Stir crazy

We have had snow on the ground since Monday and as it has been very VERY cold, we have not ventured out much. An ideal opportunity to get all my journal quilts, christma postcards and UFOs finished. Well that was the theory! I did get one journal quilt finished, so just three to go. Must get a move on!! My postcards are also getting done gradually, but on Tuesday I ran out of pelmet vilene so there was a brief halt to proceedings. Never mind, we'll pop into town on Wednesday morning and get some more!

The best laid plans etc!! Wednesday started OK, but soon deteriorated and it snowed heavily all day. As we were confined to barracks yet again, and no pelmet vilene could be got, I improvised with some calico and bondaweb! Actually, I think I prefer the slightly more flexible result this gives.

Here is an interesting view of our doorstep which gave me some ideas for my December journal quilt. I treated myself to some new threads at the Knitting and Stitching show and I'm going to try using them for free machine embroidery and give the supreme slider another run out. White on white sums up what we've been subjected to this week!
There were some more snowy photos, but for some reason, blogger won't let me upload any more!

Anyway, the sun is shining today and it's not so cold, so I'll be vernturing out later to soak up the sunshine!!

Catching up

So, that was May and it's now November! Oh dear, very bad blogger!
However, I have not been idle. I have started three small quilts, have actually finished four journal quilts, finished and delivered seven postcards, done two more workshops, visited the Festival of Quilts and have been busy thinking up new ideas for the final four journal quilts and the Alwoodley Quilters Christmas Challenge! There are also eight more Christmas postcards to do. Phew!

This morning my Supreme Slider arrived, so this afternoon, I'm free machining rather than blogging!

So that's all for now, but watch this space!

Out and about

So, Monday dawned after a really hot weekend in the garden and on the allotment and off to the station to catch the train to London. Val and I were off to the V&A to see the quilt exhibition. London was hot, noisy and dirty, but it felt so good to be there after a long time away. Shame I forgot to take the AtoZ and wore the wrong shoes, but I managed to have a great time.

We got a sandwich and found a shady spot in Green Park to have a picnic. Then we set off to walk to the V&A, but it was so hot, and without the AtoZ I wasn't sure of the way, so we got a cab and arrived well in time for our start time of 2.30.

The exhibition was womderful. There was a good balance between the ancient and modern and we took our time going around. We had chosen a fairly quiet time, so we didn't have trouble getting close to the quilts. The old quilts were very impressive, especially considering that they were all done by hand. No photos allowed, but my favourites were King George reviewing the troops, the quilt made by prisoners in Wandsworth prison for Fine Cell Work and Pauline Burbridge's Applecross quilt. So then back out into the sunshine for a cup of tea in the courtyard in the company of a Black Backed gull and various small children cooling themselves in the fountain before we headed off to get something to eat and the train home.

The least said about the journey home the better, but we did get back at last,  an hour later than we should have done and feeling very jaded.

So then to Alwoodly quilter's on Tuesday morning where Sandra was showing us a technique she called shattered flowers. This invovled using a large floral print which was cut up and arranged on a grid. Keeping track of all the little pieces was tricky, but I managed to get the grid covered. Will I do anything with it? We'll see, but for now it's going on the WIP pile where no doubt it will gather quite a bit of dust!

Then in the afternoon, Sandra and I went up to the Quilt Museum in York to see a demonstration by Alicia Merritt. Alicia was showing us how to  use curved piecing techniques and creating wonderful blocks of coloured squares and rectangles. Sandra and I met up with her friend Julie who is also a blogger and very busy indeed. There was a lot to talk about, and another chance to look at the Breakthrough exhibition before we headed for home.

So, no photos, but today I'm recovering by doing a little gentle stitching and catching up on the Chelsea Flower Show!

Exciting times!

And so off to the Quilt Museum in York for a workshop with Hilary Gooding from the Contemporary Quilt Group making lacy scarves.

