New lingo - Round Robin #1 Quilt Centre, Vintage Beauty

This week I faced a challenge, one of the quilt variety.  It came in the form of an invitation to participate in a round robin quilt.  These quilts are going to live in Mangere Women's Refuge.  Lovely sentiment and a deadline to produce by this Saturday and well, a hell of a schedule this week.  So naturally I bowed out.  And, well, there was quilt jargon I did not understand on the original invite, 'make a centre' (meaning what exactly to a non quilter?), so it fell to the side.  . . . .

Then a friend produced her centre and I was inspired.  So I hatched a plan on a swim at Omaha on Monday that just maybe it was possible, if I re-read the email, I recalled a couple of bits of fabric that could just work, and just maybe Thursday would give the window of time required . . . .

Then today a small space opened courtesy of my wonderful husband being in the kitchen, the washing all folded, and well, I made a centre.

Turns out the jargon was not as difficult as I imagined.  The hunt for the original fabric sent me off on a different tangent, and I think I have made a log cabin, a rectangle, approximately 10" in size.  The beginning was an embroidered rescued pillow slip, which seemed appropriate.

Next I put this into a bag, and I have added some extra fabric, and then I will get another quilt centre to work with.  No idea really how this works but figure I can always enlist some help if required!  And this was fun, and a very workable size, and for me a way to use up small pieces of fabric together which I enjoyed.

Needing to make something

Life is busy at the moment, at times the outlook is one full of things that must be done, and fun things on the horizon seems far away, and faint to view . . . . . . . .then the realization dawns, maybe to change the outlook is as simple as picking up a projects!  In fact I confess even the action of wheeling my sewing trolley across to the dining room table lifts the spirits!
So easy to remedy it turns out, re prioritize so that creative time does not get buried. And short of a new project or idea it turns out looking at a WIP comes to the party.

Barn Raising Quilt Blanket in progress  - with Diba the cat

I have 21 out of 42 squares completed - yes the final one is on the needles but I am counting that too.  So a good point to look at the whole thing.  It looks more colourful here that it seems to 'on the floor'.  But one challenge is getting different colours.

But the problem

Barn Square number 22 on the needles

was solved with some donated leftover yarn, a gorgeous turquoise - perfect.

Also happening has been a cushion cover.  This started with an image transferred to calico some time back. In the process of removing the paper my cat acquired some patches, but I believe that gives him character.

Black Cat Cushion Top

I am discovering I like this sort of quilting which allows a larger thing to happen with small left overs, and when the left overs are already recycled (jeans and curtains) well that is the icing on the cake.