Quilted!

Well, lookie what I did today - yep, finished quilting Ursula's quilt. I decided to make the border a little funky and trimmed it with a wave, which I'm really pleased with (except one bit on the right, which needs some minor adjustments). Now I just have to make loads of bias binding to bind it. But it's nearly done. In the end, I decided to quilt it with a variety of variegated threads, wherever possible working with the block colours. I think I used about 6 or 7 different ones in the end. I think it's come out really well - from a distance, you only see the fabrics, but up close you see the texture and the fabrics, which is just what I wanted. Not sure what colour I will do the binding - kind of depends on what I have in my stash. Or perhaps I will piece it out of many different ones - it would suit the quilt, I think.

Low fibre content

Didn't do any work today as my mother and I went up to London to do a walking tour with the London Walks company - the Mayfair one, this time. Here are some random photos of some of what we saw...

This window and the ceiling were in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which is the first Catholic church to be allowed to be built in London since Henry VIII demolished most of them... It's a rather unprepossessing exterior (for a Catholic church, anyway) but the inside is remarkable.

Below is another interior photo, and the garden outside, which is full of benches given by American servicemen who were stationed in London in WWII when this church served as their main church if Catholic.

The organ below is in the Grosvenor Chapel, which is nearby, and was played by Handel, when he was organist there. The windows were on a church near where we had lunch, but I'm not sure the name of the church, I just thought they were pretty.

Many of you reading this may well recognise the building of which the left hand photo is the interior - I do love this building - used to work nearby and went in at lunch time a lot - not even necessarily to buy anything, just to browse the fabrics and whatnot and admire the architecture. [It is, of course, Liberty of London.]

And on the right, red lanterns all over Chinatown. The effect is not even spoiled once one realises that they all have a picture of KungFu Panda on them with the date "July 2008".

And finally, a photo up the river taken from Waterloo Bridge, on the way home - and yes, I couldn't go into Liberty without buying a little something in the quilting department (which is fairly small). I astonised myself by choosing this fabric, which is Kaffee Fasset - from the new collection, apparently. Usually I am not a big fan. also bought some bejeweled ribbon, which I'm sure will eventually be put to good use.

Dyeing day

So, today, I devoted more or less the whole day to catching up on dyeing and related stuff - actually, only related stuff, as no actual dye was involved - it was all paint and stuff like that. The first order of business was 8 fat eights of complex cloth for a swap - I decided to see if there was something in my stash that was suitable to use as a starting point - and found this lovely shibori piece. It's big enough to cut into 8 pieces for the swap, but I decided to work on it as a whole peice rather than individually. The first step I added to it was to screenprint some designs onto it in various colours. I then hung it up to dry and worked on the pieces for the screen printing swap (below) but for the sake of brevity, I'll go through the entire complex cloth at once. After the screen printing, I added some stamps in various MetaMica colours (my mom helped with this) and then added some texture using Markal paint sticks and a stencil. Finally, I sprayed a bit with whatchamacallit - Mountain Mist? Something like that - too lazy to go upstairs and check it! Now I just have to wait until the paint sticks dry and then heat set it - could be a few days - those things take FOREVER to dry!

I caught up with a couple of complex cloth round robins (I've only had them a short time, but they were delayed before they got to me) - I added stencilled paint sticks to both pieces - the one on the right is actually more subtle than it appears.

And below are the pieces I screen printed -I used a variety of stencils added onto the screen with tape and printer labels - there are actually four pieces with stars on them, but they are much the same, so I haven't showed them all - lots of pictures in this post already with those to bulk it up!

And finally, here's some post - yesterday, I received this little mini quilt (which is flatter than in the photo - it was folded in its envelope) from the September 6-12" swap with my flickr swap group; today I received this Batik Beauties postcard from Di. Wow. Tomorrow, there won't be much to show, though, as my mother and I are going up to town - we might do a guided walk - haven't decided for sure yet. Should be fun, regardless, despite not getting any work done.

