What to do with CQ Blocks?????

I've been doing the  courses that Kathy Shaw has provided FREE of charge over the last year.

Well I emailed Kathy to say she hadn't sent me the next lesson of the last course, not realizing there wasn't another one to come.  So she suggested I go back to the start and redo it.  Well not quiet, but what does one do with all those blocks we've just embellished.

Well we have purchased our next 'mobile home' to continue our travels around Australia.
Old one:

New one:

My 'Craft room' consists of four plastic drawers and a sewing machine. In the previous van hubby had pulled out the lounge and my 4 drawers sat nicely there with a curtain that come over the top and latched into the wall at the bottom. This stopped movement whilst we were traveling.

But as this has a different floor plan we've had to re-think where to put my 'Craft room' - four drawers. So two will be situated at the front of the van in the bedroom area one either side. The other two will fit under the kitchen table. Now that they are separated we can't use the same curtain set up. This photo show's the back of the van where the table and lounge is. Can't pull the lounge out on this one, too difficult.

So I thought about it for a while and came up with the idea of individual slip covers for them. This way if they fall over during travel the drawers will stay in and the contents won't spill over the floor.
So using the blocks from this course I am making four covers. Here is the first one, three more to go.
Front view:

 The top, I will eventually embellish this, as it's also lined.

 Sides have the same fabric, the back is just calico (muslin).

 Close up of the block. Didn't end up putting a beetle on, would have gotten caught on a lot of things.

There is always different uses for our blocks, not just quilts or covers for books etc. Think outside the box everyone.

Thank you Kathy for another excellent class.

Arlene

Enjoying the Central Coast, NSW

Well, our house sit at Bateau Bay came to a quick end, with the son of the owner wishing to move back home due to issues with this wife's family. So we quickly found a new house sit and are presently at Holmesville, just west of Newcastle.  We are house sitting the house of course and Zacky, a lovely black and white cat. We have become good friends and we share the sun room when it's sunny.

I've been busy working on a couple of courses with Kathy Shaw, Dying and Embellishing with Threads. If you get the chance to do these courses (they are FREE), even as a refresher, they are well worth it. Here is some of my work.
First the Dying course, this is good fun, and as you can see I had wonderful weather for drying.

 Embellishing with threads, seam treatments.

 Trees, veins and spiders

 Enhancing motif's

 Monogrames, which we all don't do enough of.

I have found a few craft groups here, one embroidery, one quilting and one bobbin lace, pity we are only here for 7 weeks.

We have also done some more sight seeing around Newcastle.

 Michael steading himself on the sign to see if there are any humpback whales passing. The radio said there were a few sighted that morning.

 Michael on the Memorial Walkway, opened for ANZAC centenary.

And now to some other news. Son has decided to make a trip to the USA, for how long we're not sure as he's taking Ally (his Labrador) and Tatum (Rachel's cat) with them. So we have to go back up to Brisbane, pick up and pack up our gear he was using and store in our container.  We also have to pick up Rosey.  Thankfully Michael's mum will look after her whilst we are in Coffs Harbour (our next housesit) as the house has no fence. After that we're possibly going to have her travel with us.  Chris has had the dogs on strict diets and exercise, Rosey is now almost down to 11kg and Ally is about to tip below 30kg.  Here's the latest picture of them both.

Well that's about it for the moment, catch you next time.
Arlene

Round Robin Progress

I have finally finished my work on two blocks for Kathy Shaw. Kathy was so
kind to allow me to hold them longer so that I could get others work out of the
way before I completed hers. Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of room on either
block for me to work with, so I did two motifs for her.

For the Butterflies and Dragonflies, I created a silver and goldwork butterfly
based on her own design.

I added several buttonhole butterflies in some of the
spaces and butterfly buttons beneath my motif. There was no more room really to
do any seams.

For the Lace and pearls one, again there were only smallish seams left and only
one place for a motif. So I added lace butterflies here and there and added
twilled ribbon and pearls onto of a lace motif in the corner. Two seams near the
basket of flowers.

