Easter work in progress

I promised in last week's blog that I would let you know what became of some of the wonderful fabric purchased in Helsinki. I can't show a completed article as I only managed to get a few hours in today as all the kids turned up yesterday and we spent a great day in the garden, egg hunt and all, but progress has definitely been made.

 

I thought the big bold black, white and turquoise canvas would be perfect for a beach sized bag. So this is it so far. I have gone ovesized too as I though it would suit the oversized print too.

The Kona cotton lining is in carrot, which I really love as I have a thing  about orange for holidays these day. It will go with a fab pair of orange patent gladiator sandals that I virtually live in when the sun comes out too.

Need to go and get a magnetic  closure and a giant orange bottom for the tab and add a load of top stitching to it I think ....roll on next weekend. 

I'm back

To say it's been a while since you heard from me last would be somewhat of an understatement I think. I haven't blogged since September so after more than 5 months I thought I would just let the outside world know that Emily's Mum is alive and kicking and perhaps even kicking a bit more than before if truth be told.

It's not been the best of times in Quilty Doings land this winter with one thing or another. My little old machine is sitting neglected in the corner wondering what is has done wrong. Too much life and too many airport lounges have taken their toll on me, in both body and soul. I have completely lost the route to my sewing room and I swear a family of squirrels has taken up residence in my stash (OK, I exaggerate - no squirrels). I have been distracted but I need to recover some semblance of sanity so hence forth I shall "blog-on" regardless and share with you my little plans and events as and when they happen, whether good, bad or ugly but I will warn you, it could be quite a bumpy ride.

As I write  I am currently aboard the 15.35pm flight back to Edinburgh from the sunny and very busy Smoke, after a visit to see my poor old Pater. He and his troubles have been the main cause of my lack of web presence these past months. It's been tough and will continue that way. I have though, now finally realised there is little that we can do sometimes to change the future, so, with a heavy heart, I have left him and my Mum sitting holding hands in his Care Home room. Together but both in their own little worlds. He has a big birthday next month, nearly the biggest you can get, so let's hope that it will be a little mini celebration of sorts and another little milestone reached.

 

Even though I haven't been stitching, thoughts and plans have been hatching in the back of my brain all these months and small purchases have been stacking up in the den. The simplest and weirdly most exciting of these was a find in Devizes this actual weekend.  I was walking through the covered market there when a lady with a very mixed bag of a stall caught my eye. I spotted piles of boxes of children's hankies and I immediately had to set about buying up her whole stock at the bargain basement cost of £1.50 a box. Ages ago I saw a quilt made from vintage hankies which I fell in love with. It was not one of those boringly obvious ones you see all over the place, but a really cool and interesting one and I have been on the hunt for reasonably prices children's hankies ever since. The quilt had reminded me of the my Auntie Rita (such a 50's name). She gave me a box of these bright little squares every year for my birthday when I was little and even though she is long gone, I can't see one of those colourful pieces of cotton without thinking of her. I have them all ready now after this find, but hey, guess what? I can't find the blimen' quilt link anywhere, nor remember what it exactly looked like, or what made it so particularly brilliant. Best I get creative.

Anyway, after said hankie purchases we started to walk away when 'OMG' as they say in some daft tv show or other? There in front of me was a giant pile of plastic takeaway tubs packed to the gunnels with every kind of mother of pearl and vintage style of shirt button. I have been struggling to find a fresh supply of these and I  refuse to the pay the extortionate prices charged in all my local haberdashers which has led to a case of what can only be called "button angst". Just imagine my glee at this second find in one day! I really am a button fiend, as any of you who follow me regularly on Flickr will know.  I love a bit of a button detail when it comes to my bags and small makes and if it's not a big red button it just has to be a good old fashioned shirt button. But happy readers, the tale gets even better. Not only were these quite fabby little buttons, but these delicious fat boxes of loveliness where only ten of our best English pounds a piece!  An absolute bargain given the hundreds in each box, so despite already having a backpack with me that any burly paratrooper would struggle to carry, two said boxes of these buttons were quickly purchased and are currently the most precious pieces of cargo aboard this British Airways flight.

So anyway dear webby friends, it's back to the office tomorrow, but first of all let me share this little preview with you for next week's post. With the arrival of the Easter weekend next Friday I will get let out to play from the day job and come hell or high water I will be at my sewing machine using some of these stunning fabrics, which I found in Helsinki last month.  

Aren't they  amazing? 

