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!