The End?

Hey guess what? We have moved house!

Check our our brand new website and blog at www.materialobsession.typepad.com.

This address will no longer be a functioning blog but you will still be able to view our old blogs here.

See you there.

Swap Day Comes Around Again

SWAP DAY

Material Obsession’s annual Swap Day Sale is on again!
Sunday, December 3 from
10am – 4pm

Swap Day includes:

Browse through Material Obsession’s sale fabrics. Spot the dots on fabric bolts for 10%, 15% or 25% discount per metre. 10% off selected books and all haberdashery. Loads of fabric for $10 per metre.

Swap fabric from your stash to jazz up your colour choices at home! Bring a piece of fabric and swap it for a same sized piece of fabric from the bins. Ie. Swap a FQ for FQ etc. All fabric left over is donated to the Hunters Hill Quilters for community quilts. Fabric donations gratefully accepted. PLEASE only 100% cotton patchwork fabrics.

Special guests Sue Cody with her collection of medallion fabric for sale, and Sheena from Ric-Rac selling vintage quilt tops, blocks and gifts.

Sit and have cappuccino and cake in the car park and have a look at the "airing of the quilts! "

Most of all, take the opportunity to bring in projects you’ve worked on this year to show the girls, have a chat, and have fun! Looking forward to seeing you all.

PS Especially for all you bloggers who can't make it in to the shop for Swap Day, place an order for a kit or book on December 1, 2 or 3 by email or phone and receive 10% off. Offer excludes Kaffe Fassetts new book. Sorry!

Round Robin Stage 2

Round Robin Navajo Indian style...this photo of my freshly assembled round robin quilt top (and my loyal doggy Duke)was taken a few days back when it was freezing cold and very gray! Today the clothes the same clothes line has laundry on it drying in seconds in the super hot heat of the later afternoon. Anyway, you have all seen Sarah's gorgeous redwork bits that have fit magically together into a nearly done snappy little project. Mine is now together but resting at the bottom of a pile of quilts to be quilted...five huge projects.
However, we also got lucky when a bit of Freshcut fell into our hands. Freshcut is the appropriately named line from Heather Bailey full of divine florals and fresh new colors. Instead of quilting all weekend I spent what was left of Sunday afternoon working on yet another quilt to add to the stack only this one is freshly cut fresh offcuts.... looking forward to some time off over the holidays to move some of these to the finished pile.
ps...finally got to do something with the Nifty Notions Wedge Ruler and what fun it was! kathy

The Cut Loose Quilters

Yesterday was that one Wednesday a month and the Cut Loose Quilters (otherwise known as the ruler group) were in the shop for their class. As usual we managed to do a lot of talking, not much sewing and a huge amount of eating Lindsay's chocolate cheesecake. Life is hard and long, but we manage. :)

The girls also brought their usual rollout of amazing projects completed, enough to make Kath and I feel itchy and need to go home to the sewing machines!

Libby has been quilting and finishing the Christmas Shopping quilt that she was doing at Quilt Camp....

and Version Two, which we presume is called, "Shopping in the January Sales". Love the colours in this one.

A round of applause for Sheena, who has been playing with the Nifty Notions Wedge ruler. She created these fabulous wheels, which she is going to applique to a green linen table cloth by pinking the edges and decorating with Perle cotton and green bobbles. She's getting a bit too clever for her own good, we might have to knee-cap her.

And Lindsay has as usual managed to out do herself and everyone else by creating this little beauty, which is a take on the dresden plates and She's Apples quilts, using the Nifty Notions rulers again. She has used toiles for the backround and seventy two different fabrics for the plate blades!! This quilt is completely hand pieced and completed in a matter of weeks, and if that doesn't make you want to bash her up, she also makes a mean chokkie cheesecake. Show off.
Thanks for a fun afternoon again girls! And apologies to Cheryl for not photographing her lovely Carpenters Wheel block, I promise to get it next time. :) Sarah

Festive Aprons

If you're thinking about Christmas craft and what to fill all those little stockings with, try these on for size. These two beautiful aprons are shown modelled by my devine Oscar, who is seven, and not at all concerned by the fact that he is wearing an apron.