 

I could have bought acres more but there is only so much excess baggage costs that the Beloved will pay. Two pieces may turn into holiday clothes I think, but the rest? Well you will just have to come back to see.

Thanks for not forgetting about me and I hope you've all been keeping safe and snug with your own loved ones. See you next week .. . 

Sew Sew Modern swap

Today I have spent the day working on my piece for round 3 of this fun swap. We have had lots of notice for this make, but I struggled a bit coming up with a plan for my partner, but now I am well under way and on target for posting before 13th September. I am trying to not let on to0 much to my partner though on the flickr feed, but am going to leave a bit more in the way of hints in this blog post, just incase she is passing by, as I thought that might be fun. Her choice of item was a bit more specific than normal so I think she could figure it out if she really wanted to.

Anyway I started with a Annela Hoey charm pack and made up some HST's .

 

Next I added a little bit of hand stitching

and then a bit more detail somewhere else...

this little bird is copied from the fabric design as you can see.

So we will have to see if my partner likes the final result. Have you figured it out yet?

 

 

A little bit of improv?

Haystacks

Having given up with back to back viewings of "Homes under the Hammer", I decided I would get the machine out today and see what my jelly roll workings from last Sunday's outing was going to turn into. As I had not bought a jelly roll for Fiona's class last week, but cut some fat quarters which I had bought on holiday, I had originally thought I was just going to make a mini quilt. But having stitched together the first three rows I fell in love with the combination of colours and fabrics and knew I had to take this a bit further and make something a bit larger. My problem was though the white background fabric I had used. I hadn't really measured it before starting and had no idea where I had got it from or what brand it was so it would be a nightmare to match. So lateral thinking was needed. The white was really working for me so I thought I would go for a big area of negative space and then it just sort of grew. I suppose this is what you call improv? 

It is ready for quilting now and bear with me if you think I have gone mad with the large white rectangle. The plan is that the quilting will make this work into the rest of the quilt - perhaps charcoal? What do you think?

 

I am sorry the picture is a bit ropey, but today is probably the worst day to show of a quilt top that is meant to remind me of sunshine on the beaches of Oregon. The sky is grey and dreich and feels like we have definitely seen the last of summer despite it still being August.

Oregon fun 2013

 Oh and to add to the misery my iron spat a bit brown manky blob of water out just as I pressed it before hanging it out to photograph, so it is currently washing very gently on a cold cycle. I have never washed an unquilted top before. Terrified? That's an understatement...

Gathering Nuts in .... Edinburgh

Well we got there, we are not sure how, but we got there. And oh wow, wasn't it well worth all the effort. The first (and lets hope it it becomes an annual event) Stitch Gathering took place in the beautiful Morningside area of Edinburgh on Sunday, thanks to the very clever and organised Jo of Avery Homestore.

Unfortunately I was having what I like to call a "technical hitch" so was not firing on all cylinders so despite carrying my camera with me and snapping away, I discovered yesterday that I had forgotten to put the SD card in before hand so I have no photos of the event to show you.  But if you pop over to the SG website you will see the pictures taken by the lovely Jonathan Avery, or alternatively Sheila from Bluepatch quilting has today written a lovely post too which is here. I can however show you the contents of the stonking Goody bag we were all given. I have listed as many contributors that I could see at the bottom of this blog so you can see how generous they have all been.

As you can see it was full to the brim with amazingness, from fat quarters, to a whole box of thread, and from buttons to badges. But the "piece de resistance" was the Frixion Erasable Pen. Oh my goodness. This thing is genius. If you haven't got one you need to head right off right now and order yourself one and your life will never be the same. The idea of being able to erase any markings made on fabric simply by ironing over it seemed too good to be true and a few of us were doubting Thomas' until we actually tried it. It really is like a little bit of magic right in front of your eyes. I fear I am a little too excited by this pen, but you just try it and you will see. 

The lovely Mrs P, who joined me for the day at the Gathering, thinks we should write an episode of "Midsommer Murders" based on this pen, once we found out that the marks come back again once exposed to the extreme cold! how clever is that too. How about some deadly deeds occurring down in that fateful village's local quilt group, with the victim leaving a secret message written in Frixion pen on her favourite piece of stitching. The big reveal could be when she is laid out in front of the autopsy doctor. "It was the Swap Mama who did it!" ha ha ha...