Hilary showed us some examples  and helped us choose the threads we were going to use and once she had dished out the water soluble fabric we were off. The museum provided sewing machines for us to use and I had forgotten how much I had come to rely on my Bernina, as I was using a Brother. Nice machine but rather fiddly to thread up and the least said about the bobbin winder the better!

So you start with a sheet of sticky water soluble fabric and lay on your threads and snippets of this and that as artistically, or not as you like! Then lay a sheet of thin water soluble fabric (non-sticky) over the top and press down well to make sure all the bits and pieces are well secured. Then to the machine. I chose to machine a grid using a variegated metallic thread in the needle with a black thread in the bobbin. I had chosen black and silver as my theme, but thought that little splashes of colour would add a little sparkle.

Hilary showed me how to make a fringe using free machine embroidery on a double layer of the thin soluble fabric stuck onto the end of my scarf. Scary stuff, especially as I was not familiar with the machine I was using and the fabric was a little wobbly. Had I been at home, I would have used a hoop for this. Anyway, I persevered and ended up with a more or less fringy addition to both ends!

Problems arose when dissolving the watersoluble fabric and in the areas where the threads or stitching were densest, little blobs of glue remained and are seemingly impossible to get rid of. I have now tried using really hot water and although this seems to have helped, some glue remains.

Anyway, I now have a little black and silver scarf to show off, and also the memory of a really fun day. Hilary is a very inspiring tutor and thanks to her encouragement, I've learned a lot.

So then to my Guild meeting on Saturday. Magie Relph was giving us a talk about indigo dyeing and after lunch we had an opportunity to dabble in an actual indigo vat made up to Magie's special recipe. So I came home  with a few pieces of indigo dyed cotton and blue fingernails, having forgotten to take the marigolds!!

The main business of the week was to get the embroidered duvet cover finished in time for Isobel's birthday and that's now done so back to my little batik quilt as the fabric for the edging has arrived!

How did I ever find time to go to work! and aren't I so glad I don't have to go anymore! Yippee!

A new challenge or two

When I visited Cowslip workshops recently, I was tempted by a batik jelly roll. Jelly roll quilt, must be a doddle or so I thought. Sadly, doddle it isn't, especially for someone like me who doesn't  do planning in advance! The fabrics, of course are lovely, made up of light, medium and darks, patterned and plain in lovely toning greens and purples. I thought it would be easy to sort the strips into the appropriate value pile, but I soon discovered that there were a few obvious lights, obvious darks, but the vast majority could have been either. Indeed, sorting fabric according to colour value very much depends on which ones you put next to which. What I find hard to believe is why I was surprised by this fact, given all the colour studies I've  done.

Anyway, I decided on using a nine patch pattern and combining the darks and lights in a random way so that, with luck, no two adjacent squares would be the same. Good plan as it went, but what I've ended up with is a quilt of many squares and my nine patch pattern is lost, because I didn't use borders around each block! BUT at least I managed to improve my sewing technique, matching the seams so most of the corners meet correctly! The quilt will not be finished for a while because none of the strips were long enough to make a binding that goes all the way round so I've had to send off for some more fabric for the sashing and binding.

So, what have I learned from this? Apart from yet again realising that I'm rubbish at planning! Well, first, all the strips in a jelly roll are not the same length; some are not cut as straight as you would wish and having every strip different means you have to buy more fabric for the sashing and binding for anything other than a small quilt. On the plus side, it's a wonderful opportunity to play with colour mixing and to practice piecing techniques. I was tempted to buy a book to help use up the jelly roll, but didn't because I'm supposed to be designing my own rather than doing projects designed by someone else!  After all, having been persuaded to join the contemporary quilters group, I must play the game!!!!

