I must be mad.....

Cutting strips of fabrics in white cotton: and quite a few in aqua, pale lime, pink and pale blue:to make little log cabins:
I want to make a replacement of this quilt: which has been hanging in our hallway since we moved in. So nearly a whole can of spray starch and about a bazillion strips of fabrics later: Hmmm, considering each strip is only 1/4" wide, finished sizeThis may take a while......

A quilty word puzzle

Here's a bit of fun for you:

V R F A A B K Y B Y M D V F A
H E M J T D E N O T F O Z R B
H T A P S D R A K N U R D F O
G T M D E N P Q I Z G Q G A B
U U T N W O H S T L I U Q B B
F C R B I T O H I O S T A R I
V Y A V N T H L O G C A B I N
B R P B G O D S X F I C Z C C
L A U S M C R N G I S E D N F
O T N T A R E I T Y S L Q B X
C O T S C R A P S H O D U P O
K R O W H C T A P V R E I J G
R F L Y I N G G E E S E F G T
Y F K A N D Y G W I C N A B U
K Z U S E F T D B E I P I D B

Can you find all the following words in the square?

BAG
BLOCK
BOBBIN
BQL
COTTON
DESIGN
DRUNKARDS PATH
FABRIC
FLYING GEESE
IRON
LOG CABIN
MODA
NEEDLE
OHIO STAR
PATCHWORK
PIECE
PINS
QUILT
QUILT SHOW
ROTARY CUTTER
SCISSORS
SCRAPS
SEWING MACHINE
THREAD
TRAPUNTO

As one thing finishes......

This is what the sky looks like at 6.30 in the morning - I don't often see it this early!

Finished, the left hand 'Steam punk' cushion:Huzzah.

I do miss my sewing room - especially after visiting a fellow BQL member who lived quite near to our friends (thank goodness for the Sat Nav!).

A.W. treated me to a personal quilt show. Wow, what a prolific and competant lady. Of course no visit to a quilter is complete without a peek at their sewing area too. After viewing the WIP on her design wall, I'm quite inspired to have a go at some 'skinny inserts' after seeing how good they look in the flesh. A.W. got the idea from both Dianne Hire and Alison Schwabe. I have the Dianne Hire book - Quilters Playtime - so will have to dig it out and give it a go.

In the meanwhile, I've been fooling around with some left over windmill blocks and seeing what different alternate blocks might look like:I wondered if this red check fabric:might be better toned down slightly with a thin white cotton overlay:
or:What do you think?

Thread success

Huzzah - today I've cracked the problem with the 'misbehaving' Hemingworth thread.
My first job whenever the stitching isn't perfect on any machine is to change the needle. They are so cheap compared to almost everything else and it's so often overlooked. I buy them in boxes of a hundred at a time. I find I'm not so 'precious' about them when I have plenty in stock.
Well since it already had a new needle (I use a new one for each new project) that couldn't be the problem.
I changed the machine speed from 'normal/fast' to 'snail'. I re-threaded the machine (just in case). I fooled about with the tension and finally, I heavily starched the backing fabric and voilaSuccess:-)

Spring is almost sprung.....

The Whizz Kid flew to Spain to be with Chic Girl for a week - they are going to look for an apartment in Pontavedra and the Whizz Kid will be looking for a job in Spain. Chic Girl says she also needs to look for some high necked cotton tops as she has been advised not to flash any flesh!
Meanwhile, we had a lovely weekend with our friends L&M,
L made a lovely pudding for Sunday lunch:Pavlova base, whipped cream, bananas, grapes, kiwi fruit and chocolate minstrals. Himself didn't get to eat the whole thing!:
As Sunday was such a gorgeous day we went for a walk after lunch.....No sign of any bluebell flowers yet:Lots of moss though: Tall saplings with fat juicy buds: Plenty of lovely views: Looking over at Latimer:
Chess Bridge:Detail of a couple of chess pieces:And catkins:Spring is finally on it's way - Hurrah:-)

Mothers day fabric

I was sent a lovely gift for Mothers day, these beautiful fabrics from the V&A quilt collection:
Chic Girl has dropped some heavy hints about how she would love something made from the brown and blue shell fabric:
If I had to pick one, this is my favourite:
But these two are extremely pretty too:
I will have to think carefully what to make with them - the quality is fabulous, so soft and yet with a good, high thread count. It is a lovely gift and I didn't even know the fabric existed.
I also received some gorgeous lilies and pale lime chrysanthemums:
I'm currently doing a little stitchery on some more of the pale duck egg linen, for a couple of 18" cushions. First I mark the design out, using a light box and a washable pen:
Then I just sit down and stitch:This design is quite large and it seems to be taking a few days to finish. I then have another matching cushion to stitch.

We Start Partys EP Launch

On Sunday evening we went to Joe Publics in Bristol to see The Whizz Kids younger Brother, Elys, play with his band We Start Partys. It was a lovely friendly gig with plenty of other family members there to see their boys do well.

