Frozen beaches, inspiration

Seasonal stitching - cold and frosty

This is an A4 journal quilt inspired by frozen beaches in Scotland in the winter of late 2008. Made for our quilt group challenge, where we are making a journal for each of the 4 seasons. I Based this on the BQL challenge for January last year.

This is so far removed from my preferred colours that it was definitely a challenge.

Layered, random oval shapes were stitched to sand coloured squares and then pieced together. Hand and machine quilted with a hand made cord of floss thread from Empress Mills. I left the wadding showing at the side.

Inspiration photos are in the next post as I still can't work out how to load photos properly on here. Any help would be appreciated.

More hand stitching from Australia

This is another of the embroidered pieces that I did in Australia.

Let there be light!

I hate energy saving bulbs. The light is horrible, dim and uneven. These however are a revelation. I replaced 6 of our bulbs today and the house is bright ( however, not shiny, as all dust and cobwebs are now revealed) and my spirits are lifted.

I'm not being sponsored, honestly, and this is not a viral marketing campaign, but get these bulbs if you need to sew in the winter in the northern hemisphere.

Down with boring laptop covers

Elder son got a laptop, named after a fruit, for Christmas, after showing " true commitment and dedication to improved relationships in the home and to school work".

The covers available are just too boring for words, so quilting came to the rescue.

Skeleton fabric, two layers of cotton wadding, quilted with black thread using the walking foot, black and white lining fabric, gravestone button, velcro strip to fasten, 2h of time and there we are.

Hand stitching..........me???

In Australia , I had no access to a sewing machine, so needed a portable project that could be done by hand. I took some Moda Marble squares in bright colours ( to match the sunshine) and used some of Jenny Hart's embroidery designs from her travel themed pack.

Stitched in stem stitch, these were lovely to do. I'll post a few photos of these over the next day or so.

Coincedentally, Jenny is featured in a new online magazine, " Needle" that I saw on another blog today. Some lovely articles in this .

Words, words , words for 2010

This is the unveiled result of the "Words" round robin that I started off 6 months ago with our local quilt group. I asked people to add a word that meant something to them, using any technique they chose. It was great that one of the participants used the Lazy Gal letters method that I had used in my starter word.

I'm not sure that my word has enough definition between the fabrics, so I may go round "bumphly" with some black embroidery or ribbon or something.

Now to put this together with suitable borders......., looking forward to it as it needs to be finished for our exhibition in early May.

2009, another project that can only be seen now

Another quilt that was made as a gift, so can only be shown now. This is a Laurel Burch panel and border, with some extra black added between the two. I'm proud of my mitred corners on both external borders.

I love these colours and they look extra-brilliant in the sun of Australia, where the quilt is now living. This is FMQ with the recipients names and the outlines of the major motifs are also FMQ.

2009 - project that can be shown now

This major project took a lot of my time in 2009, but I couldn't show it as it was a Christmas present for my brother and sister-in-law. This is called "Birds and Words" for obvious reasons, and fabrics and design were chosen to match their interests and occupations. The pattern is based on a design from the book " Material Obsession" . The realistic bark fabric is from Joel Dewberry and the words fabric is from Michael Miller, strangely enough called " Oh Dick" - I think someone in the marketing department was not doing a full web search on this phrase when they named this fabric.

There is a lot of hand applique on this, and oddly enough for me, I enjoyed this. As ever, the quilt grew in the making and involved a new technique for me, curved borders, done using the stacking method.

Free machine quilted with squiggles, words and leaves, shown in the detail photo.