Three weeks in a row!

I'm sort of remembering to take photos for sharing works-in-progress!

This week the focus was putting the dark borders together for the 365 Challenge Quilt - yay, done!  The other two borders are joined up and will go on later.  It's amazing how these blocks fit together and how they look so much better when they no longer have the raw edges!

 

 

These are some of the pieces for the fourth corner block. There are more than 170 pieces in this 12-inch square block!

 

A little wonky in the middle but I'll live with that!

Together with the other four corner blocks.

 And lastly, this is not mine, but an absolutely delightful free-form embroidery start by my sister's 7-year-old granddaughter.

Wednesday update

 It has been a good week here as I have manged a fair amount of sewing time.

 365 Quilt Challenge:  I have all the 3.5-inch dark blocks complete and have started on the last of the 6.5-inch lighter blocks.  The outer dark border is to be assembled, and until that is done, I have a self-imposed  "no more 365 blocks" until this happens.   The next block will be the fourth corner, and I'm itching to start on that!  The bottom of the small dark blocks in the middle was the very last small one.  The other is the terrible first, and second better attempt, on a pinwheel with mitred corners from an October 3-inch one.

 

 

Three finishes in the past week!

The pink hand-pieced Kawandi, started when in the UK in July, it's lovely and soft. 

 

 

The first quilt on the new-to-me frame, bound and ready to go my sister's school.

 

I have an ecletic collection of yarn, no more than one or two balls of each one, and asked P if he would like a jersey, and to pick the colour.  No pattern, just winged it in a crazy-patch type of arrangement.  Learnt a new way to join shoulder seams with three needles, very neat, and easy to undo when I had to unpick the front to lower the neck-line. (Reminder to self to knit in ends when changing yarns...not wait until the end and have at least fifty to do!)

The second top quilted, this is the pieced back.  My daughter C was here to test drive the machine and frame.  She started it yesterday and I finished it today.  We both still need to work on starts and stops!  More pictures will be taken when it is trimmed and bound.

 

 

And today I was invited to join the rest of the Schools' staff at the year-end function at the Clay Cafe.   This is my glaze painted vase-shaped ceramic base.  This will get oven fired and we may collect all the works of art in a few weeks time.  Colours will change with firing.

 

Small progresses hopefully towards future finishes

I very thankfully read the quilt blogs listed on the left every day.  (It's just about the only reading I seem to get to these days!)  Appropriately I sometimes laugh and sometimes get tearywith your stories.  Sometimes I am inspired to jot down notes for future blocks, or how I might engage with the accumulated fabrics.  I date these notes, and it might be years before anything happens.  I really appreciate the people who take the time (whether daily, weekly, or occasionally) write these blogs, sharing their quilting passions and their lives.  And this is not the seemingly mad sharing that sometimes exists on the more popular social networks.

Although this leads to my embarassment/guilt of not finishing much or not writing anything, not sharing, not taking enough process photos, I still have been steadily stitching these past few months.  So far this year, five new starts and no finishes!

The highlight in this time was, back in September, attending an awesome two-day workshop of combined lino-printing (onto fabric) and embroidery with two very talented artists, Cynthia Edwards and Danielle Clough.  Of course my piece is not yet finished, but it's the bottom left one in this group photo at the end of the second day.

First a photo of non-sewing.  The first two pictures up on the walls.  These are daughter C's school works from 25 years ago, I just love their whimsical nature.  A few more up since, but lots more to go.

Progress pictures of Bramble Blooms ll.  The flowers are applique'd to the borders and possibly still need stems, and then the borders to be stitched to the centre.

 

 

One of my plans this year was to try and get the 365 Challenge Quilt to a flimsy stage.  A concerted effort (but not quite every day!!!) has me up to mid November!  Finally all the 3-inch blocks are done.   Have pulled out the reserved fabrics to finish up the final 50+ blocks.

 

 

My new-to-me third-hand HQ Frame and Sweet Sixteen machine were levelled about a month ago, after languishing waiting patiently since I got them in August 2023.  And because I was challenged to just get the first one quilted...here it is on the frame.  A nervous wobbly start, and still need to co-ordinate the starts and stops, but NO thread breaks!  - what JOY! 

EDIT:  that orange print was in the first quilt I designed and made when pregnant with my daugther T, 43 years ago!  Think it's last bits, but fabric definitely does not go off!

 

And these last few photos are from the Little Quilts of Love made by some of the many local quilters contributing to this comforting project.   All are about 24-inch square.

Been away, now back!

Warning:  quite a few pictures!

We had a marvellous trip to visit family in Wales for a month, that is now just a memory, and a trip that went far too quickly!    We didn't quite manage to do all that we had vaguely planned due to darling husband unwell for last two weeks and for a week after returning home - he is quite recovered now.  I think that this is a fine excuse for another visit.

Before leaving I did manage to complete these 14 blocks for the 365 Challenge Quilt.  Means two-thirds of the blocks made!  The dates are from the original emailed patterns in 2016.

This is the dawn taken from the outward bound flight (just past Paris).  Note the clear sky and the cloud bank below.  

And then we descended through that cloud bank to find us amazingly above a second bank!

 

 

 

My elder daughter makes quilts and is involved with the local Project Linus programme.  These are two of her own quilts being made for friends. Hehe, I got to trim some HSTs for her!

 

My six-year old grandson and I had a lovely day out together at the open-air St. Fagans National Museum of History.  They have many old buildings rescued (and restored) from all parts of Wales, some furnished as they would have been in the past.  They also have inside displays, and I managed to take some photos of the Welsh quilts, and an embroidery, on display.

 

 

 

 

These are a few of the quilts that caught my eye at our regional Guild meeting earlier this month.  Most are blurry as were taken from quite a distance, indoors, on a grey day.  I don't have details of the makers, but they are from the Helderberg Group

 

 

 

At my monthly quilt group we've been presented with a Block of the Month by whichever one of the six sub-groups runs the meeting.   My sub-group (named the Quilt-Maniacs) showed various blocks made from Disappearing Windmills.  Here are some of the results from (already on-hand) 4.5" Windmill/Pinwheel cut into 9 equal squares:

 

 

Later I stitched them up, and played with the big Windmill block (made from four roughly fat quarter sized pieces, trimmed square, as the starters for the HSTs).

 

I was asked for a specific finished size block,and have done an exercise in two different construction methods for the HST and using different sized starter squares. More to go!

 

 

 Thanks for reading to the end!