WIP Wednesday

It's another lovely morning here today, although it's once again showing up the deficiencies in my photography skills!  I thought for once I'd try and get my WIP linky post in early rather than last.

I'm STILL ploughing on with the hand quilting on the raw edge circles quilt.  I am beginning to think I wish I'd taken up Charlotte's kind offer of a loaned darning foot so I could machine quilt it, as it's taking forever and my poor needle pushing finger is getting very sore!!

I have to admit, in between pushing the blunt end of the needle into my finger tip, I am loving the effect of the spirals.  Last night after doing a few more in front of the telly, I decided to count up how many I'd still got to do.... 34!  

Then after I went to bed and couldn't sleep, first I sent an annoyed email to an etsy supplier who is a month late sending out Sew Stitchy panels, then I worked out how many circles there were in total, so how many I had completed.  I thought that would make the remaining 34 seem like small fry......

Until I worked out that 9 x 7 = 63 and therefore I've only done 29!!!!!!!!  Oh, I could have cried.  But, before I do any more, I WILL be investing in a thimble...

Anyway..... am linking up with WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced


(Oh, and this morning I had a reply from that etsy supplier, claiming that Moda were so busy producing another fabric line, they were late sending out the Sew Stitchy panels to everyone.  Sorry, but do I look like I came down in the last shower????  I've seen the panels on blogs, and I doubt very much a company like Moda would allow that - with the number of lines they produce they'd never get anything shipped if the production of one stopped the shipment of another! ) 

Sitting in the morning sun...

I decided to make the most of the dappled morning sunshine to take a couple of snaps of the baby quilt that I finished last night.  We've been having such lovely early weather lately, although it's sadly usually clouded over by lunch!

Anyway, here it is, backed with yellow magic beans from FairyTale Friends by American Jane, and bound with a scrappy Kona solids mix, in I've no idea what official colours!

Linked up with Canoe Ridge Creations Sew Modern Monday, because although I blogged it today, I did finish it last night, honest guv!

Hushaby baby

Today I finally got chance to tidy the sewing room - believe me it needed it!  (A couple of weeks ago as I was getting ready for the latest LMQG meeting I remembered I was meant to be taking some 5" charms to swap and I had a charm pack in mind to pull them from  - but could I find it???  I found it today behind some other fabric having fallen down the back of the shelving!)

Anyway, I digress.....

About 6 haircuts ago, I changed hairdresser.  As we were discussing at Aneela's embroidery class yesterday, I'm frightened of hairdressers.  I confessed this at my first consultation with Brett, and he made it his mission to make me not worry any more.  Since he started cutting it, I've had more compliments about my hair than I've ever had, so when he and his partner had their first daughter, about 9 weeks ago now, I decided I would make a little something.  

I had a charm pack of Freebird by MoMo and another of Chrysalis by Sanae, both for Moda, both with butterflies and flowers and similar colours.  As they are such lovely bright colours, I thought they'd be perfect for a baby quilt.  So this afternoon I got a simple patchwork top pieced, and made a scrappy solids binding in the main quilt colours.  I'm going to back it with yellow magic beans, I think.

Then I just have to hope they went with modern funky colours and not traditional pink!

(I also realised I seriously need a new camera, and can't keep taking blog shots with my mobile phone!)

Vintage Icons

OK, you remember a couple of posts ago I was wrestling with some fabric for a project and worried about cutting it right, etc?

Well, head on over to The Daily Stitch at The Village Haberdashery today and you can see what I was making....

Thames Festival this weekend....

My lovely super-achiever quilting pal, Judith, of Needles and Lemons fame, is hosting a stall at the Thames Festival craft fair this weekend - see her blog here for details.

For quick reference:

"The craft fair is located at Bernie Spain Gardens which is a beautiful relaxing garden located between Oxo Tower and Gabriel's wharf.

I will have a stand somewhere there on Saturday and Sunday from 12 midday to 10 pm at night (yes 10 at night !)."

So do pop along and see Judith, buy some stuff and make her weekend worthwhile.....

WIP..... are you sitting comfortably.....?

Then I shall begin.  

Many, many, many years ago, I went to school In Lincolnshire, & one of my friends was Kathy.  Over the last 31 years, we've kept in touch, both ending up living in the Reading area, co-incidentally.  Kathy is very musical, playing many instruments herself and is now a music teacher.

Never have we particularly talked about art and crafts or indeed sewing of any description.  Until last summer when I started talking about my new found quilting hobby and Kathy told me she had started making a quilt for her sister's 18th birthday, but never finished it.  We would have been 21 at the time, so this is one or two years ago.....

To be fair, Kathy was very modest about this quilt, didn't give me much info to go on and said it was in a bag in her mum's loft in sunny Mablethorpe.  I said if she retrieved it, I'd help her finish it.  Then last week, I heard the quilt had been found and was ready for more work.  

Well, today we met for lunch and I got to see it, and Kathy has been well and truly hiding her sewing light under a thousand bushels let alone just the one!

This is 80" x 66" in size and is all EPP hand stitched hexagons.  I am in awe!  At the time Kathy made it, her boyfriend's father owned a factory which made christening and confirmation gowns and he donated loads of scraps for the project.  Some of the fabrics are solids, but many are voiles or finer, some are broderie anglaise, and they are just gorgeous.  The whole thing is as light as a feather, and the stitches are tiny and invisible!

Having no proper hexagon template, Kathy drew one out on paper and hoped for the best - she was at Reading University at the time, studying music.  Some of the hexagons still have the music parchment paper in them that she used as the templates.  She'd even gone so far as to embroider her sister's name in one of the hexagons and the number 18 in another one.  You can see from this close up how fine some of the fabrics are.

We took a little trip to Village Fabrics in Wallingford, to see about how best to finish off such a delicate piece - I had ideas but I'm still quite new to this so wanted some expert opinion.

Because of the transparent nature of the fabrics, I'd suggested Kathy add a solid layer behind that so the wadding wouldn't show through... luckily the fabric shop agreed.  We then decided on soft bamboo wadding so the lightness would match the quilt top.

There was a pieces of white on white fabric in the bag too, which Kathy said she didn't know the purpose of.  However, when measured it was the perfect size for the backing so we pretended that was the plan all along!  For the quilting, because it it so light, we decided tying was better than quilting, and so it's going to be tied through the centre of some of the blue sashing hexies.  We picked out some blue for the border, and as Claire's birthday is the 16th September, we agreed to meet up again on Monday to get it all put together and hopefully finished in time for Kathy to get it posted to arrive on the big day - it'll be 24 years late, but I reckon we can blame that on the Royal Mail.....

Linking up with WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced.

Small blog meet.

When I started this blog back in March, I had every good intention of joining loads of link ups on a weekly and monthly basis.  Unfortunately, life got in the way a little, and although I've done more recently, I think it was April when I last joined in the Small Blog Meet.

Which is a shame as it's an excellent way of seeing what other new bloggers are up to, and keeping up with the newer members of the online community.

So if you're in the same boat as me, head on over to Lily's Quilts, link your blog, and have a read of a few of the others - new friends await!