Chrissy Down Under - McKenna Ryan

quiltermarynel wrote:

Makes sense to me, although Santa, being magical, might.

 

He looks like he might be leading the innocent little animals down to the water to use them as a decoy too, use them as shark bait

I couldn't stand it, I unpicked the surfboard section and the night sky and replaced it with daytime sky  

Night time




Daytime - much nicer time to go surfing and I didnt like the plain sky/horizon so I added two distant islands. I much prefer it now



I also got the final block assembled and fused, the Kangaroo Bathing Houses

You've been busy! Daytime Santa is much better and those kangaroos are soooooo cute!

I like daytime Santa too. The night sky would have worked if Santa was just sitting and star gazing but the surfboard messed that up. The Kangaroos are too cute.

Thanks, Im happy with daytime santa block now too, it was just, I dunno, 'not right' before

This afternoon I finished top stitching the final block

Excited to discover there is no sashing, don't know why I had it in my head there was. Tomorrow I hope to start joining the blocks, maybe even get to cut the inner and outer borders. So glad to be finished the fiddly work, so startled to be suddenly this close to assembling the top!

Wow, that is a big step forward.

Ive not yet recovered from the shock to continue on

I took a break from housework this afternoon, took some tylenol as my back was starting to cramp and then sat and started pinning blocks and stitching them together. This is what I have so far, borders next and best of all, its inspired shekid to get back to hers. She is busy tracing pieces as I type

WOW.

Love it.

Well look at that. That is just as cute as anything. Love it. Sure glad you changed that night sky to day, it would have stood out like a sore thumb I think.

I have little xmas light buttons to use rather than the applique ones the pattern had, I will string them on some thread and 'hang' them on the blocks that have them. You can see but I used a green satin ribbon with gold metallic edges for the stings the baubles hang from. Im going to add some fancy ric rac to them, something with metallic gold so they arent flat and I have a couple of xmas wreath buttons that might suit the bathing houses, the pink/orange one is very bland as is the blue toned one. Even a door knob might make it better when its all done.

Yes, Im really glad I pulled the night sky off the Santa block and replaced it with blue sky, it just looked wrong and would have looked wrong on the quilt. McKenna had used the same dark background on the cockatoo bell block and the quilt looks out of whack with the two dark blocks, no balance.

I have a grocery order coming today, just got an email message its going to be late, changed the time from today to 5.40 - 6.40pm so I have a free day all of a sudden! Plus that means DH is here to haul them in although I do hate having to sort it all at night right in the middle of dinner time, oh well. I might start cutting the borders, housework isnt going anywhere fast, if I put a load of washing on the noise of the machine will make me feel like Im multi-tasking

Huh, just cutting borders, the kit contains 63" of outer border fabric and the two side pieces required are 64 1/4"  - why would you only give 63", totally stupid to have to waste a whole strip to get the extra little bit required.

Inner border has 46" on two sides, why not just make your pattern a little more fabric friendly, seeing as the majority is 44" WOF??

Now all I have left to do is top stitch the few piece that overlap the border or other blocks

Yeah, I've run into patterns like that before. It really wouldn't be hard to adjust applique backgrounds to fit WOF. Love your borders. Now even more glad there is no dark blue in the center.

There are 3 Pelicans that are supposed to go on the outer border but Im not going to add them. I love them but one overlaps the kangaroo on the right end and its too busy looking and the perspective is out, the Pelicans are bigger than the roo and I don't like it. Laura likes it though so I gave the ones I made to her

Oh yeah, I remember the pelicans. They were kinda big.

You can see them on the first page of this topic, I put a photo of McKennas quilt and I just dont like how they overlap, it looks messy

Not too bad. But definitely out of proportion to the kangaroos. I guess we worry about that stuff too much. The whole thing is whimsical, not realistic and we're worried about pelicans. We're so goofy.

Gimpy that looks great! Speaking of fabric shortage my PhD for this month has a piece that is two inches short so I have to piece it together!

So pretty!

Linda I had to piece a narrow section onto one block in that quilt, it was too short when I went to assemble, thank goodness I kept all scraps was able to match it up

Thanks Jenn!

I got this  bound, labelled and ready to embellish some time ago, even got most of the bling on but I still had the xmas light strands to go. I got that done on Sunday, it drove me nuts trying to stitch through all the layers of fused batik but its done.

Thank you again Mouse for the precious gift you gave me, Im still to this day shocked at receiving the whole BOM set, I never dreamed I would ever have a McKenna Ryan BOM kit in my lifetime  

Thank you again Shemoos for your beautiful quilting that brought it to life, you put so much effort in to your designs and it looks amazing  

Thank you also to TxMary who sent me blingy sparkly jewels, if it wasn't for the gems, Id not have had anything to decorate the stockings etc with

I cant wait to hang this up and enjoy it over the xmas holidays

PS Its a pity its such a dull gloomy day, a little sunshine and the gems would have sparkled prettily

Gimpy What a beauty!

It turned out so cute. A Tasmanian Devil coming in through the chimney is a bit of a scary though but he is cute too!
I am so happy I sent you all those little bling things before the postage went nuts! That will be a lovely addition to your Christmas décor.

Sherry, where do you get all the inspiration to do that quilting? Deciding what to do has brought more than one of my projects to a screeching halt.