Shirt stripe-boxes quilt top finished!

I finished my shirt-stripe boxes quilt this morning (its about time!). Its been so hot here lately (about 35-40 degree C), I haven't felt much like doing anything energetic. I'm busy thinking about my next quilt... I want to try star blocks and some sunny colours.

I also finished the Botanika throw pillows with black piping for the sofa. I think it looks fresh!

Knitted patchwork

This is a knitted patchwork blanket that I started working on when I was about 15 years old. I work on it from time to time, when I feel like knitting (mostly in winter). This is how I taught myself to knit fair-isle using Kaffe Fassett's wonderful book "Glorious Knitting". I never really knitted any sweaters, except for a vest and a waistcoat from "Glorious Knitting"; I prefer to knit sampler blocks to play with colours and patterns. 

I have a whole bag of blocks waiting to be joined, hopefully the blanket will get finished this decade :) 

I'm still waiting to get my sewing machine back from the service agents. I haven't had much time for sewing though, I've been away at a national soil science conference for the last week. It went very well, I got an award for the scientific paper I presented, that is God's unmerited favour!

Pinwheel quilt top finished!

I finished piecing my blue pinwheel quilt yesterday. The quilt consists of 32 large 10.5" pinwheels and 256 small 4.5" pinwheels. To make a small 4.5" pinwheel, one needs 2 light and 2 dark 3" squares of fabric, which must each be cut in half diagonally to make the 8 right-angled triangles for each pinwheel. To make a large 10.5" pinwheel, one needs 2 light and 2 dark 6" squares of fabric, which must each be halved diagonally. One also needs 4 x 36.5" x 4.5" strips of fabric for the center plain bands. All seams must be 0.25". Finished quilt is approximately 88" x 88". 

Now I have to decide on the quilting. I definitely want 100% wool batting. I'm not sure if I want to attempt hand quilting, or if I should rather have it done professionally? Please let me know what you think, I have never attempted hand-quilting so I'm quite keen to try it, but this quilt is huge (225 cm x 225 cm) so I'm worried that I will get overwhelmed and then don't finish it...

Blue pinwheel quilt is underway

My latest quilting project is a square pinwheel quilt that I have designed and am making using Kaffe Fassett fabrics. My colour inspiration for this quilt came from Monet's Water Lilies paintings (see examples). There are actually over 300 water lily paintings by Monet. The purple-blue, green and pink hues create such a tranquil feeling. I have to assemble 252 small pinwheel blocks and 32 large ones. It will keep me busy for a while...

First Kaffe Fassett quilt finished

I just finished quilting my very first Kaffe Fassett quilt, based on his Spring Boston Common quilt pattern from his book "Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts". It was quite a mission to get hold of the fabric since a lot of the fabrics in the original pattern are out of print. I had to do a lot of substitutions but I think that it came out really well after all. I learnt a lot from sewing this quilt, can hardly wait to finish my next one.

I backed the quilt with a gorgeous Philip Jacobs print called English Rose in the lavender colour-way. 

I tried to photograph it next to the lavish pink bougainvillea in our garden, but it was a little tricky due to the size of the bushes.