Sue W Sews

OOh, I forgot to say....

2012-01-21T17:37:00.001Z

... How could I!!!!

I was a winner in a giveaway! I left a comment on Clare's blog, Dordogne Quilter about some name banners that she had made and I am going to have one made for me! I am really looking forward to this as David will be decorating my sewing room at the end of February so it's really well timed. I have been following Clare's blog for some time as although I don't appear to do much liberated quilting I do like the liberated look.

Friday Night Sew In - Catch up Saturday

2012-01-21T17:23:00.002Z

I thought I would post a catch up after the Friday Night Sew In. I should have posted earlier, but I went out to join a friend for a knit and natter, then lunch out with David followed by the supermarket shop has taken care of most of today.

My Friday night was a late one continuing another Dresden Plate block, pieces of which I started to cut out and tack on Thursday. Yesterday evening I tacked and machine sewed the plate pieces together, then pinned and tacked onto the background fabric. I'd also cut and tacked around the middle circle to the freezer paper. So this was the state of the block by the end of the evening.

As David was working all evening and into the night, this morning while he was still in bed and I'd got up I carried on with the sewing by appliqueing the plate to the background and afterwards I sewed the circle in the middle and it now looks like this.

I have since cut the background fabric away and removed the freezer paper from behind the shapes. Another block done to add to the other two here and here.

I also have another block in progress, but I'm getting fed up of dealing with the very pointy points on this DP. I have tried trimming the allowance down so that there is less bulk in the point but I'm not happy with this. If anyone has any ideas how I can make this look better I'm open to suggestions, but here it is:

And lastly on this, there is picture of the pattern of the DP blocks. After the pointy one, there's just 2 to go.

When shopping today the bunches of flowers were drastically reduced and I got a £7.50 bunch for just £1.88. I could not resist this bundle of colour, if it just lasts the weekend it'll be good, any longer a bonus.

And finally, my daughter, Sarah, has got to LA. She has contacted me though facebook that she arrived safely. As she travels on her own, I get a bit worried about her safety, so I hope that she'll keep posting regularly. She is out there for a week and it'll be good to hear her when she gets back to the UK.

My daughter has a blog

2012-01-17T22:01:00.001Z

My daughter, Sarah, will be going to Los Angeles next week on her own. A very brave girl, I think, but then she lives on her own and is happy to paddle her own canoe, so to speak. So she's off to see a Nightwish concert and to explore LA and she has started her own blog to diarise her adventures. Just the first posting so far and it can be found here

Getting started

2012-01-08T20:25:00.002Z

This year is off to a slow start due to a bad cold/flu virus that I've had since New Year. I struggled back to work as I'd already had a fortnight's holiday and it seemed pretty bad show not to go back, but I got through it OK. This virus really got to my sinuses so not only did I have a headache for days but a face ache as well - yeauch! Anyway I'm getting back to normal and I have been making a few postcards and making progress on a sewing machine cover (more of that later).

Made any resolutions? Mine is to try and "get out there" more - get to know of challenges, giveaways and other things going on out there. This might also be the year that I'll sign up for City and Guilds, which has been a long held ambition for me. Family and work have previously got in the way of this - I still have the work but only for 4 days a week and the children left home a few years now so the timing might be right for this. I'll do this by distance learning and it'll either be the School of Stitched Textiles or Designmatters, must weigh up best move for this.

I've also got a course lined up thats run by West Country Embroiderers at the end of February using the embellisher machine and looking at the tutor Sandra Coleridge's website looks like it could be very good. I'm going with my friend Brenda, or rather it was Brenda that talked me into it! But I am really looking forward to it.

Meanwhile in the gap between Christmas and New Year I made an iron cozy for my travel iron following the instructions here on Sew We Quilt. It looks like a very cute iron shaped mob cap!

I've also signed up for BQL Postcard group's birthday swap again and with 3 birthdays this month - one in a couple of days I've made some postcards. I bought a new Really Useful Box to keep my postcard supplies in as I make the backs in advance with the fusible already ironed on. Another thing that I've tried is using the T-shirt transfer paper to make "Postcard" and also return address labels for the cards here's the mock up on paper

And above are the finished labels on the back of one of the cards.

This one is for the birthday girl, Lois whose choice was butterflies, flowers or cats and I managed all 3!

