Strawberries and Butterflies - a finish

My first finished quilt of 2017..............................  Drum roll please!

I present "Strawberries and Butterflies"!

This little Premature baby Quilt was made from already completed 4.5" Crumb blocks, alternating with 4.5" butterfly fabric blocks cut from a FQ which has been in my NZ stash for some years. The sashing is a Strawberry one which I bought this year at Spotlight. I also used the Strawberry fabric for the backing and binding.
The quilt measures 22" x 24" which I understood to be the size required by our local Maternity Unit at Motueka. Apparently those are the maximum measurements: anything from 18" x 21" is required.
Thankfully mine was acceptable and I received some nice comments following Show and Tell.

So pleased to finally have a finished quilt to show for all the sewing I have done since being in NZ from the beginning of January.  However  today at my Quilting Group I put together another Premature baby quilt and sandwiched it ready to quilt and bind at my Saturday Group meeting.

I handed in Strawberries and Butterflies at today's meeting and will give my current project in at the next meeting on 15th March. It's another variation of Crumb blocks

UFO, finished Down Under!

Still in full swing using up scraps here Down Under in NZ.

This time, a pair of almost finished placemats. Why didn't I finish them? No idea, but they have been languishing in my NZ stash for years!

Now finished and ready to be gifted. One of my Patchwork Group friends, Jennie, is having a stall at the next Quilt Show in May. She raises money to help a school in the Gambia.  I thought perhaps someone might fancy these appliqued placemats - every dollar helps.

Orphans no more!

I have had a busy week on the sewing front, including 2 Patchwork group meetings ( one with each of the groups I belong to here in NZ).

I put into practice my idea to use the 5 "mistake" orphan string blocks, trimmed them down to 4.5" and turned them into QAYG star blocks, finishing at 12.5".

These are for Adrienne's Block Drive ( On the windy side blog), so she can make Children's Quilts which will be sent to Kaikoura for children affected by the November earthquake.

Not a great photo, doesn't really show up the colours and the Perle stitching.

My favourite block is this one:

 

I was also pleased with how the yellow string square showed up in the star block.  It hadn't worked as I had intended - hence being relegated to "Orphan block" status.

But as the centre of a star I think it works well.

Thanks to Jo's contribution of extra 2.5" squares I was able to make another 16 Twinkler blocks:

That takes my total of Twinklers to 61.  These will go home to the UK with me and then I'll probably need to sew more of them so I can eventually make a quilt for the Siblings Together charity.
Haven't worked out the maths yet as the quilt size requested is a minimum of 50" square.

I have also made a Premature baby quilt for our NZ local hospital but that will be in another post when I have finished hand sewing the binding,

So I feel I have had a productive week and enjoyed the company of fellow quilters too.

Such kindness!

I have followed Jo's blog butter z for a while. Jo lives in Victoria, Australia and for most of the year I live in the very centre of England.  For three months each year I live in New Zealand, so I am geographically a little closer to Jo.  We have never met - except in cyber space - but exchange quite a few emails and comment on each other's blog posts.  As a result I feel I "know" Jo and consider her to be one of my quilting friends. Jo has also sent me some lovely hand stitched Christmas tree decorations which hang in pride of place on our Christmas tree.

Jo read one of my recent posts saying I was running out of 2.5" scrap squares for my Twinkler blocks and, guess what I received in the post?  A packet of squares!

Mixed with some of the leftover squares I had, I have managed to sort out colour sets for 16 more Twinkler blocks!

So, Jo, THANK YOU!  You really are such a kind lady, your kind thought is very much appreciated.
Postage these days is prohibitively expensive so I appreciate you gift even more.

There are lots left over, including lots of neutral squares and I have two ideas for using those. That will be when I'm back in the UK where I have lots more squares waiting to join their Aussie cousins.  The rest of Jo's coloured squares will be mixed with my English stash for lots more Twinklers.

In the meantime those 16 Twinklers wait for me to sew them up.
My husband always comments that Quilting ladies are all lovely people - and he has met a few over the past 20 years I have been quilting.  And do you know what?............
He's absolutely right!

Busy with scraps

Still having fun sewing up scraps. Had a great day at my Quilting Group on Saturday and managed to sew another 16 Twinkler blocks.

I now have a total of 45 blocks, a good start for the basis of a Scrap Quilt. But I have run out of enough 2.5" squares to have enough variety to make more so I have started to use the 5 orphan String blocks to make large Wonky Stars.

 

Here's the first one:

 

Four more to go.