ALQS finished!

Earlier this week I received the name of the recipient for my little offering to the current"Another Little Quilt Swap". It is winging its way across oceans as we "speak" and I hope it will arrive safe and sound. To keep the suspense a bit longer, I won't reveal the destination quite yet.


With guests constantly coming and going I have only managed to make a couple of these little string bags. They are hand pieced and are actually a lot of fun to make. Hand piecing is not something I do often; to be honest, I don't think I'm very good at it. But I did enjoy making these as they can be finished in a couple of hours.

I better go and see what my guest wants to do today.

Cheers

Vreni

The first finished silk quilt!

I forgot to show you the finished silk quilt my friend Jeanette made. Sorry, the photo is terrible, but you can still see how beautiful it turned out. Now I have to get my skates on and finish mine as well!

Cheers

Vreni

Another "Good Bye" and other stuff

This friendship quilt was given at a farewell dinner this week to one of the members of our sewing group. She is leaving Singapore to return home to the UK early next month. It's always sad to say good bye but luckily she will be coming back from time to time as her son is still living here. All the best Carol, we will miss you!!!

I had a blast with my Dutch friend. We did a bit of shopping, a bit of sight seeing and a LOT of talking. This is her before the final of the world cup; as you can see, she still has a big smile on her face. After she left, I found the orange t shirt in the rubbish bin ;).

I haven't been very productive the last few days. I've played a bit with my hexagons (taking over the dining room table)

In case you are wondering how I prepare my hexagons, I will show you:

1. Cut your fabric (I fussy cut mine) and then cut a piece of aluminium foil (can be reused many times) a bit bigger than the fabric. Layer the foil, fabric and paper template.

2. Fold over all sides, taking care to get neat corners.

3. Press with a hot iron on both sides (be careful not to burn your fingers as the foil will get very hot).

4. Wait until the foil is cool to the touch and then unwrap the "parcel" carefully.

5. Press again on both sides.

6. Voila, you have a very neat hexagon and if you are careful, you don't even need to baste it.

I leave you with this picture of a sun set taken a couple of days ago from our house. Doesn't is look like the sky is on fire?

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Cheers

Vreni

Silk Marathon

Last week our sewing group had a two day sewing marathon. The week previously we went to Arab Street (that's where a lot of silk is being sold) to choose the fabrics. It was quite a palaver until we could agree on a colour scheme. We needed to get three fabrics each of three different colours for the blocks as well fabrics for the sashing and borders. As the silks fray badly we had to back them first with interfacing before starting to cut them up into rectangles.

The rectangles had to be stacked, cut and shuffled before they were sewn back together into blocks.

This is how far I got. I have all the blocks made, now I have to sew them into strips and then decide on the sashing. It's looking good so far (I think!).

This is how the quilts should turn out. One of the ladies has already made one previously. Isn't it beautiful?

I won't be doing much sewing over the next week as a friend is arriving later today. Yay.... can't wait to show her around and doing all the touristy things.

Cheers

Vreni