An email arrived from Creative Grids announcing that they now have online videos showing how to use their newest rulers designed for cutting trianlges from jelly roll strips, or cutting your own strips. The one that caught my eye was used to cut trapezoid shapes and in the video, these were put together to make a friendship braid. Looks simple enough, and I thought it would be a good way to use up the rest of my jelly roll. Well, like a lot of piecing techniques that look simple when someone else does them, this one wasn't at all simple when I tried it!! So a swift google search brought up three ot four different methods, all equally incomprehensible. Thank goodness for Chris at my quilting group on Tuesday, who showed me how in a much simpler version. So I now have a mini braided quilt just waiting the finishing touches and nearly all the jelly roll used up!!!

Chris  must have decided that I didn't have enough to do, so she invited me to join her latest challenge. This is to take a book, any one will do really. Turn to page 55, line 12 and use the text  as an inspiration for a quilt! My page 55 didn't have any text, so we chose page 25 line 6 which says "lines as shown". Yep, that's it! So I've accepted the challenge and as soon as I've finished Kay's postcard. I'll make a start.

Now I'm  off to play with my embroidery module embroidering a quilt top for Isobel's fifth birthday which is on the 1st of June! Tomorrow, it's of to the Quilting Museum in York for a workshop with Hilary Gooding making lacy scarves.

No pressure then!!!!

Phew!

So to York to the Quilting Museum to see the latest exhibitions. The Breakthrough exhibition with quilts made by members of the Contemporary Quilt group was stunning and we were fortunate that Margaret Ramsay, one of the members with a quilt on display was there to give a talk about her work. It was very interesting hearing about how someone goes about things and handling samples, but also heartening to meet a very pleasant person who was generous enough to share her secrets! Margaret uses her photos and drawings as the basis for her designs and uses many different techniques and mediums to get the effect she wants. The piece in this exhibition was made from an old Durham quilt, with applique, stitching and acrylic paint and it is a stunning piece of work.

The other exhibition, Inspired by the Past also contained some very interesting and clever work. I particularly liked Sarah Impey's "Family Circle" which had been inspired by finding a sampler stitched by a Great Grandmother and also the huge jumper quilted to look as if it had been knitted!

I would have liked longer looking around, but Sandra and I were quite peckish, so we went to the Italian Deli next door for lunch. Sitting outside in the garden in the sunshine was truly lovely. This garden is open to the public and would be a lovely spot for a picnic on a nice sunny day! Next time!!!

Then a brief walk around the wall to Goodramgate and on the way back to the bus stop, a look into Holy Trinity church which I hae never seen before. It is a tiny church in a lovely peaceful setting well away from all the hustle and bustle going on outside in the street. All the original wooden box pews have been retained and it had a lovely cheery atmosphere.

A great day out, and apart from splashing out on some artichokes in the deli, no money spent!

It all helped to take my mind off today and the visit to the Breast Screening Centre for a follow up after my mamogram last week. The letter they sent me was very vague, but I had convinced myself that my days were numbered. Strangely, my worst worry was the fact that poor Dave would have had to clear out all my stuff and would at last find out how much I had spent on fabric, yarn and shiny stuff! Fortunately, my excesses will remain my secret, at least for now, as they decided that I had a cyst and drained it there and then! So I consider myself truly lucky and can now get back to my various projects without the sword of Damocles hanging over me!

Logging onto the CQ yahoo group, I saw a post about a new site at the V&A where you can upload your own photos to make a pattern for a patchwork quilt! Had to have a go and it's great. Another new project! Just what I need! You can find it at http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/quilts/patchwork but make sure you have plenty of time as it is quite addictive!

Catching up at last

Where has April gone? Suddenly I'm up against the deadline for the CQ Journal Quilt challenge and am rushing to finish! Taking time out for a visit to Clitheroe on Tuesday may not have been such a good idea, but it was a super day for driving over the moors! I had never been to Clitheroe before, but it is a lovely little Lancashire town and reminded me of visits to Chorley all those years ago in another life!

