We Are Sailing

Yesterday my friend Brenda and I went to Exeter to the Creative Crafts and Hobbycrafts show.  This show was very busy with various local and national craft organisations and traders for sewing, knitting, beading and papercrafts.  I managed to visit the Quilters Guild stand so I could take a few photos of some of the We Are Sailing quilts and more importantly one that I wasn't able to take a photo of before it was whisked away back in June....mine!

So here it is

Since I made the quilt I kept the drawings that I used to make the boats which has been on my pin board all this time

And here are some more boats, including some by Young Quilters

They look really great.  That wasn't all of them, but all the photos that I took.

Brenda and I took part in some knitting with making a chain as part of a record breaking knitted chain (like paper chains) organised by the WI and the UK Handknitting organisation.  We bought bits and pieces, but the main thing was we had a good day, met a few people and the weather and traffic were kind to us for our journey there and back.

Earlier this week I finished some knitting, the cardigan for Leo.  Hope he likes it

I have a cone of brown yarn, which looks to be Aran thickness so I may start another for Freddie, probably same chest size but slightly shorter body and arm length.

And rather belatedly, I made a start on a 12" quilt for Another Little Quilt Swap, hosted by Kate.  Earlier this week she extended the deadline from tomorrow to 8 October.  I might just make that. The top that I have made is a mosaic style based on Elizabeth of Oh Fransson! blog in her tutorial page and I think this works ok. I wanted this to be in the Modern Quilting style, to be bright and fresh; what do you think?

Certainly brightened up the dull day we've had today.

Couching Postcards

The swap this month is the technique of couching - holding down thread with stitching.  I made cards with a purple fabric background and placed lime green yarn (can't remember where it came from) and placed it around in a sort of circular fashion.  I then decided on leaves, being autumn although not an autumnal colour.  I ran out of the yarn but found green bobbly thread which is used instead. 

On these cards I carried the backing fabric over to the front, so made the backing half inch bigger all round and using my rotary cutter with the wavy blade to edge it.  I secured this with couching on thin ribbon or ricrac.  They will be going out in today's post so just making the end of month deadline.

I've received one card from this swap already from Carole

 Talking of couching I bought this second hand from the work intranet's sales board

An Ikea bed settee, which I have been wanting for my room as extra guest space.  My Mongolian Knot cushions look rather good on it.  David and I managed to get this into the back of my Jazz, with the back seats flat the car has a flat floor and pushing the front seat forward a couple of notches it fitted in!

And another birthday girl should have received this card by now.  Plum wanted an Aqua card so pulled out as many aqua coloured things to decorate this card

I used a wavy technique that was shown recently on The Quilt Show, but the seam allowances show up a lot so I will need a bit more practice so it doesn't show up quite so much.

This and That

I thought I would share some postcards with you from the last swap. using a Found Object. 

From the top from Pauline, she used washers like I did, together with a feathers attached and sun-printed on fabric.  Bottom is from Irene with slithers of fabric and wood chain stitched onto dyed fabric. To the right is from Janet with a boat made from sweetie paper and veggie netting over some tablet foil fishes.  Very clever uses of these objects.

The next one this month is couching and I have made a start with two cards made. 

They may look blue but the background fabric is actually deep violet Fossil Fern fabric, to which I ironed on a stabiliser and machine couched some lime green wool yarn.  I used a lime green fabric for the back of the card and made it larger all around to fold over to the front and stitch down with couched ribbon or ricrac.

During the week I also received my Quilter magazine from The Quilters' Guild in the post and I found this article in there

this was written by Delyth Mattingly, from Region 9 (Cambridgeshire and Norfolk) but I recognised someone that I know closer to home than that and realised that the photo was taken of a local Regional Day (in Sturminster Marshall, Dorset). The person on the left in the white with a scraf is Hazel (facing the camera) and just to the right of her in the photo is me! I look to be preoccupied with eating an apple!

I puzzled how that photo could have been in the Quilter but figured later that it could be Janet McCallum, who is co-editor of the magazine and whose quilts are displayed in the photo.

This week I also visited a couple of quilt shows locally, one was by the Happy Patchers who exhibit their work at Wimborne Model Town  which is a pleasant place to walk around.  They had a quiz to spot 12" blocks illustrating film titles, it was quite challenging!  I didn't take any photos other than this one which one of the group made using the same jelly roll as I did with a different pattern.

Another was in a church by 2 groups of textile artists, so the lighting wasn't good for taking photos.

So this week will see more progress on my latest quilt and more couched postcards.

Last Gasp of Summer

After a lovely warm weekend today seemed a bit more autumnal.  David and I had a weekend at home and took time to tidy the garden.  The wet weather seemed to make the shrubs grow like mad so we had a session with the secateurs and pruning saw to make this little pile on the top patio.  This was shredded the next day and bagged to take down to the dump.

We have had a lot of disappointment with the veggie plot with only a few pods of broad beans, runner beans were gobbled up by the slugs and parsnips and carrots were non existent.  After a slow start for the rhubarb this year the drier weather then made it romp away and we harvested enough for a small crumble, very nice it was too!

 This fuschia was a happy accident, we never planted it, but there it is a little splash of colour.

But as you will see from my current facebook photo on the sidebar the plants aren't the only thing to be pruned.  My hair got the chop too.  It's naturally curly and the hairdresser made it go straight with a lot of persuasion, though today the curl has come back so I may have to resort to using some straighteners.

I have been sewing again and this is my latest quilt in progress.  This will be a throw for my room for when I have a bed settee in there.  The Chartreuse green goes well with the green walls in my sewing room.  I've laid this arrangement out in the spare room at present so I can move the blocks around before I sew together on Wednesday (my day off).  This is a kit that I bought from the Bramble Patch last month, called Pure II.

Has that look of Modern Quilting about it, doesn't it.  I've enjoyed the simplicity of just chain piecing the individual blocks and pressing as I go.  The kit includes enough material for front and binding and will have to look for backing material, but I'll be going to the Sewing and Craft show in Exeter in a few weeks so I might find something there that'll go.

Jelly Roll Quilt

I can now show the jelly roll quilt that I have been making in recent months, in between postcard swaps and other bits.  This was made for my sister, who reaches the grand old age of 50 next week.  She will be going with her friend to New York for her birthday weekend and as she stayed at my parents' home in Christchurch I met up with her and Mum on Wednesday at the nearby garden centre.

Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of her with her quilt as we could not spread it out there.  Before I gave it to her I did take some photos.  This one is of David (hiding behind it) holding up with quilt while standing on a chair.

The next morning I laid it out on the bed in the spare room

No fancy quilting just quilted in the ditch around the blocks.  I was hoping to have time to design and machine stitch a few butterflies but ran out of time, but at least I got the binding done.  For those wanting to know what fabrics I used the jelly roll is called Butterscotch and Roses and the blue fabric with flowers is a a length of one of the fabrics in the jelly roll and I bought these from New Threads.  By chance I used a pale blue fabric which has the same design as the beige fabric in the setting triangles, which I didn't realise until after I bought it!  Those are Makower fabrics called "Glamour Lace", which I found here (the blue version).