Anyway, I cannot thank Jo and her team enough for a great day, which ran so seamlessly. ( See what I did there?) It was great to put some faces to names from blog and flickr land first of all and then we moved on to the classes. We took the cathedral window pinnie course in the morning with Jo herself, which I loved and will now be itching to have another go at. Then after a sumptuous lunch it was Fiona's Jelly roll class in the afternoon. Truth be told, I have used jelly rolls quite a lot, but thought that Mrs P would enjoy this one so wanted to join her too. Fiona's suggested quilt is lovely and features in the special edition of Creative Patchwork this month. A really lovely quilt. I have gone for a grey and orange theme using some fabric from the Lucy's Crabshack range which I bought in Cannon Beach this summer, plus some others from the stash and am not sure how big it will turn out yet, but will of course report back. What do you think?

I think it will be a good souvenir of our trip and its so nice and fresh on the white background. I have even gone for the trickier piecing of the points, as explained by Fiona, but so far I am in luck with it matching. Thanks Fiona for your inspiration.

Anyway, still a bit to do though as you can see so do pop by to see the final top. In the meantime I have a date with a box of steroids and a week of watching "Homes Under the Hammer". See you soon.

Thank you to all the wonderful sponsors for the Goody Bag contents:   Avery Homestore , Frixion pen, by Pilot, Frister & Rossman thread box from sewingmachines.co.uk, assorted buttons and thread from buttoncompany.co.uk ,Coats Crafts UK,  Rainbow scrap pack from Veryberry Fabrics,  Hexagon Flower Block by webfabrics.net, Liberty Art fabrics, Nairn Oatcakes, Milward needles and pen, Beechwood Quilting, Groves, Robert Kaufman fabrics, Aurifil

No press please

 

No stitching yet this weekend but just wanted to share this picture with you of a shy little friend, which I took yesterday. The Beloved and I had headed off to the Borders for an "At Home" with a whole bunch of work colleagues, so I got a chance to play with my new camera.

Remember me telling you last year about the population explosion in the office, with all the chaps having babies? Well this was an opportunity for them to all get together . I think we had something like 20 little ones under 5, which was terrific and I think they had a whale of a time riding on ponies, in the back of tractors and bouncing away to their heart's content.  We were even joined by the odd dog or two but they looked slightly less impressed at the proceedings.

Sadly the weather wasn't on our side as not only was it blowing a hoolie most of the day, which nearly ripped the tent out of it's moorings, but it also tipped it down for a couple of hours right in the middle of the proceedings.  But if there is one thing we lot up here know, that is that there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes!

dressed for the rain

One of my favourite moments of the whole day however, was probably the sight of half a dozen or so senior managers cavorting about in a sack race.

 

 

Sometimes its  really hard to figure out which ones are the kids.... 

 

 

Off to buckle my swash and other festival fun

It is festival time here in Edinburgh and whilst this can make day to day life a bit more tricky if you are a resident, we really should count ourselves lucky to live in an area with probably one of the best arts festivals on the planet.

This year the lovely Jo, over at Bearpaw has worked her little socks off and pulled together the first ever "Scottish Modern Quilt Exhibition". The show, housed in Avery Homestore in the Morningside area of Edinburgh is a fantastic mix of over 60 examples of work from the modern  quilt movement. Jo, as lots of us know, is a brilliant flag waver for the modern quilter and I think she  is doing a cracking job of helping us all along and now also publicising what is going on in the quilting world. I am very very honoured to have a couple of quilts and a cushion included in this great exhibition and am also delighted to share a couple of items I have received through  flickr swaps and bees.

First is the charity quilt from the Together at Do.Good Stitches Charity bee, which I finished off in a mad dash after coming home from holiday. The block I chose for my month of June was the Rocky Mountain block which I think we have all fallen in love with. I also wanted a red white and blue theme and my lovelies in the bee did me proud.

My other quilt exhibit is the low volume quilt, which was based on a fat quarterly pattern. Its not so typically "modern" in its choice of fabrics but Jo has focused the exhibition on not only the more modern style of quilts we are all making and fabrics being used, but also the influence of the Internet and in particular flickr swaps and bees and the like. So i sneaked in by the back door on this category. Pop over to an earlier post and have a peep.

Jo really has done a great job so if your not north of the border pop over here and see the great array.

As for me I am off to see a couple of shows on Saturday with the beloved and then we have a great afternoon out with little Zoe planned. We are off to see "Captain Flynn and the Pirate Dinosaur". Now this could be highlight of my month. What more could you want than both dinosaurs and pirates all in one little show?

 I will report back on who won.