Lots of photos from my retreat

I uploaded a lot of photos from my retreat and they can be viewed here: Show and Tell, Night on the Tiles and the whole lot of photos.

First Look: "A Night on the Tiles in Manchester"

It's my first Quilt Retreat and this is what I am working on the ENTIRE weekend:



The Retreat was really good fun and I am going back next year. Once I've downloaded the photos off my camera, I'll post more.

Calculating and cutting fabric

I've been very excited about going on my first quilt retreat and it certainly did not disappoint! IN faact, I liked it so much, I will go back next year.

The accomodation was befitting, the food nice, and the quilting inspirational!

This is how I started out on the first evening:



Calculating and cutting ...

Downsizing my life

I have become increasingly aware that I am nearing a complete burn-out and need to re-assess my current life situation. The stress I submit myself to is affecting both my physical and mental health at a rate that I can no longer justify.

This along with a down-turn in the economy is increasingly motivating me to cocoon and use up what is there - to stash-bust. Quilting and crocheting have proven to be therapeutic to me in the past and I will try to focus more on those.

I am hoping that making things will help me get in touch with my feelings for the people that I make them for and also give me a much needed sense of accomplishing and connecting.

Looking forward to going through this, I am hoping (see? all that hope?) for more clarity in terms of how I want to shape my life going forward with it.

Could this be a mid-life crisis? After all, I will be 40 next spring ;-) Maybe not so much this but the end of the baby phase in my life and the sudden realisation that if I don't actively shape my life, no one will.

In the spirit of making: I'll attempt this to use up my left-overs from Hannah's Christening Quilt: AmandaJean's Ragged Squares Quilt tutorial.

Always three steps ahead

While I've been making the Quilt-in-a-Day for Natalia, I was pondering a gift for the newly born baby girl of friends of ours. To keep things appropriate (size/effort vs value of friendship - I am so material!), a doll quilt seems a good choice.

But what is a doll quilt exactly. One google later and I knew from reading the doll swap blog and checking out Flickr pool.

Main criteria:

SIZE: from 12x12 inches to 24x24 inches … any size or shape in between. So that's 30 to 60 cm square. And I'd stick with square.

MATERIALS: natural fibers/cotton, wool, linen. I'd stick to cottons because of washability and because my stash is FULL of cotton and nothing much else.

Loaded and ready to go

I'm making good progress on the quilt of which the name is a mockery, really. It's called "Quilt in a Day" which I suppose were right, had I the entire day to spend on it.

But it is a pleasure to make, very simple, and progress is easily visible. Just the way I like it. To speed things along, I switched my machine from slow to fast (the only two settings available) and zoomed right a long, up and down the sandwich ... until the needle broke.

I guess after six years of drudgery, it was allowed. Now I need to find a replacement so that I can finish my little project.

It's growing in both length and width -

guess which one is unintended. Yikes! I'll have to see that I can somewhat limit that trend to the current damage. I was so afraid that the blanket would slim down during progress that I apparently was a bit too zealous at the edges.

Gotta love Lagerfeld

"C'est jaune, c'est moche, ça ne va avec rien mais ça peut vous sauver la vie ... it's yellow, it's ugly, it doesn't go with anything but it may well save your life."

Lagerfeld lent his fashion cred to a French campaign raising awareness for road safety vests. Read more here and here.

All dotty and all done

Only roughly three and a half months past its deadline, Paula's Princess II Bed quilt is finished. I used IKEA toddler bed linen and a fleece baby blanket for this project.

I threw my back out trying to load laundry into the washer and got to spend the majority of Saturday cuddled up with a hot water bottle while finishing this project.

It feels good to move on to the next one.

Lessons learned:
1.) Piping is not so difficult to make.
2.) Ironing is a good thing.

More impressions on Flickr.

Frog Blocks

http://www.flickr.com/photos/princes_milady/248668894/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62228566@N00/3587192/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/80322373@N00/31137318/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/84259325@N00/345828808/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/womenofthecloth/2701032900/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/womenofthecloth/2701032986/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/runningstitch/74683067/

Flickr be praised, I found a lot of frog quilt blocks and inspirations for when - one dark and rainy evening - I will teach Tiffany how to patchwork and quilt.

Tying up loose ends and getting ready

I'm finishing up Paula's Princess quilt and mentally preparing for my retreat project.

It is inspired by this tiling from my favourite local pub in West Didsbury, Manchester (England), the Metropolitan on Lapwing Lane.





I will substitute the blue for green, there actually is another hallway tiled in that colour scheme. My biggest challenge will be deciding on a size and planning the size of blocks for it. This will hopefully be finished before I leave on October 23.

In the meantime, I also plan to complete Natalia's Quilt-in-a-day which I hope to be shipping from England when I visit in two weeks' time.