Let me guess?

You came here from a link on someone else's blog. Please write to them and let them know they need to update their links
New blog will be found here, lots of good quilty stuff to trawl through.
And if links don't work for you go to http://quiltfeather.blogspot.com/

New blog created

My new blog is at Feather on a Wire (an appropriate name after having my wings clipped, grin)
Please alter your feeds or lists (or whatever they are called)
I shall leave this list as it is for continuity.

Comments have been removed

I tried to remove comments which pertained to members of my family. Unfortunately one cannot do this without a censorship notice appearing. Just what I don't want. I feel very badly about my own censorship let alone yours. So to remove references to family members, I have had to remove ALL comments.
At the moment, I don't feel like blogging under such constraints. I may or may not continue to blog, if I do I shall set up a new blog where comments shall be permitted but will have to be approved in the very small chance one might contain a reference to my family.
Yours very sadly,
Sally

In the words of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, 'So long and thanks for all the fish' (mild grin)

Censorship

My DH (unnamed) has declared I should not mention him, his work or my DD in this blog.
I think I have removed everything.
I disagree very strongly. I cannot see harmony returning here for a very long while.
I think I have censored out all references but if you find one, please let me know.
Book burning is the comparison which comes to mind.

Like a bird on a wire...
I have tried in my way to be free

Indigo quilts

Jane Western asked for more pictures of the indigo quilt in the post about using a hoop under the quilt.
I made two using these 3 Cats fabrics. Sometimes I make quilts that are real no brainers. They're not ugly quilts, just ones which go together fairly quickly, need not a lot of thought and little creative energy. I don't fuss about points, or the quality of the quilting too much.
These two were made for the sofa in the sitting room. Just something to drape over you when having a nap.
Some people when looking at this quilt see stars (that was the intention) but others see a Japanese car logo. If you see the car logo, it's obvious how it went together. Piecing 60º triangles is very easy as if you leave on the corners, everything lines up nicely for piecing.
The 3 Cats fabrics were originally printed in England and went for export to Africa. Eventually the factory closed down and someone rescued the printing blocks (or were they rollers?), happily they are now being produced in South Africa.
When you get these fabric they are as stiff as very stiff card. Washing a few times softens them up and loses the excess dye. They are printed by using a resist and on the back are 3 cat heads. On the newer fabrics you'll find not only the cats, but 3 leopards, 3 fish and other motifs. Maggie Relph
imports these fabrics back to England, they are gorgeous, be aware that they are woven on 36" looms so fat quarters are smaller than those on the 'normal' 42" looms.
This 2nd quilt is made using kaleidoscope blocks, one of my favourite traditional block patterns as I love the secondary impression of circles.
Last year (or the year before My memory is shot (grin)) I went to a woad farm in Norfolk and learnt about woad indigo. We also had Jane Calender teaching us a little shibori. She is a master shibori expert. Jane uses synthetic indigo (apparently all indigos from different plant or coal sources are chemically the same). I bought some pots of the woad indigo but I shall not be using it to dye fabric but to mix into paint for our bedroom. Nothing else has quite the same blue. Perhaps my love of indigo harks back to desperately wanting a pair of Amco jeans when I was a young teenager in Australia. I coveted a pair of these so much. My mother bought me a pair of fake synthetic jeans which were NOT the same thing at all.

Quilt this far

Quilt

Patsy Thompson left a comment to ' Please hurry up and make this thing and post the pictures because I can't wait to see it!!' . No pressure there then (grin). Anyway because of the premiere I didn't have to cook or anything last night so I could get on with it a bit. This is the markings I started off with. Just a line with the over and unders marked on it. It's quite feint, you'll probably have to click on it to see the lines.





