Little Birdie Pirates

I have finally finished all the blocks for the Birdie Stitches quilt.  Aside from falling behind because I was too busy doing other things, I also hit a snag in November.  

Most of the block designs centred around the seasons or holidays/celebrations in the U.S.  This was okay, I'd just decided that I'd do a bit of a re-arrange when I made my quilt, make the seasons match the southern hemisphere etc.  Until I got to November... the block was about Thanksgiving.  We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia so it had no significance to me.

After finishing all the other blocks, I laid them out to see which designs could go in which month.  Hubby and I decided to leave the 'blank' month in September, which is my daughter's birthday month (this is destined to be her 'big girl bed' quilt).  She is also born on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so that settled it and we had to have a pirate birdie.  In the end it was a pirate birdie opening a treasure chest which is a present.

So now I have to get too and put the quilt top together.  I have all the fabric ready, but it might have to wait till my house guests leave.

My mum and 10 year old niece are visiting for a little over a week so there is lots of time spent in the sewing room after baby has gone to bed.  Tonight we are working on making a cushion cover.

My niece has selected fabrics and sewn squares together, now she is attaching ribbons and braids to decorate it. She has done all the sewing herself which is great.  It was fun watching her work through the design process, selecting fabrics she liked but then discovering they don't go together and having to find new ones.  She is currently looking for fabrics to make a cushion cover for her younger brother.  Hopefully I can share some pictures with you when she's finished.

Two birds with one stone (or needle?)

Thanks to my bright idea of moving my floor lamp into the front lounge room, I've been able to enjoy my recent habit of watching TV with hubby AND make progress on some of my hand sewing.  That's how I caught up with my hexagons the other week.

So the last few days I've been concentrating on my Birdie Stitches blocks.  I've now finished October and December.

I haven't done November as it is based around Thanksgiving, and being an Australian, this means nothing to me.  I've also rearranged the block order because a lot of them match up with the Northern Hemisphere seasons and I want them to match ours.  This means that my 'missing' month may not be November.  Hoping that I can work with hubby to design an extra block and then it will be all ready to put together.  I had decided that I wanted to finish these blocks (minus November) this year, and I put the star on the tree last night!

I'm not planning on starting any BOMs next year, but I have signed up for the Free Motion Quilt Challenge, which is a once a month task, so that should be enough to keep me busy.  I've still got all those Civil War blocks to catch up on too!!!

Last week I received my December hexies, I just kept forgetting to photograph them.  I love the cute little owls, and the sunflowers actually remind me of some underwear I used to own, would you believe!!  LOL

Birdie Stitches September

I really need to pay more attention to the auto focus on my camera.

I enjoyed getting back into my Birdie Stitches and just sitting on the couch sewing.  Lucky for me I've still got the October block to do now!

Birdie Stitches June

Although I feel like I've hardly spent any time in my sewing room lately, I have managed to catch up on the June block of Birdie Stitches (although I'm rapidly falling behind on September!).

This one sat on the backburner for a while because I didn't like the idea of putting the year into the quilt.  This quilt is destined to be my daughter's Big Girl Bed quilt, if she likes it.  I wont finish the quilt this year, and this year isn't when she was born or anything like that.  I had contemplated putting her name, but knowing my luck, if I did that, she'd tell me she didn't like the quilt!

I was looking through the Birdie Stitches flickr group the other day to see what other people had done with this block.  Someone had included the word 'dream' and I thought that was rather nice.  I consulted with my husband, he's always good at things like this, and he suggested the word 'soar'.  It kept with the birdie theme and has a great motivational meaning too.  So once that was decided, I finished the block rather quickly.

I really enjoyed embroidering the cursive writing and am thinking I should include them in my other work a bit more.

Crossing things off my list

At the beginning of the month I made a list of things to catch up on.  And this is where I'm up to:

The pattern that was supposed to be finished at the end of July is all done!  (but it's a surprise still)

My Retro Nine Patch quilt is finished in time for Lyn's showcase.  She said we can post pictures if we want, but I think I'll wait till then to show you all.  In the mean time, here is a silly sneak peek.  Since it is destined to be a doll quilt for my daughter I figured I'd better try it out with a doll!

My hexagons for August have been posted off and here are my September ones ready to go sometime next week.

My Block Lotto is all up to date, I even remembered to email my sneak peek block pictures to Sophie (but obviously I can't show you yet...)

I'm still a bit behind with the Civil War blocks, but since I've made five blocks this month I'm not so far behind as I was before.