BQL's challenge was to make useful items each month, either to keep or to make as a present for someone (hopefully to be prepared for Christmas) and the first one set this month was a sewing machine cover. If you read my blog post here I already made a start on this - now I have a deadline so I am progressing this further. This will be for my small sewing machine and another resolution - I really must get my main sewing machine serviced - it hasn't been done for at least three years!

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T16:21:00.003Z

I hope that you all have a Happy New Year.

I will be posting again very soon.

Best wishes

Sue

That was Christmas

2011-12-30T11:46:00.001Z

With Christmas over and heading fast towards the New Year, I thought I would post with images of Christmas this year. I had some lovely presents, though no quilty ones, but I've got some Christmas money to spend so I may have a go at the online sales and see what I can get.

This Christmas Day was spent with my daughter-in-law Carly's family, with a lovely lunch and it was nice to catch up with them all.

The day after Boxing Day the children and grandchildren came over for dinner and tea. Despite the lack of room in our downstairs living and dining rooms we did manage well. As soon as my camera came out Sophie wanted to have a go at taking photos. She's getting quite good at it, though I did have to delete a few photos which were blurry or with heads cut off! She then turned the camera on herself to take a photo (I'm standing behind her).

Our daughter in law, Carly, has a professional camera and at my request took a photo of the (grown up) children here

And the five of us here, which is a rare sight. It's taken until Christmas to get all of us together.

Sophie go her own back on Carly, taking a photo of the photographer

Boxing Day itself was a quiet day but we managed to go out to a very cold and windy Canford Cliffs beach, walking down towards Sandbanks. There were a lot of people walking off the Christmas excesses and children trying out new bikes or scooters on the prom. The weather must have been just right for the sailors going out in their yachts. I took a photo with my phone and you can just about make out 3 yachts out at sea.

Just before Christmas I also sent out a birthday postcard in the last birthday swap of the year to Rosemary.

The theme she chose was water and I was a bit stumped with this one until I found some blue batik fabric with circles with gave the impression of puddles. I used some Angelina fibre and organza and free machines with spirals to give the effect of ripples in the water. Not sure if convincing or not at the time but looking at the photo above it looks pretty much how I wanted it to look.

With tomorrow being New Year's Eve I'll post with a review of the past year. See you soon.

So Here It Is...

2011-12-24T18:56:00.001Z

Merry Christmas! (to quote Slade)

I looked for fancy clip art or images but decided on my Christmas tree photo from a year ago when we were in Yorkshire and had a white Christmas! How things have changed in that year.

After spending time with my parents today, David and I are looking forward to spending time with our youngest son's extended family. After a quiet Boxing Day our children and grandchildren will spend the day with us the day after. So a busy-ish time.

However you spend your Christmas I'd like to wish you all a happy and peaceful time and look forward to catching up with things in the coming week.

Sue
x

Just a week to go now..

2011-12-18T20:50:00.000Z

Until Christmas, meanwhile present shopping done, cards sent and almost there. I've just got 2 days of work and I don't return until after the New Year.

This week I worked on a card for a swap in the Embellisher Yahoo group. This is a Christmas card for Jenny in Llandudno and I sent this out yesterday.

I made a Christmas bauble using velvet, scrim, silver painted Bondaweb and organza. Decorated with ribbon, ricrac and sequins. I attached this to background fabric which I trimmed with a pinking blade with the rotary cutter and attached to the card. I hope she'll like this.

I'd also received a postcard from Lois of this delightful shepherd with his sheep.

Really lovely isn't it.

I've also finished my second block of the Dresden Plate sampler and onto the third block and here's a pic of both. I've got to find a way of reducing the bulk of fabric around the acute angle points - that's going to be a bit tricky.

This afternoon we went to StAldhelms church in Branksome to see the Christmas tree festival that is held there. It reached the national news this week about the knitted Christmas tree. A friend of mine, Penny, sent me this link here. I tried to take photos, but to bring out the fairy lights on the trees the light wasn't enough to take decent photos, so here's what I managed to take

The one above was by someone who used sewing things, i.e. tape measures, bobbins, cotton reels to decorate it.

This was the knitted tree and you may be able to see some trees behind it, though the background is very dark.