And this is how it is now. I've done the feather and am about half way round echoing round the edge. I might just do echo quilting for the whole background, changing colour or not.
For the first time I used a fusible batting. It's made little spots on the fabric which I assume will wash out. I'm not a fan. I found it very hard not to get creases on the back and this quilt at the moment is only 42" square, heaven help you if you were using the whole batting in one go, it's kingsize. The quilt has softened up more as I quilt it but at the beginning it felt very stiff, almost like cardboard. I thought it would only be suitable for straight lines with a walking foot but as I say it has got better.

couldn't resist finding my thinking style

I found this on Carol Clasper's blog and couldn't resist. Strangely I ended up having the same result as her.....

Your Dominant Thinking Style: Exploring

You thrive on the unknown and unpredictable. Novelty is your middle name. You are a challenger. You tend to challenge common assumptions and beliefs. An expert inventor and problem solver, you approach everything from new angles. You show people how to question their models of the world.

What's Your Thinking Style?

Perhaps no sewing today

This is CAD 2000 (or was it 2001?). Anyway it was the first really serious quilt I made. It's 90" square and heavily quilted with trapunto in the points. CAD is Children's Aid Direct and I got involved with them after organizing quilts for the Kosovo crisis. Someone told me raffle quilts make far more money if they are bright. As you see I took this advice on board whole heartedly (grin). I had help as there was a deadline, my friend Pauline Sanderson helped with the piecing (foundation) and another friend Lyn Stalybrass prepared the trapunto for me.
Anyway the point of this post was when this quilt was at the National Show to sell tickets, Linda Seward who wrote 'The Complete Book of Patchwork, Quilting and Appliqué', made a point of seeking me out to let me know she thought it was good. I remember going into a silly mess. A great quilter and author was telling me my work was good. I got totally flustered and had verbal diarrhoea. But this encouragement gave me the will to go on and make good quilts.
The photo is not wonderful quality but it's the only one I have unless I find the CD somewhere in the depths of our garage.
BTW it raised over $8,000US (£4,000) and the money went to the children. Children's Aid Direct was taken over by another charity or I would still probably be making quilts for them.

Which machine am I using?

I've been asked what machine and am I using a frame.

Today I'm using a Bernina Aurora 440, but I'm not using the stitch regulator. I find it too slow. Sometimes I use a Bernina 1260. I don't use any type of frame. I normally have the inner ring of a wooden 8" embroidery hoop under the quilt. (My apologies to those on BQL and Cyberquilters who have already seen these photos. ) I never push the quilt towards the needle but manipulate it by pulling gently with a thumb or a finger (or a combination thereof) in the direction I want to go. The quilt in the photo is about 48" wide so I have virtually all of it in the harp of the machine. You can see this would be the same as working in the middle of a 90" square quilt. You can also see I don't roll the quilt, I just 'puddle' it around the area I'm quilting. The hoop is not attached to the quilt in any way just underneath it.

This photo shows how it is just slid under.
On these Patsy Thompson feathers I not using a hoop because to get the organic 'feel' you need to be able to swing round each lobe in one smooth motion.

Patsy Thompson, webrings and design thoughts.

Sinclair's just here as I have no relevant photos for today's post. This was about ten minutes after the new sofa arrived and he took possession as only a cat can (grin)

I'm positively glowing from the lovely things Patsy Thompson has said on her blog. Thank you if you are reading this, it's very lovely to hear such things from a wonderful quilter.

In her post she suggests you cruise webrings. It has been suggested to me I should join one or two of them, but which ones? I don't seem to 'fit' in any of them I've found. All suggestions welcome.

I have a big wholecloth marked out. It has very traditional feathers and is ready to be trapuntoed but those feathers in Patsy's style are just calling out to be played with. (grin) I have given myself permission to play with these on a 40" square quilt before I start the large whole cloth. Now I could just follow the simple Amish style quilt Patsy uses in her DVD but there is this big bit of me which struggles with remaking another quilters work however lovely it might be. I need to create my own. I feel guilty (why?) enough that the major element in this quilt shall be someone else's creation. I have to make it mine. The rainbowing of the fireworks goes a small way along this route but it isn't far enough to quell the inner designer in me.

