Sunshine, Houses

Another busy day - went to my little daytime quilt group today - we are still working on the nine-patch I've shown here before but it's nearly finished - we put the outer border on today and next time, it will be pinning it together... And then I had to go grocery shopping, then unpack it, put it away and get the kids from school. In the extremely small gap between these activities - about 40 minutes - I did manage to finish off the Shades of Sunshine quilties. And a journal quilt and bookmark in the same theme.

And here are some little treasures from the post - my little houses from the Row House swap, an ATC from Sequana and a postcard from Beth. What a nice lot of post to get!

Gift bearing...

Picked up my mother from the airport this morning, and consequently, didn't get much work done myself, though I did work on the summer quilties a little while she had a brief rest. Doesn't matter, though, as she always comes with loads of lovely things for me, so I can show lots of photos. Sometimes, it's stuff I've ordered, but on this occasion, it was some gifts, along with some hand-dyed fabric members of my dyeing group have sent along to make a comfort quilt for another member who had an aneurysm recently - I offered to assemble the pieces together, quilt it, and send it back home with my mom when she goes home in 3 weeks' time. Needless to say, it's going to be a very simple quilt.

Anyway, above is a selection of fat quarters - I have quite possibly the mother with the best combination of traits - she likes to buy fabric, but doesn't sew, herself. So she gives me the fabric. Honestly - the sacrifices we make for our relatives!! Anyway, some fabrics above left, and above right some bits and pieces from various thrift shops, yard sales and so on. She also bought me a large ziploc bag of rubber stamps at a yard sale, but no photo of those - some will definitely be useful, some less so, but it doesn't matter as the whole bag only cost $5...





And here are the fabrics for the comfort quilt - the final photo is stuff people enclosed for me to keep, but the other 5 photos show the fabrics for the quilt - I'm just going to do 12" squares and sash them with cream - keep it simple and let the fabric do the talking. There are 23 pieces (24 including my own which is not in the photo) so it even works out, number wise! I plan to do it very soon, so watch for progress. Anyway, nice treasure trove, isn't it!

Autumn, summer

Two autumnal postcards received today - this is a swap with my dyeing group - a foiled leaf from Debbie and a metal leaf made from a soda can from Kelly. And on the right, a start on my Shades of Sunshine quilties - plus a bookmark and a journal page. I've done the bases for these, but not embellished much yet (though I did put some holes in them and started tying fibres through them). Not sure what embellishments I'm going to put on them yet, but I will probably do that tomorrow. I think I might have some dragonfly charms, which would be very suitable, as one of the red fabrics have dragonflies on them.

I did also do some work on the Twisted Mystery Quilt - got one border of the small squares done and some more sewed together in preparation for the other three borders...

A very quiet house...

So, first day back to school today and yes, I did take advantage of the time to do some sewing - but of course, I worked on something I can't show (yes, again!) so instead, you get a pictures of the littles this morning on the way out of the front gate. This is the last year they will all be at the same school as Sarah goes up to secondary school next year. And even if she doesn't go to a girls' school, Alex will probably go to a boys' school as there is a good one around the corner from us...

Anyway, I will hopefully have something to show tomorrow - will try to do something which isn't secret! I can say that I'm making good progress on the Twisted Mystery quilt - put a black border on today, so the next step is a border composed of squares of the various fabrics in the rest of the quilt. I received a fairly wide selection of fabrics to work with, so am trying to use as many of them as possible in the quilt top.

Mostly cross-stitch

Here's a couple of cross-stitch things to show - first, I finished the little house and waterfall - there wasn't a lot left to do, but anyway, it's done now. I also started on the Hallowe'en alphabet - this won't take long to do, as actually I have already worked it out to "a" this evening... But I knew it would be a fairly quick one. And while having a trawl through my box of cross-stitch stuff in search of some more black (which I found) I also found this wisteria piece - which is finished, I hasten to add - which has been languishing in there for a while now. I should probably find a frame for it. The photo is a bit light, but the piece is nice, if I do say so myself. I have a number (we won't say which number) of pieces in various stages of work - some fairly far through, some less so - and in a variety of styles, but really, when I choose new pieces (which I shouldn't do anyway) I should pick nice small, acheivable stuff like this - then it would all get done! (You'll see what I mean when I show my long-running Christmas angels piece.)



I did do quite a bit of work today on the Twisted Mystery quilt, which of course I can't show, so it's lucky I have the cross-stitch progress to show. The centre of the TM is done, then I want to add a narrow black border and then another border made up of squares of the various fabrics and a few plainer ones, so I can add some funky themed quilting in them. But it shows every sign of being finished 'ere long!

Binding & Goals

Didn't do a lot of sewing today, though I did finish the quilting on the basket quilt for my blogversary giveaway, and then attached binding to that quilt and also the little 12" piece for the flickr swap group. I do still have to sew the binding to the back - both will look much better once I do that.

But that's ok, I'm fairly well on track at the moment - I do have a few more September deadlines to cover, but it's not too bad at the moment. Last weeks' goals:

• journal quilt for the week (deadline 6/9) - yes, did this, and last week's and one to cover the missing week. Whew.
• finish binding Hawaiian 3 quilt - didn't finish this, but did work on it.
• August arch (deadline 31/8 - I have already warned her I was going to be late!) - done. Luckily, I won't have to be too late.

And this week:

• journal quilt for the week (deadline 13/9)
• finish binding Hawaiian 3 quilt
• bind 12" Jacob's Ladder mini
• bind giveaway quilt
• work on set of "U is for..." postcards (deadline 15/9)
• set of "Shades of Sunshine" quilties (deadline 20/9)

It may seem a lot, but actually, three of them are handwork, so they don't really count... Oh, and did I mention the lovely children go back to school Monday? Yippee!

