What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

The Great New Zealand Quilt Show opened today in Rotorua, and I can finally show you my entries in the Aotearoa Quilters Lime Challenge.  

First up is "Not Your Grandmother's Garden".  

12" wide x 16" high

At first glance you might think these are hexagons, but they're not! Hence the name, and the fact I'd just bought some new jeans from Not Your Daughter's Jeans. 

I love experimenting with geometric shapes, and I wanted to try the Fiesta Gitana pattern in Millefiori Quilts 4 by Willyne Hammerstein. 

I hand pieced this mini quilt, and then I ...

I am not even close to finishing the Fiesta top. I keep forgetting that even though I laid out the blocks and thought I had the block placement all figured out, I’ve been changing it as I go — so it’s not just a matter of sewing the blocks together now but moving them around and — well, just changing things on every row since the second one!

So all I’ve got are some more pics of a few of the blocks. First a pretty blue star block.

Some of the star blocks have a frame, so to speak ...

The colourful Fiesta blocks are the perfect antidote to the grey days of winter that we’ve had so many of this year. I have enough of the fabric left to use in some other project that calls for some wild and colourful fussy cut pieces.

The effects from fussy cutting/printing a fabric always is a bit of a surprise until the pieces are sewn together. The fabric I used to fussy cut/print for Fiesta has definitely been that – and then some. It was fun to see each block as I finished it.

Some of the stars end ...

This book arrived and I want to make almost every one of the quilts in it! So it’s a very good thing I got Dance of the Poinsettias done before the book arrived.

The cover quilt is called Fiesta Gitana and I knew I had to make it the second I saw those skinny stars. An Inklingo Fiesta Gitana collection was released and I was off to the races.

In no time I had all the pieces printed, cut out and in a box that was just perfect for the Fiesta quilt.

And those skinny stars turned into some ...