from the depths of the wardrobe...

Happy New Year!!
Thanks to everyone who has stopped by & for all your lovely comments over the past year!!!
If you've just found Kokaquilts for the first time, welcome!

Well first up, before even getting down to the beach, I couldn't not make the little mermaid doll that Karyn over @ http://millymadeit.blogspot.co.nz/ made little baby Lucy!!   Olive, my 2 1/2yr grandaughter, just loves being a mermaid, & reading mermaid stories, so how could I  resist?!?!?  I downloaded the PDF pattern and away I went....

And Olive just loved her little mermaid dolly on Xmas day!!
During the pre Xmas rush I also managed to finished my Flying Geese Quilt, get the binding all ready, and the batting/backing sorted ......

Onto 2014........
I have had a lovely relaxing few weeks down at the beach...swimming, walking, dress shopping @ Molly's (!!), and eating out at the various cafes, etc. The high influx of people into the area meant that the main road was just like rush hour all day!!! Luckily this last week it all quietened down a bit. 
As the annual requirement dictated, I went to the vintage fair & and bought a lovely garnet necklace for myself...

 & a vintage dress for my v. old baby doll (which my grand daugther now loves to play with)  ...

And onto my sewing -
Well, instead of having new resolutions, plans & projects for 2014,  here's what I got side tracked with once I got back home  ....
Yesterday I went searching in the wardrobe for a particular fabric, (for something quite unrelated to patchwork!).  One would think that now I have a bit of a system happening with my fabric stash that I should be able to lay my hands on something easily, but no such luck!!

On going thru' the depths of the now sewing room wardrobe, what I found instead was this sweet little unfinished quilt top. Kaleidoscope blocks using Kaffe stripes with softer pastels & a couple of batiks thrown in too. There's a kind of circular- motion- thingy happening, where alternate blocks have the lights & darks reversed. I remember seeing a version of this quilt in a book by Alex Anderson, only she paper pieced it, whereas I drew up the triangles on graph paper & machined pieced them.  And, on a closer inspection of my earlier piecing, it's all looking pretty good...the intersections are almost perfect!!

I fished out some circus fabric which teamed up well for the backing & layered the quilt up ready for some simple machine quilting.


The other thing I found was a lovely old unfinished quilt top - of my version of the Cotswald's Quilt, a large medallion quilt, using reproduction fabrics.  This quilt top is an old UFO, and has been sitting in my wardrobe for well over 8 years now.  I purchased the pattern from Patchwork on Stoneleigh in Australia. I remember that  I had a spot of bother with the one of the borders, just couldn't get it to fit, so I abandoned the project.  Looking at it again now, I am so sure I could  make it work.... my 2014 motto - if it doesn't fit, make it!!!
I still love this kind of look, with it's faded creams & repro colours, where nothing looks like it was bought specifically but rather collected over a few years, & seems kind of unplanned.

What's more, I also had all the other bits cut ready for the flying geese borders, & some were even pieced as well!  And there seems to be all the bits cut ready for the next final four simple borders. So sadly, this lovely beginning of a quilt never came to anything - yet!!!
But I can understand how this happened.
Around this earlier time in my life, after a short 3yr stint owning a patchwork shop & earning nothing/ziltch/nada/zero/nil, I concentrated on getting back into full time work.  Nursing became a priority and in the process, all things patchworky kinda stopped in my life for quite a few years.

Anyway now, re-discovering all these old goodies in the depths of the wardrobe is simply wonderful!!  
AND with everything all cut & ready to go,  I've got no excuse not to just get on & finish this!!

But I am selective on what I will work on & actually finish!!
This final UFO is old, from way way back!
I remember hand stitching some of it while I was doing night duty -

Tumbling blocks, all in jewel type colours with mainly black inbetween. I have two largish segments, all hand pieced, and I truely don't know what to do with them now !!! 
Oh dear......any suggestions?