2019 Wk 39 - whole piece quilting and a day out

The whole piece quilt is rather lovely even if I do say so myself!  I have a plan for it, but then I had more ideas of what to do with it . . .  so I started another one!  This one doesn't have any specific negative space, and it has more hand stitching than is planned for the bigger piece, and I just used the machine running stitch.  More hand stitching is on the cards

It was my birthday this week and Plum and Avril have blogged about Chihuly at Kew Gardens.  It's not that far from us so we booked tickets and went for the afternoon.  I thought we would see them lit up, but we went on Wednesday and the "Chihuly Nights" session are Thursday, Friday and Saturday :-(  We had a good time though, although I declined the opportunity to buy a small bowl for £6000!!!!

 

My favourites though are the pagoda I remember from going there as a child and the dragons on every corner of every roof

and the wrought iron spiral staircases - I cant help feeling my life would be complete if I had the space for one of these!!!

This week end I did a bit more hand sewing on the second whole cloth piece

and found a purpose for the amazing folder Plum sent me for my birthday

(My friend Sharon gave me a journaling bible for my birthday and a guide book . . .and persuaded another friend of ours to get me some journaling pens . . .  and they all fit perfectly in the folder - thank you Plum (and Sharon and Alison!) no comments on lack of artistic talent thank you!!!!

2019 Wk 38 - Quilting!

I'm not really a quilter - more a patchworker (as husband explains, I cut up fabric and sew it back together!)

But I woke up at about 3am the other morning with a vision of a completed whole cloth quilt.  I basted it a Crafty Church on Saturday, and marked off 6.5" squares, and on Sunday I started sewing.  Very liberated machine running stitches, a few fancy stitches from the machine's memory, and later will be adding some hand stitched running stitches sort of Kantha style

I'm using each thread no more than once on each line - and each line may have just have one or two decorative stitches: either from the machine or hand stitched.  It's taking about half an hour to do each colour - On Sunday I clocked up 2.5 hours.  There may be some paralleled sections but not many!!!

And today I took the total up to about 4.5 hours.  It doesn't look much from a distance

but close up I'm loving the colours.  Next I need to add the hand stitching and I have an idea for the squares . . . watch this space

 Just thought I'd confess to a total inability to sew parallel lines, but I don't care!!!!!!