Unashamedly floral post

2011-12-12T18:59:00.002Z

I like orchids as they flower indoors at a time when most other plants don't and the flowers last for ages. When I moved to Yorkshire I was presented with a white Phalenopsis Orchid from the Bourne Quilters which throws out a long branch of blooms each year. There are 13 so far and the stem is still growing and another stem has sprouted about halfway up.

Just before my birthday I went supermarket shopping at the local Sainsbury's store and found some nice orchids, grown in Sussex, in simple white pots. This is not as big as the white one, being about 12 inches tall, but there are a good number of flower buds on the stem.

Could not resist it - here's a close up of the flowers - they are so gorgeous!

Not to be outdone, my Christmas cactus, bought a couple of years back from Ikea in Leeds, decided to flower too.

They will miss Christmas as the flowers are passing over now, but they were lovely to look at in the kitchen, where it normally lives.

Some flowery postcards - a belated one from Barbara

And two that came in today's post from Irene (birthday) and Pauline (Here's one I made earlier). Irene is a clever lady, with the lovely hand painted flowers and leaves. Pauline's flowers with the diamante ends are sewn onto a needlefelted background. Really great postcards both.

This concludes my fancy floral post!

Happy birthday to me!

2011-11-30T08:50:00.001Z

On Monday it was my birthday - I'm now 56. Where did the years go? But I have a husband (he's two weeks older than me) of almost 34 years as we were married in December 1977 (Silver Jubilee year), three children - the eldest of which, Sarah, turned 30 this year and now 4 grandchildren - the eldest, Sophie is 5 and has been to school for some time now. The youngest Freddie will be 2 years old in a few days and a proper little boy.

I had the lovely surprise of birthday postcards from the postcard swap that I belong to. Being towards the end of the year with just one more birthday to make a card for at the end of December, it is nice to be on the receiving end this time (who said it was better to give than receive?) with such a varied array of postcards. I asked for flowers, no-one else had asked for that so I thought I would. Here they are:

From top left is from Plum who stitched through paper with real petals, next to that is Jan's Union flag with gathered flower middle. In the middle is Avril's velvet background postcard with textured flowers, then Pascale's liberated flowers. The bottom row is Rosemary's crazy flower patchwork and Sandra's painted and stamped card.

From Janet is a foundation pieced flower and next to that is Jacquie's blue paper flowers on blue leafy background. At the bottom is Lesley's trapped flowers under orgranza and lastly from Carole is a machine embroidered bunch of flowers. There are a couple more to come that I know are on the way.

On the subject of birthday postcards, the week before was Avril's birthday and this is that I sent her

I made this card way back in August bank holiday and her theme was sea, boats, beach and I appliqued some cottages to look like a fishing village. The boats were cut from the same fabric and the sea was made from layered strips of blue cut with a zigzag rotary cutting blade and sewn over with wavy stitching. I ought to have put a photo of the fabric that I used (on a few occasions) with the cottages and boats on a sew theme as its been fussy cut so much that it has holes all over the place!

Another collection of cards that I've received recently come under the heading of "Here's one I made earlier" of cards made from earlier swap collections. In the post here were the ones that I sent out and below is a photo of the ones I've received.

Bunting from Benta, a Penguin (from a black and white swap) from Jan, Sunbonnet Sue (windy days) from Carole and Kandinsky inspired circles from Janet.

I've taken to knitting recently but the trouble with it is the sewing together of the parts that make a garment, as it's not so easy to sew things in the artificial light, so at the weekend I finished sewing in the end to some fingerless gloves that I've knitted.

This was one ball of sock wool but it looks like different yarns, but there would have been even more ends to have sewn in! Another knitting finish I can't show yet are a couple of scarves that I've made for Christmas.

Here's progress on another Dresden Plate block in progress.

Lastly on a flowery note is a Christmas Cactus that I bought in Ikea a couple of years ago which has been flowering brilliantly, if a bit early, for Christmas.

Sunday post

2011-11-20T21:19:00.001Z

Just catching up after a weekend away and getting ready for work tomorrow. First of all I must show off my prize from Lis' giveaway recently a gorgeous little tea cup mat. It was larger that I thought it would be at 7.5" square so a nice size for a mug too and plenty of room to admire the sashiko. In the spirit of giveaways, there was a little bit more in the envelope some white gloves for free motion work and a note pad. Thank you once again Lis.

