Posted in The Sewing Room

I am not the world's best quilter. In fact, I think I'm a very lazy sewer - I always try to cut corners - which is funnily enough just what my teachers used to say about me when I was in highschool - mostly my maths teacher!

But the children and I had really been enjoying homesteadmamas4 (or LittleHouseintheValley's) tutorial recently on the block of the month, and I was dismayed and quite disappointed to log on one day recently and find her blog is deleted! I hope she is ok and nothing bad has happened. We had cut out our Bear's Paw pieces, but hadn't sewn them together yet, and I'm having to copy Leanne's picture from AtTheGoodLife to figure out how to sew it together. I'm hoping to work on it this afternoon. The children are really enjoying it, and I didn't want to let them down, so I bought a big book from Borders this past week called 5,500 Quilt Block Designs by Maggie Malone, and it is full of all kinds of patchwork blocks with easy instructions on how to make the patterns. It might be a bit of trial and error, but I'm determined that we will finish our sample quilt by Christmas.

Look at all those lovely squares! And there are tons more than these - much simpler ones and more complicated ones as well.

I went into our little town on Friday to run an errand and had 10 minutes to pop over to the little sewing shop across the road which I hadn't visited yet. I always seem to be in town with the children and I don't fancy browsing in a little shop with three lively kids. My mother was staying last week and minded the children while I was out, so I had the chance to have a 'go-see'. For such a little town it is really a great little shop - they had so many shelves of beautiful quilting fabrics and a lovely rack of books and patterns. I found one that I'd wanted to order through www.keepsakequilting.com but because the postage is so expensive from the USA to NZ, I'd put it off. I was thrilled to find it at this little place and bought it straight away. I'd love to do one for my own home, and I have big ambitions of doing one for our Sunday School teacher's end of year gift, but this might be a little bit too much to expect.... but we'll see. Here it is: (Sorry it's sideways. I rotated it on Photobucket, but it somehow didn't do it here).