It's Worrying

Chicken and Mushroom Risotto for last nights tea. Made by me without a recipe and it was lovely. Is this the start of the slippery slope?

The bottom of my shoe. I thought it was a very nice pattern and I'm sure I will be able to do some work in my sketchbook (when I find it) using this pattern. 

Iv'e decided to go curvy on the border. I think it will look vey nice once it's stitched and the blue pen has been washed away. Barbara made the templates for me , she is our template queen and will spend hours making the right one. Hopefully today I wiil finish marking it up and you never know I might get some stitching done.

Yum Yum

Spicy Pumpkin Muffins for afternoon tea.

This is the Quilt-a-Long quilt I made a little while ago. Last week I started quilting and I'm very pleased with it so far.

This is the back, I thought you might be able to see the quilting a bit better. All I've done is stitch a quarter of an inch either side of the seam. I would like to be a little bit more adventurous on the border but I'm not sure what to do. Any suggestions?

Nearly There

Thanks to Barbara and Pam my quilt is now layered and basted just waiting to be quilted. I'm looking forward to doing the quilting. I have decided to do diagonal lines because it means that the little square in the middle of the blocks will become four little triangles and I think they will look very cute.







It doesn't show up very but using the rust dyed and painted fabrics I made another fabric ready to make the Artists Trading Cards.



The brown paper is from the bag the stamps came in, I have also used an old road atlas. The two small plain beige squares you can see are tea bags. I used some of my grandmothers cotton lace so they will be very special A T C s. There is even a label from a Layer Cake kindly donated by Pam.



Today I'm hoping to make at least one A T C.

More Progress

Well I managed to get the rows sewn together and the borders on and I think it's looking very nice. All I have to do now is layer it up and decide how to quilt it. Originally I was going to quilt in straight lines then I thought about wavy lines and now I'm thinking flowers would be nice,time consuming though.





Here are a few shots of the blocks.






Such pretty colours and patterns.

I'm hoping to do some more work in my sketchbook this weekend.

The weather is promising to be nice for tomorrow. I hope you all enjoy your weekend.

Yesterday's Progress

Yesterday I managed to get all the blocks pieced and the blocks joined together in rows. Today's aim is to join all the rows and if I'm really lucky get the borders on.



I only managed to get this far because Barbara helped me for which I am very grateful. She passed me the blocks as I was sewing them into rows and she kept them all in order.



I'm of now to join the rows, here's hoping for a productive day.

The Final

I have re-dyed the calico and printed cotton fabrics with the rusty bits and some copper. I'm very pleased with results.





I have got some very definitive marks.



And I've also got some lovely turqouise ones. Having three plumbers in the family means I'll never be short of copper and I'm definitely going to do this again.

Now I have these lovely dyed pieces of fabric I'm not sure what we are going to be doing with them. I vaguely remember Gina saying something about ATCs.

A couple of weeks ago Pam and I signed up for a 'quilt-along' with Fat Quarterly (see link on the right). Neither of us know why we signed up for it as we have both got so many things on the go already. I think it just sounded like fun. We should both know better really.

I'm using a jelly roll called Verna. I managed to get the cutting done last week as you can see. Monday we received the piecing instructions and yesterday I started to put them together.