Buttons!

Yesterday in my lunch break I took a sneaky button shopping trip. I went to Buttonmania, which was a really lovely experience! Buttons of every size, shape, type and colour imaginable! I was offered many many different button options, and we narrowed it down to two:

The ones on the left were round mottled metal ones, and the ones on the right flatter textured brown plastic ones. I decided that the metal ones took the military inspiration slightly more literally, and the brown ones were a little "warmer.

I spent a very long time mulling over my choice, including calling a friend for a second opinion (with the lady in buttonmania being very patient!). In the end I went for the brown ones, as I like the slightly less literal interpretation of the military inspiration.

I'm hoping to get it finished this weekend - I have the buttons to sew on, buttonholes to do, and lining to sew in left to go... that's doable, right?

Quilt Show Lectures...

I'm officially going to the "festival of quilts" on the 20th and 22nd of August! I've bought tickets for the following three lectures:

Inspirations with... Amy Butler
Spend an hour chatting, laughing and getting inspired with American fabric and interiors designer Amy Butler. Get an inside look at some fun, behind the scenes imagery and stories chronicling Amy's latest creative adventures through her travels and studio life.

Machine Quilting in Sections / Quilting as You Piece (Marti Michell)
You’ll learn the difference, the similarity and how both methods can help you finish your quilts on your home sewing machine! If manoeuvring a big quilt through that little opening in your sewing machine is overwhelming, this lecture has answers! There are always new quilts and tips.

The Batting in Between (Nancy Goldsworthy)
Battings, battings and more battings! They are flat, fluffy, polyester, cotton, and all manner of blends. How can we possibly choose the best one for our current project? Nancy is here to help you separate the urban legends from the facts about today’s battings. Learn what the correct batt can do to enhance all of your quilting projects. From bags to bed quilts, find the best batt for the job. There will be lots of sewn samples so you can compare for yourself. Door prizes too!

I'm VERY excited!!

Buttons?

I have realised that I need to make a decision on buttons for my Hikaru before I sew the lining in... and I don't even know what I'm looking for. What kind/colour buttons would you put on this jacket?

For a reminder, this is what the pattern has for button placement, and also the burdastyle example:

So; Help??!

Lucky!

Guess what!

I was going through my left over genome quilt fabric last night to see what I could use to make a name badge and I found four more sets of squares that had ended up in the wrong place!! Now I have enough for exactly the right number of HSTs. I also went to Clegs and seriously stocked up on pins. If I don't have enough now I'm going to scream!!

Also, in response to the comments on yesterdays post, no I'm not leaving them all facing the same direction, I just laid them out like that as I thought it would be easier for the gradient. My next job will be to go through them changing their orientation to match the sequence I've chosen. The final design will look something like this:

Just a few short...

After finishing off the last of my HSTs (governed by how many white squares I had) I started laying out the HSTs for the genome quilt layout. Starting with the navy blue fabrics in the top left hand corner down to the green fabrics in the bottom right. Annoyingly I'm 8 HSTs short; I had four white squares too few! Frustrating!!!

After laying them out I swapped them around a bit until I was vaguely happy and started pinning them to the sheet I'd laid them out on. Sadly while our living room has just enough space to lay out all the squares it doesn't really allow for actually using the room. Since it would be a bit inconsiderate on my housemates to leave it like that while I sew the top together (because who knows how long that will be!) I had to turn my "design floor" into a "design wall".

I started pinning the squares to a flat sheet and discovered my second shortfall of the day (and one I really should have seen coming)... pinning over 1200 HSTs to a sheet requires, you guessed it, over 1200 pins! Of which I only ended up having about half as many as I needed.

The sheet is now on the wall and about half of the squares are attached (the rest neatly laid out on my cutting board, seen in the bottom of the above photo). I'll be stopping off in Clegs on the way home from my skating lesson tomorrow to buy 600 or so more pins!

Lesson of the day: make sure you have enough of everything you need, otherwise it's mighty frustrating!

MMQG Name Badge Swap

The Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild (MMQG) is developing fantastically. We've now had two meetings and have loads of stuff in the planning stages.

One of the things that I've been organising for the MMQG is a name badge swap. Sign ups close tomorrow afternoon, so if you're a member of the MMQG and would like to join in it's your last chance! Head on over and sign up ASAP.

Also to MMQG members - remember that our next meeting has been moved to Sunday the 11th of July (NOT Saturday anymore).

Getting there...

It's starting to look like a real coat!

Please excuse the pins, they're holding on the shoulder pads, I need to learn how to sew them in!

Only lining and buttons (which I still need to buy) to go. (yes, only...!?)

Amazing Timing!

I recently bought tickets to go back to the UK in August and September, and look what my Gran just told me about: http://www.twistedthread.com/ And guess where I was planning on being that weekend? Birmingham! I'm SO going! Especially after missing the Australasian Quilt Convention because I was in Perth.

I've taken a quick look through the classes and there's so many I'd love to do (most of which are probably sold out). Assuming they were all still available and money was no object, which classes/lectures/workshops would you go to? (lists are here and here)

(Pretty Much) as Good as New.

On Monday I went on a little trip to Clegs to purchase some sewing machine oil. You'll be pleased to hear that after a thorough cleaning and a few drops of oil in (hopefully) the right spots, my machine is up and running again and sounding nice and smooth!

Sadly no progress to report other than that as I've been busy with other things, but I hope to have finished all the HSTs at least by the end of next weekend.

Giveaway Results!

Thanks to everyone that entered my giveaway. As of last night there were 12 entries and random.org assisted me in choosing the winner:

Congratulations Andi, the bag will be yours!!

In other news, the second meeting of the Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild was yesterday and was great fun! I worked on more HST for the genome quilt. My HST count is now 1,010! Incase you wanted to know, this is what 1,010 HSTs look like:

I think I'm going to make the quilt queen sized, which is approximately 2.1m square, which would require 1,296 HST in total, so HST count = 1,010/1,296

Sadly I can't make any more for now, as my sewing machine is in need of some TLC. Hopefully oiling it will help, otherwise I'll have to take it in for a service.