The wallhanging is finished! I hand quilted the lines on it to resemble water flowing down and painted some more silk to use to bind it and got it finished - I am quite pleased with how it finally turned out. Now I need to finish the rest of my samples and paperwork then I can send it all off to be marked.

C+G Module 2 - I'm trying to get Module 2 finished - a couple of weeks ago I worked out how I was going to do the final wallhanging and did some silk painting that I could then quilt. The design is based on a postcard of pebbles - I am using just one of them as inspiration for the shape and colours. The shapes of the different sized pebbles and the border were outlined with gold gutta. I embellished the silk painting by using salt on the largest of the pebbles, printing on the smallest and markal paintstiks on the middle one and outer border.

Once It was dried and heat set I then quilted the pebbles and the plain green border - however I didn't like the quality of my painting or free machine quilting - so its back to the drawing board - I cut off the border and echo quilted round the shapes, thinking I would then applique them onto a background - still didn't like that.

So - I cout out each of the pebbles and appliqued them onto a newly painted piece of silk - I also stuffed them as I sewed them on. After layering the silk I hand quilted round each pebble.


Now I need to work out the rest of the quilting then the border. I am going to try and use the original speckled border for this piece - if there is enough fabric.

Quilts and sewing space

My niece has recently gone off to University for the first time having spent a gap year working and travelling. Part of her time was spent in Tanzania working in a Bible School and training to climb Kilimanjaro, which she succeeded in doing towards the end of her stay. Before she went I asked her to see if she could bring back some material for 'an African project I would be doing over the summer'. She obliged by bringing back some tartan fabrics, some black and white fabric and 2 different lots of batik style fabrics with animals on them. Over the last 3 years or so I had been collecting very brightly coloured patterned fabrics as I had it in mind to make her a quilt for going off to Uni - she loves very bright colours. But - how to mix the 2 lots of fabric into a quilt that didn't look a complete mess?

Looking for inspiration early in the summer I found a Fabrications magazine that had a quilt in it with stars and decided to adapt it to use the bright fabrics - many of the smaller sized stars have centres made from a duck material which added some humour to it. I also used the tartan fabric and some of the batik fabric for the centre stars/squares. The black and white fabric had a variety of African motifs on it so I cut them out and appliqued them onto blue fabric to use in the corners.

Here is the finished front - I started by trying to be very random in my choice of fabrics, but that didn't work for me and I thought I would just end up with a mess so I was then more organised in my combinations of fabric.


Next to the back - the batik fabric was pale aqua and brown with animals on it - I knew I wanted to use large panels of it and managed to find some chocolate brown patterned fabric at the Festival of Quilts which seemed to go very well - I also bought a bit that was brown with gold glitter on it!


I bound the edge with a plain darker aqua coloured fabric, outlined some of the motifs on the front with Madeira 'Glow in the dark' thread and quilted it with a variegated thread in primary colours and got it finished so my sister can deliver it to Christine today - hope she likes it and enjoys using it.

Now for my sewing space - here is a photo of the sspace where I was doing some silk painting last week in the kitchen.
When I counted up I realised that I was storing my stuff in at least 9 different places around the house - we live in a 3 storey house - so that's a lot of stairs to climb everytime I was trying to do a project. My very tolerant husband accepted the fact that there was always stuff lying around the lounge and kitchen but would have much preferred it to be tidier. So ... last Friday I mentioned the problem to him and we decided to move things around on the ground floor - the result being that I have my own dedicated sewing room!! Wonderful. Son number1 now has a music room for a bedroom when he comes home from Uni at Christmas (it has 2 pianos in there + guitars and amps) but there is room still for his bed, so he does have somewhere to sleep.

So - here is the room - the wardrobe has been pinched from Son Number1 and now houses my fabrics and things like freezer paper and heat gun




Now all I need is to finish marking lots of my students assignments then I will have time to play and create in there - wonderful!

Although I have been very quiet on the blogging front recently, I haven't been quiet on the creative front. During the first half of October I decided to make a bag and to stitch on to it the embroidery panel that I did as my piece for the Sumptuous Surfaces course I took during the summer. Here is the finished article -