Back to Blogging !!

Well, I have been a really hopeless blogger this year. My visitor stats have gone way down, as can only be expected when I don't blog for 6 weeks! I have actually been quilting and have a few things to show you but I will drip feed them otherwise it will be another 6 weeks before the next post.

I have just finished two weeks of school holiday and since the weather was horrible nearly the whole time it has been a perfect opportunity to quilt. I used the first week to cut pieces for Cotton On Quilters next raffle quilt. It is a design from an Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine Vol 16 #8, called Westward Ho! It was designed by Frances Leate. We emailed her to ask permission to use her design, which she willingly gave and it is a good thing she did because she alerted us to the fact that the templates for the design in the magazine had been reproduced at the wrong size. I'm not criticising the magazine at all. It is a huge task to publish patterns in a magazine and even when you think you've got it right it the gremlins can take over while you are not looking.

I organised the cut pieces into bags for people to sew into blocks and we made very good progress. The first picture is of the borders in progress:
And this is the body of the quilt:
We changed the centre block from the original design because we thought it had too much white space and it was an Ohio star, rather than a 54-40 or Fight star. We like the result. I have now put the borders on and I just need to put up my big design wall so I can take a decent photo of it. We will then send it away to be quilted. It is so good to have this done so far in advance of our next exhibition which is not until March 2011. I'm not working to such a tight deadline this time :-)