Friday, October 29, 2010

BLOGGERS QUILT FESTIVAL

Hello and welcome to my not so regular blog posting.

This is my 3rd year of entering a quilt in Amy's Bloggers Quilt festival.

Every year there is some wonderful quilts to be seen, and often lovely stories to go with them.

It also means that every year my blog reading list gets a bit longer.

So... here is my entry for this year.

I only finished this quilt last night, it is a gift for my cousin who is turning 21 next week but his party is tonight and I wanted to have it done.

He is a Carlton Football Club Fan (Australian Rules football) so I made it all in Navy & White.
The pattern is a free one that i got from Anina at Twiddletails she ran a Quilt-a-long a while back and i saved all the information and then made the quilt just now.
The instructions were very easy to follow but I didn't want to just cut out 1 square at a time and do it in a week by week format so I put all the information in a spreadsheet and added them all up and cut it all out at once. Thank goodness for spreadsheet, the maths nearly did my head in even with the help.

I am quite happy with the result. Some of my pinwheels are a bit wonky but the majority of them are just great. I did rush a little as I had a tight deadline.

As for quilting I was quite stuck but then I stuck with simple and did a straight line down the middle of each sashing strip. Then I had an idea that I wasn't sure would work. My lovely Janome MC11000SE has a stippling feature so I simply did one spot of stippling in the centre of each block. I was worried it would look strange and to some it may but I think it's a different way to use a stipple, kind of making a feature out it and it adds a strange depth to the pinwheels.




The label is also done on my machine using the letters from the Monograming function.

All up the quilt finished up at about 48" x 62", it is 100% cotton front, batting and backing. The front is simple homespun and the backing is a Michael Miller called Western Bandana in Denim, that is also used for the Binding.


Thank you to anyone who has visited I am doing my best to go and see some lovely quilts also.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

**NEXT** Google Reader Simplified

I have a whole stack of blogs on my Google reader.
I sometimes have trouble keeping up with my reading.
Due to my dodgy internet connection I also find that I don't leave alot of comments as it is a slow painful process most days.

However,

I was reading on a blog recently that there is a new way to access your blogs through the Google reader but you actually get to see the complete blog page each time and it is so much easier to access the comment form from there.

As a result I am a very happy blog reader and am able to show a bit more "Love" to all the wonderful bloggers that I love to read.

This is just one blog that gives great instructions on how to use the "Google Next" feature.

GOOGLE NEXT INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE SWEET LIFE