Welcome to my world

For some time now I have been thinking of setting up a blog and today is the perfect opportunity.  I have picked up the current bug so am not doing what I usually do on a Saturday morning - teaching quilting at Arohata Women's Prison - therefore, to turn a negative into a positive, I shall publish my first blog.
I love making scrap quilts and get just as excited now about a  pattern or a piece of beautiful fabric as I did all those years ago when I injured my back and had to stop playing tennis and badminton for a while.  I needed an interest on my day off from the family business, and patchwork, as it was called in those days, filled the bill admirably.
I saw an illustration in a book of a rail fence, totally scrap, the blocks placed alternately horizontally and vertically and I started to make one.  No rotary cutters or boards around in those days, so I made a template out of heavy card, drew around it on the wrong side of my fabric with a twiddle of the pencil to mark the corners, then cut out the piece using scissors.  When I had several cut out, I started to piece the block; I took a patterned fabric and put a plain one either side.
I started playing with layout on the floor, and saw at once that any which way wouldn't do for that quilt, it just had to follow the colours of the rainbow - the first of several of my quilts to tell me that!

In those days this quilt was considered 'a bit bright'!
What's on the design wall today? some fabric that my son brought back from Italy, I am auditioning other fabric to go with it and possibly do The Venetian Dream pattern as it allows for a reasonably large square of the feature....... watch this space!
I am also hand quilting a wonky hexagon log cabin - which came about when I tidied my sewing room and found a box of left over hexagons, tacked to their paper templates.  I decided I did not want to make another hexagon quilt with them, so took out the papers and ironed the patches and found they were all funny shapes - after all it is the paper that has to be accurate.  The basket of strips beckoned so I used the wonky hexagons as the centre of a log cabin and I love it!  I am enjoying quilting it, I have this great frame which can be attached to a stand and it makes the hand quilting such a pleasure.

 I am also machine appliqueing bright hearts onto a very ho hum dull blue top and am liking the lift they give.

I went to the Antiques and Collectables fair recently in Lower Hutt and got such a bargain, a box of old sewing machine parts.  I have been doing  research online and will get some good photos to show but in the meantime, do you know what this is?  In the top picture you can see there is a cutter, for paper do you think?
I look forward to your comments and will talk again soon.
June