Merry Christmas!

Yesterday I successfully defended my PhD thesis (yes, NZ readers  - on the very last day of the university year, just before the commencement of the great NZ shutdown!!) It feels like the best kind of Christmas this year with days of nothing but lazing around with family and friends ahead.

Merry Christmas to you all my crafty friends!

A small Y-seam miracle!

I'm a huge fan of Rachel@woodenspoon. When I saw her mini-quilt using Sarah Fielke's 'Night Garden' pattern from the book Quilting from little things, I decided to be brave and have a go at those awkward Y-seams.

1. All looking pretty ok so far, but don't get too excited Megan, winter is coming...

2. Perhaps a tad over-zealous with my pencil, but I can never see tidy little dots I mark.

3. Now, Sarah's book is lovely, but I have to say, a bit minimalist as far as diagrams go. I could not understand the instruction "When you reach the Y junction of the seam, pivot on your needle and continue sewing out to the stem of the Y" with no picture to help. Hmmmmm. I appeared to be on the wrong side of the fabric to pivot, so I went for an origami approach instead.

4. OMG!! It worked.

5. A little undersized, but its not from the sea, so no need to throw it back.

6. I'm pretty happy with this little experiment. The sun is shining, I'm going to celebrate by heading to the beach and just maybe, my first sea swim of the summer.

My lovely pouch {and some Penny Patch progess}

We had a fun time at our Monday Modern meeting this week. There might have been wine involved ;-)
A secret santa gift exchange was also involved. We each made a small gift, popped them into santa's large plastic bag (he's all style) and took turns to choose one that we knew wasn't our own. After unwrapping them each person tried to guess who had made the present they had received. I didn't do so well at guessing, but my pouch turned out to be made by Karyn. I love this fabric and it had the most perfect looking zip.

It is a most excellent size for storing my paper piecing supplies:

(Just focus on the pouch and ignore the attention seeker in the corner)

I did a bit of sewing this morning then a lot of humming and haaaahing over my Penny Patch quilt. 

I'm not entirely feeling the love. I think the teal is a bit too samey samey (technical term) so I'm going to try and add a few different greens in. More head scratching and indecision to follow I suspect.

Catching up

Hello quilty friends! I'm back from my whistle stop tour of London and Copenhagen - great cities with lots to see and do! I did not purchase ANY fabric at all - well done me :-) Instead I turned my geeky attention elsewhere - the British Library, for example, which I completely loved.

However, fabric and textiles are never too far from my mind. I spent ages in the V and A museum in London admiring garments and fabric and of course those amazing tapestries.

I snapped a shot of my friend's rug thinking it was interesting inspiration for a quilt:

And finally, just to prove I did make to Aarhus University, here I am with my friend Kirsten. Alas, I am not the glamorous looking blonde...