Sandra and I went to see the Textilia 111 exhibition at the Platform Gallery and were very impressed. This group is quite small, but very talented and the pieces were all very different. The gallery is also very well stocked with lovely jewellery, bags and other hand crafted items. Then to Molly's Cafe for lunch and a stroll through the castle grounds before heading back home via Embsay Mills for much needed fabric!
I decided we needed to see the moors, and we certainly did that, ending up driving along a gated road through a farm yard!

What a beautiful day out! Pendle hill looming at us. Lapwings, Redkites and even a Buzzard overhead. Blue skies and signs of Spring everywhere.

So my March JQ, long planned did not take long to stitch. I am sticking to the theme of raw edge applique with curves, but for this quilt I decided to use some of the decorative stitches on my machine rather than free machine embroidery. The design was inspired by seeing fields of daffodils and winter wheat on our recent trip to Cornwall. I used a piece of Indigo dyed fabric for the sky and it worked very well and it really looks like a March day. My mitred corners will probably not stand too close an inspection, but I am quite pleased with it.

For my April quilt, I decided to stay with the curved piecing theme but I was a bit stumped for a design. In the end I decided to just use the colours in the fabric and the curves as the design to reflect all the lovely colours of Spring inspired by a visit to Caerhays gardens on Easter Sunday. The Camellias were all out, and some of the Magnolias were beginning to come out, but seem to have been knocked back by the bad winter. On our way back to the cafe, we turned a corner and were confronted with a magenta Magnolia that just seemed to leap out at us.

So now I can relax because all I have to do is finish my postcard to Kay, my Batik challenge quilt for Sandra, a birthday outfit for Isobel........ Why do I do it?

Just because I love it!!!

Down but not out!

So the next time I decide to start digging, I will have some strong words to say on the subject of backs! I am still suffering after a week, although I can now stand up and have walked up to the shops today. Sadly I still can't sit for long at the sewing machine, but I did manage to get my February JQ finished yesterday and am pleased with it. Here it is and I have uploaded it onto the Yahoo group!

I have got my March JQ planned, but there won't be time to finish it before we go off to Cornwall so it will have to wait until I get back. Seems as if there will be quite a lot of knitting done as I can't take much sewing with me! Oh well! I'm sure we will find something to do and I have decided the sun will shine and it will be warm!! OK!!!

Spring is here

All this lovely sunshine and, yes, warmth, has seduced us out into the allotment and the front garden. Until Sunday tihs resembled a bomb site, but after a few hours it now looks like this.
The down side is that after all the digging over the weekend, my first spadeful on Tuesday proved to be one spadeful too far and my back has given up the ghost! At least I can stand up straight today, but can't get far from my chair so I have been planning my next JQs while I knit! I realised that I still have two to complete before the April deadline and one not yet started and I am determined not to fall behind.
At least I have finished my latest postcard for the GWNN challenge and will be able to give it to Chris on Tuesday. I am pleased with it, but would do it differently next time. The edges are a bit ragged. Still, the mental block seems to have gone, for now at least!

Failure

This is my latest attempt at a postcard. A lovely sunset on a lovely Cornish beach on Christmas Eve which I thought would just make a lovely little postcard. I am trying raw edge applique, but quite forgot about using Bondaweb so the pieces moved around. Then my attempt at free machine embroidery didn't work. My metallic thread broke and try as I might I just couldn't get the tension adjusted to get the bobbin thread to come through for whip stitch! Am I downhearted? I'll say!

So It's back to the drawing board once again. I did think that the lovely sunshine we've had for the last few days might just spur on the creative juices. Well you never know it's only Tuesday!

I think the answer is to just do it and not think about it too much. So Stop blogging and get sewing! Now! OK!!!

Lazy days!

Where does the time go? I have a postcard to make, three journal quilts to finish before the end of April, a challenge quilt and a party dress for Isobel. Yet.... I am not doing any of it! It has been a fairly busy week, but even so guilt is beginning to creep in and darken the soul!

