the last month of spring down here.  And it’s been pouring rain all weekend and I have the heater on.  Winter is fighting to stay and it’s so incredibly green and wet here in Victoria.  I commute on the train to the city to work and its all we commuters talk about, particularly when the train goes past one of the local reservoirs.  There’s real hope that it will be a cool summer, hopefully no bush fires.

October has felt like a quilty marathon.  I’m not to sure why I’m relaxing yet. Next weekend its time to go to our Quilt History Farm day with Robyn Falloon and Jan Baker, and the weekend after that its TAS or as we now are CAG – The Castlemaine Appliqué Group.

Farm day promises to be exciting as Jan is such a wealth of knowledge and always has lovely examples for us to see.  We usually study a particular aspect of piecing & quilting and next week it will be ‘Whig Rose’ and ‘Rose of Sharon’.  I think I’ll need to do some preliminary study before hand.

I’ve barely been able to do any sewing lately as I’ve got so many web related ‘things‘ to do.  I have my own personal site to redevelop, which is going ever so slowly, a new site for my business to design, my collaboration with Margaret, WFIT, we nearly have a new post up just a few more finishing touches, don’t give up on us yet!  I’m the Web Administrator for my LQS, I volunteer my web skills locally, oh and I teach IT & Web Design 3 days a week.  I really do need at least 2 more days to be added to the week!

I love appliqué but I really have to nurse my hands so that I don’t over-tax them.  The more blogs I read of course the more quilts I end up designing in my head.  In the last week I’ve managed to design two quilts, in physical form, and I have fabric from my stash for both.

One quilt is based on an old ‘thistle’ design found in an old book in my collection. I plan on using mainly fabrics from my Smithsonian collection for this one, probably on a plain Kona, I think.  Click on the image for more detail.

Woodland Thistle fabrics

The other quilt is a Dogtooth clamshell pattern I drafted up the other night.  It was lots of fun to get out the compass & protractor and draft up a large, 15″ block.  For the dogtooth section I’ll use the freezer-paper foundation method.  Once its started it should be a reasonably quick quilt sew up.  I’m thinking indigo or prussian blues, taupe or tan and raspberry colours.  I have plenty of most although I may have to go on a shopping expedition for Prussian blues as my stash lacks any.

Well time to get back  work so that maybe I’ll get to my sewing room this afternoon.

ciao

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