where does the time go?

It is January 16 already. I must have blinked and missed the last week - I don't think I slept through it?

If all goes well we will be moving house at the end of February, hooray! I can't wait to move into the new place. We have lived in the old house for 14 years and have been happy here, but it's time for a change (and a bigger sewing studio). Looks like the next few months will be busy ones. We are travelling to Melbourne for a few days in February so I can go to the Australian Quilt Convention. The Tasmanian Quilt Exhibition is on in Hobart at the end of March. Then the BIG one - we fly to Chicago mid-April to the International Quilt Festival! I still can't believe I'll actually be there - maybe it's a dream and I'll wake up soon...

I had planned to post some more photos of quilts. I just looked at them and found that I had missed the end of one when I took the photo and the other one was a bit dark so I'll take some more today.

The last week has been interesting. My 10 year old nephew has been staying down here with my mother for a week. Murray and I visited with them the evening he arrived. He said "Auntie Cat, can I come over to your place tomorrow and sew something?" "err, okay." So he came over 4 days running and we sewed... We Made a cushion with roads and hot rod cars and monster trucks. Then we made another one with tropical fish. On the last day with one and half hours to go before he went back to Mum's house, he decided he wanted to make a handbag for his mother, and it had to be triangle shaped! We made the quickest bag ever but it turned out okay. Took about 2 hours from the first idea to the finished bag. I think his 9 year old sister is coming down for a few days soon - I'll have to think of something for her to make, I guess. Any ideas?

Don't know what happened with the photos in the last post. When you clicked on them, nothing happened. I'll try again! You can tell I'm a blogger novice, but I'm learning as I go.

mctavishing

On Monday morning I was feeling a bit uninspired. Sat around looking at books for a while before deciding to finish off a UFO. The one I chose was a top I made in 2001 as a class sample but had never finished. So....I thought I would try free form feathers and mctavishing. I have been drooling over a book called Mastering the Art of McTavishing by Karen McTavish.

Here a some photos of my first attempts. The photos aren't as good as they could be, sorry. I'm now debating whether I need to do some micro stippling around the feathers to make them stand out. What do you think?

I don't know if I will be motivated to finish more UFO's - there is a 'little' stack of them. Quite a few of them are traditional-style quilts, and my focus at the moment is more contemporary in nature - but you never know. After looking through Karen McTavish's books, I'm sort of tempted to start a wholecloth quilt - or maybe a wholecloth table runner?