Charity stitching

Our quilt group had a charity "stitch along" a couple of weeks ago, and I brought a set of blocks home to put in to a top. this was all donated fabric, hence the eclectic selection. I added some quieter inner borders and managed to add some similar squares to get an outer border. Quilted from the back with variegated thread around some great planets fabric from stash. This is about 40 inches square.

I don't know what's gone wrong with loading these photos, but I've had three attempts to fix it, and that's enough.

Stamping and stitching

Experimenting at the weekend with more stitching on some of the stamped blocks. I found some threads ( while looking for something else, inevitably) that I thought I had lost. These blocks are about 10 cm square.

I also practised some tassel making that our groups did at a workshop earlier this year. This book has very clear instructions and inspirational ideas if you want to follow-up on tassel making.

Stamping - but not my foot

After the rant below, I'm now back on an even keel and ready to try some of Sally Kelly's ideas from our workshop with her.

I have stamped some gold acrylic paint on to black cotton and then stitched some tight and loose French knots with my current favourite Sulky variegated orange cotton thread.

The group below are stamped with biscuit cutters, but not stitched yet. the acrylic paint doesn't withstand washing, so is really only for decorative use.

Join Liberty today

This is not post about Liberty fabrics, so sewers may not want to read on. However, if you value civil liberty, please do.

I have been dithering about for a few years about joining the campaign group Liberty. Today I did, after an incident last night with the police, claiming that I was driving without insurance.

I know I can forget to do some domestic tasks, but arranging insurance is not one of them. What had me incandescent with rage was the insistence by the police that their database could not be wrong and that I must be wrong. This was even after we phoned our neighbour who went in to our house to get the insurance documents, and quoted the policy number and renewal date over the phone to the police. Also despite my asking how i would have been able to renew my car tax online if I did not valid insurance, as the whole system is designed around this.

Despite the evident fact of existing insurance, I was then told I was driving at my own risk and the police would have been" fully entitled" ( their words) to arrest me and impound our car.

Today, I had a call from the PC who acknowledged that the database was indeed wrong, and " there is an inconsistency between the National Insurance Database and the copy that the police use".

Very, very worrying. If this can happen with car insurance, what else is wrong, and where else is the citizen assumed to be lying rather than there being a fault in the system?

But, don't be afraid, join Liberty and get campaigning.

Bling, bling, bling

This is my October calendar quilt for the British Quilt List challenge on yahoo. With darker nights approaching, I need some brightness to look at.
The red / fuchsia fabric is a silk dupion from a scrap leftover from the train of my wedding dress. These suppliers give fantastic service and can match to a colour swatch.
The gold windmills are an artificial fabric from a wacky 1980s jacket.

I really like the way the windmills are so three dimensional and tactile.
With this amount of gold, the machine quilting had to match, so " Bling" is FMQ in the central diamonds. Usually I just free stitch these, but this time I wrote the words on with a sliver of old soap ( feeling very frugal). the outer triangles are flattened with lines of FMQ.