Bits and Bobs

The NZ National Quilt Symposium exhibition deadline is looming.  I'm sewing in threads and sewing down facings and hanging sleeves and I'm confident I'll finish up the quilts I'm working on in time.  But that work is all hand sewing and I'm keeping it for evenings on the boat with my family, or for snatches of time in between dinner cooking and homework.

So in the studio this past weekend (it was Queen's Birthday weekend here in NZ so we got Monday off too) I've been doing little catchup jobs.  Bits and bobs.

I put together two bassinet quilt tops and spray basted them.  A friend is running a free-motion quilting class soon and instead of practice quilt sandwiches, she suggests we use bassinet quilts made from orphan blocks.  They are a good size to practice, the orphan blocks give the feeling of working on actual blocks, and they can be donated to the maternity unit after we are done to brighten up the postnatal ward.

I really like the one above.  Very modern.  Made from half-rectangle units that I was practicing technique with (and I've put fun crocodile fabric on the back!).

I have a bit of a pink overload in my stash and some of them are really old-fashioned.  But they look sweet in a simple little quilt like this.  Must make more and use them up!

Then I used my new big pressing surface to fuse down this dragon that has been waiting in the wings.    I sell the appliqué pattern for this panel on Etsy (both PDF downloads and paper copies), but I've been wanting to update my samples for a while.  This is the second dragon I'm doing.

Here's the first updated one I did.  I can't remember whether I showed you or not, so I'll show it again just in case.  She's made from my hand-dyed fabrics and I love how she glows!

Then I found some positive/negative blocks that I had put together as samples for my Aotearoa Tote bag class but never finished into the final bag, so I finished up the free-motion quilting on them and I've sewed them together ready for straps and binding.

I chose a random wood grain pattern to quilt them with.  It's a very 'zen' pattern to quilt.  And one you can do with your walking foot too.

It's very satisfying to make progress on a whole pile of jobs.  I'm not one of those quilters who work exclusively on one or two projects until they are completely finished, but lately, with the symposium deadline coming up fast, that's what I've been doing.  It feels restricting in a way, so to rebel and take steps on a stack of different projects has soothed my spirit a bit.

In fact, I've made such good progress on all my symposium entries that I've decided to make a stab at my unrealistic symposium project.  Do you do that?  A few weeks out, decide on a project that you know will be perfect and start work on it even though you also know it will be totally unrealistic to get it finished?

Here's an Instagram pic of that project I posted a couple of days ago.  It's a little further on than that now, but still in the piecing stage.  Do you think I can do it?!  The race is on!