Recent works, a mini tutorial & new hair colour

Just in case you thought I was having another hiatus in the craft department, then you'd have thought wrong....I have a few finishes, but can only show you two at the moment, until the others arrive to their destination.

First up is a tablerunner top...not technically a finish, but it's a 'hope to be finished soon' kinda deal lol

Quick and easy tablerunner....4 solid corner squares and the rest is all hst's...it doesn't all have to be one colour for the patterned bits....you could do two colours and a solid background colour and also use hst's on the corners, but face them dark side to the corners....even a scrappy one would look good.  To make it, work out what size you want the finished squares to be and add half an inch....so I started with 5 & 1/2" squares, made my hst's and trimmed them to 5".  Sew them together in rows, alternating the way the seams are pressed on each row, so they nestle together and play nicely lol  Then sew the rows together....and tah dah a tablerunner that's quick, easy and effective looking.  Back and batt it and then quilt it as desired, bind it and you're all done (labelling is an optional extra), pat yourself on the back.

Next is a birthday block for one of the 'gals' at the quilting group I attend....her birthday was a while back, but with her being away, and then me being away, I haven't had the chance to give it to her.....but here's the block (2nd one, I misplaced the first one!) I made for Heather B, who wanted teddy bears on black.

Later on in the year, once the last gal has her block, I'll post a photo of all the blocks I made this year....next year I think I'll try and get some of the girls interested in doing a squishy fq swap for birthdays....I have enough quilt blocks from swaps to keep me busy next year, without adding another quilt full lol

Lastly, today I went to my friend Carols place, and she foiled me...well, not me exactly, she did foils on my hair....so I went with this hair colour....

And came home this colour.....

Think I need eye surgery....my eyes are uneven lol  Think it was all those years of wearing my long hair plaited over to one side of my head....will try and find a pic of it one day, so you can see why I think it's my hairs fault that I have wonky eyes lol

Till next time

Latest show n tell

Just recently I shared the pics of the items I made for the F-R-I-E-N-D-S Swap for Marcia (Marc - pronounced Marse for those who thought it might be pronounced Mark!) well I made her a couple more things, one was for her birthday and the other was a new tutorial I found and wanted to try!  Actually both were online tutorials, one a printed one, and one was a video one that doesn't really have a pattern, so I 'winged' it haha

So the above shows the twisted drawstring/dilly bag I made her....it's an interesting technique and I think would look great in any fabrics.

Next up, I made Marc and Terri tissue holders.....doesn't sound anything flash or anything, except I think I really, really like the shaped top on these...I've made the straight edged ones in abundance, but these are going to be one of my "go-to" projects for pressies.  I found the tutorial here.

The bottom pic shows Terri's tissue holder and she wanted me to take a pic of it with her owl pendant....so you should've seen her leaning over the cutting mat, but trying to keep her out the pic at the same time....it was very funny, especially as I didn't tell her I'd zoomed in and wouldn't have got her in the pic anyway....lol

Next up, is a couple of pincushions I made, these were a printout that someone gave to me, as she had found it online, but the printout doesn't show whose tutorial it is sorry.

In the quilting group I go to here in the Riverland, we ran a Birthday block swap this year, and whilst I've taken pics of the blocks I've made, they're all on my old pc that needs some TLC before I can access them, so here's the latest one, which was for Pat M and she wanted animal blocks, so I did her an elephant applique (it's actually a softie elephant, but I just used the shape for the applique!) and gave her the bottom pincushion in the pic above....as it has an owl on it, so she'll remember who made her the pincushion.

I've also made an owl block....it's not finished yet.....still got to stitch around the edges...but I'm trying to decide whether to reverse sew the 'tree' sections, find some more brown tone-on-tone fabric and re do the claws and tree or whether to do faux ankles in the gap I've acquired in between the feet and the bottom of the owl.....decisions decisions, but until I decide, it looks nice on my design wall.

Oh, and the need to be centralized too, as I seem to have moved on from wonky eyes....to wonky feet lol  The block is from Vol 7 of 100 Blocks Magazine.

Above are some scrappy blocks I'm putting together for Aussie Hero Quilts....they measure 8 & 1/2" and are a great way to use up relatively small scraps, or as I prefer to call them, offcuts.  I've cut more out, so I'll be making at least one quilt top out of them...coz I know Jan-Maree (although it's easier to see what she's up to by visiting the Aussie Hero blog in the link above) likes scrappy quilts....and I do too, so it's kind of a double whammy lol  I can't wait to share with you the final quilt pic....I reckon it's going to be a nice bright, cheery quilt/s.

I have some cool purchases to share with you, but I'll share them with you tomorrow, seens as though this is getting to be quite a long post...don't want to overwhelm you with pic overload today...lol