More Birds

Well, actually, just one more.

Looking at them side by side you can see which one is the proper one.

The Aurifil Invisible Thread arrived yesterday.

Look at this!

I received one spool in the give away, which I had to send back to AlexVeronelli, and the lovely man sent me 4! Can't wait to get quilting.

To finish off this post, look what The Old One found in the pool on Wednesday morning

and no it's not rubber!

I promise it's a proper, real, live Salamander deciding to go for a swim.

Have a great weekend!

More soon

Winging It

After yesterday's post,  you've probably gathered that I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for various packages to arrive. After I wrote the post, I popped over to Lynne's blog to have a look at her birds. I'm very taken with them.

I got the bins out and started matching fabrics. Fiddled about a bit with some scraps and created this.

There is a lack of contrast with the body and the beak, which is not pointy enough.

I emailed this photo to Lynne asking what she thought and, oh goodness, I didn't realise she had written a tutorial. I just looked at her photo and matched bits up as I went along.

So not bad considering I was winging it!

More soon.

A Finish!

In haste as a houseful of teenagers, but, at long last, Liquorice Lane is on the wall!

Let's Celebrate

Home again, home again. Jiggety jig and in order to celebrate, I give you - da da - (drum roll please) Liquorice Lane

La neige arrivée

Look what we woke up to this morning.



3 inches of the stuff and more on it's way.

Magic has decided she loves it!



and to while the time away while I'm waiting for it to thaw, I've been practising my hand quilting.



A close up.



Temperature is going down to -6°C tonight and tomorrow is going to be a maximum of -1°C. The schools are closed which is Sod's Law as they only went back yesterday. Don't know when The Young One will go back. It is highly unlikely the school bus will get up the hill tomorrow morning and we certainly aren't going to attempt to drive in this.

Think I'm going to spend the next few days under a quilt in front of the fire. Brrrrrrrrrr.

Surprise surprise

Don't you just love it when something turns out well, or how you wanted it to look (ish).



Really must teach The Old One how to hold quilts up.

A detail

I've hand quilted it in various ways.  The centre has been tied, as has the left hand side.  The words have been hand quilted in the ditch, with various designs in the gaps between each word.  On the right hand side, reading from the bottom upwards it says Estella Elizabeth and her birth date (30-10-08 though I suppose it should be 10-30-08 as she's in Los Angeles LOL).

Although it is not 100% perfect, I'm just so chuffed with myself that I knuckled down and finished this off in one hit.  Didn't get side tracked and just, well, finished it!  Wooo hooo.

Back to the UFO's.  What will be next I wonder?

Is there anyone there?

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder!  After a 10 day break I hope so!

Yuk grey weather.

Yuk cold weather.

Yuk weather FULL STOP

Enough to give anyone the winter blues.

So I'm hand quilting like crazy.

Haven't touched the sewing machine for what seems like weeks.  That string quilt is still on the wall with 2 borders on and I can't seem to get the motivation to finish it off.

So keeping warm and quietly stitching away.

Whoops - that photo wasn't supposed to be that big!

........... a finish

You need to read the post below this one first.



Roughly 10" x 10".

I can see me getting addicted to mini's :-)

And that's me outta here!

There is Hope Part II

Front

Back

There is Hope

This is the top for my Priority Hope Challenge quilt.  I've started quilting it and hope to get it finished by the end of this week so I can register it and send it off.

Have you checked out the Liberated Quilters Web Ring recently?

There is some stunning liberated quilting going on out in Blogland.

Take a look at Marit's Liberated Stars.

Belinda has got the star bug too, so much so that she can't sleep!

Kristin has been having great fun with solids and she's done some awesome houses.

To round this post off - a photo taken by DD the other day of the Banana Tree in the courtyard (and before you ask, no it doesn't fruit!).

Stained Glass or Sugar Candy Houses

This is one of the projects I did for Lazy Gal's Summer Class 2008.

This is the stained glass version.  Pretty isn't it?

But I think I'm going to stick with the original idea.

Question now is how do I quilt it?  I don't want to detract from the houses so perhaps stitch the ditch round the rooves and the house blocks and then fans on the black?

Anyone any ideas?

....... and more Pink (and a link)

Wooo hoooo - this has got to be a first!

Look!



Crap photo - sorry.

The small maverick star on the right has got some white in it which slipped in by mistake.  That's why it doesn't show very well.  I was going to do the right hand border entirely of Maverick stars, but realised I'd still be cutting tiny HST's in 6 month's time!  Remember this?  It's going to be the binding.  Thought I needed to starting cutting into it after just over a year of it sitting in the pink stash box

I've already started tying the quilt and it should be ready to go to the UK at the end of next week for Mum to take to Los Angeles middle of next month.

Whilst I'm here, have you read about Lazy Gal Tonya's latest idea.  Hop over to her Priority Hope Challenge blog and join in.  It won't take up too much of your time and it looks like fun.

And on that note I'm off to bed!

More Pink

It's the Stashbuster Virtual Retreat this weekend so I thought I bust more of the pink stash.

The words are done and all I've got to do now are the borders.  I'm going to put a few small Maverick Stars in them to use up some of those tiny HST's that seem to have been multiplying by themselves in the scraps bin!

I rang my sister in Los Angeles the night before last.   I'd sent her a photo of the current WiP on this quilt and in between telling me how gorgeous she thought it was, she told me that they are going to call Little Miss Bump Estella, which means star.  How spooky is that!

Oh, I forgot to tell you.  The 1425 sewing machine has gone in for a service and renovation.  We couldn't get it to work and DH was loath to touch anything.

He's not too sure about the 191B either.  We are waiting to see how much the 1425 is going to cost before going any further.

Back to the sewing.

Hope you are having a good weekend.

