Black and white

Back in the groove after an enforced break to recuperate in which only these were done....

Today I'm working on squares I cut ages ago but never got to start: the quilt will be called 'Morphine' because I came up with the design after coming round from a minor operation earlier in the year and studying the fluorescent light cover for a couple of hours!

Randomness.

The final batch from September, 102.

That's a months total of 902 bow ties.  I recon I need about 1000 for a quilt, which I will have now.  There are  500 or so left to sew up, I will do this  before I start to piece the top, so I have maximum variety to choose from.  I see these quilts as ongoing-its a good way to use larger offcuts, I add to the pile of sets every time I cut something.

 

Sewing stopped for a family emergency for a while, now back to normal I hope.  Whilst I was away I sewed a few of the 1/2" paper pieced diamonds and triangles.

 I watched a film and went through the crumb bin this week on my return. Some more 1/2" diamonds cut, a few hexies, the rest will be for a second crumb quilt-a lot of these crumbs are already sewn into pairs from the last one.  I love this kind of relaxed piecing.

 

I have cut lots of black and white nine patch sets, along with bricks and squares for future projects.   They are stacked underneath the acrylic table top, bow ties on top.

I have some brown hexie paper pieced blocks sewn up too and made progress with the random hexie blocks last week. 

So, quite a bit  achieved.  Once the current batch of bow ties is completed, it's on to quilting some of those flimsies!

Cutting remarks again

I spent Saturday on a lonely cutting bee that I had long been putting off.  I had to make 12-sets for the outer rings of the brown hexie, my portable project.

 

 

All the brown centres are sewn up, leftovers from Darwins Flower garden.  

These are leftovers too.  I will have enough 'flowers' for another quilt!  I finished the last few this week, I wanted to get them packed up and out of the way for the time being

I also cut some more papers, not my favourite job in the world. 

It's been a hexie themed week, I sewed a few hundred papers in for the random hexie: the variety is low at the moment for this project, so I started some blocks off, to be filled out later when I've sewn in more papers and the colour variation is better. 

I have watched a lot of pre-recorded documentaries in the last few days too!!

The hand sewing has gone way for a bit, I have seen enough hexies.  I wanted some mindless sewing, so this morning I made about a hundred bow ties. 

I barely scratched the surface of the sets I have matched up ready to sew.  The orange and red ones have knots made form the leftover snips from  pink Sisters Choice. 

They are smaller than the other knots so will add variety.

The rest of the week I will be trying out my machine quilting. Scary!

Booksnobbery

This weeks read was the Sugar Camp Quilt, which I read via Bookcrossing.   I have realised I'm rather snobbish about my reading having studied it at university level~these books are well enough written, sometimes a girl needs a gentle easy read with a bit of history, quilting and romance for good measure!  It did me the world of good in a very stressful week.  



On to this, that I was sent by the author in a RABCK (random act of Bookcrossing kindness).  I will be sending it to the International Sweepstake winner in Canada when I'm done, so its back home to Continental America for this book.

Next,  The true history of the Kelly Gang, for a swap with another Bookcrosser.

Sewing is still Kiss in the Corner, I am approaching the second corner!!  One long side, one short side done by the weekend!  I think my technique is improving slightly, though its a good job there is a 'busy' backing.  Moo!


I have been watching shows from thequiltshow.com whilst I sew.




A few brown hexies over the last week or so at lunchtimes and at a picnic.......

Remember these from past posts?

Vitreous enamel sample plates from work as design inspiration.  I asked if we had a manual of defects (not that we EVER make aything like that!) and we did.........

Dry old reading for most people, I know, but it's an atlas of quilting inspiration for me!

I'll be doing some design work on this at the weekend.

Kiss in the corner

A little progress has been made this week towards edge filling, I'm approaching the second corner.  I didn't get much done in the evenings, this was my first full week back at work after 5 weeks of on and off illness and I was tired! 

Sunday morning, I woke early, sun streaming in.  I made a pint of tea, went back to bed and caught up on Quiltcam whilst I did some sewing.  Very cozy.













These are the colours I am choosing from to quilt with











Lunchtime therapy has been brown hexies this week, I took them visiting yesterday too.

I found these synthetic threads on ebay for machine quilting, aren't the colours delicious?   Don't know what the quality is like, or even if they're colour fast ( I will be testing that as they are manufactured abroad). I'm not going to recommend the seller as my delivery got 'lost' and my emails were ignored, then my questions were not addressed (there's more but don't start me off!).  It was a MONTH before they arrived. Gr. However wonderful these threads are I will not be using the seller again. I'm a professional purchaser and deal with suppliers all day long so I know things go wrong sometimes, but customer service is about what you do when it IS going wrong and a lot of the time it was nothing!

I have never had much luck with ebay (:</




About a month ago I was charity shop browsing and I found a bigger-than-king size white cotton duvet cover, all soft from use and wonderful quality.  I'm having that for backing, I thought, for a minuscule  £4.   It's now on my bed as it goes with my newly painted white room!  It has a really high thread count, is slightly textured-extreme close-up.  Yesterday I found another one, but I think that will end up on my bed too for the time being!

I think its time for a tea refill and a to start my new book, promised as a gift to DubaiReader, another Bookcrosser.  I have about 850 books to read so I had to organise a draw as I couldn't make my mind up!

Where is that seam ripper?

 

The green hexie corner is stripped and stashed away. 

I set myself a comfy spot, and put Bonnie's latest Quiltcam on this morning whilst I sewed a couple of Brown Hexie flowers up.......................

......and got these done.....

 

                                                                                          

I got out the quilt which needs the machine quilting ripped out last night, thinking it would take 10 minutes- but I couldn't find a seam ripper-it was impossible to get the small 'in the ditch' stitches out without risking damage so that's postponed until I can get a new one. Grrr!  Moral? 

Be tidier!

 

I'll be sandwiching this playmat next, which will be simply machine quilted  as I need to get at least one of the five done quickly.

Doing the rounds

I was visiting today, so I took portable hexies in my pocketed Clippy bag and got these done.  This will be the heirloom quilt for son number two.  Give it a few years though as I'm still working on the one for son number one!