So my thoughts keep coming back to having the feathers spill out from a central point like a Prince's Feather (Oh dear my comfort zone always takes me back into the traditional). But I feel this is the one quilt where I should go asymmetrical. I'm also playing in my head with the feathers weaving under and over each other. This would mean a lot of starting and stopping as the 'over' bits of the feathers would have to be done before the 'under' ones. Clear as mud?

More fun with those feathers

I outlined the feather with the curlicues as I felt whilst I liked the shapes, it didn't have enough impact. Outlining just outside the plume seems to sort this out. It might have looked even better with another colour. The fabric is a mat black not the grey it appears in the photo. The thread is very definitely a pure yellow but in photos and in life it appears green.
This has caused a problem in the next feather.

I thought it would be good to try to gently blend the colours on the fireworks feather. I used green and then yellow moving to orange then shocking pink. I think for this to have worked I would need to find a more orange yellow but you get the idea.
The threads used are Madeira Polyneons in their luminescent range (think dayglo colours) with Bottomline in the bobbin. I used a 90 Microtex needle.
I also think the stumpy bottom of the feather could do with a little more work. Perhaps a 'nib' could be drawn with thread before starting to draw the feather with thread?
Is this quilting or is it embroidery? There's a definite crossover here. I know where all those threads meet on the fireworks feather, the work is very stiff.

A lovely day

My two favourite things about quilting are learning and the design process and yesterday I managed to fit both in.
As usual I did a tension piece first, this didn't look too bad until I saw the back and there were a couple of loops and broken thread on the top.
See what I mean? But I got this sorted and then started to play.
The first lesson was to do organic feathers with no spine and only the central line marked as a guide. I found this contra intuitive as I had to do each lobe of the feather in the opposite direction that I'm used to. My very first one is the one on the left. I'm pleased with this. The 2nd one wasn't quite as good as I started to relax a little and the needle took my down it's 'known' route (a bit like when your car goes on auto pilot (grin).
This 2nd lesson is done the same way but with little curlicues interspersed.

And then WOW! This one is called fireworks and isn't this cool. I love it. This is the very first feather reworked. I took the sample piece to bed with me and didn't sleep just because I was thinking how to use this in a quilt.
The lessons were on a DVD from Patsy Thompson. I don't recommend it until you have got to the point where you are happy moving the fabric round under the needle, but then go for it. I have a link to her site in the column on the right, 'Blogs I read' I haven't felt this fired up for weeks about my quilting. I hope it rains again today (except over those places where it's flooding) just so I don't feel obliged to work in the garden when I want to be stitching....

Old Baltimore Blocks

On BQL there was a post about the Quilt Police in our heads.
The post referred to an old unfinished project and how she was now not happy with her work at that time. This made me remember one of my early appliqué projects. In my head the work was absolutely dreadful. The post made me out them out and re-look at them. Actually they're not too bad workmanship wise. They are not anything like Margaret Docherty's work you understand (grin) but for an early effort they aren't dire.
The fabric selections are odd. Very different greens, yucky reds which clash with each other and muddy cat foot prints but together they don't look too bad.
Now to decide what to do with them. And then when it's finished what to do with the resultant quilt.....
Perhaps some UFOs should remain just this?

What's on the machine

This is the little wholecloth so far. It's about 14" X 10". I need to decide what to do as a filler which will be scaled down small enough and still look good. I hadn't realized how difficult it would be to do such tiny feathers. Some of the little lobes of the feathers are a quarter the size of my little fingernail.

And I've finished the background on this one. Today I'll wash it to remove my black quilting guidelines and block it before it's ready to have it's binding on. The thread in the background is a variegated Madeira Polyneon and the couched thread is something a friend got in Hong Kong.
As I write, I've just realized that I don't know if the colour in the thread runs or not (gulp), watch this space........

Victorian quilt fabrics

Just thought I'd share some lovely Victorian prints with you from one of my antique quilts. Here's a quilt where she wasn't concerned about points. Some people think this adds to their charm. I love the stripe with navy, red, cream and blue and the pink is gorgeous.