But, this is the third day in a row that the sun has shone. Our seeds are germinating nicely and there are these in the garden at last.

The hellebores are beginning to get flower buds and the bulbs are beginning to show, but everything seems to be very late and reluctant to get going. I know the feeling!!!

Yesterday was Bernina club at MKC in their new premises in Dock Street. It was well attended and informative, but I came home at lunch time. Still feeling very down and not in the frame of mind to get going, I met the Postman at the gate as I got home and this arrived from Chris. Cheered me up no end!

So, I got going on the party dress and got most of it cut out ready to start sewing when I get back from class this afternoon. It's going to be very bright with pink and orange net frills and ribbons and I hope she will like it.

Just shows that after all the snow and dark cold days spring may at last be arriving!

Why bother reading the instructions!

I handed over my latest postcard to Brenda at our group meeting today and she was very pleased with it. Phew! However, someone pointed out to me that I was well ahead of the game and I noticed that our swap started on 6th February and not 6th January as I had thought! I did read the instructions, but must have missed that bit! Anyway, I've already started the next one so I'm really on a roll now.

Some hand stitching for a change today whule I thought about ideas for my next JQ. I think I will stick with the theme of my tree, but will do some sketch book work to get my ideas in order and PLAN!!!

At art class yesterday, we were confronted with dead fish from the museum store. Some of them were so brightly coloured that they looked as if they had been painted! We were using pastels, which actually gave lovely effects, but were a bit messy. Sandra and I chose to draw the same fish and we were really pleased with our efforts. So much so that we have decided to challenge each other to make a quilt (just a small one) based on the drawings. Oh, will there be an end to this whirlwind of activity!

On the way home from the bus stop this afternoon, a red kite flew over! It's been flying around most of the afternoon and it's the first one I have seen around here. I hope they are moving in as they are wonderful to watch.

Off to make curry for tea and watch the rugby. Come on England!

Another day another postcard

I decided that I would tidy up my workroom and give it a bit of a clean. The tidying underway, I then got sidetracked into emptying my "I'll finish it later" basket and decided to start finishing the bits and pieces started and abandoned in the distant past. All was going well, but then, I got a bit bored sewing dozens of inch squares together and started to yearn for something else. Displacement activity at it's worst or best, whichever way you look at it!

Our group with no name is having a group meeting on Saturday and as the next postcard in the swap needs to be done by the end of the month, I thought I'd get going on it. So I abandoned  the "finish it later" pile and got started.

Geometrical shapes  have been much in my mind lately, so I thought I would use that as a theme. So I cut some shapes from my handdyed fabrics. I chose orange and green/blue as the base colours and layered some organza shapes on top. Machine embroidery using metallic threads, some shapes using my flower stitcher and a nice neat edging and here it is! I hope Brenda likes it.

My flower stitcher is calling me now, having sat unused in my drawer for over a year and it is going to be a lot more useful than I thought it would. My currrent task is to use it with as many of the stitches on my machine as I can before it gets a bit boring and make a book to show them off when I do my workshop at MKC later in the year. I'm also going to practise changing the setting so that I can do concentric circles! Anything it seems to avoid going back to the unfinished projects of old!

More swapping!

Following the demise of our Night Owls quilting group, some members decided to carry on regardless, but on an informal basis only. So, we had out first meeting at the beginning of January, our chinese meal out, and we're now planning on meeting once a month! It's good to think that there's life after death, so to speak!

In order to keep everyone focussed, we're having a postcard swap which involves making one postcard a month to be sent round to the next name on the list. I received my postcard from Janice a couple of weeks ago and it is really beautiful. Hand embroidered pansies on a painted fabric background.

I had no idea what to do for my postcard to send to Kath, until the other night, when not being able to sleep, I looked out of the window and saw a wonderful full moon glinting through the branches of my tree. A song came into my head as I stood and looked, but try as I might I couldn't remember how the line went. Thanks to Google, not only did I discover that Don Mclean has his own website (how did I not know that?), but there was a Youtube clip of him singing that very song. Deep sigh here on account of lost youth etc!!!