I've finished another whole Birdie Stitches block.  For the sunflower centre and the birdie chest I decided to use a lattice stitch I'd seen in a magazine a few months ago.  You make really long straight stitches across the whole area, and then do tiny cross stitches over all the intersections.  I love the effect it gives, seems to jump out at you more than back-stitch does.  I think I'll try and use this stitch again some time.  I might have to design an embroidery pattern specially!

That leaves just one more Birdie Stitches block to finish in order to be up to date, and I'm halfway through that already.  Can I finish it in two days?

And lastly was my Wee Folk quilt, which I posted about earlier in the month, but here is another photo just because.

This is now hanging on the back of a chair in my sewing room because it doesn't have an end purpose.  I have a feeling I'm going to end up with a room full of things hanging over the backs of chairs!

I'm a Desperate Housewife

I finally got around to making some of the other blocks from the Desperate Housewife's Quilt-as-you-wish-along.

The first is 'Evolution' by Jane

The pinwheels are actually blue and pink (not red), my screen doesn't show up the colour very well.

The second is 'Quasar' by Wedding Dress Blue

I really love how both these blocks turned out, and they look even better in the photo, I guess because you have that effect of standing back and seeing them rather than the close up view.  I love the Quasar one so much I'd like to make more of them in the same colours, but all the fabrics came from my scrap bin so I might not be able to get all of them the same.

I've also been working on catching up my Civil War blocks
27 Irish Chain

Fabrics for this one are the Baby Hand Print mini quilt I made, and the fabric I used for the labels on the kids puppy/dino quilts

28 Next Door Neighbor

The background star fabric is left over from my husband's coffee quilt, which I used again the other week to line the wallet I made for his Tablet PC (which is still a work in progress because the design brief changed after I thought I'd finished it!).  The purple, pinky/orange and light green are all from hexies I made, and the darker green is some of the fabric I received from my Mug Rug Swap Adventure II partner.

29 Railroad Crossing

All these fabrics come from my Desperate Housewife's quilt block 'Perspective'.  The background is very dark purple, even though it appears almost black here.  I really love how this block turned out.

30 Peterson's Stars & Stripes

Luckily enough, this week I had red and blue fabrics to choose from to get the American flag effect which is the point of this block.  The red and yellow strips are fabrics I bought at the recent craft show and the blue is the binding off my dinosaur quilt.

31 Empty Spools

Fabrics for this are the backing from my Wee Folks quilt and one of the yellows I used in my block lotto blocks this month.  I cut the fabric really carefully to line up the stripes but then forgot about the seam allowances, so they didn't match up after all.  I don't really like how the block came out at all.  I might get around to redoing later.  Or maybe I wont.

And my final catch up item for tonight is Birdie Stitches.  This is actually the July block, I've skipped over June for the moment, and am now working on August, which is progressing rather quickly thanks to a sooky baby who wants me to sit in the lounge near her while she plays!

I feel so much better after having caught up on all these blocks.  I'm now only one week behind on Civil War blocks by my standards, and my outstanding Birdie Stitches are now down to 1-1/2 from 2-1/2.  Another few things to cross off my August to-do list.

Birdie Stitches and a goal reached

Here is last month's Birdie Stitches block:

I took the photo a while ago but keep forgetting to post.

And this post is 9 of 9, therefore completing part of my May Challenge!  Stay tuned to hear about the rest of it.

Weeks and months keep slipping by

And more Birdie and Civil War blocks are complete.

Civil War block 15 is Fort Sumter.

The centre nine patch represents the Fort surrounded by blue water and the red is the lines of fire from the shore.  I think this is the first time I've done a square in a square block and I quite like the look.  The fabric choices for this week are made up of fabrics I bought from AQC, and some others which I found in my sewing room whilst I was doing some tidying up.  I'm really liking that leafy pattern in the centre, and luckily the fat quarter I bought contains the selvedge with the name on it so I *might* be able to obtain some more.

Block 16 is White House

I did the pinwheel the wrong way around on this.  Of course I didn't realise until I went to press the pieces and had already cut the fabric.  Oh, well, in the grand scheme of things, no one will know, and I'll probably even forget by the time I come to make up a quilt with these.  The fabric choices are my friend's birthday present which I'm working on at the moment (and can't show you because she reads this.... you'll just have to wait!), and the red is the same as the previous block because in needed an extra colour.

The next block needs blue, so I guess I'll have to make sure I work on something blue this week.  What a good excuse to start cutting out my nephew's dinosaur quilt.