I also made my Herman cake as mentioned in the last post. I think I should have put the mix in a larger cake tin and it took longer than the instructions stated but it came out really well and I took half with me to my Brother-in-Law's where we stayed this weekend. It seemed that people I knew heard about the cake but didn't want the sourdough mix to make one themselves so I'll use one part to make another cake to freeze.

Last week I made a start on a sewing machine cover to replace the horrible plastic one on my new little sewing machine. I've quilted the two sides and the gusset bit in between and put a pocket on one of the sides. I've got to think about what to applique on this. I was given a photocopied pattern but want to put my own style in this. The shape of the machine cover is similar to the red one here. A lot of the patterns that I have seen don't have a space for the carrying handle on the machine to come through, so as I intend to carry this to workshops this was important to me. Now I'll have to find a way of finishing the hole for the handle, which probably use a bias binding.

Above is my progress so far. The parts all quilted and the pocket put on the front. David is away during this week so I may get some sewing done on this.

Odds and Sods

2011-11-15T21:58:00.001Z

Didn't know what else to call this posting as I have a miscellany of things to post about.

First off, I won one of the prizes on Lis' giveaway, which is a delightful little sashiko teacup mat, which I am looking forward to receiving soon. Benta, who commented on this blog has also won a prize too, so well done Benta!

I've made progress on my Dresden plate block which I'll take for showing and telling at Bourne Quilters on Thursday. First block done and I'm quite happy with it. Hope to to one with the rounded tops to the blades next.

On Sunday I dug out my needlefelting machine and had a busy time embellishing fabrics and roving onto some velvet fabric which works pretty well. I saw a project in Stitch magazine for making corsages from embellished fabrics so see how that goes. I've not used the machine since going to a workshop back in the summer, as I'd managed to lose the tool kit including the tool that detaches the needle unit from the machine so up until Sunday I'd not been able to use it. Anyway here are the pieces that I've made

The piece above is a velvet base with blue dyed cotton fabric and wool roving

This has a multi coloured silky polyester fabric and wool roving

This is some white panne velvet with natural cotton scrim, silver painted bondaweb and white organza.

I've free machined over the pieces with metallic thread that complemented the pieces. I've yet to cut up into the flower shapes so this is as far as I have got. Nice to have a play.

I'm taking part in a postcard swap where I don't make any postcards as they are already made! This one is called "Here's One I Made Earlier" and the cards I'm going to send have either been extras from previous swaps or some extra I made because I liked the theme and wanted to make more.

From the top then. A card from selvedges (as I have a large bag of them) and used the wording on them, next is a postcard which was from a Fastenings swap - March 08 (popper, button and ribbon with a bow on the front, a brad on the back). In the middle is Rainy Days - Nov 06, and a sample postcard to show fabric weaving which I made in 2008. The bottom row has Folded Wonders from April 09 and another selvedge postcard from 2007. These cards will be going in the post tomorrow.

And finally, here's a new resident at our house - Herman the German Friendship Cake. This is a sourdough mix which gets topped up with flour, sugar and milk after the fourth and then the eighth day before being split into four and a quarter is made into a cake. Karen at work tried this out and I had a quarter of the mix from her. You can read more about it here.

Here is my Herman

Bubbling up nicely but will need feeding tomorrow. See how it goes.

Giveaway Alert

2011-11-09T09:24:00.002Z

My friend Lis, on Piece 'n' Peace is celebrating her 500th post with a giveaway with some lovely quilty gift of threads, fabrics, book or tea cup rug. Go over and have a look at her blog post here

Autumn Colours and a Dresden Plate

2011-11-05T20:57:00.001Z

As Autumn progresses, last weekend in the UK the clocks went back an hour from British Summer time to GMT. On Wednesday, my day off I went out photograph the autumn trees at a nearby lake, Hatch Pond. Where we live is just a few minutes walk from there and on the edge of an industrial estate. Two sides of the pond are inaccessible as it is a nature reserve but the other two sides have roads running alongside and on my way to work I've seen the lovely colours.

The family of swans seem to think that I may have some food for them (I didn't though). I moved away quick

Just a hint of the industrial estate with the building in the centre background. To the right is a group of silver birch trees

This is what I wanted to get the autumn colours of the trees. The water is very still here.

