Friday 25 September 2015

Eddies' quilts big brother

Pastel Log Cabin.






































This is the full log cabin lap quilt I made which had extra panels that became eddies quilt (Eddies Quilt, an inspiration)

I had two colour variations of the same material.  It gives a nice muted pastel effect. 

Log cabin close up


Sunday 20 September 2015

Sunday stitchings eight

After no stitching on my Sunday project for awhile got my normal 45min time slot today.  So here is my progress, still working on the black.


Saturday 12 September 2015

Mint Tulip (a quilt)

Before her ill health in March my mother had bought some new curtains, they were a too long, a section needed to be cut off.

There followed a request for a quilt to match the curtains using the cut off section of material.  I already had some orange material I thought would go and a simple quick pattern in mind.  However, the pattern required a third piece of material and that was proving more challenging.  

My mother and I had been looking for some time and not found just the thing.  Then my mother has a major health issue with time in hospital. 

The requested quilt now became symbolic of much that felt undone, unsaid.  The kind facebook quilters offered to help me find the illusive fabric, had I but known what I was looking  for.

Wonderfully my mother came home, it has been six months since she was initially incapacitated and she is making progress.

I finally fixed my eye on some material already in my stash, just used on a long term project of my own and decided it would do.  It more than did, once the blocks were put together the colours were vibrant more and the light mint for the edge set it off nicely.

patches close up


I made a template for a tulip to echo the tulips on the curtain material and set to with the hand quilting.







Tulip template




I had no plan on finishing it in time for the local show however, my mother was firmly of the opinion that I should.  I did manage it just in time.



Here is the finished quilt.



Mint Tulip Quilt


Happily my mother was quite right and as mentioned in an earlier post it won. 

Quilt at the show





Tuesday 8 September 2015

Elephant bag, free motion quilting

About 24 years ago my mother and I went to a class on batik.  My mother decorated a panel with an elephant, I made something else (you have probably guessed right but that is for another post some other time).


Elephant after free motion quilting





I came across the elephant tucked in a bag waiting for something to happen.  









What happened was some free motion quilting, borders, sides and back, lining and handles.  Embellished with beads and buttons to produce a...drum roll..bag.

Not quite big enough to put an Elephant in but it is BIG.






A prize winning bag as it turns out and all the materials to make it apart from the buttons came from my stash of stuff so a stash busting bag too.  A double win.  A triple win would be using it to keep more stash in however, the bag belongs to my mother, she plans on using it to keep her new quilt in when not using it on the bed.

So from languishing in a bag, it now is a bag.   
                         

Saturday 5 September 2015

The Show 2015

Ok with my mothers health problems I did not expect to have much finished to enter the show this year.  However with some encouragement from my mother enter things I did.

A quilt and quilted bag in the quilted class. My Sunday Pooh in the embroidery class (which includes counted cross stitch) and entries in two classes not previously tried, a wrapped gift as if for a birthday and the chocolate truffle in the cooking section.

And whoopiee only poor Pooh came away without a prize (which was not a surprise as he was rather outclassed against much larger more complex items).  A first and third in the quilting, for quilt and bag respectively and a first for the decoupaged wrapped gift and joy of joys to this non cooking person a first for the chocolate truffels.

Rose wrapped gift
This is my winning wrapped gift.  I had such plans for this entry, I was going to do something with origami. I never did find just the right paper to fit the plans in my head.  In the end I recycled some gift paper saved from an earlier ocassion. I used ons bit of the roses on white paper to wrap my hexigone box. Added a bow made from some bits I found in the kitchen drawer and then cut out one of the roses and sections of the same and made a decouparge rose. The paper also had some butterfiles and I decouparges a cople of those too.

I was quite pleased with the result, more so with the prize. The £ of which will arrive at some point in the future, giving me lots of time to mull over what to do with it.

Chocolate truffels





My other new class, the truffels, look less impresive on the table but must have passed the taste test.  I looked on line and in books for a reciepe and ended up using one on a typed sheet with an unknown origin.  Made the first batch too small, second batch larger and had seven, One to test and six to enter. five left after  the judges had made their selection, none left now all eaten up.

Quilting entries
Top middle, my winning quilt, middle right the elephant bag and bottom middle my BFF's quilt.

Bag and quilt will have posts of ther own in the next few days as each has a story behind the stitches.