Happy Scrappy Houses

Rooting through my stash this morning, I found this great brick fabric, perfect for some of my chimneys.
I decided only to make a small wall hanging for this project, here's the top finished..... but I do have an idea forming ... not sure how to go about it yet... but I won't let that stop me.......

A lot of these fabrics are Brazilian cotton.
The bright green with big white daisies has been a favourite of mine since I bought it in 1999!
When I lived in Sao Paulo I bought lots of these fabrics.
I didn't much care for them then, but it was all we could get. Now I use the Brazilian fabrics all the time.
Fernando Maluhy & CIA is the manufacturer. I checked out the website earlier and they are still producing the same fabrics today, plus some other lovelies of course.

Quilt Class

My goodness it was hot in Quilt Class today, we were all melting. You can see the fan in the background... it is only June... and from now, the temperature only goes up!!!

Noemia cut all the strips for her next project. It's going to be a railfence quilt with 6 strips per block. Noemias's first project was the hand pieced table runner so this will be her first machine produced quilt.
Here she is pondering the Spanish writing in her book.

As we work with inch rulers we just translated it from centimetres.
This is Magda putting the finishing stitches into her third bock.
Dorila is making this baby quilt with perfectly matching points... she has a very cunning way of achieving them!!!

Dorila and Carolina working and chatting.

See the cute dog fabric? this is going to be a quilted bag.

Katja continues to hand quilt her log cabin quilt. Here she is designing her next project, a floor cushion for her boys using Thomas the Tank Engine fabric.

Cristina has her second project in progress already.... I think it's a secret though.

Licinia worked away in the corner making patchwork curtains for her cottage.

Happy Scrappy Houses

This morning I was up well before the birds.
All my jobs were done early too... 'freetime'!!!
I have the binding to handstitch on my "Chunky Chocolate To Dye For" quilt but I will save that treat for later. I decided to make 'a' trial block for my "Happy Scrappy Houses" quilt.... as you can see I made two, "I love them" ... I have 5 more cut .... I will get back to them right now..... I will take them to show at Quilt Class this afternoon.

IWP Quilt Group

Oh poor Therese....
She had worked so hard to get all the Chunky Churndash blocks made, then spent the entire 'all day sewing' day (5th June) making the hour glass blocks. She went home happy and proud that day. Carefully over the next few days she sewed the blocks together, taking a lot of care with her block placement. She wanted to make sure that all the scrappy fabrics were evenly spread out, and concentrated really hard to achieve this. When it was all sewn together she went running to Sally's house, to show her.....

This is Sally, Therese's friend and neighbour and a fellow quilter. Here she is explaining to us how she had to tell poor, delighted Therese that her hour glass blocks were all turned in different directions. She had concentrated so hard to get the chunky's right, she had not paid attention to which way up she had put the hour glass blocks..... Sally says "it was like bursting Therese's happy bubble!"


So, Therese here is showing us the pile of (quote...bloody) blocks all "un-sewn" every last one!!!
She was so angry with herself that it was funny, funny, funny...
I know we shouldn't laugh at the misfortune of others ... but on this occasion, even Therese was laughing after she told the story a few times... she says we all learn from our mistakes... let's hope so Therese!!! he he he


At this point, I remembered to tell my ladies that I was fed up with eating plums, so I handed out carrier bags to each one and off we went to the garden. It was very entertaining, as one plum was picked, 20 more fell from the tree as they were all so ripe.... not any more though... not one plum left on our tree now! Thank goodness!!


Arabela had given the children in her son's playschool class, a piece of fabric with some paint, coloured pens and directions of what to do to make a signature block for their teacher. This is the quilt top that she made with all the blocks. What a very sweet gift for any teacher?
Arabela needs to have it finished for next week.


Ursula has been working on this very special window for some time now. It is her own design and is now making the applique 'bird of paradise' flowers to give it a 3D dimension.


Jutta's son and daughter -in-law have just had their 4th baby, This baby quilt was finished just in time...
Irene is making a log cabin quilt in these fabulous rich colours.

