Too nice to cut, fabric and flowers

Aren't they  beautiful?  Just the cheerful note that is needed on this bitterly cold day.  I have lived in Wellington since we came to New Zealand in 1958 and have never seen snow in the suburbs such as we have today.  On the flat here in Petone we have had sleet, huge, flat, fat snowflakes that melted as soon as they hit the ground - it has been the perfect day to stay home in the warm.

Yesterday I taught my 5" squares class at the Pinestream Quilters' UFO Day and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I am having trouble with the photographs, so will continue with the text and hope to be able to insert them later. 

 

Looks as though we have success!  This is the end of the hall where I taught, you can see the six busy quilters and the wall of some of my samples.  One the left is a pile of the sample tops I have made to demonstrate one way of putting them together.

It is always intriguing to see the different fabrics that are used in the blocks and how this changes the result.  I loved these Delectable Mountains.

Ages ago I bought a piece of Indonesian batik and knew I could never cut it up, so it was the ideal piece to use on a double sided small quilt to use up some marbled fabric pieces.  One of the groups I sewed with had a marbling session, great fun, and we all ended up with a small piece of every different attempt - these were put away together with some rich dark blue fabric and I forgot about them. 

So one side is the bird picture and the other is the postcard variation using the marbled pieces.  And you are so right, I shall never again use white batting in a dark quilt, so please ignore the bearding!

Here's a closeup -

And another

And the marbled fabric

I think each one is a picture, it's amazing what you can make of them - rivers and landscapes.......

On the green block, second from the left on the bottom row I had to add a piece of batik to the marbled fabric as it was just an inch or two too small - did you spot it?
There is one more small quilt I wanted to share with you tonight, before I lose patience with the slowness of downloading the photos - maybe too many people are sharing their photos of the unusual weather......

This one I made a long time ago and it has been well used by my granddaughters, both as their quilts and then for the dolls.  It is made of one and a half inch squares - for some reason when my friends were making their two and a half inch squares into quilts I decided to leave mine for later when I would be able to think of something special to make - I would just run up a cot size quilt in the meantime - this little undertaking actually has six hundred squares in; the border has faded a lot as have some of the squares.

One of the reasons for sharing it, is evident in this close up

You see the cheddar yellow with the strawberries on?  It is a favourite fabric and I had to join two strips to get a few one and a half inch squares!!  A true patchworker, eh?
Time to go I think,  blogger is playing up, so keep warm, and keep stitching!
We'll talk again soon
June