By contrast, my husband is not quite as happy about wearing an apron, especially knowing that is photo will be seen by other people.

All that aside, I made both the aprons using Christmas fabrics from the shop. I made three little aprons, one for the shop and two for my little nieces for Christmas, along with some cute shaped cookie cutters and a tiny little wooden rolling pin. The kids size aprons use half a metre of fabric, and took only about 30mins to make, including the bias for the apron strings.

Bearing in mind that the aprons still fit Oscar at seven, and I made them for three year olds, they should last a while. Best of all they were quick, inexpensive and easy to construct! The fabric comes in four different designs and is $24 per metre, and the big green spot is from Yuwa and is $28 per metre. :) Sarah

Glorious Kaffe

Believe it or not, it's true, the wonderful, wonderful Kaffe has a new book out and Material Obsession have it in!

Kaffe Fassett's Kaleidoscope of Quilts offers the reader a range of 20 individual designs that feature both the new fabrics in Rowan's patchwork range and some firm favorites. Photographed against the glittering backdrop of the Mediterranean island of Malta, these quilts echo the bright sunshine colors in a glorious array of new designs from both Kaffe and his team, including Liza Prior-Lucy and Pauline Smith. With each quilt comes illustrated step-by-step instructions with colored diagrams, a 'flat shot' photo, and the quilt template.

All this for the bargain price of $45 - YES - it's too good to be true - inspiration in a soft cover - call now and recieve a free set of steak knives! We post. :) Sarah

PS Just kidding about the knives, but you already knew that.

Red Red Robin

Kathy and I have been participating in a Round Robin with our group, the Hunters Hill Quilters, over the past few months. You might remember that I did the fish block for another quilter's Robin a few months ago. Well, the Round has finished and I have my rows back, and they are shown below! I asked for red and cream with a touch of green. I made the top row of daisies, and the other ladies added another row as it went between four other people.

The reason I asked for red and cream is that a million years ago when I still had time to hand embroider (did that time ever actually exist? Apparently so) I stitched a whole lot of redwork designs by a couple of stitchery designers, predominately Bronwyn Hayes. I never did anything with them, so I thought that the RR might be a good opportunity to use them up.

I'm thinking of sashing the redwork apart using some of these new Moda dots we've got in, and the red print from Piece O'Cake's Serendipity range.


Cute huh? I'll let you know when I've finished, and I'll get onto Kath to post you her RR tomorrow night! That's if and when she manages to crawl out from under the six hours of cricket matches she has to attend tomorrow..... three boys is a massive sporting life.

We can order any of the many Bronwyn Hayes books in for you, and we currently have her latest block of the month pattern Polka Dot Girls, in stock as a complete pattern. Happy quilting...and stitching..... :) Sarah

PS To those of you who have been asking about the beautiful Dove in the Window quilt a few posts ago, it is Brigitte Giblin's design and she unfortunately doesn't sell her patterns, you have to take one of her classes to get them. Sorry about that!

Another Great Link

This one's a doozie. Click on this link to www.dailycandy.com and they will send you an email for free telling you about what's hot in design and fashion, and the latest of everything. This is the email they sent me yesterday..... beautiful retro wallpaper cutouts for your kids rooms. I want the elephant for my sewing room! :) Sarah
http://www.rompbklyn.com/html/items/wallpaper_zoo.html#

Clever Clogs

Believe it or not this a first quilt! Nancy is in our Wednesday morning class, and decided she would make Summer Sunshine as her first quilt. Well, it grew a bit, and with a colour change and a few extra blocks, here's the result. Well done Nancy, you should be pround of yourself, it looks great.