Last year there was a fabulous reproduction range of turkey red out there. There are still one or two bits around. I so wish I'd ordered the minimum quantity of each but at the time I thought I didn't really want as much as a ½ yard of all of them. Now I think I don't want to pay the postage for the odd one or two left out there on the shelves.

I think I can see myself working mainly on whole cloths and medallion (framed) quilts for a while with a few smaller contemporary pieces in between. We'll see. I hate to commit to too much because then it feels more like a burden of things to be done rather than a pleasure.

I started that little miniature yesterday. See When you can't do much of Anything . Why did I think a miniature would be quick? The lobes on those little feathers are less than ¼" wide and I'm going up and down just outside each line instead of backtracking along them. I'm wondering what backgrounds to use which would be proportionate to it's tiny size. Oh well, it keeps me off the streets (grin).

All of over the world and June Barnes' work

Yesterday I had been blogging for 4 weeks. I put a site meter up on the 5th of June and this morning found I had over 1,000 visits already. This is lovely, it means I'm not talking to myself (I'm sure all you long term bloggers know this feeling).

I've had visits from the expected quilting countries, the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ. I've been delighted to find visitors from such diverse countries as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iceland (I'm particularly delighted with this as Iceland is such a small country), Japan, Kuwait, Dubai, Iran (yes Iran!), Italy, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece (yasou!) and Russia.

June Barnes is the best machine quilter here in the UK. I remember first seeing her work at Quilt 199? (don't remember which year) at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. The quilting blew me away. The quilt, if memory serves me well, was irregular spiked yellow and oranges on a white background. The background quilting was a marvelous 'doodle' of little suns and stars, some with little smiling faces. She'd had so much fun. Then I saw more of her work at various National Patchwork Championships, Baroquen Dreams and If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it (I hope I have these names right). June now works in a totally different style, working with getting different textures by shrinking the work deliberately after quilting and in distortions. On her blog she has put forward a case for not having competition in Quilt Shows. I'm not sure I agree but it is very well thought out.
You can see her work here and if my linking skills haven't worked copy and paste this url
http://cjunebarnes.co.uk/Gallery%20Index.html open each gallery and click on the thumbnails to see the whole works and some have details. (June if you read this, I would love to see more detailed close ups).

Quilting designs are everywhere

This is on one of the inherited bits of furniture. Wouldn't it look great repeated round a border? Feel free to use this.
And this one is from the same dresser.

Sorry about the dust, photos are cruel, it really doesn't look this bad in reality.

All this sort of stuff is considered 'brown furniture' by the trade and is definitely not in fashion. If I had a barn I would buy it all up and store it until this current phase of regurgitated 50's and 60's stuff is over.
Sadly as a child, I can remember a huge bonfire in the garden where we burnt all this sort of stuff in my family before we went to live in Australia. I remember it so well because one of the items was my doll's house (I was about 9 at the time). It hurts every time I see a similar one on the Antiques Road Show.

Keys have been found!

Funny how the St Anthony thing works?!?
They were on the grass near where I had been cleaning out the down pipe.

Respect your work

In an online group I belong to the question 'Do you make quilts for show?' came up.
A lot of people felt their work wasn't good enough. I know that feeling and for a very long time my quilts weren't good enough. I was ashamed of my mistakes, my quilting, my points not meeting etc etc. What was I doing producing stuff that I was ashamed to have scrutinized?

Two things changed my attitude to my work.

I did a course with Barbara Barber, www.barbarabarberbritishquilts.com , she suggested you should tidy the edges of your quilt by zig zagging before you started quilting. This was showing respect to your work, keeping it clean and tidy. If you didn't respect your work, who would? (BTW I did this for a while but now I prefer to have a bit of extra backing to 'hang' onto when quilting the edges).

That word respect stuck. I hadn't even considered respecting my work before this.