I have not neglected my sewing (or knitting - I've been doing some of that in the evenings). The Bourne Quilters have decided to do a block of the month, a Dresden Plate sampler from an article in Popular Patchwork by Nikki Tinkler from a few years back. Last Sunday was grim so I set to.

These "blades" look almost like little coffins (it was the day before Hallowe'en!)

But I soon got them stitched up, now it looks more like Dresden Plate

And here is the block tacked onto the backing ready to be hand sewn.

There are a total of six varieties of blocks which will carry on into next year.

I've also got a postcard to show from the birthday swap which I sent to Jacquie, which I made ages ago, but could show until now as her birthday was week before last. Jacquie requested Cats for her birthday postcards and here are some really cheery ones.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

2011-11-02T09:35:00.000Z

I've notice lately that some of the blogs I read have entered their quilts on the Bloggers' Quilt Festival run by Amy on Amy's Creative Side, so I have decided I would join in the fun on this online quilt exhibition. At the time of writing this post there are almost 500 people from all corners of the "blogisphere".

So here is my entry which does have a story to tell. This is my Oriental Fan quilt which I made almost a year ago at a weekend workshop that I thought I would treat myself to for my birthday at the end of November.

I was living in Yorkshire at the time and this workshop was held at the Silver Thimble Workshops between York and Malton. The tutor was Pat Archibald, whose quilts I have admired and really looked forward to this but what I'd not bargained for was the weather as I hadn't ever experienced snowfall before the end of November! The weather was exceptional for last year.

Anyhow we were all ready for a weekend away as David and I were staying in a hotel just outside Malton, which looked really nice (it was quite a good hotel) after the first day of the workshop. David was keeping himself entertained going into York for the National Railway Museum and doing some Christmas shopping. There had been falls of snow in the north eastern counties and north of York and a small flurry where we were living and some doubt in my mind whether the workshop would take place, but indeed it was. Once off the main road, which was clear, to the Silver Thimble the snow was about 4" deep and we just made it down the lane. There were snow flurries during the course of the day which others there who were local worried about and the sky had that greyness about it. So it finished early and David and I departed to our hotel. The next day was just as bad, David had trouble getting out of York to collect me and it took us 3 hours for a less than one hour journey to get home.

About the quilt - the workshop was called "Ghost Images of the Orient" where there was a choice of 2 patterns - the fan or the boat - and the sheer images created by layers of net going from dark to almost faint in the top fan. The curve to the left of the quilt was appliqued on after making the curve with stitching very close to the turned edge. The quilt was layered up and the left side was quilted (I stitched echo quilting following the curve) before the fans were stitched and there was further quilting to follow when I used some gold metallic thread to machine stitch some stars.

Earlier this year we moved back to Poole and by chance at the regional meeting of the Quilters Guild in June one of the speakers was Pat, so I had an opportunity to show her my quilt from the workshop.

I hope you enjoyed my story and I'll have lots of quilts to see too.

Last of the Malta pics

2011-11-01T07:02:00.000Z

I can't believe that it's November already. The year is whizzing by. I said that I would post more photos, lovely to bring a bit of warmth to an autumnal day. The last day we had in Malta we spent some time on a harbour cruise in Valletta. It is quite a large harbour with Sliema to the west and Paola to the east with several large inlets which are big enough to hold fishing boats, a marina of larger vesssels and sailing boats, some cruise ships and once had a shipbuilding industry which is now no more.

This is Tigne Point, in Sliema and on the far right is one of the watchtowers not far from the outer harbour wall. There is still some building going on here with a lot on new apartments and a shopping mall under construction. The tall yellow building is a hotel.

A lot of the harbour has tall fortified walls to repel invaders. The first of these is Manoel Island where there was once a hospital

Just round the corner from here were a few little boats

And this one above is said to belong to a Mr Abramovich (one of a fleet I suspect). There were some more yachts nearby that were moored in readiness for a boat race around the Mediterranean islands that weekend.

Below the gun battery in Valletta were some visiting cruise ships. It seems to be a popular stopping off point for several cruises as we saw half dozen ships when we visited the town during our stay. Here are two of them.

