ATC Friday

Two more sets of Round Robin ATC cards - once again, these are cards which have been sent to me to finish off. The sail away cards didn't need much as they were not only quite full, but also nicely balanced; I just added some text (something which often works well, at least in my books!)

These were very different - but again, didn't need a lot. I had some nice vintage floral heart papercuts which matched well & threw in a couple of words for good measure.

Bordered Linus Top, Take 8

...and as promised, another top with the same border fabric. This one is slightly larger, with 16 blocks instead of 12. Blocks are from the same master set as the others, though.

And that's all the bordered tops, for a while at least. I have two more tops paired up with suitable fabrics, but btoh will want to be mitred, so they will probably wait a while until I feel up to the slightly additional effort.

Cross Stitch Update

Only a little done recently on the cross stitch - a single cake. Because the girls are both revising like mad for their upcoming exams (one down today: Sarah's C1 Maths resit (she took it last year but wants an A or A* on it, rather than a B, so she's taking it again); one coming up Friday; Olivia's Spanish GCSE) we are watching almost no telly in the evenings; this really eats into my stitching time!  Anyway, maybe more next week, who knows.

Thanks to those who were interested in the cross-stitch patterns; I'll be in touch soon!

Tuesday Trunk Show

The next in my series of virtual trunk show pieces. This is a really old quilt; it's probably the very first one I made when I took up quilting again as an adult (I did a little in university). According to my book, it's from 1999. Apparently the pattern was from a book called Easy Log Cabin quilts or something like that. Not a book I have any more, despite my enduring love for log cabins.  Anyway, here it is, pictured on my bed, and the photos below are scanned from my book. 

The quilting is very minimal, just straightlines down the blocks, but in a spiral to the centre of the log cabin blocks. I actually forgot I had this quilt, so it's nice to see it again (it's in a pile which are in Sarah's room). 

Bordered Linus Top, Take 7

Here's a small top made from some of the many brown blocks I had knocking about; the border is a brown and blue dot with little birds in it. I have enough for another border as well, so you can perhaps guess what you'll see if you stay tuned a few days...

Bordered Linus Top, Take 6

These are the same sort of blocks which appeared in the quilt top I showed yesterday, but this time, I've partnered them with a bright orage print, so the end effect is quite different. Both nice, just different.

Bordered Linus Top, Take 5

Here's another one from the Linus box, with a blue batik border to help make it a good size and finish it off. Not done yet - there's still more to come before I run out of tops which have border fabric waiting.

ATC Friday

After a few weeks of other work to show, it's back to my main ATC occupation: round robins. These were both cards where I was the third person to work on them, so you can see how they looked after two players, and then finished.  This one has a soup theme, 

and this one has a Christmas theme.

Bordered Linus Top, Take 4

Here's another top for the Project Linus pile. The purple half-square triangle blocks were made shortly after I attended a Project Linus day last year; it's taken a while to find a good border for them.

Pattern Giveaway

Doing some decluttering; here are a few cross-stitch patterns which I no longer need. If interested, leave a comment.

(I only scanned half the pattern, but the whole thing is there - I got this one for free & I like it, but I have two copies...)

Trunk Show Tuesday

So, after I posted about my little talk at the local library, I had some positive comments (thanks!) - as I am always looking for thing to blog about to make this blog an interesting place to read (and write), I thought it might be fun to do a virtual trunk show of my quilts. It's not going to be a tutorial or even a link to patterns (though it might sometimes be), but more, what I'd say if I was talking about the quilt to people who weren't necessarily quilters - just some info about when I made it, why, what inspired it, and any interesting bits and pieces. Hopefully it will be fun!

