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.