This one is fuelling up for its onward journey

We later saw this ship outside the harbour wall

When inside the wall it proceeded to turn 180 degrees so that it could reverse into it's berth. Fancy trying to parallel park something as big as that!

Amongst the many vessels visiting was this Canadian warship

And we spied a Sunseeker boat (they're made in Poole) so had to take a photo.

Our last visit was to Marsaxlokk (Marsa-shlock). A small fishing village not far from Malta airport. Some lovely sights there with traditional fishing boats and this charming little sculpture.

A lovely little town to sit and relax watch the sea before contemplating coming home again. To think all this was less than two weeks ago.

I have got some sewing and knitting stuff to show soon.

More Malta pics

2011-10-27T21:24:00.001+01:00

Such a change from last week, being back at work, the nights are darker, days colder and wetter. Will be even darker when the clocks go back at the weekend. Time to look at some sunny pics to warm myself up!

Last Thursday we took an excursion with the tour company we booked with to Gozo. David finds it funny that I get all excited about a trip on a ferry (doesn't matter whether it's France or Isle of Wight, even the Sandbanks chain ferry - I love going on a boat).

This was leaving the harbour in Malta where there is a shrine in the harbour wall

The seafront in Gozo

Jellyfish warning sign in Xlendi (pronounced Shlendy). Thought the Fried Egg Jellyfish looked rather bizzare (bottom left)

Lovely view of the bay

Didn't stop me getting my feet wet - first time in Mediterranean waters (although he took a photo of me eating ice cream and not paddling in the water!).

After going to a local hotel for lunch then onto another part of the Gozotan coast in Dweera Bay. There the arch made by sea erosion looked almost like Durdle Door and there were boat rides into a cave nearby,

Chance to take a photo of David

A small chapel neaby

Very popular place on the tourist trail - look at all those coaches and a Malta tour open top bus was just arriving here. In the distance is a tower which was part of the string of watchtowers along the Gozo and north Malta coast.

We then visited a fantastic church called St Phillips or Ta Pinu, which was the site of a miracle when a local woman (now buried in the church) heard the words of Mary. The church was not in the middle of a community, it seemed in the middle of nowhere. But people came to share their miracles too, where there is a room dedicated to thanking God for the babies that survived or people overcoming illnesses, having been healed. Amazing to look at. The architecture was pretty amazing too, couldn't help looking at the ceiling.

fabulous Rose window

This picture in this arched frieze is made of mosaics

Just look at the pattern in this arch

And this one too. Inspiration for a quilt maybe?

Here's some of Davids pics

After visiting the main town of Victoria we then headed back to Malta. Again watching the vehicles getting on the ferry and watching it set off.

After this lengthy posting I'll show some pics of our harbour cruise last Friday very soon.

Back from Malta

2011-10-23T20:12:00.002+01:00

Nice to be back after our week's holiday and catch up with my blog. The holiday didn't have an auspicious start as we flew into stormy weather. The flight last Saturday was delayed from 11.20 pm to just after midnight from Gatwick and the last flight out of the airport. Sunday was still stormy with heavy rain and heavy seas just look at the photo below. The wall that you can see if the edge of a swimming pool with the wave crashing over.

On the Monday the sea was still stormy but at least sunny by now as we explored Sliema, the town where we were staying. The town is quite a popular resort and there is a lot of building work going on to build more hotels, apartments and a new shopping centre. It seemed almost like home with familiar shops such as M&S and Next.

This was the sea just a couple of days later. Nice and calm and the weather was a lot nicer and warmer too.

Above and below are a couple of pieces of artwork on the streets of Sliema, as you can see above there's David stopping for tea. Below is a cutout of people enjoying the promenade casting the image on the pavement.

Tuesday saw us venture into Valletta, Malta's capital. It is a fortified city with walls around the town to defend the country from enemies as it's had invasions from various countries in its history. Malta is famous as the centre for the Order of the Knights of St John and in the middle of Valetta is the Co Cathedral of St John where the knights are buried in this elaborate Cathedral.

Above and below are the chapels dedicated to the Grand Masters

The floor are where the Grand Masters are buried, made in marble depicting death and glory. The stones often showed skeletons or skulls on them.

This is looking down the cathedral to the altar with the chapels being in the arches on each side (there are 8 in all).

