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I've finished my Swatch quilt and I've called it Club Tropicana. 

A while ago I started naming my quilts after my favourite songs from the 1980's and I loved Club Tropicana by Wham.  Here's link to the video in case you need a reminder.  This quilt does have some palm trees it in and the bright yellows remind me of pineapples, so Club Tropicana seemed appropriate. 

Remember those fabrics I showed you last week? Well, I cut them up and made the world's fastest quilt pattern - the Swatch Quilt by Ruby Star Society. 

This week I spotted two of our New Zealand quilts that are ready to donate to Ukrainian children in Germany.  The kiwi block makes the first one quite recognisable! But I also recognise the borders because I assembled our quilt tops before I sent them over to Claudia in Germany.  

Claudia received far more quilts and blocks than she ever could have imagined, and she has been donating quilts as quickly as she can.  I'm not concerned that our tops from New Zealand are still working their way through the finishing stages.  It's lovely to see that they ...

I have a new finish to share. Meet Paroma.  Although the quilt was completed in August 2022
(hence the lush green backdrop), I had to sit tight till now. 

Paroma. 56" by 68"

Paroma is a Fat quarter friendly quilt published in Quilt Patterns - Fun Fat Quarter Quilts for Spring (anniescatalog.com)  With 22 FQ projects for just under $10, this is a steal.

In process

20 FQs make 20 stars and yield enough fabric to make a scrappy happy border.  Paroma finished at 56" by 68" and it just sparkles ...

My Kawandi is finished!

I took a one day Kawandi class with Lorena Uriarte at Quilt Symposium 2022.  We learnt to make Kawandi and here is mine.  

Kawandi are meant to be scrappy, but I used a charm pack of Koi Pond by Ruby Star Society.  I knew the colours would all work together and I'm pleased with how it turned out.  

My Ruby Star quilt is finished! 

I used the Raindrops are Falling on My Head pattern by Willyne Hammerstein from Millefiori Quilts 4. 

I've called it Ruby Star because the fabrics are all from Ruby Star Society.  I had a lot of fun fussy cutting ice creams, rainbows and birds.

I chose to hand piece my quilt, but there are English Paper Piecing papers available. 

Last year I used the same Raindrops pattern to make my Bollywood quilt. 

I had a bundle of Ruby Star Society fabrics that I wanted to fussy cut, so I decided to make the ...

 I've made it through winter and we're officially in Spring now.  My work conference is over for another year and I finally have some headspace to think about quilting again.  

The US Open tennis started earlier this week and I've been enjoying watching that on TV.  The timings work really well for someone with a flexible part time job like me.  The night session starts at 7pm in New York, but that is 11am here in New Zealand.  I try to do my work in the mornings and then watch a lot of the night session during ...

Well, last weekend didn't go according to plan and I didn't make it to Christchurch after all.  I was caught up in Air New Zealand's worst weekend of 2022.  It was the start of the school holidays, the All Blacks were playing Ireland in Dunedin (so a lot of people were travelling), the weather was awful in parts of NZ, and the second wave of COVID-19 is affecting airline staffing levels. 

My Friday morning flight was cancelled, and then my Saturday afternoon flight was cancelled too!   The next available flight down was on Tuesday.  So, I had ...

I've been enjoying a return to what started as my 100 day project, hand piecing my Merrow Croft quilt (pattern by Margaret Mew). If you haven't done any hand piecing before, I have a how-to with lots of tips in my hand piecing tutorial. Using some of my treasured hand printed fabrics by Karen Lewis and Lucy Engels, I'm enjoying the neutral cool vibe of these pieces.

So I'm using up my stash but I'm also adding to it...

Here's a rectangular patchwork throw quilt made with a scrap pack of fabric that I picked up quite a few years ago from Southern Fabric.  They put together WOF ends and sell them as a group.  I love the palette on this one, all I had to do was add a few extra fabrics from my stash to maximize what was in the scrap pack.  Most of the strips had at least six inches of width, so I made six by seven inch rectangles and decided on an eight by eight layout.  

The quilting is an edge to edge ...

 This week I had a little play with English Paper Piecing.  

I don't have a master plan yet, I'm just going to experiment with them.  That's why I chose to do English Paper Piecing rather than hand piecing.  These blocks could be floating around for a while, and they will keep better with the raw ...

My Bloomtopia quilt is finished and I took it on a trip to Maleny hoping to take photographs but alas it turned out to be a a cool, rainy winters day. Fortunately, my friend and I sneaked a few photos in-between showers in the picturesque township of Montville. The Bloomtopia 2020 Charity Quilt a long...

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