Later I did a course with June Barnes, www.cjunebarnes.co.uk/ . Her work is wonderful. She was talking about what to do with thread ends. She said she used to clip them off. Then she imagined her mother talking to her in the way she had when she was small and her mother said 'Are you happy with that?' Then she started burying her threads.

At this point I started to have a different attitude to what I produce. My unpicker became my friend. It gave me a chance to put things right. I made a space on my wall so I could look at the work in progress and see if I was satisfied.

Unpicking seams which don't come up to scratch, makes you sew and cut more carefully. When appliquéing, it takes a little longer to put in smaller stitches but it is less painful than having to redo it. We're not in a race (unless it's a quilt for an event like a wedding or a birth). The more you correct your mistakes as you go, the less mistakes you make and the more you are happy to have other quilters not just look at you work from a few feet away, but also to get up really close and personal with it.

You wouldn't serve your family lumpy gravy, so why would you give them a quilt with mistakes in it? It doesn't matter if you design the work yourself or use a bought pattern, go for quality over quantity.

Respect your work, respect yourself and you will find you produce work which not only are you not ashamed by but you can be proud of.

BTW when I mentioned this to June Barnes a few years later, she had no memory of it at all, but it has stuck with me for all these years.

Mondays at Toad Hall

Almost every Monday I make chicken stock.
I take off all the meat off the carcass, add it to some water, the left over gravy, vegetables and stuffing, add an onion or two (leaving the skins on for colour), celery if I have it and any other vegetables which look like they should be used (not tomatoes or parsnips, wrong flavours), a bouquet garni (I used to make my own but Waitrose sell very good ones, Tesco ones are revolting, I bought one packet when I had my mammogram, ugh!), and if you can get the chef version of Schartz mixed herbs this is good as well). A Knorr chicken stock cube, I know it's saltier than the others but you cannot beat the flavour. This will simmer happily for 2-4 hours. Then I strain it, retaining any whole onions and carrots.
Come the evening, I will either use the stock to cook rice and towards the end of cooking I add the chicken meat diced, some red and green peppers, and some sweet corn. Or after straining, I will add the chicken, thicken it a little and add some herby dumplings, new potatoes and whatever suitable vegetables I have.
The house smells of delicious home cooking and I feel virtuous (grin).

My purchases at the show

I really shouldn't be allowed out with my plastic
33 spools of YLI Soft Touch, 9 of Bottomline and 1 of Robinson Anton, 5 lovely wooden buttons (1 out of shot is a kangaroo) and some big clips. (I'm going to try and pin baste on my drawing table)

This pretty blue print turned out to be something 'I had to have' . Nice to see it is English.

As is this one, the colour is more crimson and less vermilion this photo (glad there are no toes in this shot)
The coveted Prussian Blue. I still can't find it in a reproduction line although one company calls one of their lines Prussian Blue, it's not as bright as the originals.

I also bought a bolt of really nice black and what was left on a bolt of white cotton lawn.

As I said, I should not be allowed out (grin)

A Day at the Show

Receiving the Machine Quilting award (photo taken by Cherie Lumsden's DH, thank you) I now have another Machine Quilting little salver. I don't quite know what to do with them. I'd hang them up on the wall in the loo if it wouldn't be quite such a problem keeping them clean. I do admit to being proud of winning them so don't want to hide them away.

And still haven't found my keys, I have the key from XXXXX's ring and the spare set of house keys.

This must have been the wettest June on record. Yesterday was different, not the torrential downpours we've been having (think monsoons) but steady heavy rain.

I left a bit late as I knew I'd have to stay after the show to collect my quilt (so much nicer when the show is less than an hour away). When you enter some of the shows over here, you are given a one day ticket which makes entering the show a good deal. Except if you forget your ticket (grin)? I think my brain is becoming fried in the hot flashes through the night. Luckily they know me now and let me in.