Variegated flames

Well, amidst various errands today including amassing a huge collection of paint chips mostly in neutral shades I did manage to pin together and start quilting Ursula's quilt. I decided to use a variety of variegated threads - the quilting is going to be my basic flame meander which I tend to work in diagonal rows (approximately) anyway. So what I will do is switch threads here and there, mainly depending on the colours in the quilt so that in some places you get two different coloured rows abutting - like above. I think it will work fine, and it will solve the whole pink-variegated-not-looking-good-on-a-green-background issue without making my task too difficult. Tomorrow I have a free day for crafting stuff, but I intend to do some dyework - screen printing, complex cloth and so on. Whee :)

Rusty

Here are some lovely fabrics I got in the post today - from the rusted fabric exchange with my surface embellishment group. The variety is remarkable and the pieces are lovely. Not sure how I will use them yet, but I certainly will use them!


And here are two recent finishes - I have done the binding on both of these piecs now - the Jacob's Ladder is a 12" block and the basket is about 22" square, I think. Both are now finished and ready to go off to new homes - not sure where the basket is going yet, as it happens, but we'll get there before long. If you'd like a chance to own it, check out my post about my blogversary giveaway!

Goals.

I know I set my goals for the week Saturday to Saturday, but half the time I forget to talk about them on Saturday- not that it really matters, but it's just another sign that I'm getting older and losing my memory!

Anyway, here's what I aimed for last week:

• journal quilt for the week (deadline 13/9) - done. and well before the weekend. for once.
• finish binding Hawaiian 3 quilt - well, no. But it will get there. Eventually.
• bind 12" Jacob's Ladder mini - finished. ready to post out tomorrow or whenever I next go to the PO
• bind giveaway quilt - not done yet.
• work on set of "U is for..." postcards (deadline 15/9) - finished, ready to post
• set of "Shades of Sunshine" quilties (deadline 20/9) - finished, and in the post

Not too bad, really. The binding tasks weren't any of them urgent, so it doesn't matter that they weren't done. For this week, I really need to do some dyeing related stuff - hopefully I will have a day for that - I'm thinking of dedicating Wednesday to it...

• set of screenprinted fat eights for a swap (deadline 30/9)
• set of "complex cloth" fat eights for a swap (deadline 30/9)
• journal quilt for the week (deadline 20/9)
• finish binding Hawaiian 3 quilt
• bind giveaway quilt
• quilt some of Ursula's quilt (deadline 1/10, if possible to go home with my mother (otherwise I have to mail from the UK))

Hoorah for traffic!

(I know, it's an odd title for a post - what happened was, we were going to go out this afternoon, but we got stuck in such bad traffic, we turned around and went home, which gave me several free hours in which I could do even more work than I had already done today - which turned today into a VERY productive day - a thing I've not had much of recently...)

This morning, I put together all the lovely hand-dyed pieces for Ursula's comfort quilt - in the end, I did 10" squares, as 12" squares, plus sashing, was getting a little large. This is still fairly large, but if she's going to be in a rehab unit for a long time, perhaps she can keep it on her bed there to brighten things up... Anyway, as expected, it's rather gorgeous, as the fabrics are so amazing. I'm glad I choose cream (over black, which was the other contender) - it's cheery and light and will show the quilting nicely. I pieced the back as well, from two pieces of hand-dyes - one of which was long enough but not wide enough, so I inserted a narrowish strip of a different hand-dye down the centre. Now just to pin together and quilt...



And here are the bonus things I got done - a little box, which I hope will be for a swap I'm doing, hosted by Carole, which is called "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" - I say I hope, because it's a 3D item, and I need to check that's ok before I send it out. The elements are: old - the box, which used to have greeting cards in it and the grey fabric on top, which came from a pair of Olivia's school trousers which split in the seat and had a hole in the knee and were therefore in the bin in my sewing room; new - the dragonfly decorations on the top, which I bought at Hever yesterday; borrowed - the dragonfly picture on the top, which I borrowed from Carole's blog; blue - the paper I covered the bottom of the box with and the fibres on the top.

