It's not like I have time for this .... but:

Apron in an Hour - available as PDF tutorial by Jona at Stop Staring and Start Sewing

V little elfin activity ...

At the last minute I managed to make this little stocking wadded and filled with cloves, as a pendant for a gift on Saint Nikolaus Day, 6 December.

I would love to make more Christmassy stuff but there simply isn't enough time in the day or night yet, what with all the other elfin activities going on here ...

Happy Second Advent

In other news, there is another finish:

This has been in progress since early 2010 ... more.

Another finish: Almondesque

Almondesque is done. And I am really pleased. It was inspired by this photo:

The quilt was very well received and a total surprise for my friends. They had thought that their boat had sailed in terms of receiving a quilt from me because they were done having babies before I had ramped up production enough for me to give quilts away to special small humans ...

Vital Stats:
105 * 185 cm, roughly
Kona Solids
Gütermann and Aurifil threads
Freudenberg 100% cotton wadding
lotsa fun to make! .... more

Quilting done ....!

I have another 3 evenings to get this one done and washed. So far, so good. While not entirely perfect, I think the quilting is straight enough. What's more, I managed to hit most of the corners the way I meant to ....

Now onto binding!

Bloggers' Quilt Festival Fall 2011

The time has come for the Bloggers' Quilt Festival Fall 2011 ... and this is my contribution:


Night on the Tiles was inspired by the floor tiling of my favourite pub in Manchester, just down the street from where I took my first lessons in patchwork and quilting. I've been working on it for 3+ years now, in fact, every time I go on my annual quilt retreat, this one comes along. It's not finished but it will be and soon - or so I hope. As you can see, I have gone about it a bit backward by adding the binding before I finished the hand-quilting. But it already looks so much better that I am really motivated to finish this one before the next retreat in September 2012.



top in progress - endless imperfections
top finished - hand quilting
"Vital Statistics":
Finished size approx 220 * 220 cm
all cotton fabric
all cotton thread
all cotton wadding
machine pieced
hand quilted
machine / hand bound.

Quilting Almondesque

Did you know? Good prep work makes machine quilting so much easier and so much more enjoyable! You did? And you never told me???

I painstakingly pinned the whole thing and then taped about a centimetre away from where I wanted to quilt. Then I practically flew through half the quilting ...



Now I need to strip the tape and re-apply new tape at a 90 degree angle. And I'm not holding out great hope that I placed my pins strategically enough.

Progress II

So I spend all evening on the floor with this:


only to turn it over ...

to find that I had scrimped too much ...

and now having to spend more time fixing my cheapskateness ...

Progress

QAL Carpenter's Wheel

This one looks interesting:

Night on the Tiles

I know I am doing things a bit backward but with all of the stabilising quilting done I addded the 9+ meters in binding ...

Almondesque - the top!

From a shoebox


to the finished top:

Making headway on the quilting ...

but it will not be done in time for the retreat. However I am getting very excited about my trip ....

And then there is this ...

I am still struggling with deciding on the lay-out of this quilt which has to be finished by mid-November.

Maybe a scribble with coloured pencils will help ...
High time, don't you think!?

Finally: the proper needle for this job!

I've been looking and looking for good hand quilting needles for my monster job. Yes, the regular ones are really nice and just bendy enough but for this huge job with straight lines only, I was given a mystery Roxanne needle which I loved and then snapped in two - by accident and after many many stitches.

At the Festival, I scoured the stalls and spoke to Someone in the Know who recommended embroidery needles. They are a little stiffer (and also sharper at the other end) but they are longer and come with a bigger eye. So I'm happy ...

Out of my sewing funk ...

because of too much stress at work, I haven't sewn in weeks, months, really. I did some hand quilting but nowhere near enough to meet my deadling :-(

But today I will attempt something like this little block!

"Takings" at Festival of Quilts

There were a few things that I couldn't walk away from:

Lurvely fabric:


A membership to the Quilters' Guild, patterns, bobbins, needles ...


But before those get put to good use, there must be an end to this:

Best laid plans ....

had me doing a large recap of the Festival of Quilts ... but I cannot seem to find the energy or time for it. So I'll just show my high-lights:

- loved the multi media quilts such as this one:

- became ever more determined to do one of those:

- was (and still am) intrigued by this one:

- changed my mind about appliqué:

- adored everything about the Twelve by 12 show:

- grew ever more eager for the "Army Wife" series by Kristin la Flamme:


Now I am drowning in ideas .... and will definitely go again! For more, go here: Festival of Quilts 2011 Flickr Set

Looming deadline: 43 days to go!

This quilt is supposed to be finished for this year's quilt retreat ... I have another day of work to go and then about six weeks of what one might call "unpaid leave" where I have a lot of admin things to tackle. But the biggest item on the list is for me to relax, unwind and recharge my batteries. Finishing this project may just do the trick with those 3 tasks.

Gone quilting ...

Bunting Mug Rug

Made by Anna of Something Sewn
Brilliant!

Making headway with fabric selection

I have finally managed to find enough Kona Solid in blue to start fretting over colour arrangements for the top ...

What also wants to be addressed is the sewing room and the heap of mending ...:

But the ironing is done and the room is already looking much better with everything else put where it belongs!

How funny is that?

It's not only on the day of my wedding anniversary but also when I am away on my annual retreat .... Coincidence?

the plaid scottie: Finished Whack-a-Bunny Quilt

Check out this brilliant baby quilt

It's The Plaid Scottie's Finished Whack-a-Bunny Quilt: "I finished binding Bry's giveaway prize , the ' Whack-a-Bunny ' quilt, late last night. Sorry, but all you'll get today is a quick photo pa..."

Details of the front II

It's slow but steady going and I am really happy with the progress I am making in hand-quilting this monster of a quilt. My weeks are rather hectic at the moment and doing this provides much needed quiet!

Maybe it will be done in time for my retreat in September?

Meanwhile being mulled over in my head ...

Friends of ours inquired a while back when (yes, when!?) they would get a quilt!? Seeing how they are building a new house in Bauhaus style, this seems as good an opportunity as any. But the design choices, oh, the choices ... so I surfed the web and came across the above by Orangebird242.

Because my friends are not really Bauhaus kinda people and love Edward Hopper, I thought I'd stick with Hopper-esque colours of blues and greys but arrange all in a Bauhaus-esque design. And ei, presto, my first real excuse to order Kona Solids. But someone something went wrong when I chose the colours:


On screen (and on the print-out of the shop), they go together really well, in real life: not so much! Argh! Back to square one then, eh?

My 15 Seconds of Fame: Someone referred to me in a tutorial

... because I should do something else which is tedious and I am too exhausted to focus on it, I have been trolling my flickr statistics and saw that I had a few referrals to an older photo and project.


This was a progress shot of my Fall 2009 entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival, where apparently Leila stumbled across it and referred to me in her post on fabric recommendations for the Skill Builder Sampler.

As you can imagine, I am quite pleased with myself ;-) especially because nothing much has been happening on the Quilting Front because I am simply too exhausted at the end of a long day ...

Moving onto hand quilting

I'm still only at the white centres of the block but am making good progress. Will it be finished to show of at the retreat? Who knows! It is good fun though and I am enjoying the meditative quality of this part of the process.