Bank holiday sewing

We were busy this weekend with our younger son's birthday swim and sleepover. (Why do boys of 11 in a group need to keep getting louder and louder until you have to be louder than them to get any response?)

After that , I needed to get to my sewing machine, but didn't have much time, so I used the scraps from my word block and from the birds quilt to make a quick postcard. I was a bit sceptical about fabric postcards when I first saw them, but I really enjoy making these when there just isn't enough time but when you NEED to do something with fabric.

Words - round robin

My quilting group is about to start a round robin. We take a very liberal interpretation of the round robin concept, and ask participants to set a theme and then other participants can add to it as the originator specifies. We will have 6 rounds in the round robin.

I am increasingly interested in using words in quilts and so have set the theme for my round robin as " Words, words, words.....". My starter block uses the free-piecing letter technique as demonstrated by Tonya of Lazy Gal Quilting. The word I have used is a word coined by my younger son to describe his duvet when the filling was distributed unevenly.

This is the first time I've used this technique and the liberated approach appeals to me.

Reuse and recycle

My older son's school has been gathering fruit net bags to use in an art installation this term. I love the orange colour of the bags used for citrus fruit and wanted to make a little journal quilt with them. Many thoughts have gone in to this one, but particularly the pressure on young women to spend a fortune on wedding dresses that they will wear once.

In the spirit of recycling, the net is filled with scraps of offcuts from the birds quilt. The dress has machine trapunto behind it, and the upper torso is free-machine stitched onto the background calico. The words are written on with a pigma pen in red. I've left the bottom of the dress and the end of the quilt as a raw edge to give a bit of movement. I quilted round the edge and then added a few more wobbly contours for a play on body / geographical contours. The wording on the left side says "how many times will she get to wear that?", and on the right says " reduce, re-use, recycle, re-make, revamp, repair".

I quite like this, but my drawing skills need more work! This one is off to the Little Gems fundraiser.

Charity shopping - love it!

Look at this great vintage fabric I found in a charity shop. Lots of options for a train fan's quilt or quilt backing.

Several of the charity shops near us have gone too upmarket with prices likewise. There are still a couple of gems where bargains and bizarre bits can be found.

First post

On encouragement from my sons this is my blog. Typically today is busy, so the post is short. Done so far: two lots of washing; trips to music shop, optician and fishmonger; stitching.

Stitching was adding some stitched detail to a bird block , based on the book, "Material Obsession".