Holidays and stitching - just back from a fortnights holiday driving to the South of France and back via Lake Como, Stuttgart and Luxembourg.  We had great weather on the Cote D'Azur - cloudless blue skies virtually every day, no rain until we got into the Alps, great food and lots of driving.

 

We stayed in a cottage in the South of France which was very rural and quiet yet only 5 minutes from the motorway which it made it very easy to get around and visit St Tropez, Antibes, Grasse and Nice. 

We visitied some very interesting places including the Musee Picasso in Antibes, the International Perfume Museum in Grasse and the Villa Ephrussi di Roschild in Cap Ferrat.

 

On the way home we also stopped in Brugges for a couple of hours to wander round and enjoy the atmosphere.

Stitching - before we went away I decided to try to get a quilt finished for my nephew, Andrew.  His sister and 2 cousins had each had a quilt when they started university, but as he hasn't gone off to uni I've made him one anyway and here is the finished result.

The pattern is from a book called and was really easy and fun to do - the scariest part was cutting the completed blocks to the right size then trimming them so the would appear twisted.  I then had to decide how to quilt the finished top.  A week before I went on holiday I went on a course at The Bramble Patch with Edwina McKinnon entitled 'But how do I quilt my quilt?'  On the course we discussed lots of ways to quilt the various quilts tops that we had taken and this inspired me when I came back to have a go with a spiral design on this one.  It took me about 15 hours to quilt it but I was pleased with the finished result and I think Andrew liked the finished quilt.

Since coming back from holiday I have been making a pegbag as a sample for this month's Creative  Thread project and preparing samples for a nativity wallhanging workshop we are holding at the end of the month.

Gerard's Quilt
I have spent the last couple of months, in amongst other things, making a quilt for the flat in Germany for Gerard to use - I need to make a second one for when I or visitors are visiting but haven't yet started it. Here is the front of the finished quilt - the stars were foundation pieced, then the flowers were machine appliqued before adding the sashing.

For the reverse I decided to make it a bit more 'manly' and used a lot of black, white, cream and red music fabrics left over from Jon's quilt - inevitably I didn't have enough and we had to go searching for more! So I'm still left with a pile of black and white music fabrics! This time I used a much simpler block that I pieced as time was running short, added sashing then quilted it.

The only thing I was disappointed with was the quilting as I found it very difficult to match up the sashing front and back, so I think for mine I will choose an easier backing and possibly do ita as a 'quilt as you go' in smaller sections.

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!

I have spent the last 10 days working on my 2 quilts for the Festival of Quilts - for the past few days all I seem to have done is stitch and very little else.

Well both quilts are finished and on their way - hurray! It was rather a close call in the end as I finished the roses quilt on Monday and blocked it out yesterday - it looked quite good when it was finished - I spent 2.5 days machine quilting it in the end. I started this quilt about 3 years ago on an online course through Quilt University it is machine appliqued onto a background of 2" squares.

I finished stitching the blue quilt as the UPS man rang the doorbell!!!! I had asked them to come between 3 and 5 to pick the quilts up but he arrived early at 2.45 so he had to wait while I took a photo of it, gave it a very quick press and packed it up - now I realise that I didn't have a proper look at the finished item so don't really know what it looked like overall - it'll be a nice surprise when I get to the Festival of Quilts.


The four corner blocks are candlewicking - french knots, the central block is beaded and the applique blocks are done by hand, the sashing scrolls are couched with Caron Watercolours thread.

I've attached photos of the finished items - the blue one hasn't come out very well, I'm afraid. I know that I could've sent them by UPS tomorrow but I wanted to make sure that they had enough time to get to the depot, in case UPS had any sort of delay. Now I can get on with the rest of my life. So...

Tomorrow is likely to be filled with shopping, washing, ironing, tidying up and starting to read HP6 as a refresher before I move on to HP7. I have started to outline my shells for my first Sumptuous Surfaces piece but need some more neutral cream/sandy coloured threads to make the background interesting.