After the visit to the cathedral we explored more of the city ending at Upper Barrakka Gardens over looking the harbour. There were cruise ships, we saw a sea plane which flies between Valletta and Gozo and walking through the park there was a piano which invited one to play on it.

The next day we took an island tour bus on the southern route taking us through Valletta (again) out to the towns surrounding the harbour, to the fishing village of Marsaxlokk, before stopping off at the Blue Lagoon and back to Sliema.

We had a visit to the island of Gozo on a tour, which was quite good, but will post some photos of this in my next post.

For now though, it's back to work tomorrow, but we can feel already that autumn is in the air and things are a lot colder on our return to the UK.

Just before we go....

2011-10-14T20:02:00.002+01:00

on holiday for a week! David and I are off to Malta, hoping to get a bit of autumn warmth and maybe some sun too. Booked it just about 4 weeks ago it was a holiday that we were going to earlier this year but never go around to. After disappointing summer weather decided the time was right to book this.

Before I go I thought I would show a couple of photos. In the last post I sent of my wiggly skinny quilt to Avril and yesterday I received a skinny from Mary in Edinburgh. This looks really gorgeous and came with a postcard with views of Edinburgh. It was nearly a year ago we visited there, but some memories were bought back of that trip. I had saved this the right way around but Blogger is deciding otherwise.

I hadn't shared with you a postcard that I sent to Plum as part of the ongoing Birthday postcard swap. She had requested 'Architecture' so I sent her a house, here.

I thought it looked rather fun, very cheery. I've got ahead on these postcards and have made two more cards which I will show later. One for the end of this month, another for November. I've signed up for another year of the Birthday Swap as I like making the odd postcard. In November I've also gone for "Here's One I Made Earlier" which is really easy as I've already made the postcards because they are spares from earlier swaps.

Hoping that I shall have quite a few photos to share when I get back after next week. Take care!

Catching Up

2011-10-10T18:38:00.003+01:00

It's been a little while since I last posted and it's one of those quiet times when there's not been a lot to blog about.

David was "on call" over this weekend so he set to and started to decorate the garage (yes I said decorate). When this house was built in 1989 it was originally used as a doctor's surgery and where the garage is became a room so the walls are clad with plasterboard instead of the usual breeze blocks showing and it also has a carpet. The front was replaced with a garage door. As with most British homes the garage is a storeroom rather than for housing a car, though mine did used to go in there when it was new, that didn't last long! Now we're back David now keeps his model railway in there and has plans to extend the existing layout. We've also got the bigger shed for storage too so one side of the garage was cleared for painting and he'd also painted the ceiling with some white emulsion that was left by one of the tenants.

The left hand side all painted and looking nice


and the right hand side, railway to the left of the photo and a display for the wagons

We've also now got some long curtains in the living room to shut out the dark weather now the evenings are drawing in.

And here's a photo of my orchid which has had 4 blooms in one week and there's another 10 buds on the stem.

This post is somewhat lacking in sewing content as I haven't done a lot this week. Last week the Bourne Quilters were making pot holders and this below is my little effort. I got the tops ready before the meeting and quilted (with my new machine) during the evening. It really does need a walking foot, so will get around to getting one soon. Yesterday I tidied up the sewing and put the binding on and all done!

I also posted of my wiggly quilt (see here) for the BQL Skinny Quilt challenge to Avril who has a blog here.

Creative Stitching and Hobbycrafts Show, Exeter

2011-09-28T08:34:00.002+01:00

Having worked from home virtually all week David was wanting to get out at the weekend. In fact we hardly had any time at home last weekend. On Saturday we ventured over to Exeter to the Creative Stiching and Hobbycrafts show. This has been a regular event for some years but never got around to visiting so this show was a first time for us. Besides quilting, embroidery and knitting there were yarn spinning groups, sugarcraft and even an egg-decorating group represented there. There were quite a few papercrafting traders too, so an interesting selection of things to see.

There were displays to see as well as traders, but although I took my camera I didn't replace my memory card from the last time I uploaded photo's (because I use a card reader to load my photos onto the computer). So David and I took pics from our mobile phones instead. Here's one from a display of costumes from the five main characters on Downton Abbey. I think there may be more photos, but this is the only one that I've got at present.

Further along we saw a large display of postcards by members of the West Country Embroiders and although I took a few photos here the light around there wasn't brilliant but here's a selection.