I think the most unexpected sight of the night had to be a very elegantly dressed 'middle class' Mama, sashay her way to the front to see her boy perform with his band called Poster Boys. The band started up, the main vocalist started singing and then her son all dressed in black with more than a touch of Noel Fielding about him started, errrr, growling/roaring menacingly, actually I'm not sure what it's called, but it sounded fierce. The Mama bopped away, clearly having the time of her life - and good on her too!

Himself tried to hide at the back: no way was he getting squashed with everyone else!

We Start Partys (yes, that is their way of spelling it) launched their EP on Sunday. I hope it does well for them, because the music sounds great. All three tunes on the EP are very catchy - so catchy in fact that I couldn't sleep properly that night because I had the words to Frontin' going around my head - argghhh.

I took lots of photos both of the band and also the audience and uploaded them all on to Facebook, I didn't realise that being the 'owner' of the photos would mean I had to 'allow' everyone to 'tag' themselves and their friends in the photos - so my inbox has been chock-a-block with requests. The Whizz Kid (the black arrow points him out) recorded the whole set for Chic Girl as she couldn't be there - she was missed by us all.

After the WSP gig finished, Jagermeister freebies were being handed out by a couple of pneumatic, smiley young women wearing tight orange dresses that I swear would have been snug on just one of my thighs! I was given first a bandanna/scarf and then each of the girls put a lei around my neck:imagine my surprise that the scarf is 100% cotton...... I'll have to try and think of something inventive to do with it. Which given the colour and design will be challenging. When the smiling girls then came around offering lurid orange test tubes filled with some alcoholic liquid, I gracefully declined - I'll stick to Joe Public G&T's with lime quarters - mmmm, very refreshing:-)
We oldies took over one of the booths

This is a low....

We were all hoping to see Chic Girl this weekend, but she didn't fly home as she has been offered a teaching job at the University in Pontevedra, Spain. She hits the ground running when she starts on Monday morning, so she had to pack up her suitcase yesterday, catch the train to Vigo and then another to Pontevedra, where she then had to find a hotel and plan her lessons. I expect the poor mite will also try and catch up on some sleep at some point.

Buttons and cushions

In 1994 my Mother gave me lots of Mother Of Pearl buttons, some of which were from her Mama. I've kept them in a little labelled pot ever since, adding a few more when my Mother In Law, gave me her sewing box four or five years ago. I came across them recently and realised how decorative they all are and I would like to see them all the time. So I made a little stuffed heart yesterday and last night while watching TV, I sewed on lots of buttons. I finished sewing this morning, grateful that no corresponding buttonholes were needed! The stuffed heart weighs a flippin' ton! Who knew a few buttons could be so heavy? London's Pearly Kings and Queens have my admiration, they must have incredible stamina.
P.C. kindly sent me a photo of her little wallhanging so I am able to share it here: I do enjoy making these little wallhangings, the stitchery is just enough to complete in an evening.

I've also been practicing my piping skills...... This is the cushion that went horribly wrong with the Hemingworth threads. Here it is just after I finished the stitching the letters: And here is the finished article: I'm really pleased with it now

Thread addict

These are the threads that are giving me trouble:I bought them at the Festival Of Quilts. I tried them out a couple of times, but since they haven't been well behaved I've kind of ignored them and gone back to one of my more reliable threads.
Here's what went wrong: Not good is it?

Call me naive but if I'm paying full whack for threads, I expect them to behave with very little tweaking or fooling around. Especially when they are only poly for goodness sakes. I know that metallics need a special needle and I am prepared to sew at snail speed for them. I am prepared to do the same with my Indian Natesh rayon threads, although I now prefer the softer tones of Madeira Polyneon. Same lovely sheen, same delicious range colours and they work with only a slight loosening of the tension.

Hmmm, I really ought to get rid of the Natesh threadsAnyone want to make me an offer?

So wrong and so right

It's been a funny old week what with one thing and another......

I started doing some trapunto which I love doing, all was going well and I carefully cut out wadding on the reverse of the intricate design. When it came to the quilting, the test bit of stitching worked fine, but when I came to actually free machine quilt around my design, the thread would start occasionally misbehaving. But I carried on anyway - biiiiig mistake. I hated the result and spent hours carefully picking out the tiny stitching. I want to fall love with 'Hemingworth' threads, the colours I have are so beautiful, and they have a lovely sheen which I know will look fab when stitched, but every time I've tried to use the stuff, it breaks or knots up and goes loopy on me. I think I need to sit down and give it a stiff talking too and figure out why we cannot work together and soon.

Isn't finishing UFO's satisfying? This one I've had hanging around for ages, I just couldn't seem to get the beading how I wanted..... But I'm very happy with the results now. This has now been given to someone far far away.

I've also made another of my little matryoshka quilts and posted it off to a friend as a little gift. Stupidly I forgot to take a photo of it before I wrapped it up:Doh!