Pebbles.

Hi. I've been doing bits and pieces of various projects lately and have only managed to finish one item so far this year. I really want to finish my wonky log cabin quilt which I'm in the process of quilting but it seems to be taking ages. I've decided to try and do at least an hour a day until it's done (starting from tomorrow).

The piece of work that I finished is part of a project which my sewing group have started. There are 7 of us, we have chosen 7 colours, we have each dyed 7 pieces of cotton which are all 7" square, we will then all produce a piece of work using the same technique and subject. They will then all be displayed together as one piece of work. Not sure if that is clear but it should all make sense eventually.
I dyed my fabric purple and started with this colour first. The first subject we chose were pebbles and the technique was machine embroidery. This is what I came up with.

It was very interesting to see what different interpretations we came up with.
We have now swapped colours and the next subject is water using sheers and metallics. My colour is yellow.
That should be fun!
Bye for now, Maria

Quilt blocks two by two.

Hi. Yet again it's been ages since I posted here. I had intended on posting before Christmas and I did get as far as starting to write a draft which I didn't finish. So instead of wasting it, here it is in all its unfinished glory.

  I wanted to fit in a final post (remember it's now January 12th) before Christmas, and thanks to a falling of the cold white stuff I've been able to include some seasonal looking photos. We don't see this much snow here very often. I've not been able to get the song "Walking in a winter wonderland" out of my head!
There's a heath and golf course in walking distance from our house but there's not been much golfing going on over the last few days, it's been replaced with lots of sledging. Luckily my attempts weren't caught on camera as the first two ended up with me falling off the sledge and ending up amongst the bushes . My son very sweetly said "she is just a beginner". I soon got the hang of it though.

This tree is in our front garden and it looks beautiful with it's red berries covered with snow.

So there you go, that's what it looked like around here before Christmas and we haven't got rid of the snow yet, in fact we've had even more. As the old ryhme says "Rain, Rain go away, come again another day", that's the way I feel about the white stuff but it can wait until next year before visiting again.

Onto my main reason for writing a blog, SEWING.
I was recently invited to join a quilting bee called Bee Europa. We are divided into two groups of 12 quilters, the Honey Bees and the Bumble Bees, I'm in the later. I rather like the idea of being a buzzy bumble bee!
 Tacha is organising the bee and volunteered to go first. She is planning to make her two little daughters quilts from the blocks. She gave suggestions for the type of blocks she would like and these are the two blocks I came up with from her fabrics...

I enjoyed working with someone elses choice of colour palette and fabrics. I use a lot of blue, green and pink but it made a change to team the blues with oranges and browns. There are some really cute fabrics  amongst Tacha's selection.
My month for sending out fabrics is May and I'm thinking of going for a Christmas theme, I hope the others won't mind sewing with christmas fabrics in the spring!

I've also made two quilt blocks for Simone who is making charity quilts. She sent fabrics and block instructions to a group of volunteers from across the globe, we then add our own choice of fabrics, complete the blocks and send them back to her in Holland where she will make two quilts for a boy and a girl. Here are my blocks.

 

(oops, out of focus photo).

I'm planning to start a new quilt tomorrow even though I have three others to finish but you know how it is sometimes you can't resist.

By for now, Maria.

This "n" That.

Hi there, during the last week I've been working on a few items that need finishing. I decided to make a pieced back for my wonky log cabin quilt using the many scraps I had left over plus some fabric that just needs using up. It's taking ages to put together as there are many small pieces, I could probably have finished it by now if I'd not pieced the back but it's nearly done now. I'll show a picture when it's completed.

I showed this christmas mini quilt last year when I started it and surprise, surprise it's not finished yet, I'm doing hand work on it now and hope to get it done for this christmas.

My "Summer pools" quilt has finally made it onto the wall. Sorry about the poor photo.

I tried a new craft the other day inspired by this wonderful post by Lucy at Attic24. It's called decopatch and involves tearing up pieces of paper and glueing them to an MDF frame. I bought mine from here.

I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out, I much prefer Lucy's though. They were sold out of the style of letters she used and I was too impatient to wait for more. It was fun to do and I think I may do another one which spells "home".

Bye for now, Maria.

Colour Therapy.

One of the main reasons I love to sew is that it gives me the oppurtunity to play with bright, colourful, cheerful fabrics. We're having a very dull, dreary November and even a quick glance at my unfinished quilt laying over a chair brightens my day and immediately makes think of sunshine and summer.

Last night when it was dark and cold outside I went into my sewing room and looked at my other bright quilt laying on the work table and felt so happy that I have quilting and fabric in my life. Maybe all us lovers of bright, colourful, quilty gorgeousness should start a new movement. I vote that we all make some bright, happy quilt blocks and hand them out to people in the streets to bring some sunshine into their days too!!

I've been plodding on with quilting the quilt I showed in my last post. It's getting slightly less frustrating but I'm still having trouble keeping the stitches the same length and also with manouvering the weight of quilt. Here's some of my progress so far.