Photo heavy

Lots of stuff to show today - first thing is something I actually worked on - a little quilt for a mini swap on a flickr group - this is a batik Jacob's Ladder block which I happened to have already, which I have sandwiched up and quilted heavily. I hope it's suitable - the theme was open, so I haven't made a themed quilt in this instance. I think this block is very pretty, so I hope my partner likes it as well. Need to bind it, too, but maybe tomorrow. Or Sunday.

I did also work on the quilt for my blogversary giveaway - but I didn't do much on it, so I didn't bother to photograph it. Especially as I have so many other photos to show.



I got a nice package in the post including a lot of pieces from some old swaps which finally got wrapped up - these lovely dyed pieces are from a swap themed Stormy Seas.

And these below are CCRR (complex cloth Round Robin) pieces which it's my turn to work on - will do that after the kids go back to school (which is Monday, hoorah!) as it's easier to do dyeing and painting stuff when they aren't around.



The CCRR piece below is mine, which came home to me - not sure what I'll do with it now, but it'll be a nice base for something. And the ATC is from Wil - we swapped.



I also got two other ATCs from my recent swapping exercise - from Genie (left) and Doreen (right) - a nice day for post, wasn't it?

September Bag

I was thinking I had nothing to show today as I didn't do anything sewing related (spent a bit of time at school sorting out the uniform shop and then went to Sainsbury's - my exciting day!), but I remembered that I haven't shown my September Bag yet (as it wasn't Sept until recently). I also haven't shown my September Block Lotto blocks, but I need to take a photo of them, so maybe I'll show them tomorrow, when once again I doubt I'll have anything sewing related to show (the last day out of the summer is planned - Chessington World of Adventures (an amusement park))...

August Giveaway

Well, heck - who knows where the rest of August went - if you do, can you let me know, please!

A few weeks ago I offered this big bag of bits to those who left a comment by the end of August - only I keep forgetting August is finished. Anyway. I've now used a friendly random number generator to work out who gets these lovely bits, and the winner is... number 8! [And in normal human speech, that translates to... Guzziesue! Hoorah, congrats Guzziesue - send me your address and I'll put the bits in the post to you.]

Neocolor II

That was the theme of a swap on Arts in the Mail - these are art crayons which are water soluable, and the swap idea was simply to use them in some way on your postcards. After a little research and whatnot I decided I would try to use them for some monoprinting - I think they came out fairly well. Did a journal quilt with the same technique while I was at it.

Here's a photo of the glass plate with the crayon on - I think you could probably draw your design with the crayons dry and then mist it with a spray bottle, but I've not done it that way - I just dipped the tip of the crayon in water and coloured as I went along. The secret is to make the plate pretty wet before you try to transfer the colours - if it's at all dry, they just stay on the plate and don't move to the fabric.

Because it's a monoprint and only works once by definition, I made all of mine fairly different, but I didn't bother to take photos of them all in construction.

Once the design was on the plate, I placed the fabric over and smoothed it out to come into contact with the glass (left below). Right below shows the fabric after the print has been made.



After printing, I added free motion stitching to emphasize the shapes and then a few embellishments - I think they work fairly well. The journal quilt was printed twice - not from the same print, but I did colour them similarly. It's not a technique I'd want to use on a huge area as it's a bit time consuming, but it works nicely for postcards. There are tons of other things you can do with the crayons, so I will definitely experiment again in future.

NQR (Not quilt related)

...but as arty types, I thought you guys might like to see these fabulous masks - these are some that my mother has raku-ed lately (my mother is a potter; she does a lot of masks) - I love these - especially the ones with the nails and other hardware in - and especially the first one. Aren't they great?

Loads of photos...

First, the only thing I am showing today which I actually worked on - my cross stitch, which I forgot to show yesterday. Not bad progress for a week, especially considering that I also used my evening hand-sewing time to do the binding and sleeve on the forest quilt and also worked a bit on the binding for the Hawaiian shirt quilt for my brother & SIL. On the right is where it stood last Sunday, on the left where it stands today (actually, as I type this, it's actually even closer to being done as I have worked on it tonight as well). All that's left is some filling in in the brown sections (which is done now) and the three stars across the top (of which one is obviously done already) and a sort of bannery bit, which connects them.

Not sure which project I'm going to pick up next - I have a Christmas piece I want to work on, but actually, I think I might work on something I haven't actually started yet - it's a Hallowe'en theme and I think if I start it now, I can have it finished by, well, you know - Hallowe'en... (It's just the alphabet with some Hallowe'en bits and pieces around it, nothing too ambitious.)

What's next? Oh, right - this lovely black, white & red Scottie dog quilt which was made by Sue (who doesn't have a blog). A while back, she won a bunch of black, white and red quarter circle scraps in one of my giveaways, and she has built this entire quilt around those bits. How cool is that?

And finally, here's some stuff I got today - first, another machine (it's a little one - a Jem) which my friend Margery was parting with - we went up to collect it from her and spent a nice day out with her at Knebworth House. I also got this lovely bag of bits and pieces which I bought from Helen Suzanne's etsy shop.

And finally, these two lovely awards - both of which were bestowed on me by Genie. Now, you guys know what I'm like about awards - really bad about passing them on, so frankly, I'm not even going to try. But here's what you should do - have a look at the sidebar and the list of blogs I (somewhat) regularly read and click on one or two you've never visited before. Go ahead, it will be fun!