This first piece I've chosen because it's one of the older quilts I've made, which I still have.  Or rather, in the case of this one, I have it again. It was made as a gift for my husband's parents back when we'd been married only a few years - I don't know exactly what year, but definitely pre-blog. [Hang on, I do have a book where I used to keep notes about quilts I'd made, back in the pre-blog days...*]

OK, this one was a gift for Christmas 2001, apparently. I found it in my book, and I found a photo of it on my in-laws' bed (reflected in the wardrobe mirror). I wasn't a very sophisticated quilter in those days - these days I am much better with free motion stuff (though most bigger quilts, I have longarmed anyway). So this one is just attached together with stitch-in-the-ditch (between the blocks) quilting. [The reason it came back to me is that Geoff's parents are both now gone; when his mum died, his brother offered us the quilt back - she'd had it with her in the care home where she lived towards the end of her life.]

It's made with many different fabrics, including a variation in the neutral squares, and it's just two traditional quilt blocks, alternating with one another. 

Great for using up small pieces of fabric. I really like this quilt, and I'm glad it came back to us. We use it a lot in the living room (though as it's been washed many times, it actually needs a few repairs; I should do that!)

*Actually, there are a lot of quilts in that book which I no longer have access to - lots of photos as well - I might do the trunk show from there for a while, as those quilts won't have been shown on this blog before!

Bordered Linus Top, Take 3

...and here's the next top. As usual, this has photographed poorly, but it is a kind of pale purpley blue and a pale purple; the centres of the blocks have ABCs on black or on blue backgrounds, so it's a very child-friendly piece. Some of my scrap quilts are a bit more grownup as I don't really tend to collect novelty fabrics (unless I set out to do so). 

Bordered Linus Top, Take 2

Here's the second of the promised tops - this one went really well with a rather in-your-face rose print which Liz (the Project Linus Coordinator in my region) had in her Linus stash. The pink and black blocks are quite girly, lots of shoes and shopping prints in the centres of the blocks...

Bordered Linus Top, Take 1

Some sewing time this weekend prompted me to match up some Linus top centres for which I had allocated border fabric, with those borders. Partly, I have no real space for cutting or organising as my daughter is using the table to do art in the lead up to her GCSE Art Exam on Monday and Tuesday. Borders need a minimum of cutting and whatnot. So, here is the first of those - a greeny blue scrappy thing with a green border.  Please excuse the papers in the background - my entire house is covered with bits of revision - two children undergoing major exams this year creates a lot of paper!

ATC Friday

A couple of ATCs made recently - the top one was a hostess card in a swap; fennec foxes were something she had listed as a "like" in her profile. 

And this is a card for an APC (Altered Playing Card) PIF (Pay-it-forward). Someone lists what they'd like to receive and you can make a card for them. If you commit to making a card, you can list what you'd like to receive, and so on. This person wanted an Alice in Wonderland theme. 

Cupboard clearing

As part of my household declutter in the month of May, I'm going to have a clear out of my craft supplies - or some of them, anyway. I might not go through every single drawer and box. But in these cupboards, I'm going to go through and see if there are things I don't use, which I can get rid of. 

Here's the pile I found to start with!

Cross stitch update

So, I've actually moved over to the other side of the top row of the stitching now - there wasn't a lot done in this past week, but I did fill in the white bits in the bow at the top, and added some details to the rabbit (I'm not going to stitch the longstitch until the end - too easy to pull out of shape - so he won't have eyes or a monocle until later).  Still, it's coming!

Sneak peek

Here's a tiny sneak peek at what I was working on in my secret post. You really can get no idea of what it is from this photo (aside from some of the colour scheme) - all will be revealed in due course, once the Cotton Robin has finished. Until then, you'll just have to wait patiently!

Something secret

So, I was working on a round of the Cotton Robin this weekend. I can't show what I started with or what it looked like when I finished (though I have taken photos, so I can show it later, when the swap is finished), but I can show the fabrics I pulled out to possibly use (I didn't use them all). 

And I can show a little bit of sewing, as this really gives absolutely no idea what on earth I did, or even really which piece I was working on, though you might be able to eliminate some, based on colours.

Scrappy blocks finished

These are the blocks I started the other day, using scrap squares and strips. I can't remember how many of them there were in the end (though I did count them) - I think it was 30 or 40. I guess I'll find out when I come to stitch some together... For now, into the basket of block sets.