Next I need to finish the blue triangles and then its onto the pink diamonds, just got to decide what pattern to try in the diamonds.

Last week I was very lucky to win a give-away by Rachel of Contended. Look at the lovely pressies she sent.

Don't you just love that cute owl fabric Rachel made the zippy bag from? The little heart now hangs from a cupboard door in my sewing room and I wore the flower brooch at my sewing group and it received lots of compliments. Rachel also sent these pretty cards.

There were also some jelly beans and bath bombs but they're both long gone! Many thanks for the generous gifts Rachel.

Well I better go and get on with some quilting, er sorry, housework now!

Bye for now, Maria.

Quilting frustration!

  Hi there, it's been a very long time since I've posted on my blog. There's no particular reason other than I've not had much new sewing wise to show. I've still been blog reading and I hope there is someone out there who hasn't forgoten me and may pop by to say "hi".

I've been working on a wonky log cabin quilt from a tutorial by John from Quiltdad who was the guest tutor (if that's the correct term) on the Old Red Barn Co. Quilt Along on fickr.
I used fabrics that I already had and wanted to use up. I recently did a direct fabric swap for some Park Slope strips with Viv from Highway cottage
and they went really well with the fabrics I was using so I added those too.
Here's some photos of the completed quilt top. I'm piecing the back too in a random make it up as you go along, let's use up some of the scraps style.

This is where I've spent some of my time this morning getting very annoyed and frustrated (you should see how hard I hit the key board when I wrote that).

I've been quilting a large double bed size quilt top, which I started making nearly two years ago, and my frustration is not the fault of my lovely new Bernina but down to the fact that the quilt is just too big to manouvre when free machine quilting. I'm not happy with how the quilting is looking but I'm just going to have to live with it.

Bye for now, Maria.

Mini-Quilt finish.

I've finished my quilt for the flickr Doll quilt swap an flickr and It's now in the mail. Have a look here for some photos of what other members of the swap have been upto. There's some beautiful work.

I showed a picture of my quilt in my last post when it was in the nearly finished stage. I'm pleased with how it turned out. The pattern for the applique flower is from a book called "Making scrap Quilts to use it up" by Lynne Edwards. She is a local author (Suffolk, UK) who was recently awarded the MBE for her work as a quilter and author. My mother-in-law remembers her when she first started patchwork. She used to sit on a bench hand stitching hexegans whilst my husband (when he was a child!) and her children played in the village play area.
 The quilt in the book uses lots of the flowers, I'm afraid my patients only stretches to one though. I just used the pattern for the applique and designed the rest of the mini-quilt myself.

Bye for now, Maria

Sewing and some culture.

At last some sewing to show. I've nearly finished my quilt for the doll quilt swap over on flickr.
I've hand appliqued a flower with each petal made from a different fabric and I'm in the process of hand quilting around each petal. I've used a fairly thick embroidery thread rather than a standard hand quilting thread. In the centre of the flower I've embroidered some french nots but I think it needs a few more.
The rest of the quilt will be machine quilted. Hopefully this will be one of the last quilts I machine quilt on my trusty old Janome as I'm off to order a new Bernina tomorrow. I'm so excited!

Months ago I explained that we'd started decorating our living room. Well it's been quite a big job and I'm not sure whether we started it at the best time as my husband has been very busy over the summer and progress has been slow. We need new cushion covers to go with the new decor and I've made the first one. It's in a log cabin design and uses a different fabric for each log. I'm pleased that I managed to insert a zip in the back and piped the edges with piping I covered myself. I plan to use the same fabrics for the next three but they'll all use a different patchwork design.

And now from some culture!
In my last post I showed a photograph of a lighthouse I took from a beach in Cornwall near St.Ives. I explained that I couldn't remember the name of the beach, well Carolyn of Love Stitching Red lives in St.Ives and recognised it. She kindly informed me that the beach is called Godrevy and she told me that it's the lighthouse that the major twentieth century author Virginia Woolf writes about in her novel "To The Lighthouse" (first published 1927). I've now learned that Woolf spent time as a child at Talland House which overlooks St.Ives bay and Godrevy lighthouse. Although it is the inspiration for the book the lighthouse in the book is set in Scotland. The house has now been turned into luxury holiday apartments.
I bought a copy of the book today but I must admit that it's not the kind of book I normally read, I've read a review that states that many readers find the novel strange and difficult but I'll see how it goes.

When I first saw the book cover I was somewhat disappointed as although the image was beautiful it appeared to be modern. It was in fact taken in 1913 by Lieutenant Colonel Mervyn O'Gorman and is called "Christina walking on the beach", Christina was his daughter and two more of his photos of her can be seen here and here. The photos are autochromes which were the first practicable colour photographs and to me they have a beautiful dream like quality and bring the past to life more than black and white photos.
Sorry about my photos, the light was poor.
Bye for now, Maria