My idea was to put a line from the song onto the fabric but not being a fan of the text tool in PSP7, I thought I might use free machine embroidery. Not a success as the text was far too intrusive. Fortunately, I also have PSPX and the text tool is much easier to use and the help is better.

So I cut my fabric  and stuck it onto a piece of ordinary printer paper, put it into the tray, hit the print button and crossed my fingers! Bingo! It did not get screwed up, or smudged and looked just as I wanted it to. Here it is, ready to go off to Kath today! Sideways on sadly, but I'm sure you get the picture!

Journal Quilts

Of course it would be easy if I had lots of ideas and the ability to transfer them to paper and then fabric. However, having taken the plunge to join in with the Journal Quilt project I am trying really hard to plan my projects and to think the designs through before starting off blindly and then finding it just doesn't work!

There is a poplar tree growing in my neighbour's garden and it's not really a thing of beauty, but growing up it and wrapping around it is an old Wisteria. This is actually growing in our garden, but as it was here when we came, we can't really take any credit for it! I find myself looking at this tree every morning when I'm drinking my early morning tea and I have become fascinated, (DH says obsessed!) with the way the wisteria twines around the trunk and branches. It was quite a picture in the recent snow as you can see, so I decided to use it as a design source for my January Journal Quilt. In fact, if I have gone so far as choosing a theme, I think this will be it.

So I have been hard at work trying to get the first little quilt finished, but as usual

didn't like the first attempt and abandoned it to be resurrected in another project  later. Likewise attempt number two, but the third attempt seems to have been successful and I've now uploaded it to the Contemporary Quilt Group.

Am I enjoying it? Yes, but still a bit scared that my efforts are a bit amateurish! More practice is needed!

In at the deep end!

So, as if I haven't got enough to do, I'm embarking on a new venture in addition to the spinning, weaving, embroidery....... etc.  I've always been interested in patchwork and quilting and somewhere up in the attic
is a cardboard box of bits of left over fabric from dresses I made for myself and my Daughter in the 1960s and 1970s. The plan was that when I retired, I would use these bits to make a lovely quilt which would be  a reminder of those lovely heady days and might even be of historical interest! Well I have retired, and the box remains beneath it's layer of dust with it's contents intact! I now have a stash of fabric that it will take several decades to use up, so the heirloom quilt will have to wait!

Back in 2005, I wasn't intending to start quilting, but the train journey from Kings Cross to Leeds takes around two hours and having dozed off for a while I noticed that the girl who had been sitting opposite me had left her copy of British Patchwork and Quilting magazine on the table. I was bored by now and picked it up and that's how that journey led to this quilting journey that I'm now embarked on!

There was a pattern  in the magazine that took my eye, based on a nine patch block. So, not having a clue what that meant but thinking it looked pretty, I decided to make one! I had plenty of fabric that I had dyed myself and the result was not too bad for a complete beginner.  It made an ideal play mat for my little grandaughter and  I was very pleased with it. [Shame about the redeye!].

My next effort was much more complicated and was my own design. I had been to the Harrogate Quilt show with a friend and saw some fabulous fabric with cats and dogs in lovely bright colours which I just had to have. The fabric was designed by Laurel Burch and was so eye catching that I knew Isobel would love it too.

As I am not renowned for my forward planning or working out the design beforehand, the quilt was a bit cobbled together and I only just had enough fabric to complete it! It now lives on Isobel's bed and is very much loved, even though it is full of mistakes and would not win any prizes for technique!

Have I learned my lesson? Well I would like to think so but can't promise. I am hoping that joining the Contemporary Quilt Group will encourage me to develop some good habits such as measuring accurately and planning ahead!

Possibly wishful thinking! We shall see!!!