This was the cup I won last year. This is a perpetual trophy which you hand back. So it sat on my sideboard and I always felt a little embarrassed as it didn't have my name on it. Your name goes on when you send it back, so I had to get this photo to prove to myself it had been mine once (grin).



I can't show you photos of the quilts as there are signs everywhere saying you can only take photos for personal use and you should not publish them. My own quilt hung better at this show than at the Festival of Quilts, but still not perfectly. They don't put it in a bag before hanging, if you ask them nicely.

Where are the car keys?

XXXXX is fretting, he thinks replacement car keys alone will cost over £100, he could be right but they must be in the house somewhere as how else would I have got in the front door?

A few weeks ago I lost my mobile phone. I wasn't worried, I knew it would be around somewhere. I had a bad back so couldn't do a lot of searching. After a couple of weeks I checked all the shops I'd been in by the till receipts in my bag. I also checked with the supplier to see if anyone had used it, no. XXXXX pointed out that these days people lift phones for the intrinsic value of the phone not for the calls. Eventually I bought a new sim card and put it in my old phone.

So yesterday, I found my phone but lost my keys. I'd rather have the keys (grin)
Now isn't this sad, I got the phone to go with a Cath Kidston quilt I've made. I can't show you the quilt until it's done it's stint in a show but the photo shows it on Fliss's duvet cover.

And has anyone seen the charger for the new phone? Nokia in their wisdom have changed the connections on their chargers.

XXXXX has just come back from town. Must be the day of the car keys, she'd locked hers inside the car, so Dad had to go in and rescue her. They went into the Carphonewarehouse and she was up for a new phone. She used to go out with one of the lads in the shop before he went off on his gap year so they know us in there. Anyway the upshot is she has a new phone with twice as many minutes and texts plus they gave her an Ipod Nano. As the only family member without an Ipod, it's mine! (wish I knew how to add a smiley face).

On a roll of good news.

Censored

of course the new kitchen radio turning itself on full blast at midnight. I suffer from insomnia anyway so it wasn't a big deal for me.

Getting on to the good news, my quilt has been accepted into the World Quilt Show. This is excellent as far as I'm concerned as after reading Ferret's Post and her problems not getting her quilts over the pond, I'm pleased all I have to do is send the quilt up to Bristol and they take care of the rest. Scary to see all the other names going, real quilters (gulp).

The bad news is there is a postal strike planned for next week and the quilt has to be there before the 7th July. So I sewed on a label as proscribed (in future I shall make all my labels have every possible piece of information so I don't end up making one for each show). And I got it packed, folded on the diagonals and put bubble plastic in the folds. This wasn't too easy as I don't actually have a bit of floor this big anymore. But I did it. And I played with word to make a nice big label. And I collared Fliss to come with me. And it's all ready to go but..........................

I can't find my car keys!! We've even got to the point where we've checked the freezer.

Whoo Hooo!

I've just had a phone call to let me know Peace#1 has won the Machine Quilting Award at the Nation Patchwork Championship at Sandown.
I'm very pleased this is always the award I want to win if I can.
BTW this photo is how it hung at the Festival of Quilts last year. The creases show as does the wobble at the bottom.

Practice samples

When I quilt I always have a small piece with the same fabric, batting and backing as the quilt I'm working on. I use it to get my tension right in the first instance, then as a warm up piece to get my hands and eye in when I've been away from the machine overnight or for a day or two and I also use it for a little while each time I oil the machine. I need to know that if I have over oiled the quilt won't pick it up but I am willing to sacrifice my sample.

Quilt has gone to Sandown

Peace#1 has gone to Sandown, National Patchwork Championships. With Colin's help I hung it before I left to check it hangs perfectly. It does, well it did this morning, I'll see when I get there if it does still. It would be lovely if it wins something, but I'll be seriously happy if it just doesn't get criticized for not hanging well. After the Festival of Quilts I found out it had been folded into a paper bag overnight before being hung. Not a good look for a very heavily quilted piece.
It hung perfectly on the rail but to make extra certain I put a couple of pieces of tape at either end for their rail to thread through. It is a problem with showing quilts their display methods vary from what you would do in a permanent setting. At home it would have a 2nd sleeve at the bottom with a cut off length of wood to weigh it down. This wouldn't be necessary on most of my quilts but this one has curved corners so the sleeve doesn't go to the edge.
I'll know on Sunday...

