This year I went to Quiltmarket in Houston for the first time ever. Wow, what an amazing event - there are so many designers, manufacturers, exciting stalls and new fabrics.. it was hard to know where to begin.

Quiltmarket is an event for shop owners, designers and people in the business of quilting. It goes on for three days (plus a day of 'schoolhouses' at the beginning), and then the whole area is cleared out to make way for Quilt Festival, which everyone can attend.

I was just in seventh heaven, going to presentations by designers I have become familiar with over the years of running the shop, seeing all the new designs and meeting lovely people.

One of the main reasons for attending this year was to meet Kim Moos, founder and CEO of Cotton Cuts. Kim and I have been talking for a while about taking my Mystery Quilt programme to the USA, and it was so much fun to meet up with her in person. Kim is doing a great job, working with a disabled workshop in St Louis to cut the fabrics...

It was time to go for a walk .....

The last couple of months have been so busy, I needed to take time out and stretch my legs. My quilt companion is Shifting Strata, a small quilt I made based on Wendy Williams' Crossing Paths pattern back in 2012. I named it after the Christchurch earthquakes. Here's my quilt

And here is Wendy's original

Given the recent shifting of the earth under our feet, it felt like Shifting Strata was a very topical quilt to bring. This was one of my first 'improv' style quilts, and also my first attempt at big stitch hand quilting. It was also one of the first to win me a ribbon, at the Capital Quilters exhibition later that year :)

Having done very little walking over the winter, I took it fairly easy this time. From Kiriwhakapapa campsite there is a loop walk that passes through a grove of redwood trees - these were planted way back before we realized that messing with mother nature is not necessarily a good idea. Now they make a beautiful...

Since the 2016 Mystery Reveal I have had a lovely break away, doing a little traveling around New Zealand.

You may have heard the news about the large earthquake that hit the South Island. There are lots of photos in the news of the damage to the roads and infrastructure there. Although we only felt relatively little shaking here in Masterton, a lot of damage happened on the other side of the mountain ranges in the Wellington area.

source: stuff.co.nz

This is the Queensgate mall  which was closed for a couple of weeks and is now only partially open. I travel past here when going to my Capital Quilters meetings, and when I went last Saturday it was eerily quiet - usually at this time of year it would take ages to drive through the town. Buildings are being demolished and there is a lot of work going on to get things back to normal.

Meanwhile back in Masterton, I am preparing lots of exciting things for next year.

MYSTERY 2017

We had so much fun making the 2016 Mystery quilt. I'm...

This morning we broadcast live on Facebook from the Mystery reveal. Follow this link to watch the video!

https://www.facebook.com/sheila.christensen.71/videos/10202207741552887/

Hi there! What an exciting day - it's the Big Reveal of my 2016 Puzzle Mystery Quilt.

If you have been quilting along, this blog post contains photos of putting the quilt together. You will need the month ten instructions - either from your Mystery pack or by downloading from my Craftsy store.

If you are new to this quilt, the clues are all available on Craftsy. Start by downloading the free information which will tell you about the quilt and how much fabric you need.

So without further ado, let's take a look at the quilts.  My samples are in two of the colourways that we offered through the shop. We had fourteen different colourways altogether, and I will show you some photos of other colourways after the reveal day.

The single quilt is shown here in the Tokyo Garden colourway.

And here is the double in the Pewter and Linen colourway

Did you guess the layout?

So now it is time to show you how to put all the pieces together:

Here are the photos that follow the...

Hi everyone

Here I am at Quiltmarket and feeling frustrated that I can't give you photos that are the right way round - I promise to post lots when I get back!

It has been an incredible few days and I have lots of news ahead, so stay tuned, and don't forget to look out for the Big Reveal of the 2016 Mystery this Saturday 5th November!

A few years ago we had a great range of fabric in the shop by Nancy Halvorsen, called Curiosities and Mischief. Curiosities had a lovely combination of pink, lilac, strawberry and yellow. Mischief was full of green, brown, orange and teal. Both had cute little pictures on some of the fabrics. We got through metres of that fabric!

One of the projects we made was a railfence quilt based on a mini jelly roll of twenty strips. Since we have now sold out of the fabric I really need to get round to making another sample quilt in a new range, and the sample we had in the shop has been unloved for a while. When I was looking for a quilt to take for a walk this week it seemed like the perfect opportunity to give Mischief a little love.

In a few weeks I am going on a long (73km) walk with my sister, so to get in a bit of training I decided to hike up to Rocky Lookout. It's a 350m (over 1000 feet) climb in just over 3 kilometres, so quite a challenge for me if not for the super fit Kiwis who...

Here we are at the last but one clue! Will you be ready for next month's Big Reveal? Make sure you get all of your clues up to date and labelled. It doesn't take long once you sit down and get sewing.

I'm so excited to have both sample quilts back from Noeline at the Quilting Shed, she has done a lovely job with the quilting and I just have to get the binding on them now!

Here is step 1

step 2

 step 3

and step 4

and here are my parts M1 and M2 all done.

Now onto parts N1 and N2

Extra pieces for the double quilt....

LC1

LC3

LC1L

LC1R

That's it! All the pieces are made and ready to assemble next month. The Big Reveal is on Saturday November 5th (New Zealand time).

See you then!

Sheila

Our team standing in front of the finished quilt top.

This Saturday I went to Capital Quilters, one of the quilting groups that I belong to. In place of the usual meeting the committee had decided that we would spend the meeting making charity quilt tops, using Jelly Rolls. The idea was to make the event fun and have a bit of healthy competition thrown in. Seven teams of three worked on quilt tops and most completed them in the two hours. One team even came all dressed up in their PJs and mop caps!

A few of us drive over the Rimutaka Hill from the Wairarapa to Lower Hutt each month for the meeting, and on the way we usually stop for a bite of lunch. So it was over lunch that we firmed up our plans for our quilt top. Pam brought a notebook with some sketches in, and with great foresight she had brought along some fusible web, Lyn had remembered her cutter, mat and sewing supplies and I brought the machine and Sew Ezi table. We were all set and ready to compete!

Most of the teams...

Today was pretty wet and miserable. Not really a great day for taking my quilt for a walk. I decided that rather than go to the mountains where it would probably be even wetter, I would walk to our local park. It's about a 6km (3-4 miles) round trip, so would give me a good stretch.

To cheer up the grey weather I decided to bring my latest quilt, Playtime.

On the way I saw this beautiful Kowhai tree.

Native New Zealand Kowhai Tree

Kowhai is the Maori work for yellow, and the blossoms let you know that Spring is here.

Kowhai Blossoms

 Where better to take a Playtime quilt than to the park? Here it is, at the amazing kids playground. This was a community project built by the town just before I came to live here. Nearly all the posts have the names of people who contributed.

To make this quilt I used Riley Blake's Wheels 2 range and added some solid colours. On the back is the Wheels2 playmat in canvas, so it's a reversible quilt. Here it is one the only dry surface I...