Seeing Stars

I have been stitching stars lately, getting in ahead of time for what seems like endless babies due this April and May. Baby quilts.
For this quilt I have used the Rosalie Quinlan pattern 'Baby Zak's Quilt' with American Jane's 'Look and Learn' fabrics. I played with and organised the colours and patterns in typical 'Bec' fashion - don't worry if you can't see it, it will be more obvious what I have done when I stitch the last two rows on. Soon I will start a second baby quilt with a 'Wee Play' jelly roll. Keep posted, I can't wait to share when I have them done! There's just something about baby quilts that is appealing, love them!
How many baby quilts have you made? What is your favourite pattern, colours and fabrics to use?

I wanted to share our 'verandah' friend. This spider has made it's home above our outdoor dining table on the verandah. The last few weeks we have been watching him/her making the web bigger and the spider itself has been growing... fascinating. Must dig out that book to identify it though.

I have nearly finished putting together my bundle for the Time for Tea swap that Stephanie is running (see sidebar). I have used fabrics that my swap partner loves, and I have tried to make things that she will be able to make use of. I would love to put some chocolates in but am not sure how they would travel due to the heat here at present.

The Rosez quilt is half quilted, sorry no pics, and I hope to have it finished by Friday night. Yep, binding too. I am going out of my square with my quilting now, slowly gaining confidence. I didn't do ANY ditch stitching on this quilt! Instead I quilted over the joins in the large squares with a decorative quilting stitch, in gold thread. I then attempted to quilt large swirling circles which ended up a disaster, so I unpicked these. After reading about antique quilting, I decided to quilt squares, criss cross squares. Keep posted for a pic in the next few days.

Yesterday I took some time to sit and watch some of the news on the fires raging here in Australia. Until now I have listended to news but not watched it. I don't watch news, it is overall too negative and I have better things to do with my time, so I listen to news on the radio. The scenes and interviews with survivors I watched were horrific to say the least. I had to wipe the tears away numerous times. Everyday worries are so trival compared to what those people (survivors and helpers alike) are going through. Like one surviver said 'this fire made Ash Wednesday seem like a BBQ, this was a REAL fire this time'. Ash Wednesday happened over 20 years ago and approx 75 people lost their lives, a horrendous fire but small compared to this present fire.

I am a long way from the big fires that are raging but there are some smaller ones within a few hours drive. I hope something happens soon to put the fires out.

Help is being organised and carried out in many ways.

Kerry's Tuesday class are making quilts to donate.

Melly and Me are having an auction to raise money.

Tia has organised quilts to be made; you can make and donate a 12.5" wonky star block to help.

Kim at Honeysuckle Cottage is helping Tia by organising donations, accepting blocks on her behalf and has local quilters to help get the quilts together. Kim also has other links on her sidebar for otherways to help.

I am sure there is much much more help being organised out there in blogland, I have just posted links to what I know at the time.