I've also been working on some blocks for Southern Cross Crazies, my Xmas cracker swap block and our current round robin.

This is the Christmas cracker block, still to embellish, with silver, blue and white, and a silver beetle.

And this is my block for the RR, we get to choose our own theme, so I chose Christmas. in the silvers, white and blues.

And lastly the first part of my stocking for Lyn's Stocking swap.

Arlene

Look at my beautiful block

This is all mine.... are you jealous? This is my block from the CQ International round robin - Lace and Pearls was the theme.  I made the block, and lucky for me four very talented ladies got to work on it.  They certainly did a wonderful job. I love the colours, the lace, the pearls, the beads, the silk ribbon embroidery, the charms and especially my 'A', which gives me ownership of this wonderfully stunning block.  Do you think I'm a happy chappy, well yes of course, wouldn't you?

Here are some closeups of their work.  Thank you Kathy Shaw, Nicki Lee, Susan Locke and Rita Cruz.

Thank you, thank you, thank you ladies......
Arlene

Preparing to stitch an Round Robin Block

I've recently been asked why do I have thumb tacks in the photo of my crazy quilting. Well the answer is that they are holding my CQ block to a wooden frame.  so I thought I'd let you in on how I prepare a CQ Round Robin block to work on.

I have two size frames now, one for the 6 inch blocks and one for the 12 inch blocks.  Our cheap shop had a sale on these picture frames that I use for this purpose, so I now have a few of them, and can have a few blocks ready to work on at any one time.

First of all, I need to cut a big hole out of the canvas, I leave the canvas around the edge as it's white and helps to protect the fabric.

I then add calico strips to the outside of the block, to make it large enough to put over the frame. I usually use little gold plated safety pins, as they don't rust and good for the fabric.

My next step is to add this to the frame. I tack the corners in first, then the centres of each side, and then the centre of each of these. I don't pull too tight, as you can see from the safety pins, they might pull out.

This is Nicki-lees Lace and Pearls block, it's stunning, and so my next task is to work out what I'm going to do. So I get out my stash and decide what I want to put where.

Others might say, oh dear no, but this is how I do it, and it works for me, and I haven't heard any complaints about my work on any ones blocks, and I've now been doing Round robins for 4 years now, wow, where has the time gone..... I love the colours that Nicki has, the soft pastel colours are georgous. Rose pinks are a favourite colour of mine and I like to use on blocks, and so have a fair amount to play with. 

So I've got the big bow motif on the bottom, the rose pink braid which I'll add pearl beads to, and do a seam of chevron stitch below this.  Up the top on the left I'll add a meandering bow.  That will leave room for Kathy Shaw to work her magic on the areas that are left. She'll tone down that braid strip I've added by adding something else on the block to draw the eye  away from it. If I do it now, there won't be enough room for Kathy to work.

As I sew I cover the work that's been done before, so that my thread doesn't catch and pull the work. the blue butterfly was painful, he did get covered eventually, so I could work without my thread catching the feather all the time. (which it did a couple of times until I got fed up with it).

So with pieces pinned in place, I find matching thread and stitch them down.

In a couple of days I'll post the finished block. I hope this helps shed light on what I do to prepare a block for a round robin.

Arlene

Postcard Round Robin with Kathy Shaw

I entered into a postcard swap late last year with Kathy Shaw, our guidelines were to make 3 - 4 x 6 postcard sized CQ blocks and send all 3 to Kathy.  Kathy would embellish one, and send the other two off to others who also signed up for the swap.

I received a few days ago Colleen A's and Andrea's. The first one (blue tonings) is Andreas,

And the second one is Colleen's.

Here is one of my postcards returned, Maureen Gleeson worked on this one. Maureen's work is just so stunning.  And below is Kathy's one which is on it's way to me in the mail. 

Still waiting to see what my third one is like.

Arlene