Are you enjoying our travels? Australia anyone?

These past many months, we have really racked up the airline miles with our World Quilting Travel Adventure. We have visited Oregon, Hawaii, Canada, England, and Israel and had absolutely no jet lag whatsoever!

I've had a great time designing and creating each of the souvenirs for you. Sadly, I've heard from only a few of the 28 original folks who signed on to travel with me, but I am happy that a few of you continue to let me know that you are making the souvenirs and are enjoying our visits throughout the world. I  may cut our travels short but for now, I am planning to continue our journey as planned.

I'm on the homestretch of machine quilting my Israel souvenir. I always underestimate just how long it takes me to machine quilt. I did finish quilting the hoopoe yesterday but it took me days to do him. Yep, I'm definitely a turtle quilter. I have the branch left to quilt and then I'm ready to square it up and put the facing on. This one will not have a traditional binding because I don't want the binding to detract from the piece.

However, I have been thinking about our next destination and ideas have been bouncing around in my head like crazy. I have to make myself stop thinking about it or I would never finish this souvenir! When you get close to finishing a project, does your mind start to drift onto the next project before it should? Come on....I can't be the only one....can I?

It will be a while before you get to see anything or receive the pattern, but I've decided that we must ALL go to Australia! This country is so diverse that it was hard for me to narrow down just one area to study, but I found it and you are going to love, love, love it or let's be Australian and say this next souvenir is going to be fully sick! LOL I am loving learning some Australian English Phrases.

Let's go sew!

LOOK Hoopoe Sighting & FREE TQS shows

Sorry for a bit of blur but you can only imagine my excitement at the hoopoe sighting while watching the Jungle Book movie! I ran to grab my phone and obviously couldn't hold my hands still. But isn't it great! I told you hoopoes are awesome birds. Even the makers of the Jungle Book think so.

Here's another photo of him with his wings spread a bit. What a marvelous bird.

But wait! There's more.  Remember back a post or two when I recommended Grace Errea and that she was a guest at TQS. If you are become a member of TQS, you can learn a lot from hundreds of teachers from around the globe.

Well, you can watch all 200 plus shows for FREE starting on the 17th and going through the weekend. TQS is celebrating International Quilting Day and are opening up the classes for everyone! And, there's even more. They are giving away a ton of gifts. Go HERE to enter the contest and get ready to have a weekend of bliss watching as many shows as you can take in! There will be many winners so you might as well get in on the running.

And, please don't forget to watch Grace's show first! Click HERE to quickly go to it.

Hoopoe Construction

Building my Hoopoe

Building the hoopoe was so much fun and I hope you enjoy building yours as much as I did. What you see above is me checking the layout for my next section. I cut the biggest part of the black on the wings in one section and then carefully cut away the sections in your pattern that say CUT. Initially, I was going to cut each of those sections individually and I had an aha moment and thought it would be much easier and nicer looking to have fewer units. This made the gluing easier as well. The only thing I want to caution you here is that these pieces are very narrow and fragile so when you remove the freezer paper, be gentle so you don't distort the fabric.

Freezer paper on wing fabric

What you see is the freezer paper cut precisely. Once I ironed it on I 'roughly' cut it out and applied the glue. After the glue dried and I ironed it to make it clear, only then did I cut the fabric out exactly following the pattern. This allowed me to keep unnecessary glue off of the front of the fabric. Grace doesn't do this but I am not as gifted as she is and really needed that fabric buffer.

Body parts! Ready for glue.

Don't you just love those feet!!!  I do.

Dried glue

This is what the glue looks like when it is dry but hasn't been ironed yet. Once you iron it, it turns clear and has a plastic appearance. Remember you can still remove the glue at this stage before ironing by simply brushing it off with a stiff bristle brush. Once you iron it, it is permanent and cannot be removed.

Please share with me your progress so others can be inspired too.