I haven’t disappeared - we’ve all been sick. I was so sick I no longer had new quilting ideas - not a good sign. However, I’m beginning to feel better and I’ve started working on my blocks again. Only 7 more to go …

I’ve been working on the hour glass blocks.

It occured to me as I was working that I should try to get the animals to be the right way up!

I think it will take me about a week to finish these blocks and I’m determined to finish this quilt before I start something else, but you all now how things change.

So I sewed both versions to make the decision easier …

I’ve decided to go with the version on the left (blue fabric in the triangles). I’m foundation piecing these hour glass blocks because my rotary cutting is dreadful - although I did find starching the red fabric made the cutting easier. So only another 35 blocks to go…

I’ve attached the border strips.

Here is what it looks like so far …

I need to make 36 hour glass blocks for the second border. I’m going to use this fabric …

They will look something like this …

Or like this …

Or perhaps a combination of the two. So we could have this

Or this

Or this

Oh no I can’t decide - any opinions?

Today I cut my four border strips.

I cut four strips 7.2cm wide - 6cm border and 1.2cm for seam allowances. As I didn’t starch enough of the fabric, the final strip was in the unstarched section of fabric. I could tell the difference so now I’m sold on starching.

My plan is to sew the strips on tonight and start work on the hour glass blocks tomorrow.

I finished sewing the binding on the quilt - not too bad in the end. As I used a water erasable marker to mark the quilting pattern, I need to wash it before I take a photo. So this means I can start a new quilt!

I have this alphabet panel I bought a couple of years ago thinking I would make a baby present out of it - of course I didn’t. I’m thinking I could make a wall hanging.

My plan is to add a plain fabric border (red spotty fabric) and then an hour glass block border. In the above photo I’m measuring the panel to determine how wide the fabric border needs to be, so I can fit the hour glass blocks.

After much anguish I’ve decided the border needs to be 12cm, the quilt top will then be 80cm by 72cm. Ten hour glass blocks (each 8cm) will fit along the length and nine along the width.

I starched my fabric for the first time today - Heirloom Machine Quilting recommended it - it certainly seems crisper, but I haven’t tried to cut or sew it yet.

I’ve finished quilting my Seattle quilt - the new sewing machine definitely helped although I did struggle a bit with the tension settings.  I’m now working on the binding. I always struggle with the binding - I’ve read heaps of tutorials and watched a couple of avi/dvds, but still I’m hopeless. This time I tried to do a continuous binding for the first time - not too bad, but not perfect either.

I thought I would try to machine sew the back of the binding to the quilt rather than hand sewing, but it was completely hopeless. With the first attempt I didn’t always catch the binding and the second attempt just looked shocking, so I’m back to hand sewing. At least it’s cold at the moment so sitting around with a flannelet quilt on my laptop is actually quite pleasant.