Panda quilt along - head and body together

He still needs his back legs and his ears finishing off, will do that tomorrow, its now time for bed!

Panda quilt along - progress

Happily everything went much better after supper. I managed to cut the pieces out without mishap, so he now has a body!

Panda quilt along

I saw a really cute Panda quilt along on AJ's Blog and have been tempted to join in... Thought it would be fun to spend the afternoon playing catchup..... I'm only 5 weeks behind!

Have learnt that I can't follow clear precise instructions even if they come with very good diagrams/pictures?!

I cut out the face, cutting several pieces the wrong size in the process!

When I began to piece it and realised I had no back ground fabric, and was consequently 2 pieces short. The only fabric I liked and had enough of needed washing.
(Note to self wash all the fabric recently bought... eeek there's yards of it!)
Then the picture went horribly wrong, I managed to lose the ears in the background, had to place it on a white background so you could see it.

Not sure this panda likes me :0)

However, here's my progress so far.

Will now have a break, go make some supper, then back to the attack this evening perhaps.....?

Little Gem/Twilt

Why as someone who doesn't 'do' flowers am I drawn to flowers of late?

Its half term my youngest son is at my brother's, I had an entire day to sew so I made another stash busting twilt for the Little Gem tombola.

Size: A4 (approx 11 3/4" x 8 1/4")
Techniques: piecing, machine quilting with a multi-coloured thread
Fabrics: all from my scrap box so perhaps that's not stash busting, the greens are hand dyed the rest commercial prints.

Twilt Tuesday

Ooops I put the link in but forgot to say Twilt Tuesday is an idea of Shelley Swanland for more info pop over to Shelly's blog, then why not join in? :)

Finished it!

Twilt Tuesday. Must confess I didn't finish it today finished it at the weekend but only just got round to taking a picture, does it still count?! :)

'Curves Conquered' is now all finished the quilting is done, the label made and attached along with the binding and hanging sleeve. This one is going on my wall.

Size 15.5" x 19"
Techniques: curved piecing, machine quilting with glittery metallic threads, my first really successful attempt using these threads
Fabrics: Commercial and hand dyed fabrics all from my stash, which makes it a stash buster quilt too, woo hoo!

Thinking of having another go at some more pieced curves now.

Curves Conquered - update

Have spent the weekend quilting the sample I began at the Anja Townrow workshop last weekend and have sewn the binding on this morning, it just needs hand stitching in place. Now I know this will come as a shock to people as(I constantly tell your) I am no hand sewer but I do like to hand finish my bindings. I find it is the only way I can get everything stitched down and kept in place without any flappy bits! I am saving this last bit to do next weekend when I have the delightful pleasure of watching lots of sweaty 13 yr old boys run round a field after a bag of wind... yes my son has a football (soccer to our friends from across the pond) tournament on, I can hardly wait, just hope the weather bucks up a bit. Spring and summer appear to be over and now we are back to autumn, its cold, windy,and raining in buckets, out there!

I digress... Anja is a great one for quilting with more unusual threads not just run of the mill invisible or cottons. I have lots of metallics in my stash (who doesn't?) but have never used them for quilting before (they invariably shred, get tangled, break needles etc.). So following Anja's advice I was able to use them successfully, and I now have a quilt with bling or should that be a bling quilt?!

I managed to quilt it with only one broken needle caused by the one thread that wouldn't behave itself, but I refused to give in and forced it to become part of the quilt, it was of course the one I wanted to, and did, do most of the quilting in!