Sunday stitchings double day

Now normally I stitch on a Sunday at Church during the talks, see my earlier Sunday stitching posts for details. Conference gave me a little longer stitching time.

This week I doubled up, normal 45 mins at church got me to here...

 Once home, after lunch we decided to enjoy more conference via the internet, so more stitching time leading to...

The black is all finished, I think the image is coming into focus just from the black.  Next week I will have to decide what colour to do next and will I try and work all of that colour before moving to the next?

The Castle, a Quilt

The latest of my applique quilts for my friends children.  Sadly I don't mean that it has just been finished but rather it was the one that the recipient had to wait the longest for.  It was not completed until after his 8th birthday.  Although in mitigation I offer the following:

• His sisters quilt  "Willow Fairy" took much longer than anticipated.
• On this occasion the parents did not have any preference for the design. Leaving me for too much choice.
• I lost a year, nothing drastic I just somehow managed to make him a year younger than he actually was. (If I could really do that for people I would make a fortune) so in my mind I was well on track for a before his birthday finish.
• My original simple thoughts got a bit more complicated, I do that sometimes.

As the young gentleman in question was fond of the Harry Potter books I originally planned to do an owl design.  Similar to the one carved into my Halloween pumpkin.  A slight variation, to add a scroll into the owls claws to make it more Potterish.. I had the design sized up the background material picked however, the material for the owl was just not coming together and I started to have second thoughts.

In an earlier post I described a toy castle I made (with help for my father) out of a bought plastic portcullis,  a cardboard box, bits of wood and pipe lagging . That castle was a gift for the same boy this quilt would be for.  His father assured me the castle was still popular some years after that initial Christmas unwrap so I started to think about castles.  "Castle toy post"

Much as I generally dislike repeating a design I could not get The Castle by T.W out of my head.  The finished cross stitch now hanging on my wall kept it at the forefront of my mind. Finding the pattern used for the duvet cover and the  remains of the watermark material sealed it.  A second applique inspired by the T.W design started to take shape. 

The Castle 

There were of course some changes from my first homage. The moon in this case is white satin giving an nice sheen.  I had by this point started including wadding in the applique (the previous one was flat) and of course there was the added dimension of the quilting both on the central design and out onto the quilt as a whole. 

Circles to emphasise the moon and waves to set the island into a sea.

As with his siblings quilts the back had a simple geometric design into which his initials could be included.  Although admittedly this quilt with the addition of a bit more padding is less reversible than the other three. 

Here it is held up by the recipient, only his fingers on show (pending at some point his permission for the full picture, he was smiling).

I made him a matching cushion, as I had for his siblings, it was a bit slow in reaching him and therefore made it, as a last thought entry, into the local show that year.  And it won, it had his name on one side and a small silhouette of a dragon in flight, the other side was log cabin. 

Sunday stitching..General Conference.

Got more time stitching this Sunday with it being General Conference. Feel like I got caught up on those missed Sundays.

Inspired by..a cross-stitch gift.

If you have visited with me before, you may recall I was gifted The Castle by T, W as a kit by my brother and his girlfriend.

Before I had finished sewing my kit I made an applique inspired by it as a gift for them.  I did not feel I had time for a full quilt so I put it in the middle of a purchased duvet cover.

They were most enthusiastic about it...so were their cats who apparently liked to sit on top of the applique.

Castle dragon

The moon and the tip of the wing on the right of the image are my additions.

The edge of the dragon is satin stitched using an orange to white variegated thread. 

The watermarked material sang dragon skin to me when I saw it and at the same time gave a feathered effect to the wings.

Sunday Stitching nine

More progress but still with the black.

  

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 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.

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

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.   

                         

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.