Current work - I am busy at the moment working on 2 wallhangings for the Festival of Quilts - I need to have them finished before the end of the month so that they can be posted off - as usual I am working on them at the last minute and still have a lot to do. One of them involves a lot of handstitching - I have done all of the candlewicking and hand applique, now I am on to hand quilting and then putting it all together. This is one of the applique blocks (I completed 3 of them this week).


The other wallhanging needs some machine applique on it then to be quilted and finished - fortunately I have a completely clear week ahead of me, with absolutely nothing in it but housework and sewing.

I haven't had time to do any work on my Sumptuous Surfaces design although I have been following all the discussions in the forums - I just don't have time for anymore handstitching at the moment. However I will try and finalise my design for it this week when I need a break from stitching.

Then of course there is my C+G work - I need to get on and finish Module 2 so I can send it off for assessment, before I do any more work on Module 3.

I'm also resisting picking up Harry Potter 7 - I've decided that I need to reread HP6 first, but don't want to get engrossed in it until the quilts are done. Matthew read HP7 in 8 hours yesterday - he did nothing else except eat and drink until he had finished it, now Gerard is reading it.

With all these things on my list of things to do, it's a good job that I don't have to go to work for the next 7 weeks - I love my job and the summer holidays!

I can't believe it's nearly Christmas! Yesterday I finished the banner we have been making to hang in Church over the Christmas period and here it is -

Although you can't see it very well on this photograph the gold lines from the star extend outwards to the edges and we sewed blue sequins on to the sky which sparkle as the light catches them. The star is actually mounted on a cross (made from blue net) which is very subtle. It got a good, positive reaction in church this morning which is encouraging for all those who were involved in its production. Now we can start thinking about a hanging to celebrate the church's 350th anniversary next year - we are one of the oldest Baptist churches in the world.

I can also now start to get on with some other stitching and thinking about Christmas pressie shopping etc.

Today I am going to show you the first two pieces I have done for the first module of the Level 3 City and Guilds course I am doing by distance learning with WS-Touchbase in Dorset. As part of the first module looking at colour we had to find photos depicting each of the four seasons, pick out the main colours from the photos, using fabric paint sponge the colours onto plain fabric then using similar colours stitch onto the fabric using the stitches we have practised. I am not showing the original photos as they are copyrighted.

This first picture shows spring - the original photo was on a postcard depicting a bluebell wood - I have used feather stitch and mainly perle cottons on a calico background.


The second picture is summer taken from a photo of a meadow in the height of summer. This time I have used buttonhole stitch radiating both inwards and outwards again in perle cotton on calico.

I am now working on autumn then need to finally decide on a picture for winter.

This is a wall hanging that I have started based on a design from a Fabrications magazine I bought a few years ago. I have used a piece of 'Sky Dyes' fabric by Micky Lawler that I bought in America to create the sky and now have to start quilting it.


Will show the finished wallhanging later.

I have just finished a quilt for my son to take off to university with him on Sunday - he is very interested in music (hence the theme for the quilt) although he is going to be studying Theology at Uni.


Now I can get on with some of my other creative activities including finishing the first module for the Level 3 Embroidery which I have had since June. I did have high hopes of completing it during the summer but I was frankly too lazy. Now I'm back to work and the boys are back to school/Uni I have the time to get on with it.

Hi and welcome to my blog - my space to say and display my thoughts and my creations. You are welcome to enjoy and be inspired by the pictures that you see here but please remember that these are my quilts and are protected by copyright.

First a couple of quilts I designed and displayed at the Festival of Quilts lastyear (2005) - the first one was created using the Quilters Guild challenge fabric and was inspired initially by a quilt my husband and I saw in America at Easter in the Quilters Heritage Celebration in Lancaster PA.


The second quilt based on a digital picture I took of Warkworth Castle in Northumberland, printed onto cotton fabric and embellished with beads and needle lace.