Playing with Pink

I'm still weighing up the pro's and con's so will stay put for the time being.  The main reason for staying is the templates - much prefer Wordpress to Blogger for that, even though Wordpress's widget's aren't as good.

Anyway, on to more important things, like what has been happening in the sewing corner.

I've put the stars together and put a border round them.



I then thought words round the edge (You are a star), but I think I've over-egged the pudding.  The words could go across the top and down the side, both sides, or down one side and across the bottom.

Without the words the quilt measures 26.5" by 36".  Obviously with the words and another border it's going to be a lot bigger.

The quilt is for my niece to be .  If I leave it as it is then it will be fine until she gets to sleep in a big girl's bed, but I thought if I made it bigger then she'd have it for keeps.

Decisions, decisions. HELP!

The weather we've been having here is unbelievable.  The Hibiscus has normally finished flowering by the end of July.  There are still one or two blooms left on it.



I've been meaning to take a photo of these fountains for ages.

They're in the centre of Périgueux near the Theatre (Allée d'Aquitaine).

Now isn't that just typical!  There's me saying we having gorgeous weather and the sky has turned black, its raining and there are ominous rumblings.

Donc, A+

Star Bright

(please excuse crap photo - light is appalling)

I'm getting fond of these.  My fav so far is the one bottom right.

Only a few more to do and then I can do the border which I'm looking forward to.

Stay tuned!

A finish!

Well sort of.

I don't think you'd call this a proper quilt. The border is not quilted.



I was getting so fed up with it.  I started stitching the ditch and my fingers were bleeding and aching so much with all that pushing and pulling of the needle I gave up and tied the rest of it.

When I had done the inner border I looked at it and decided the rest didn't need doing and put it to one side.  Then Finn's Challenge came along so I pulled it out and put the binding on.

This wall hanging is going to be hung in a dark corner somewhere.  Not even I, who is not afraid of the Quilt Police, would dare put this on show.

I suppose at some point way off in the future I could return to it and tie the rest of it.

However, it has got me back into the groove, I've managed to cross off one thing for Finn's Challenge and I did a few fans on Ab Fab last night - woo hoo!

WiP Wednesday : 20-05-2008

This is the next project for the Lazy Gal Summer Class - Crazy Houses.

I've decided to take out the  original block in the middle and the one to its left.  I'm having fun mixing and not matching fabrics, playing with batiks and brights and seeing which way the rotary cutter takes me °vbs°

The Day the Earth Shook

One ruler with some dark blue FQ's to finish my Lazy Gal project.



I'm on a high - very big high!

After writing yesterday's post the postman arrived. He delivered a big box from America.

I couldn't for the life of me think what it was. Had I won a giveaway (highly unlikely as I never do!), or had I ordered something online and forgotten about it (again not likely).

The Customs declaration form said it was a book. What on earth????? I'm sure I hadn't ordered anything recently. The Euro/Dollar/Sterling thing has put a stop to that!

Only one thing for it - start opening it! Now who do I know who lives in WI? Only Finn and I know she hasn't sent me anything and the name does look vaguely familiar. Questions, questions, questions. Start ripping and let's see what's inside.

Loads of bubblewrap. Whatever it is , it must be precious.

Screams, yells, jumping up and down - the family came rushing thinking I'd hurt myself.

LOOOOK!



It's from Kathie at Threadlines.

Her card says

"I happened upon a bargain priced copy of this book a couple of weeks ago. I already owned a copy; what to do with this new book?

I decided it belonged to someone who really wanted a copy and was unlikely to find one where she lived. "Someone" suggested you."

That "someone" received a phone call yesterday from a very incoherent me. Sorry Tonya - I probably wasn't making much sense!

Kathie - you are one of life's nice people. Thank you so very very very much. I still can't believe I now own this book and have to keep making sure it's actually on the table.

On that note - the sun is shining - for the first time it's warm - I've got a patio to pressure wash and Gwen Marston and Liberated Quiltmaking is going to have to wait until afternoon tea time, but I'll probably keep on popping into the kitchen to make sure it's still here!

Donc, A+

A trip down memory lane

Remember this?

I've been rummaging through the bins trying to find something to do. I'm really do need to unpick that batting, but keep putting it off.

So I decided to make this little orphan house part of a bigger top and see what happens.

A start

It is pouring with rain here.  Alex breaks up tomorrow for the 2 week spring break.  Hope the weather isn't going to be like this for the whole fortnight.  We've got plans.

As Alex is on hols, you should know by now that you won't see much of me until she goes back.

So A+

Odds and ends (updated)

Haven't really got much to show off at the moment.

Connection speed is diabolical and I'm having difficulty uploading photos to Flickr, so here is a photo of what is on the wall at the moment.

That mess on the left is my project for Tonya's Lazy Gal Summer Class. Don't seem to be progressing very fast. I'm thinking of using Tracey's Free Pieced Roses between and around the words. Either that or stars. Not at all sure. What do you think I should do?

Top right was meant to be a wonky tree for the same project, but it looks like a cross between a house and a mushroom. Most of my rejects are made into pot holders and sent over to my mother and that is where this one was going, but when I had finished we decided to keep it and hang it somewhere.

Bottom right is Bellatrix who has now got a border.

The connection seems to have sped up and Flickr has behaved itself so here are some more photos.

I received a package yesterday from the UK. I knew that Anne had promised me one of her heart quilts in exchange for some fabric, but she hadn't shown it on her blog so I had no idea what to expect.

Isn't it gorgeous!

The envelope was huge. Why on earth would she need such a big envelope for such a little quilt.

This is why.

Scraps and crumbs and scraps and crumbs. Wooo hooo. I feel another Bonnie crumb quilt coming on.

Have a good weekend.

A+