Summer Sunshine by Nancy

Summer Sunshine by Sarah

And my Wednesday night class has once again produced a lovely quilt, Kathy is midway through this medallion for her bed, using beautiful Kensington fabric for the centre. It's looking devine, and we'll keep you updated as she goes along. Keep up the good work Kathy :) Sarah

Christmas Presents

Due to low funds and a large collection of beautiful silk threads, I decided this year to make the presents for my kids teachers. A while ago I bought Katherine Shaughnessy's gorgeous crewel embroidery book, The New Crewel, so I started there. Sort through the stash for fabrics, pulled out the threads, throw in a few bars of nice soap and hey presto.... teacher presents! Well the first one, anyway.

Only two more to go.... lucky they're so fun to make. Her book is truly lovely and brings the craft of crewel squarely into the modern home. The links above go to her website, where her art is featured, and also to a crewel website which links to a site where she sells her pillows and kits. Check it out! Sarah

Baby Quilts Galore

This month's issue of APQ contains not one, but two MO baby quilts for you to whip up for thelittle people in your life. Cowboy Baby, Kath's little western number (below) has been so popular that we have already sold out of the blue fabric it's made from, and we can only do it for you in green. I tell you this not as a har-de-har-de har-har piece of info, but to let you know that in green it is just as cute and has the added bonus of being still available!

Oh! Olivia, is quick and easy quilt in black and red just perfect for a newborns. I realised that I am really still a child when I begged Kath for the chance to make a quilt "with the piggy fabric". Oh well, at least I know what I am.....


Both these darling kits are available now from MO, and contain all the fabric for the top, the binding and the pattern. AND a Material Obsession quilt label, which I know you are all just hanging out for. To order, you can email materialobsession@ozemail.com.au , and if you quote the code blogd1, you can get 10% off the original price, a special deal just for all our beautiful blog readers. Good luck with your Melbourne Cup bets for tomorrow.... love that first Tuesday in November! :) Sarah

Free Quilt Pics!

Here's a great little idea.... how you can get a free quilt pic sent to your computer every month.

The INTERNATIONAL QUILT STUDY CENTER at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln houses one of the largest publicly owned quilt collections in the world. The quilts range from outstanding early examples of American quilts to contemporary and international quilts. The International Quilt Study Center's collection now numbers nearly 2000 quilts from fourteen countries, dating from the late 1700s to the present. The quilt shown below is one of their latest acquisitions.

Click onthe link and have a look at their website, where you can search and browse through their entire quilt collection, or sign up to their monthly email system, and they'll send you a pic of the Quilt of the Month to inspire your inbox every four weeks. Not bad for free! :) Sarah

Brigitte Giblin

One Thursday a month Brigitte Giblin brings her bag of tricks (translated as gorgeous quilts) to the shop for a class. Today was that day full of oooh's and aaah's as she revealed her latest projects and we showed her our progress as well...Theresa started us off with her version of "The Couples" quilt which in this case is very retro and decidedly single...

We spent some time going nuts over this and then Kelly showed us her progress on her hexagon quilt...

Brigitte had a new treasure to show us today with Orange Peels and Hexagons in gorgeous mixes of warm and cool colors.

And the latest quilt for Brigitte's new farm is her version of Sarah's favourite block, Dove in the Window in reds, black, and latte.



It was an exhausting day filled with inspirational viewing, fabric selecting and lots of lively chat. All too soon over until next month! kathy

Tuesday's Class

The gals on Tuesday night have been sadly neglected. Their work is marvelous and varied as seen here. Kate has been stacking quilt tops for what appears to be years. Every week she brings in another treat that she wants to finish. Check them out.



Rachael is looking happy now as she has been busy working on finishing Ruby's butterly quilt and has it nearly there.


One project that has been slowing down the quilting progress is her cute little Chrismas calendar which is also nearly finished!

Michelle is working on her gorgeous Annie's Garden Quilt (see Sarah, people in my class do your quilts too!!) which is coming along very nicely despite her hectic schedule with two little kids!
There's been a lot of progress this year and lots more projects either finished or still in dream state but well done all! k