A Finished quilt!

My local quilt shop are having an exhibition next week, so I have just been to drop off a couple of quilts for them. I finished binding the Indian Hatchet this week, so that one has gone. Unfortunately photos of the finished quilt will need to wait until I get it back, as the light isn't great in the evenings just now and I couldn't get a picture yesterday during the day thanks to after school commitments. The other quilt I took to Busy Bees was the Surprising 4-patch that I did in a class there. It came back from the long arm quilter a week ago, but I just could not get the binding finished in time. So this one has gone as a work in progress.

Just so you have something to look at in this post, here is someone enjoying the sunshine a couple of weeks ago!


We are heading off to Holland for 2 weeks on Sunday, so poor DJ will be going into the cattery tomorrow morning. Let's hope that the lady who runs it wont mind giving out lots of cuddles!

Look what I got....

This beautiful quilt arrived this weekend. Made by Amy, I certainly feel very lucky to have been given this one!


Here's a detailed shot of the tiny piecing and intricate machine quilting. As one who can only manage straight-ish lines of machine quilting. I would love to be able to quilt like this.



Amy also included some very pretty fabrics and notepad in her parcel.



All in all a lovely surprise to get in the post - thank you very much Amy!

Back on Line Again

Well a fried cable modem has meant that we have had no Internet for a little while.
But I'm back again now ( for a little while at least!)

In the meantime, I have finished and sent off my little quilt for the ALQS swap. Stupidly though, I was so intent on getting it in the post in time, I completely forgot to take a picture of it!
All I have is this picture of the finished blocks. I did a mixture of machine and hand quilting in the end, and was quite pleased with the finished quilt.
I hope that **** likes it!

Carrying on with the children's quilts

My washing line looked very attractive with all of those colourful quilts drying in the sunshine yesterday. I have 2 more quilts to finish, 1 to bind and 1 to complete the quilting and bind, and then I can wash those and deliver them all by the weekend.
This evening I have concentrated on the quilting. I just have a few more lines to do and then I'll be done.
I'm not much of a machine quilter, I can just do straight ( ish! ) lines with a walking foot. I really want to remedy this though, so I have bought a machine quilting dvd - Fast and Fun - and signed up for a class on Quilt University. I know the theory, and also that practise is the key, so I have the idea that I will make table mats - nice and small to try out the techniques.
Oh well, it's almost bed time, just a little bit of blog reading before I head up - night night!

Famous - but not too famous we hope!

On an aside, DD Bronwen has her photo, and a photo of her Guild Challenge project in this month's Popular Patchwork, along with the other Young Quilters who were at the AGM earlier this year.
Bronwen is the small one on the right in the photo, if you happen to see it.

Let's hope the fame doesn't go to her head! LOL!

Charity Quilt Day

I belong to a local quilt group ( well, I say belong, I have just become chair!)
with around 60 members. Some time ago we started a project to make children's quilts for charity, then kind of fizzled out a bit. Well, we have had an entire day today of finishing some off for delivery to Project Linus later in the summer at the Festival of Quilts.
These are the ones that will be delivered to the lady who will be taking them in the next week. Some of them were already finished, and I have 2 more to finish the machine quilting on and bind, but I think it's a good start.

There are some more in the pipeline, and when they're done we're going to sit down, work out who we want to quilt for and find a new design to try.

Visitors, work and mud!

Recently my mother in law has been visiting us from London, so I haven't had any time for quilting ( and hence no blogging either!). I get on well with her, so we all had a lovely time over the last week. One of the places we went was to the literature festival at Hay on Wye - thanks to the rain, it was extremely muddy



This was the state of the car park when we were leaving - I really did not think we were going to get out of there!
We haven't been to the festival before, but we enjoyed it so much that we'll definitely be going back next year. I took the children to see a comedy show ( Marcus Brigstock and Dave Gorman) while DH and his Mum went to see A A Gill, and then we all went to see the Liverpool Poets in the evening. I've seen Brian Patten and Roger McGough before a long long time ago, so we knew that we'd enjoy it. DS, 16, was not sure though. Picture the scene, the whole family waiting in the queue outside the venue, Niall - "So what are we going to now Mum?", me - "The Liverpool Poets", Niall - "What will they be doing?", me - "Reading their poetry". A look of complete horror, Niall - "What! You're taking me to a poetry reading?"
He did finally confess to enjoying about half of the performance, I think the poetry about love and death was a bit too much though!
Still I'm sure that these experiences will all stand him in good stead at some time in the future! He he!

I have an appointment with the local long arm quilter tomorrow to take 2 quilts to her, so I have been finishing off a pieced backing for the Crayon Box quilt. For some reason, whenever I buy fabric that might be good for backings, I never buy enough, so the backing is as wild and funky as the front of this quilt. Let's hope Bronnie will like it when it's all finished.
It was too wet outside when I'd finished it, so I'll have to post pictures when the whole thing is finished.

Mum, DD and I have also done the Race for Life today. A quilting friend of mine, Jennie, died a month ago, so it was a particularly emotional day. But we're glad that we did it again - this was race number 4 for us all together!