Elephants and Rails

It's hard to believe it's almost winter 'down under'. I spent last weekend about a 4 and a half hour drive away at our recently acquired holiday place. It's so exciting after 10 years of dreaming. Why would I drive so far for 2 nights? Well it is SO peaceful and serene. And it has a beach that is a 5 minute walk from our place. Here's a shot around 7:30am and remember this is the end of Autumn (Fall) here.

It was so warm by the afternoon that I thought I'd wander down and see if a swim was a real possibility. When I got there seems I wasn't the only one with the same idea. Two other women were already in! It was beautiful and amazing. I wouldn't have expected to swim in late May.

I was also able to do some patchwork - pure pleasure. So I now have my Elephants and Rails sandwiched and ready to quilt. It's only a small cot sized quilt for a young couple who are sadly leaving Australia to return to Europe. I thought the 'elephant never forgets' idea would be a reminder to them of the community they connected with here, in the fabric. 

Here's the 'before quilting'

 And then the 'after' with some cross hatching on the turquoise frame and some squiggle free-motion on the lime frame. The elephant blocks I did some 'Baptist fan' pattern, which both tends to outline the elephants and is a shape like an elephants ear so that's fun.

Here's a close up of the fan pattern: 

And then on the back, I found this cute all over elephant fabric which just seems to go: 

So a fun baby quilt for a lovely couple. Hope they like it. 

Until next time,

Lynn

Linking up with My Quilt Infatuation and Confessions of a Fabric Addict

A friend of mine is having a birthday party and being a creative person, it has a theme: 'Mat Hatter's Tea Party' - doesn't that sound like fun? And of course we have to wear a hat. So I put my thinking cap on first and thought I'd make a few tumbler coasters for fun - and a small gift at the same time. I remembered one of my sons once bought a bit of a crazy hat with small bells on the end, so the plan is to attach the coasters to the hat. Sure will be crazy, but they were fun to make too.

My friend teaches children aged 4 or 5 so I think she'll enjoy the child friendly scraps I used for these. There were good fun to make - though the binding was probably the most time consuming. They were also a good trial for a similar quilt I'm thinking of making - yet another way to use scraps productively and I seem to gather quite a few along the way. 

I'm linking up to My Quilt Infatuation and Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Until next time,

Lynn

I've been busy putting together a couple of quilt tops together which I will shortly be quilting, but I've needed to focus on this one below, for my mother-in-law's 80th birthday. I'm sewing the binding on tonight as we will gather as a family to celebrate tomorrow. We celebrate Mother's Day here in Australia this weekend and my mother-in-law's birthday is always a couple of days either side of it, depending what date the 2nd Sunday in the month falls on. So it's a matter of 2 gifts in a short space of time. The quilt is her main gift, with flowers as an additional gift. 

I started the quilt with the 'garden' fabric, which doesn't look very prominent now at all, but never mind. I particularly enjoyed doing the free-motion quilting, having seen something similar I thought I'd give it a go. I improved as I went along, with the squares on the right and bottom edges working out the best. 

I love it when 2 simple blocks, a 9 patch and a snowball block come together and seem to create a different block like this. The blue really makes it sing. I think she'll like it!

Below doesn't have the binding on, but it does show a closer up of the quilting. 

I found the perfect backing fabric in my stash, but as often is the case it wasn't quite enough. So I gave a pieced backing a go too. 

Until next time,

I'm linking up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict 

Lynn