Snow Day = Sew Day

As those of you who live in the UK will be aware, we had some serious snow (for London) today and school was therefore closed. This was thrilling to the kids (and fun for the grownups, too) and it also meant that although I did have a brief (but at an hour and half, not quite brief enough - brr) trip to the park this morning, I got to spend most of the day at home, indoors. I didn't even have to deal with three children demanding things, as after we were at the park, my girls went to a neighbour's house - their friend Dasha, who is in the same year of school as Sarah, but at a different (private) school. The three of them had a great time, building a snow fort in the back garden (a suggestion from Dasha's mother, who used to do it as a kid - in Russia, so there was admittedly a bit more snow!) , watching movies, and various other things. Tania fed them both lunch and supper, so I had a lovely quiet afternoon with Alex - who played on the computer for much of the time as there was no competition... Needless to say, I sewed.

I did some work this morning - quilted the winter mini quilt. There was a suggestion that I use silver thread, and I'm sure that would look great, but I almost always have trouble with metallics when doing FMQ, plus I wanted to quilt it TODAY and didn't have any silver - and with the weather, well, it just wasn't going to happen. I have quilted it in white, with lots of swirls, both top and bottom, and it works fine. I am going to finish binding it (it looks a bit wonky above - that's because the binding isn't yet sewn down on the back - I just pinned it back to show the piece better - that, plus it's laid out artfully in the snow on my patio, so it's not sitting flat), then I think add a load of beads in blue and white (and perhaps silver, if I have any).

This afternoon, I quilted the triptych panels - it may be hard to tell from the photo but I quilted them very close side by side, and the quilting pattern overlaps from the edge of the side panels into the edge of the centre. The quilting design in the side panels is the same as the centre, but with a different orientation - i.e. sideways rather than up and down. Once again, the binding is only pinned back, rather than sewed down.

If you are interested in our weather, there are lots of photos over on my family blog and flickr album...

Oh, and although it's not stopped snowing, school is also closed tomorrow, so I have more time to look forward to - not bad considering I normally get nothing done on Monday at all, and not a lot more than that on a Tuesday.