Success for Carol

Earlier this year Carol entered this block into the Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks celebration edition which was to mark Issue 10 and 1000 new blocks. 

Well she has now heard that her block was selected and so another Aussie designer hits the international stage.

Well done Carol.

Something a Little Bit Different

A few years ago I entered a block into Quiltmakers 100 Blocks competition and luckily it was chosen. The block was called Yvonne's Mystery as I had designed it for Yvonne, one of my students who wanted to do something different. As we were unsure of where we were going with the quilt it was a mystery. This morning someone asked me to design her a quilt based on this block and here are my first two attempts. Be interesting to see what her  thoughts are on these.

Isn't it amazing the difference colour placement makes. both blocks are the same but I have swapped the light and dark value in most places for the darker block. It will be interesting to see which block Linda decides to go with... and then we will see what ideas we can come up with for the border. I have a few more of this also...another mystery.

Quiltmaker 100 blocks winner

Well have just completed the draw. Hopefully people have won something during the blog hop. Mind you although there were approximately 100 prizes there would have been a few hundred participants. But if you didn't win I am sure you found some interesting blogs in your travels as I did.
The winner from my blog is Dawn Frisch who I have contacted and hopefully will hear back from her shortly.
Thank you to everyone who joined in. It was interesting to see that there wasn't an overall favourite block from the collections which goes to show variety is the way to go.

Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks Volume 8

Well Quiltmaker's latest volume in their popular series 100 blocks is now on available at your local newsagent. If you have been collecting these magazines you won't be disappointed with the latest issue. As before there are appliqué, piecing, foundation piecing and mixed techniques and all of these are new original blocks.

Patrice's Gift

My block, Patrice's Gift uses a mixture of foundation piecing and regular piecing... and it is an easy block ..but takes a little more fabric than one might assume:) 

Read my blog post below to find out how you can win your own copy of this great magazine thanks to the generosity of Quiltmaker.

For more chances to win copies make sure to visit the other designers who are featured in this week's blog hop. They are all listed here.

Quiltmaker also is giving out fantastic prizes every day to both local (American) and international (that's us) visitors. So don't forget to leave a comment here ... and there is always a special major prize on the final day.

100 Blocks Inspiration & Competition

Well I have been very fortunate to have another of my blocks chosen for the latest Quiltmaker 100 blocks and through Quiltmaker's generosity you have the chance to win your own copy of the magazine. Details at the end of this post.

Lately many of my ideas have been a follow on from the Raconteur quilt and this block is no exception. Although all of the Raconteur blocks are hexagonal it doesn't take too many errors to change it to a square block and Patrise's gift is no different.

As for the name... well I had pulled out fabric from my stash and took it with me on a weekend's retreat. I thought I had more than enough fabric but found that I didn't have enough of the red to do the last triangle. No matter that it was a small triangle I didn't have it. I put a call out to one of my online quilting groups and Patrise sent it to me.

	Initially I planned for the block to simply stretch out from the centre in four directions but wasn't too excited by the block that resulted. Next I tried simply spinning the triangles around and still thought it could be improved.
	I had been looking at some perspective drawing and then tried to encompass that idea into my design... Patrise's Gift was the result. As you may guess red was not my first plan for the colour.
Once I worked out my block design the next bit was to find a design that would work with it it. The central medallion was easy as I thought it was perfect way to showcase the blocks and they were active enough to carry the middle		That left two considerations -  the corners and the area surrounding the medallion. The first two pictures showed the two possible ways to slope the blocks and although I initially thought all going the same way was boring, the alternative was too disjointed.
	I still however thought that the corners were too heavy and so to lighten it I took the outer strips from the block and simply made the centre block and framed it in plain fabric. This was definitely the best choice.
Initially I had placed four of the triangle centres around the medallion to fill in the space as I am a piecer and not an appliquer. However when I added borders etc there was too much action and no where for the eyes to relax or focus so I removed them.		The plain areas would be perfect for detailed quilting - I'm only just beginning on my machine quilting experience:)
	So why have I cut off the corners? So that the quilt can be turned around in all directions on the bed and so equalise or minimise fading due to the sun. Also it means that the corners don't hang lower that the rest of the quilt when on the bed.

Each month another free BOM is uploaded and also a new collection is on sale from the Raconteur Collection here.
For a chance to win your own copy of volume 8 of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks simply leave your name and the colour of the block you like best from this collection which will be January's featured collection.
A name will be drawn next Saturday. Make sure that there is some way that I can contact you. I'm sorry but anonymous comments are just that anonymous and there is no way of tracking you down.
Good luck.

Quiltmaker Blog Tour Begins

Well the Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks Blog Tour begins today. Make sure you stop in at the QuiltyPleasures blog each day for a link to all of the day's blogs plus a host of prizes that you may win.
My day is Wednesday so looking forward to seeing you back here then.

100 Blocks Blog Tour

Do you have a few  minutes to spare during the week of 11th to 15th November? If yes then I would like to invite you to join in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks blog tour. Each day you will have, not only the chance to win a copy of the latest magazine in the series, but  also possibly one of many great prizes from a fantastic range of sponsors. Simply check out Quiltmaker's blog to find both the list of daily blogs that you can visit and the daily competition for the major prizes.
My block and blog will be featured on Wednesday 13th so make sure to stop in here and check out my block.... it developed from Raconteur... as I'm sure you all expected.  See you in a fortnight.