Out of the blue....

Well ...um....I haven't been blogging. It seems life, the universe and everything has been conspiring to use up every second I have to put a stop to anything more than an instagram post every now and then. I'm not saying that's going to change very much any time soon but I've noticed a few blogs I read have also surfaced to say they're back...but no promises. So I thought, well perhaps I should make an effort at least. So here I am.

Quilty efforts of late have been sporadic and I've found myself assembling tops and not getting much further. However I have had two babies arrive (both on the same day actually!) and that gave me the opportunity to enjoy the scaled down, fast finishing that comes with cot sized quilts.

Foolishly I didn't get a photo of the first finish which was a scrappy 16 patch using 2.5" squares beyond the instagram layout on the floor. I'm hoping that as this one was gifted to Joe's nephew's brand new daughter we'll get to see it again. This quilt was pot luck and I was very much relieved that the baby was a little girl as many of the colours from my scrap bucket tend to be pinks and reds.

The other was for a dear friend's first grandchild which I patiently waited until I learned that he was indeed a little boy. This gave me the opportunity to play with blue fabric and everything either side which I pulled out of the cupboard and put back in (and took out again and put back in!) trying to decide what I could possibly make. I ended up settling on solids and isosceles triangles using up some fabrics that I had just enough to cut out a 6" strip.

For the back I used the absolute last of the strips and the corners of the triangles. I can honestly say I used absolutely all of the turquoise, grey, ochre and green and ended up with a back that looks like a front. Not my usual style but so pleased with how it turned out.

And then I bound it all with the indigo which turned out rather smart.

And whilst we're talking about blue, a message popped up on my email a few weeks ago which was totally out of the blue. I received an email from Artsy asking me to link back to a blog post I had made way back in 2013. I had mentioned in that post how I thought a piece of fabric (which was in fact an up-cycled shirt of Joe's that I couldn't bear to part with) looked like the work of Yayoi Kusama. Artsy strive to make all the world's art accessible to anyone online and as part of their site feature the work of Yayoi Kusama and asked if I would be kind enough to make a link from my site to theirs. How they found me from my one little mention I'll never understand but seeing as they had gone to so much effort and were so nice about it (I did email back to make sure it was a real request!) I thought, why not. So if you have a moment check out their site and of course Yayoi Kusama.

I'll tumble for ya....

Yes, showing my age a little here with a Culture Club/Boy George reference but I could also say I really fell for this quilt and in more ways than one!

This is my red, pink and grey tumbler quilt. It was born out wanting to have a go at a tumbler pattern, which I strongly recommend. But more importantly, falling instantly in love with the quilt featured on the front cover of Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. So it's absolutely fitting that I should finish this quilt this week and share it through Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday.
It's fair to say, I'm a red and pink girl and had plenty of it in my stash and when I started pulling fabric from the pile was pleasantly surprised at how much grey I also had.

One such piece of grey was a piece of re-purposed fabric from a shirt of Joe's that met a sad demise. It was a shirt that I had help him buy when we first met. We both loved the print but I think I was more of the enabler in the purchase. His mum wasn't too impressed that he'd spent so much of his pay on one shirt and it always made me feel awful that I'd talked him into buying it! But he got lots of wear out of it (...perhaps to prove that he too really loved it) and it ended up ripping across the back. When we were cleaning out his mum's place I found it in the bottom of his wardrobe. I couldn't bear to throw it away so I squirreled it home, washed it and popped it in my stash cupboard. The colours are perfect so I cut quite a few blocks for this quilt.

I have to admit that this quilt was a long time in the making. My initial, "I have to make this" flurry soon passed and it became one of those long-term projects. I picked it up and put it down and then late last year I decided I would make an effort to finish it.

So out it came again and I began to share it on Instagram. My sister noticed it and commented that her friend would love this quilt. Sure enough that was indeed the case so it finished with a new purpose. The really funny thing is that what influenced their liking for the quilt was that little bit of Joe's shirt when they exclaimed, "there's even a bit of Yayoi Kusama in it". I don't know if Yayoi ever designed fabric used by Sportscraft back in the early 90's but I have to admit...it does look like her work! Wouldn't that be funny!

 Later edited: Here I am in 2016 and haven't blogged for months when out of the blue I received an email from Artsy. Somehow they managed to track down my earlier mention of Yayoi Kusama. By way of explanation Artsy strive to make all of the world's art accessible to anyone online. Their admiration for Yayoi Kusama is demonstrated through their bio featuring over 150 of her works and exclusive articles and up-to-date Kusama exhibition listings. To check it out visit here. Thanks Artsy for getting in touch. More than happy to help share the love.