Birdie Stitches Block 4

I've started to mix up the colours on these a little from what Little Miss Shabby does, which quite a few other people are doing as well. I like the effect. I might have to go back and change some of the earlier blocks so that they look right compared to the newer blocks.  I'm still trying to stick to the basic idea though, because I feel I have to have some respect for the person who has designed the picture.  I'm loving these blocks, they're so cute and colourful.  I hope my daughter likes birds, since at the moment this is destined to be her quilt.

Birdie Stitches Block 3

I finished this last weekend but apparently I didn't blog it....

This block was nice and quick to do, lots of long lines!  I decided to make the dots in the rainbow in the silver colour, kind of like rain drops, and the bird tail dots are green just for some extra colour.

These are so fun and cute, can't wait till next month.

Birdie Stitches Block 2

Late as usual, I finally got around to doing my Birdie Stitches Block 2.  When I completed block 1, I followed the colour layout exactly, but then after seeing all the variations in the Flickr group I realised I could have changed a few things to make it personal.  I was then stuck with the dilema of do I now go ahead and change colours around a little bit at the risk of the first block looking out of place, or do I stick with following the original design for the whole quilt?

In the end I fiddled with a little bit (the colours of the flowers) but left everything else.

I may end up doing lots of changes as I go through the blocks but I guess I can always come back to the earlier blocks and change them if they look out of place.

The colours in the above photo are a bit off because I was photographing in the fading light of the evening.

Again I used water soluble marker, but this time I just sprayed it with my ironing bottle rather than washing it under a running tap.  Don't quite have the same crinkled up mess of the last block.

Speaking of the last block, even though I pre-washed the white fabric, it looks like the centre square has shrunk after being rinsed.  I couldn't work out why.  This month it occurred to me that maybe the pellon had shrunk!  Of course I thought of this after I'd ironed on the pellon for this month.  I couldn't locate any information online about preshrinking pellon (other than to iron it, which obviously doesn't apply to the iron-on version), so I followed the same instructions I'd found for whisperweft when looking the other day.  I'll have to wait till next month now to see if it had any effect.

I've finished constructing all the squares for this, and yesterday I bought a larger embroidery hoop so I can do it all in one go without moving the hoop.  It's all systems go!

Birdie Stitches Block 1

This block was posted at the beginning of the  month, but since I only decided to start it on Friday, I've only just finished it.  Still in time, since there is a whole day left before Febuary starts!

I'll actually be sort of behind with all the blocks since I intend to work on them at my once a month craft days and these usually take place in the middle of the month (or later).

In the background you can see where I've cut up the strips for the rest of the blocks.  I'm going to sew up all the blocks in the next month and then they're ready to go when I want to start the embroidery.  Hopefully then I'll be able to finish each block in the one day.  Yesterday I didn't get it completely finished because I was spending time sewing up the block, tracing the design and binding my embroidery hoop.

Also, I decided the yellow thread I had bought was not really bright enough for the design and the border fabric.  It was too difficult to distinguish it from the cream thread, so today I headed to Spotlight and bought a brighter colour (which you can see the bird done in the picture).

I have put iron-on pellon (Vilene H630) behind the design.  This gives it a nice texture to the stitchery, and also helps to hide the threads in the back when you carry them across the design.  I found it made the whole process much easier, but harder to put my finger on why.  I think I will be doing this (or something similar) for all future stitcheries.  Only thing I have to work out now is how to iron it and get out all those wrinkles around the snowman.  I washed the block in cold water after sewing it because I'd used a wash out marker for the design, but now it all looks a bit crumpled.  Any suggestions?  Or should I not worry about it until I get to putting the whole top together and go to quilt it?

So that's 1 of 12 down.... I can't wait for next month to see the design.  Luckily I will only have to wait a few days to see it, but then I have to wait about two weeks till I can sew it!  I also need to buy a bigger embroidery hoop.  I had to sew the snowman and then move the hoop to sew the bird.  My next hoop up is far too big.

How many projects can a person do at one time?

So I found an excuse to talk myself into doing the Birdie Stitches block of the month!  I have a once a month craft gathering with my friends and hand sewing is best so we can all sit around the family room.  I don't have any hand sewing projects on the go at the moment, so I decided I could do the BOM and each time we meet this year I can work on the stitcheries.

I've decided to use the Me and My Sister Favourites (by Moda) jelly roll that I bought from Green Fairy Quilts a while ago.  I'm using plain white for the stitchery backgrounds, and have only altered the recommended thread colours slightly, choosing colours a shade brighter to go with my fabric.

So stay tuned for monthly updates on that one.  I need to go now and iron my fabric after prewashing, and cut out a square to start stitching tomorrow.  Not sure if I'll get time tonight to put the border on it, but I'd like to get all the borders done at some point before I have to do any of the following months stitcheries.