a fabric swap

I joined Leslie Keating's Handprinted: a fabric swap III.

My four swap partners come from all over - USA, Canada, Wales and Australia.

The idea is to hand print a fat quarter of fabric for each person.  Each person specified their favourite colour/s, I think I mostly met their requests.

Here is a sneak preview:

The four packages have been posted ...  now what will I receive?

More minis

Some more small quilts for Neonates.  Another Mosaic pattern by Elizabeth Hartman

And another Mosaic, I think this will be my last using this style. 

 

I've almost used up my supply of pink FQs.  Various widths of strips of pink had white strips joined at either end.  This was a bit random if I did this again I'd take more care with the lengths of each piece when cutting.


I used this piece to practice my free motion feathers.  I spray starched the top, stabilised the back with freezer paper then using a stencil marked the feathers with an ordinary pencil.  
  
The spray starch and freezer paper makes the whole surface like drawing on paper.  Any pencil marks either wear off when stitching or just wash out.  

After the marking the pattern and removing the freezer paper the quilt top was basted and quilted.  Another advantage with the spray starch is that the quilting surface is nice and smooth.

This is based on Elizabeth Hartman's Sparkle Punch Quilt (follow the link for her tutorial).  Here I was using up my bright FQs. 

The quilting is Orange Peel.  Looks hard but is quite easy using the grid created by the seams.

Next time I'd try making the stars a solid and the background patterned.

A Day Out

The in-laws were in town so we had a day out.  Drove to the other side of the harbour and to the end of the road. Its been a long time since I'd been that far along - there is now a Wahine memorial for the 1968 disaster. 

Hebe

Followed by a picnic lunch at Days Bay and a bit of a walk up in the bush.