Retro flowers quilt top finished!

Yeeeee - haaaaa!
Yep. That's a massive cheer from me! This took me ages to finish - I thought it may not ever happen. So many seams to match but the effect is great.

Still a work in progress though...unless the magic quilting fairies turn up sometime soon! Linking up at Lee's:

Paper Piecing Blog Hop Begins!

It is the 1st of August! That means the Blog Hop can begin. Well, it can for us in the Antipodes, some of you might need to wait a few more hours!! Hop on over to Kristy's and see what she is up to!

While I plan my paper piecing project (gulp!), I am continuing to work on my retro flowers. My  flowers appear slowly... whenever I feel like doing more challenging sewing. They are not hard to make, but they do require a bit of fussing around so that all the seams match.

I  have six left to make, but I'm in no hurry.

Linking up over at Lee's:

Retro flowers on a break

I have to take a break from my retro flowers for a while - I'm out of white fabric and so is my local shop where I bought this particular white. I'm reluctant to change whites mid project, so the last four flowers will not be appearing for a bit. But I'm chuffed with how they look so far.

What to do in the meantime? Twiddle my fingers? Practice my FMQ? I know! Start a random new quilt on the spur of the moment! I decided to use my Kate Spain Good Fortune charm squares and make a start on Katy's Constellation quilt. Because it seems I can't get enough of stars - and because I just can't decide what to do with my shot cotton bundle.

In other news, I went to a modern quilters meeting last night at The Little Craft Store (thanks Helen for making me feel so welcome). Great fun...and homework! Yay!...That is certainly the way to a teacher's heart! More on the homework later...

The bad, the good and the ugly

The bad
I have made a retro flower using stripes. I tried to avoid it knowing it was going to cause me some headaches but I really wanted to use the fabric for this quilt. I counselled myself to work slowly and spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted the stripes to look. Just when I thought I was on the home stretch this happened:

The good
Three petals later (yes, I managed to repeat the same mistake twice more), I did get the flower I wanted:

The ugly
I have decided this flower will have to go on the back. It was one of the first ones I made. I was concentrating so hard on the curves and matching seams that it did not occur to me that a large gingham print wasn't going to play nicely:

I have tried to convince myself that this block is ok. But I know that the fabric going this way and that will always annoy me.

If you want to see some great mini quilts, pop over to the AMQG website. Our guild made cot quilts to donate to the Auckland Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit. We decided to make it a friendly 'viewers choice' competition open to all - click here to see the quilts and cast your votes!

Back in the saddle

Not literally of course (although once upon time when I was young I was a horse rider). After what seems like a long break from my sewing machine I finally had time to start a new project today. I decided I wanted to make the Retro Flowers quilt. I'm not quilting-along with the group  because I seem to be a bit of a disaster at this if the NYB quilt along is anything to go by.

I'm not sure if it is because it has been such a sunny warm Easter, but I had an urge to make something in spring-like colours. I made this selection after spending at least an hour dithering about in the fabric shop this morning.

It took me a long time to grow my first flower. I accidentally only trimmed 3 edges of the first petal I made, and failing to notice it wasn't square meant that I spent ages wondering why my seams were hopelessly un-aligned. Fortunately the following three petals went together much more speedily. Yay.