The Never Ending Wagga...Progresses...

Way back in 2010 I wrote a post on having actually worked on The Never Ending Wagga...and then it went back in its box and waited some more...the next step was some wool embroidery on the applique...every now and then I'd stumble across it...take it out...look at it...have absolutely no inspiration or motivation and put it back again...I did manage a few bits of embroidery a couple of years ago but it went back into the too hard pile...anyway, a couple of weeks ago it was stumbled upon yet again but this time it came out into the light...the wool threads were taken out of their plastic bag and the embroidery stitch books were pulled from the shelf...I started with the leaves and kept on going...and now we have...a wagga top (well wagga-esque)...

 

I really enjoyed working on it this time, and now...ta dah!...the finished top...

At 58" x 64 3/4" it's a useful size...and while shopping online a couple of days ago I added a variegated perle thread to the shopping cart in anticipation of it wanting to be big stitch hand quilted eventually...you never know, it could happen!

 

Happy Stitching...

Lullaby...

Way back in January 2011, at the last Summer School hosted by Susan Smith in Wodonga, one of the quilts started with Karen Cunningham was "Lullaby".  It had been ages since I'd opened that box, thinking I had an issue with one of the triangle borders to figure out and a heap to do to finish the centre.  Getting ready for Scrub Stitching I opened its box to find it not so far off to finish that centre - the two cactus (which were ready to be appliqued) and the circles.  Right, get it ready to take on holiday and maybe get it a little closer to being finished.

 

After laying the cactus pieces out, I was pinning away and huh! one of pieces had gone missing - I have no idea where it went and it hasn't been seen since (I actually lost two pieces, from separate projects, that day and the other one turned up in a really weird place but this piece never has)...a frantic rummage through every box and project and miraculously I found a piece of the fabric and could re-cut the applique piece..whew!...

 

It didn't get finished at Barradine, it went to quilting group a few times but it didn't go back on the shelf...plugged away and eventually a couple of months ago...ta dah!...a finished top...

Karen used a plain white for the background and heavily quilted border...I didn't want white or the heavily quilted plain border.  The border is the fabric the centre square was fussy cut out of, the width determined by the piece of fabric (which was missing a corner square).  To bring it up to size needed a spacer...I was going to use the blue background fabric - it didn't look right...OK, make it smaller and ditch the spacer...nope too busy...needs a spacer but what colour...rummage through the scraps and find the perfect pink, of course nowhere near big enough to do anything with...that scrap took a trip to the shops for the closest to it pink homespun I could find...

 

Entirely hand sewn, borders as well...it is only a wee quilt a metre square-ish (very roughly measured - it is supposed to be 39" x 39").

 

No idea how to quilt it...that's a ponder for another time...for now, wahoo it's a finished top and a project box emptied...

 

Happy Stitching...

Sherbert Pips - AKA The Experiment...Ta Dah!...

Sherbet Pips...AKA The Experiment (because I experimented with chopping the corners of a Sherbet Pips by Aneela Hoey layer cake to make big hexies and machined them together)...that was started so long ago I don't even remember...but a trip back through 15 years of blog posts (this one and the original Wordpress one just in case) has turned up two posts...one from 23 July 2011 when I sewed the rows together and one from 16 July 2012 when the top was finished...hey, only a year apart that is a miracle in itself....so started sometime in the first half of 2011 I suspect...hand quilting started maybe 2-3 years ago? can't remember that either...quilting finished and trimmed up on the weekend of 11 and 12 May 2024...you just can't rush these things...

Big stitch hand quilted in perle 5 silvery thread in lines 1/2" apart.  I liked the idea of modern quilts matchstick quilting but 1/4" apart was just too much madness.

 

I was so excited, pulled out the piece of fabric from the range put aside for the binding all those years ago...and...It Did Not Work At All...seriously wrong...disaster and disappointment.  Scrounging about to see if I had any bits of the other prints (nope) I found a scrap of a solid grey that was just enough to audition to see if a solid was what it needed and...yep...perfect! Except, probably poly not cotton and a 6" scrap wasn't going to be enough regardless.  I'd have to wait until I could get to a shop - whenever that might be.  I ran out of patience within a few days and started the online search. Found what seemed the right colour in a Devonshire solid...tossed up between two shades...considered buying both - I only needed 1/2 metre so to get both wouldn't be too much of stretch...decided that was silly and went for the one I thought was closest...probably should have gone with the other as it seemed a bit light when it arrived but too bad so sad it will have to do...

Ta dah!  Quilted and bound...so happy...it still needs a good bath which will snuggle it up nicely but it's so so so cold and randomly has remembered how to rain again (we haven't had rain for months so that's not a bad thing), so still waiting a couple of weeks since it was finished...maybe this weekend...

There has been more but I don't want to cause too much shock so one thing at a time...

Happy Stitching...