A Little Bit of Everything

Its been a long hard, difficult week with DS2 but this weekend he has been with the respite carer. We did have a house full of teenage boys yesterday as DS had some friends round but peace reigned over the house. This allowed me to finally get down to the dyeing required for my diploma quilt. I'm not sure what has happened to my camera, all the photos in this post are not great. I think I need to check all the settings again so apologies.

The turquoise blue is for the mid-day sky. You can't tell on the photo but it goes from a pale shade on the right through to a shade darker on the left. The texture on the fabric also isn't showing. The brown is being dye printed so I have more control over the final shades. The three pieces need to be just a shade darker than the one before each time.

I have been inspired by some bloggers trying to complete UFO's so this Halloween quilt has finally been quilted and completed. I like to think that it is 8 months early!!!! You just can't see but I free machined pumpkins all over it in a varigated orange and purple thread.

I decided a few weeks ago to cut out a "turning twenty" quilt. I have mamnaged to do the piecing much quicker than I had thought. I will have 16 blocks, here are some laid out on the floor to give you an idea of how it will look. Again not great photo which doesn't show up the feature monkey fabric in the centre of each block.

I wasn't sure whether or not to show this because of the photo, the colours are washed out. It's one of my mug rug swaps. The batiks are rich jewel like purples and a deep pink. I just have to bind the other one before they can be posted off to America and their new home.

I spent a peaceful four hours at a sports centre today whilst DS joined a power riser/jump stilts group. I concentrated on the sewing and not what was happening down below. If you have never heard of them just look at this clip. DS isn't at the point of doing stunts yet though.  

Festival of Quilts 2009

I know there will be lots of posts about Festival of Quilts 2009 at the moment but I thought I'd share my memories. This was the quilt I entered in the art quilt section. The idea was to make something that was quite simple up close with the design becoming clearer from a distance. It took longer to design and draw out the zebras than to do the actual stitching. The one below was entered by my son and I can honestly say that I feel very proud that every stitch was done by him. It was called "Postcards from the Orient"


After teaching/helping over the whole four days I've had a croaky throat today and been incredibly tired. The children's workshop area was constantly busy and we even had a full workshop on Sunday afternoon. The children worked so hard within each two hour session to complete a project. I do have lots of photos of quilts but haven't had time to go through them yet. One advantage of working so hard was that I could get into the show at 8am each day, both to help set up and view the quilts.

I did manage to escape sometimes and have a look round. There were stunning quilts by Ferret, Sheena Norquay and many many others as well as all the competition quilts, but something that stuck in my mind was the restfulness and calm of the quilts by Ingrid Press, this is what Twistedthread wrote about her

"Ingrid works with cloth (which is often re-cycled) and fibre. She likes to arrange things - mainly in rows and grids. She sees beauty in repetition. Texture is also important and is achieved through dense machine stitching of the quilts and through the materials and weaving methods used when making her small vessels. Making things gives her a feeling of being connected to many generations of crafts people all over the world.She subscribes to 'Less is More' and tries to keep her work calm and rather simplistic, which is helped by the use of a limited colour palette."

The children's workshop area was right next door to the virtual studio enabling me to keep popping my head round to see the wonderful fabric being created, and to indulge in some retail therapy!!