Busy week

A few days ago I had a lovely play date with Plum, Avril and Lesley (does Lesley have a blog). As well as a great chat and a scrummy lunch, plum provided us with scraps from her Meg's Flower tree quilt (which is even more amazing in real life)

We had a great time snipping, placing and ironing scraps onto postcard sized white fabric.
















Thank you Plum!

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I haven't done much making in the last few days - except making a mess.

Yesterday we put the tree up:




















This involved 4 big storage crates coming down from the loft- let's put them in the sitting room. At 7:30 last night Lisa and I decided to go to Ikea to get her a new bed - let's put the stuff from my car into the sitting room to make space to bring the bed home.

Then Scott (nephew #1) needed a left to the airport - let's put all the Ikea shopping in the sitting room to make room in the car. So this afternoon's plan was to start picking up and putting away.

But then we decided to take out Lisa's old bed, hum that left a blank wall, and there is a roller still wet with white paint, lets paint that wall. Well as we've done that we could just strip and paint the next wall ... (did I mention Lisa's room is also my cutting, pinning and ironing room?)















.....

Deep breath. Anyway, the tree is up and looking lovely, and the mantle piece has it's usual slightly eclectic nativity scene and winter snow & trees scene.































The advent calendar is up for Niki, and the alternative advent calendar has gone with Lisa to uni (and she has promised a photo)





















And yesterday two ornaments came winging their way from USA and Canada as part of the swap: thank you Peggy and Paula - I love them















Also up is this hanging that Jackie made for me last year (it's actually been hanging in the sewing room all year, but now has gone to the sitting room)




















And finally I have now planned, and shopped for, the Log cabin Candle tree, and the raw edge applique table runner has been re-planned as a wall hanging, and once I get some time I will finish the two table runners for Norway, the four sacks, and then I can get on with my hangings!

Candle Christmas Tree Quilt - bleugh

I KNOW that green and blue are next to each other on the colour wheel, and I even had Plum warn me (and Kate prove to me) that dark green and dark blue don't contrast well, but for some reason I chose to ignore all this and expected my dark green tree and dark blue sky to work well together.

Possibly this is because I have invested hours and hours in sewing 1.5 inch squares together for the sky - approximately 500 of the blinking things, all hand sewn in a strip, and they jolly well SHOULD look good together. It isn't too bad lit up by the camera's flash, but I can see that I will have to start on the sky again (light blue this time) and use the current sky on some other project, but I have to say I am a tad pi$$ed off!

(Oh, and also I forgot to put the top triangle on the tree, that will happen - I have LOADS of green strips, chunks and crumbs on the work desk!)

An Art Gallery, and more shopping!!!

We popped into the local art gallery where Step Mum has some painting exhibited, it was great to see her name outside headlining the exhibition

She mostly works in abstracts

but does some people too

After that we went to Jo-Ann's where I picked up some more fabrics

And I have been sewing too - I'm starting on the sky to go with the Christmas Log Cabin Candles quilt - so far I have hand sewn 1.5 inch dark blue squares into a strip 6 meters long , and have about another meter's worth of squares to go. These will be followed by about the same amount of medium blue squares, until hopefully there is enough to complete the sky ... then I need to do the same again in white for the snow on the ground. Will it be finished by this Christmas???

Life on Fast Forward!!!

Somehow my life seems to be whizzing away, and I'm not getting stuff done! The last 10 days have seen me actually drop 10 hours work, but as those hours were 7:15am to 9:15am I'm not managing to be productive in the extra hours - just asleep ... which is lovely, but gets nothing achieved!

About all I have finished is two postcards for the nephew and niece in Australia. These went in the post on Thursday, and I think I'm safe in posting the finished cards as (as far as I know) their dad (my brother) doesn't read this blog

And without doing any work, I have sold an embroidery design on ETSY, so another $1:50 into the pension fund :-)

However my list of excuses is longer than my list of achievements!