Quilt Class

A very busy and fun day at Quilt Class today. No new ladies but we did have one lady who came only to see what class was about... by the end of our morning she had chosen her fabrics to take home to wash, ready to start her lessons next week.

This is Paula with a very sweet quilt made for friends who will be celebrating their first wedding anniversary soon. It is a mini Scrappy Bargello with applique that Paula has stuffed to make it 3D. The cake with is embellished with lace, it's lovely.


This in Marina, Rosario and Alda. They are getting their things ready to start work.





Sofia has finished quilting her bright log cabin quilt and today trimmed it all, here she is joining the strips to make the binding.



Ines continues to work on the sampler quilt. Today she added borders. In the meantime she is working on this quilt for a friend's new baby .

Noemia made this table runner using the blocks from the Block Party book that I love.

Noemia with her log cabin quilt, she has been working a lot recently.....
Today she bought in another set of blocks for yet another project, we chose a very nice sashing fabric and a great fabric for the binding... I bet it will be finished ready for next weeks class....
This is the quilt that Noemia was cutting out at last weeks class... already in a sandwich ready to be quilted!!


Here is Rosario with her Christmas Railfence table runner, it looks three dimensoinal in this picture?

And last, but definitely not least.... this weeks Special Offer Fabrics. €4 per metre.

My Day :c)

Today was our Summer Solstice Hash with the Lisbon Hash House Harriers, which meant us meeting in Cascais at 5:45am!!! It was a beautiful morning for hashing through the old streets and watching Cascais come to life. The bonus with this is that we were all finished by 8:30am and it left me with a full day to crack on with my sewing.

Finally I have quilted my Round Robin project. I decided to "dance with my feed-dogs down" all over it, which wasn't easy with all the embellishments to avoid.

My "Chunky Chocolate To Dye For" had come to grinding halt because I couldn't decide what kind of border I wanted to use.
Today I finally settled on these 'soft fruity centres' ... tee hee.

I rummaged through my stash for ages and eventually found this Hot Air Balloon fabric. I bought it in Mexico City about 6 years ago.... but it is one of the fabrics that I just didn't want to cut up. It is now the backing.... like the pictures on big boxes of real chocolates!

Making the sandwich now....

IWP Quilt Group

Only a few ladies came today. Some ladies telephoned to say they had no fuel to get here. I hope this strike sorts itself out soon, when it affects important things, like our Quilting, we start to worry !!! tee hee... We still enjoyed the time though.


Arabela finished this quilt for Karina. She sewed the binding on and then "danced with her feed-dogs down" all over it!
Arabela is very proud of this quilt, and so she should be!

Susan, left, is tying the ends off after quilting her Stained Glass Windows.
Helen, right, finished hand stitching on her binding and here is stitching on the label ... a very productive few hours!

This is Susan's wall hanging quilt, it still has a few pins as it isn't quite finished yet.

I finished the binding on this baby quilt. Now I need to make the label and get it off to the post office.

I love this dolphin fabric that I used for the back.






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Farewell to Luisa

Yesterday we had a farewell lunch for our Luisa. She is heading back to Korea with her husband. Luisa is one of the original members of our IWP Quilt Group. Helen and myself are the only other original members left, that is not such a big deal really though, as we only started with 6 of us.

Here Luisa carefully removed the wrapping from her parcel, well it was fabric after all!!

You can see she is very happy with the contents of her parcel... each of us made a blue and white block for her, to represent the beautiful tiles of Portugal. That particular block was made by Susan, standing to the right of Luisa.
This moment catches Luisa reading a letter that accompanied 2 blocks sent all the way from Malta by Judith, another original member who left us a while ago, I am afraid the moment caused a few tears....


At the bottom of the parcel, Luisa found Kaffe Fasett's book, 'Quilts In The Sun', a perfect gift for a special friend as his quilts were photographed in Portugal.

We will miss Luisa very much........