Failure

Just to show not all my quilts are something to be proud of. This is the back which looked quite good until I washed it. The yellow then turned a murky greenish greyish colour of yellow. The stippling wasn't fine enough to really put a red veil over the quilt and quite frankly the quilting wasn't too hot either. I knew the tension wasn't right and just kept ploughing on. Some how I felt it 'would sort itself out'. Where that thought came from I have no idea (grin)










The front is a piece of Ricky Tims hand dye. I wasn't happy about how the colour ran and wrote to them. Their reply suggested that it doesn't run with their hardness of water etc..
It went to a quilter's new grand daughter who has no expectation of my work. I'm happy to think it will be sicked over, pee'ed and pooed on (very very big grin)

How very cool is this?

This is a photomosaic done of close up of one of my quilts. Click on it to see how clever this is. I've wasted so much time today playing with this, be warned.....
Here is the photo before treatment,

New little quilt

This is a sneak preview as this is to be entered in a competition. The photo is of about 6" of the little quilt. The whole thing is only 24" square. The echo type background quilting was the first time I've played with this. I love it and will use it again. Perhaps it would be good to give the impression of one of those linen 18th century quilts.
If you click on the photo it will show it up about 4 times life sized.

Yeah! Poo!

The camera has arrived but it runs on different memory cards than the ones I own so hopefully tomorrow I can play with it.

Waiting in for camera delivery

I've included this photo of my helper, Sinclair who last year decided that my Nostalgia quilt was just the one he wanted to get involved with. You can see the temptation, that little silver thing going up and down. And why is it he only wants to sleep on my best works, never the ones I just run up to go on the sofa?

New Camera Ordered

For my sins, I've just ordered an Olympus SP510. I can only hope I've done the right thing. It works in low light conditions, it has 10 X optical zoom weighs only 300gms (without battery and card) and takes AA batteries. The guy I was speaking to thought it absurd to have AA batteries as part of my criteria, but I got caught out before with running out of battery charge and having no way to re-charge or buy a new battery. With AA batteries I can buy them almost anywhere on the planet, even on a Sunday. His answer was to buy more of the specialist batteries at £30-40 a time. I don't think so.
I nearly bought the Fuji at a similar price but it was nearly twice as heavy and I couldn't find any reference to low light conditions.
So I have a camera which cost £100 less than my last one with over three times the optical zoom.
You may get photos tomorrow if it arrives as stated.........

Bad blogger

My apologies. There's not a lot worse than checking blogs only to find there is no new post. I promise to try harder in future.

My little quilt is coming along nicely now I've decided to use YLI Soft Touch. Many thanks to The Tabby Cat who got the thread to me in less than 24 hours. NAYY. Bad news is that I've heard YLI are discontinuing doing the 1,000 yard mini cones except in the basic colours so the search for the perfect thread for my quilting shall go on.
I'm thinking of biting the bullet and buying YLI 100 weight silk for my next big quilt. Though as I use up 13,000 yards on my big quilts, we are talking serious money here. Probably by the time I pay duty and postage, it will be well over £150 for one quilt. This I could live with if I didn't have the worry about the longevity of silk. Silk rots with exposure to air and light. It might have amazing strength but it's lifetime is limited.

Can't give you any photos as I still haven't stopped procrastinating about which camera to buy. Once I've made up my mind on that, I'll be better placed to decide on the thread. I have to save some cash for the show at Sandown next week (grin).

A little something amusing

When my daughter was about 4, I was driving round a particularly nasty round about when she asked,
"Did you buy me Mummy?".

Did I buy you what darling?

"Did you buy ME?"

