Australian quilting

Yesterday I played around in the sewing room again all day. I love Fridays! Lorraine, from Australia, had sent our patchwork group just loads and loads of information and tools and kits as an introduction to Australian quilting. But how are we going to use all these wonderful things? At Thursday's patchwork meeting we went through the contents of the packages again and a couple of us took some of the things home to experiment with.

Yesterday morning I followed directions from Helen Stubbings book and kit to make my first "Hug's n Kisses" block from "Neenie's Garden" BOM kit. This is called Faux Applique and basically it uses a technique of coloring inside transfer lines and then embroidering over all the lines. Yesterday I used the pencils that Lorraine had sent and colored my first block.

Well, this part of the block goes quickly. I think it is the stitching that will take quite a while. I will work on the BOM in gradual amounts and see how far along I can get. Tentatively, the plans are for someone else in the group to do the stitching around the lines though.

Another of the treasures from Lorraine's box was this "Aussie Quilt" pattern. Lorraine had showed us her finished full size quilt when she came in January and we all fell in love with it. She sent us the patterns but this is another BIG job. But so cute! I decided to chose 4 or 5 five of the blocks and make a fun wall quilt and so I brought all the patterns home with me and played around yesterday. Which blocks to use? Unfortunately, I've never been to Australia and know nothing about the animals in Australia. Most of the animals featured in this quilt I've never even heard of! Well, I know what a koala is. I know parrots. So I started with those blocks yesterday. So much fun!

Hah! Tanya, the hard part comes from now! You've got to applique all those pieces down!

I figure once it gets too hot to quilt I can do applique this summer so I'm going to go ahead and make a couple more blocks today.