Rainy Days

Like the rest of the country in Dorset we have suffered really rainy days and on my day off on Wednesday it just, well, rained until the evening when the sky suddenly cleared, but by then too late to enjoy the day.  So sewing was the order of the day and I was busy finishing off my Mongolian Knot cushion covers which started off as this here to these below

 Fronts

 Backs

Quilting Detail

I initially quilted around and inside the shapes but there was quite a large amount unquilted in the corners so using the drawings that I made at the workshop I worked out a quilting pattern based on the knot on the cream cushion and sized it until I had just the right size and repeated the same pattern on the orange cushion.  I used an envelope back for both but as you will see from the green cushion back I had to add a strip of cream fabric because there wasn't quite enough fabric.

Having done all that I turned my attention to the jelly roll quilt which has been a little while in the making as I didn't quite appreciate how difficult I pattern that I chose.  This was from Pam and Nicky Lintott's book of "More Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts" and is the Twisted Braid Quilt.  In order to keep track of what I was doing I had to use a Post It note with an arrow on it and several plastic bags with the block letters and numbers on.  By the end of last week I got to the point where the units were sewing and were about to the joined into strips.  I left them on the spare room bed so I could take a few days to rearrange them if I needed to then I went for it and joined the strips. I managed that all on the Wednesday afternoon.  I've ordered some fabric for the strips in between, which I hope will be this coming Wednesday's bit of sewing, but it's looking good so far.

But before all this activity, something else was enjoying the wet weather and I spotted this and took a photo quickly before it could get away...

 Sorry not a brilliant pic but I couldn't get a better shot than this - a heron looking for some breakfast!

It'll be my grandson Leo's birthday on Monday and we had thought of taking the boys to see Thomas the Tank engine at a special event in Eastleigh on Saturday, but again the weather was so awful so instead Mum Carly, Leo and Freddie came with us to the Southampton's Solent Sky Museum to see some aeroplanes, which houses a Spitfire, a flying boat amongst its other aircraft.  They liked going into the flying boat and we must have been inside there at least 3 times!

So rainy days can be good days too.