And the cards are my "U is for..." cards - U is for Umbel, in this case. These are a photo, printed onto fabric, with thread painting on top. I thought those were going to be late (they are due in the post tomorrow) but I have managed to sneak in just under the wire - provided I get to the post office tomorrow, of course!

Today's bits

Here are some things I acquired today - the fabric, notions, thread & book came from Hever quilt show - mostly just general items because I liked them, although the blue and white fabric is for a winter themed mini that I'll be making before too long.

The two ATCs are a result of my ATC challenge, and came from Ann in France - she didn't have to send two, but she said she couldn't choose between them, and I'm delighted she felt that way. Also a bag of buttons and similar bits - how cool is that!

Forest Challenge at Hever

Those of you who hang out here on a regular basis will be familiar with the tree themed quilt that I made for my group's challenge (theme: forest), which was due to be displayed at the QGBI Region 2 quilt show at Hever Castle this weekend. Here in this post, all the quilts for the challenge - although I saw lots of other quilts at Hever, I'm not posting photos of any of them, due to copyright issues and so forth - but this group of quilts is an exception - as it's a private group and I know all the people in it, I can share the photos of all our efforts - so it's your lucky day!

Please note that these quilts are original design work and are therefore covered by copyright restrictions. Please do NOT use these images without the permission of the copyright owners and where used, be sure to credit them appropriately. Many thanks.


So - on to the quilts. The first one above is the group quilt we made together - we all pieced some of the leaf blocks and each made one (or more) applique block(s) (mine is the gingko leaf in the upper right). The long vertical applique panel was made by Meg Leach. I can't remember off the top of my head who put the blocks together, but it was designed by Lesley Brankin, quilted by Mandy Parks and finished off by Doris Dove. A great team effort, don't you think? Even if I do say so myself! On the right hand side, is Jennie Lewis's quilt for the challenge - "Where have all the leaves gone" - this is a fabulous quilt, with lovely beads hanging in the trees.

Below are quilts made by Brigid Ockleton ("Forest Logs" on the left) and Mary Cunningsworth ("Pick 'n Mix in the Forest") - Mary intends to enlarge her quilt later to make it bed-sized.




These two are by Sally Skaife ("Autumn Leaves", on left) and Kay Barrass ("Forest"), which is heavily quilted & FME'd - not sure if you can tell that from the photo, but the centre is great (well, it's all great, but the centre is heavily FME'd).




Here's two more - MandyParks', on the left ("Forever Autumn") and of course mine, at right.




And finally - one from Doris Dove ("Not Exactly 100 Acre Wood") and one from Meg Leach ("Fallen Tree"), which incorporates an original poem as well as textiles...




A great turn out, I think - it's a shame that not everyone in the group was able to complete a quilt for the challenge - these are so great I'd love to see what the other folks might have come up with!

Hallowe'en alphabet...

I know I normally show my weekly cross-stitch update on the weekend, but as I finished the Hallowe'en banner tonight (would have finished last night, but I got the vulture nearly done and realised it was over about 6 spaces too far to the right, so I pulled it out. argh) I decided it would be a sensible time to show it, now. That, and nothing else to show as I spent the day at school (mostly, with a brief lunch break)... Anyway, here it is - it stitched up very quickly, as expected and will make a nice gift for some Hallowe'eny friends. A reminder of where it stood last weekend is below.


Also below is the next one I'm tackling - this one will be around a bit longer, I reckon. The piece is a sampler with the state birds of the US - 50 boxes with a bird, its name and the state name, then in the centre a larger motto - I think it says "State birds of the US" or something like that and then has some birds around it. I have 32 boxes done, I think, so only 18 to go and the central motto. Several of the birds appear multiple times - one or two appear quite a few times - I think I got tired of doing them. And the bordering boxes...