How to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Recently I had a major fail with one of my quilts. It resulted in cutting off the already quilted borders and rethinking the binding. I'd used this amazing African fabric for the pieced border and it was too beautiful to throw in the bin. What to do?

Here is one border cut into strips about 12" long. You can see the quilting.

This is the reverse of those strips - yummy fabric too.

 

This is the binding from the quilt which I'd actually sewn on twice already trying to remedy the "wavy" problem.



In a light bulb moment I decided to make some placemats! Here are those three strips with fusible 1/4" bias zig-zagged over the seams. They needed a couple of goes to secure the raw edges.

Doesn't look too flash on the back but who'll look there!

 And here's the finished article including the old binding. I had enough borders to make six placemats and I love them!

 

A great lesson in recycling or is that UP- cycling. I can never tell.

I'm off O/S on Friday for a month so blogging might be a problem. I'll be posting to FB more often here. Hope you all get lots of sewing done and I'll have next year's Springwood Community Quilt Show raffle quilt to work on while I'm away.

Winners part three

These are my two quilts hanging at Sydney Quilt Show.

Though I didn't win a prize for either of them I feel like a winner just because they'll be seen by so many visitors to the show. Above is Fiesta, a riot of NYB blocks and below  is my Cut Loose sampler made after a class with Gwen Marston. I loved making and quilting every little bit of this quilt. Such a fun piece.

And I really am a winner with this quilt which is a project in the current issue of Quilters Companion magazine - my Sunflower quilt. Hand pieced sunflowers appliqued onto their backgrounds with foundation pieced sashing.

And Grace's Quilt which won a prize at the show has a pattern which is available here so you can make your own version.

I am at the show tomorrow demonstrating foundation piecing in the Guild demo area so if you're there come by and say hi.

Winners part two.

We received 3rd prize for our raffle quilt. Very happy! Now for the tenth anniversary quilt for next year!

Winners!

Got THE phone call last night to say our beautiful raffle quilt has won a prize at the Sydney Quilt Show!!

Must wait til Wednesday to find out what. Well done our industrious committee!

Charmhaven

Where's that I hear you say? It's on the Central Coast just near Wyong and it's the home of a lovely shop called All About Sewing. It's owned by Jody who's in the middle of this collage.

I'd never been there before and it's an oasis of beautiful things in the middle of an ordinary shopping strip.

As you can see we had a Basic Mariners class with a large group going all out for the day. Some managed more than others and lots of different fabric choices made for lots of different results.

Thanks Jody and Leanne for organising the day - it was a lot of fun.

I've finished writing up two BOMs lately so I had a chance to SEW!

This is my version of Kate Conklin's wonky zig zag quilt. What a fun project! Two fat qtrs for each strip  and it comes together in a flash. Great for kids or modern young things.

And this is a terrible pic but I'm slowly transforming a tablecloth into a quilt top. It's a beautiful weight linen, heavily embroidered and just screamed out for something extra. Hexagons at the moment but other things to come.

Not long now to the Sydney Quilt Show! but before that I'm off to the Australian Quilt Study Group's two-day seminar in the city. Staying over with a couple of friends and really looking forward to seeing lots of old quilts and hearing interesting speakers too.