an infestation of lawn beetles/grubs. I have spread powder to kill the beetles but the crows are not convinced and keep ripping the grass up to check! So the netting is there for a little while... hopefully not long, hehe.