David liked the embroidered Mini - said it looked like a car from an Ikea advert! He also said with the number of cards that I've got I could rival their display!

I did manage to shop as well and bought some fabric, even some to make a couple of skirts. I've also bought some yarn, a pattern and more unusually, so cutting dies to go with my Big Shot machine which will go towards some card making for Christmas (that's not long now, rather scary thought).

I saw some mask templates, thought it would make interesting effects on fabric as well as card.

The top two fabrics I'll probably make skirts with. I couldn't resist the Christmas fabrics either. Plenty to keep me busy then.

Postcards and Knitting

2011-09-22T20:37:00.002+01:00

As it will be Autumnal Equinox tomorrow I'm sharing with you some of the leaves cards that I've received recently. These were my offerings which I sent at the beginning of the month here

And below are the ones that I've received from swappers Alice (with the coppery foiled leaves), Lesley (leaves on a hessian background) and Jacquie (the shaded leaf skeleton) and what a gorgeous selection of cards they are.

As a surprise I also got a card from Benta, who wasn't in the swap, but she won one of my postcards, this is just lovely. I've taken this photo in artificial light (the nights have drawn in) so the photo doesn't do this justice.

Recently, it might be to do with the weather getting colder, I've taken to doing some knitting. I bought the wool way back in the New Year, when we visited Whitby and found this wool shop in an old Wesley chapel called Bobbins (I've found they have a website here). I later found a pattern in a wool shop in Wareham, started enthusiastically knitting the back, then left it. Now picked the knitting up last week and completed two fronts (they now have to have the border knitted on) and finished a sleeve yesterday and now on the second sleeve. The yarn I've used is called Riot by King Cole, pattern by Sirdar. I have found since that this yarn is sold in a local wool shop (but was not as interesting as the one in Whitby!)

Another Busy Sunday Sewing

2011-09-18T17:58:00.000+01:00

I've progressed the quilt that I started last Sunday with some free motion quilting on Wednesday and adding borders today. I wasn't quite sure whether to do some straight binding across the width of the fabrics that I chose or to "wonky cut" the fabric and add 1.5" on the width of the binding. I tried one strip just to see and the give in the fabric was enough that I could just cut straight binding. The end product is that I had a wonky quilt that drapes OK so that's good. The size of this is 15" long and 11.5" wide (at the longest and widest points).

I thought about whether I needed something more on the coloured strips, but no I'm going to leave that all I've got to do now is the label.

The inspiration for this is this quilt here, I called this one Branksome Chine and I made the blocks at a workshop called Chop and Go years ago in 2001 and the teacher was Janice Gunner. I think that we were asked to bring fabrics based on a photograph. Branksome Chine has cliffs that were in various orangey-sandy shades with dark green for the pine trees. I not only completed the quilt but that had a label too (at a time when I didn't think of putting labels on my quilts!)

There we go, without that label I wouldn't have known when I made the quilt!

Sewing Sunday

2011-09-12T06:49:00.002+01:00

At the beginning of the year, the BQL Challenge was a Skinny Quilt Challenge which involved various small skinny quilts according to the challenge set for 2 monthly periods or for this period 3 months. These quilts were then swapped with other BQL members who participated in this challenged. I took part in the beginning with this quilt here, but since then working and time constraints meant that I didn't make any more.

So having got up to date with postcards I thought I would give this month's a bash and in an afternoon yesterday I made this quilt top below. The challenge this time was making a quilt that wasn't rectangular or if it had 4 sides they had to be irregular. So I went wiggly.

I started with a rectangle of blue fabric and cut that into 4

I joined some irregular strips of fabric

I cut the strip into 2 pieces lengthwise with the narrower of the two being used for the short strips in the quilt and the wider one used for the long strip along the quilt. I then took the rotary cutter and wiggly cut the sides before layering up.

That's where I have left it for the afternoon. Have to think about how I'll quilt it now. Quite pleased with how it's looking so far.

Meanwhile David has also been busy over the weekend, he had a shed to put together. He had some help from Alex on Saturday to put the main body of the shed together and yesterday was making it watertight by putting in the windows and doors. Its just as well as it's raining this morning. Some parts of this have to be painted but the wood had been treated so there's not too much hurry. Here's how it looks.