Precision piecing - "finished is better than perfect"

The weekend's sewing had moments of frustration as precision piecing once again proved not to be my forte.  Still, with the mantra of "finished is better than perfect" I got on with it, despite NATS best efforts at destroying quality of life in west London.

Speech patterns

This is the result of the round robin on words that I started with our quilt group about 7 months ago. I asked each person to add a word that means something to them using any technique that they wished.

I've added a lime green inner border ( proper patchwork, using an old shirt) and an outer border. As usual, this developed rather than being planned, hence the triangles on only two sides. This staggered flying geese technique I saw demonstrated at Farnham Maltings about two weeks ago , it's a great technique - if you read the instructions correctly and don't miss out a crucial step. Due to missing this crucial step, some of these triangles will not pass msuter with the points police.

These colours are much brighter than they appear here, need to get a better photo. This is about 36 x 40, but may get larger.

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 - 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.

Pronk your home

I read the Dutch word " pronk" on a blog a few months ago and it really struck a chord. Pronk as quoted on that blog means " to display one's best" or " to show off".
This year I have decided to pronk in my home by using one's best rather than having is on a high shelf to protect it from marauding boys! Hence this little jug, which is " too small to be practical" ( to quote some in our house) now being used to store pens and pencils next to the phone.
I bought it at this art show a couple of years ago.

PS, I see other definitions of pronk on the web, such as "jumping straight up like a kangaroo" - hope this isn't what happens to my jug.

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.