• R's quilt has been put to one side as yet again his life has been messed around - his Dad's borough cant find a school for him, so dad is moving back here to keep R in the current school, but the foster family cant keep him, so he's boarding at school weekdays and at Dad's weekends for now
• The big embroidery machine packed up during an order of fleeces, so I'm behind with those (although husband has got it working again, so I am trying it on my stuff rather than customer's stuff)
• I am hand sewing 1.5 inch squares of dark blue for sky on the Christmas tree quilt, but that is a long job and not very exciting to post
• Sophie's seat covers have had to wait and she's on holiday - and I'm such a duh that I don't remember whether I used black or grey thread, so I need to check with her ... Double Duh - if I bothered to look at my own blog I would see the photo that I posted, and would know that I used black!
• The customer that wanted an I Spy quilt hasn't come back to me with sized or info, so that will have to wait

Luckily my November list isn't too long, so I can finish October's and get on with Christmas!

Log Cabin Candles

I'm making these up as I go along, but thought I'd also have a go at writing a what-to-do (or what-not-to-do) blog as I go along, so if I put them to one side for a while I'll remember what I've learnt!

I started with (for each candle) a piece of yellow about 5cm square, and four smaller rectangles of dark green. Each green was placed (one at a time) in a corner of the yellow (right sides together) and stitched diagonally, so the bigger half could be flipped open. [start stitching from the centre of the shorter sides to give a better flame point, and remember to set the needle to central, so it stitches where I expect it to!!!]





This creates the flame
[Although the flames that started life as a rectangle have a better shape]









The candle is a piece of cream fabric about 4cm x 10cm (my Grandfather's Christmas tree always had real candles on it, and always white or cream) attached at one end of the candle (try auditioning to see which end looks best)


[all measurements here are very approximate - I haven't used a ruler or even a rotary blade for any cutting, just scissors by eye. But do trim excess after each addition]



I then started adding random strips of dark green.
In fact I think the design is more court house blocks [add to each side, then each end, then each side etc] rather than log cabin, but if there are such things as Quilt Police, this is a minor crime compared to many of my others!]

Sometimes it's easier to visualise something drawn out for paper piecing: Although I don't much like paper piecing, this should remind me roughly what I did!

These seams do need to be pressed, but I got away with finger pressing the flame seams, and then ironed all 4 open, ironed the candle in place, and then ironed each pair of logs (OK, steps if we're being correct!)


And here are the first 6 candles: You may need to squint to see the candle (or am I being overly critical?) but the quilt will hang from the top of the stairs so will be seen from a distance and I think it will look fine

Log Cabin Christmas Tree

This morning I woke up at 3am with a start - I knew exactly what I wanted to make!

A bit of background - my uncle Geoff died in January this year, of Prostrate Cancer. He died at home, but spent the previous 6 weeks in a fantastic unit at the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford where the staff were just awesome. Being in hospital over Christmas is gloomy for patient and visitors and I wanted to do something for them for next year.

I woke up thinking of a log cabin Christmas tree: each block made roughly 10x8, then trimmed to a wonky 8inches tall, by about 6 inches wide, where the centre of the block is either a bauble (snowball block) or a lighted candle (coloured centre strip, topped with a small elongated yellow snowball?) and all the strips are shades of medium to dark green. These would be arranged in a triangle to represent the tree. This would be too narrow at the top to hang, so dark blue blocks (for the sky, maybe some with yellow stars in the centre?) at the top and then white blocks at the bottom for snow would form the sides to keep a rectangular shape so the whole quilt could be hung up.

I started today to look at the greens I've got in my stash - hum, not many! I can buy some, but I dreamt this in loads of different greens as a tree has so many different hues.

So I wondered if I could change this to an appeal - an appeal for either fabrics or donated blocks. Then it occurred to me that other people might like to do the same thing, so maybe it would work to swap blocks - you send me a few, and I'll send you a few back: that way we get some variety

I haven't thought it all the way through, but I am so excited by the idea that I have ignored my to-do list (again!!!) to make the first block, and here it is - just a hundred or so more to go!




EDITED 3rd August

Here is the quilt that inspired me, by Nadine Leroy Bohy, seen in the May/June Magic Patch (should be rotated clockwise -ooops!)