Buy you what darling?

"Did you buy me?"

It clicked.
No darling, I made you.

"Oh goody, I like all the things you make"

A conversation I shall treasure forever.

Ideas?

I've twenty or so of these blocks done about 5 or more years ago. I don't know what to do with them. I tried taking photos of each block individually and then the plan was to print them out and play with various ideas. The camera kept compensating for balance and the colours went so far off what they really are that this didn't work at all. (BTW is there a way I can get blogger to spell check in English English rather than USA English, I hate it telling me I don't know how to spell colour (grin)).
This was one idea. By the way I have no more of the background fabric and can't get any more.
And another idea, think this one is totally yuk!!

This is marginally better.
Any thoughts anyone? Should I just donate them to Project Linus?
This quilt was made as a solution to the problem, it was going to be the centre (Apparently I can't spell centre either!) with one row of blocks around it. Needless to say this didn't work either.

When you can't do much of anything

Today I woke up after having 8 hours of delicious sleep. I felt great, I'd shaken the cold off and then just three hours later I was back to square one (grrrrr).
XXXXXX my XXXXXXX always says I send myself backward by doing too much as soon as I feel a little better. I'd barely done anything so bang goes his theory but to keep peace and harmony I promised to do nothing today. Well almost nothing.
I designed this little miniature wholecloth. It don't know what the definition of miniature is so maybe this doesn't qualify but it gave me something to do whilst just sitting at the kitchen table. The brown marks look terrible, I starched it and didn't wait for it to soak in. It looks worse in the photo than in real life.
It will wash out along with the markings. I find it quite hard to look at in the photo. The extra lines round the outside of the feathers confuse the eye, but when it's white thread on white fabric and texture rather than colour, it calms down. I also find it quite difficult to draw these organic feathers, my hand keeps wanting to make them even and more formal looking. There's also the thing about keeping it vaguely evenly uneven (grin).
I'm not even sure I shall ever get round to quilting it but it could be worth doing as something to play with. Perhaps over dyeing? Perhaps painting?

Given up and unstitched

It took all yesterday evening and most of this morning but it's done.

On a more cheerful note, even my garden shed looks good on a cloudy day in June. This is the year of the foxglove. Last year I left one spire after the flowers had died and waved it all over the garden, they've come up in all the beds but the best are in a shade bed. Unfortunately today is the day my camera has decided to die so I haven't a photo to show you of these. It started to go through batteries at a rate of knots but now it has used up four new batteries in five minutes so I guess it's time for it to hit the great camera graveyard in the sky. It's served me well and even survived a short dip in the garden pond a year or so ago. And it will cost about a third of it's original price to replace. I don't need anything more than 4 X megapixals though more optical zoom would be lovely.

Tension problems and Bottom Line Thread

I ended up with the top thread tension at very nearly zero and the bobbin quite tight. (It wasn't going to drop easily like it normally does when you test it).

This worked, lovely even stitches with perfect tension top and bottom. Played for a while on my test sample piece then moved over to the quilt. And it worked, then it didn't. I stopped reloaded, did a bit on the sample, went back over to the quilt still it worked, then it didn't. This is very very frustrating. I found the thread every so often was winding itself round the bit of the thread guide which goes up and down (I'm sure this has a technical name but I haven't a clue what it is).

I've found out that this thread is just too springy to go in the top of my machine. As I don't have an alternative thread in the same colour. It's all going to have to all come out and because it's very very fine, the stitches are very very small. What fun......

Bad quilting day

Some days things just don't go well. I don't know if it's because I've a cold or because I've been drawing with a pencil rather than with a needle for a few weeks, or because it's humid or it's just a bad hair day (grin). I tried with Bottom Line in the the top and bottom, then I tried changing the top thread to 50 Madeira, the to YLI Softtouch. Nothing was playing nicely.
Then I tried Bottomline again but this time a cone of it. This was the best I got out of the machine today, so I'm going to stop.
Tomorrow is another day..............