Laundering a big quilt!

As I had marked up the patterns I wanted to stitch with white washable and blue washable pens, I knew I would have to wash the whole quilt - there was just soooo much drawing on it!

 Well, firstly 'would it go in my machine?' or 'would I have to take it to the launderette?'  best to try it and see.......it fitted my machine so there it stayed with three colour catchers just in case - ('cos I am one of those who never washes fabric first - I think it makes it harder to cut accurately and sew evenly if you have washed the stuffing out of it - and who wants to spend loads of time spraying starch while ironing it any way? - I want to start my quilt 'NOW') The catchers were hardly marked - but better safe than sorry.

I washed it on the lowest heat setting on my machine 30c - the woolies wash! and hung it in the garden to dry.  It hadn't dried by bedtime so I brought it in and humg it over the clothes airer..........big mistake!  OK - it was dry in the morning but when we spread it out on the bed it had five bumps in the middle!! I have an airer that has 'shelves' on it and the supports for the shelves have 'shoulders' .......if I hadn't been so tired I would have realised that it would cause problems! So I had to dampen it down again and rehang it in the garden........all day again!  It was still damp when I brought it in again, but this time I folded it carefully and hung it over the back of the conservatory sofa beside the large radiator and left it till the morning!   Perfect job! when laid out on the bed it was bump free.

I e-mailed my daughter to tell her it was finished and she came over expecting to take it home with her - I told her I wanted to hang on to it for another couple of weeks - she can have it at the begining of November! WHY? she asked?  I wish to take it for 'Show and Tell' at http://www.thamesidequilters.co.uk/ on Monday evening and I also want to take to a quilting day with my friends over in Yateley at the end of this month.

I have been 'lost' since I have finished this biggie.......I need to start something else - something I can hand sew on the days I go to meetings and something I can machine sew for when I am at home.   I have a lot of projects waiting to start but don't know which one's I want to do now.......I keep going into my workroom and standing and looking and coming out none the wiser!  Perhaps to dya I will be able to make up my mind.

Finished at last

Here are pictures of the finished quilt - it is 100" square - that is smaller than the original top was made at.....someone didn't want it that long after all - after I had made it and marked the quilting patterns! so I took a whole pattern block off the bottom, after detaching the borders ..........I was not a happy bunny!  It has affected how I felt about the quilt and I am sure I have not made as good a job of it  as I would have done.

Now the younger daughter has asked me for a new quilt for her bed (another kingsize) I don't know if I want to do another one yet.  She already has a blue and white one I made for her many years ago but now she is changing her colour scheme and wants a pink and white one!  Perhaps I will htink about it in the New Year .

Catching up

Gosh what a long time since I last posted! I haven't been away again - just busy at home.

I have been working on the kingsize Double Irish Chain quilt (Quilt in a day Eleanor? I don't think so! it took two days just to mark up the quilting designs!), and it is nearly finished......the rest of the binding is being sewn down today - then I shall take pictures.......

I have also had two lovely days at lacedays with my friends, so my table cloth edging is growing , slowly - unfortunately there are no more until the begining of Feb 2010, so unless I make a commitment to myself to make lace at least once a week, nothing else will be done till then!

My middle granddaughter came over one week end and spent the time going through my stash of fabric and chosing colours for the ninepatch quilt top she is making - it was going to be just red and dark blue - but- other colours are creaping in as she discovered fat quarters of gorgeous yellows and greens and purples......."oooh can I have some of that Granny?"  A lovely weekend of sewing with her left me exhausted - not just through raking through boxes and cutting 3" squares for her, (I have yet to allow her to use the rotary cutter!)  but because she never stops talking! She's worse than me!!

Thamesider Quilt group ( http://www.Thamesidequilters.co.uk/index.html ) have thrown us a challenge - we provide a block - any size , any style - for the center of a quilt and then pick an envelope from the box which will tell us what first border to put on.  We will have two months to make that border then we will pick another envelope.....till our borders measure 20".  Sounds like fun so I am going to join in......will I regret it - we will see..........
  

Stash!

OK - so QuiltSue has given us a challenge to show our stash as others have done.  I have several boxes and a couple of shelves in wall cupboards full of fabric! quite neatly I think.  I do know where everything is if I need something in a hurry.  I am not opening those cupboards - although they are tidy they are full and stuff may well fall out if I open them!

DH made the shelves the boxes sit on and hung the cupboards that house so many lovely goodies.  You can also see some of my collection of quilting and other craft books.  In the blue icecream tubs my threads are stored according to colour or type - i.e. white or cream, light coloured, dark coloured sewing threads, then the quilting threads then the fancy ones and embroidery rayon .  In the plastic boxes the fabrics are stored by colour - nothing bigger than half a meter! the large peices of fabrics are in the cupboards.  Then the baskets contain UFO's (well some of them)

Lace days and gardening

On Saturday I spent the day with my lace making friends - I am still working on the table cloth edging that I started over 3 years ago! I am nearly at the third corner - so it should only be another year or so before I finish :-))

Yesterday I spent in the garden cutting back over grown bushes and the dead heads from the Hollyhocks and red hot pokers.  I have potted up some of my white/blush pink geraniums but still have more to do - these will over winter in my spare bedroom.

I thought I would do some more sewing on the double Irish chain quilt but everything has gone wrong - I got threads caught up and the stitching went funny - so I unpicked! then the bobbin ran out and I hadn't any wound, so had stop to wind bobbins, then I didn't get the bobbin case back in properly and the machine jammed! I don't know whether to try again this afternoon or leave it till tomorrow and start afreash then. I have a lot still to do on this large quilt but I  hopr that it will be finished by the end of October.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that everything goes right tomorrow.

This and that

Since the last posting I have been away on holiday to Cornwall - we went to Bude - why haven't we found this place before? - when the children were small?.  The beach is marvellous - sandy, with a surrounding of rocks, the children would have loved fishing in the rock pools, making sandcastles and playing in the sea there.  Lots of other things to do in the town  too, some lovely individual shops lots of cafes (well you would expect that) a museum, a library and a couple of supermarkets. There is also a canal (the only canal with a sea lock - now unused) but the tow path is lovely for  walks.

This is the place we stayed in.  A place called Burn Park, and a Seasons timeshare property.  I ment to take photos of inside but never got around to it...we will certainly go there again - they staff were so friendly and the place so smart and comfortable.  The little houses were set around courtyards and arranged so that no one was overlooked.  There were several of these little courtyard complexes and they were all were a bit different.  We found lots of lovely things to do in the area but I think that one will remain in my memory for a long time.  We were making our way to Hartland Abbey to see the gardens and house there, we like to take the most awkward routes - the ones through all the back lanes, with only the room for one car at a time, when I spotted a garden sign, one of those red rose signs that indicates something of interest in the area.  We were a long way from our orignial destination but thought we would have a look at this before going on.  What a gem we found - it was an old mill, with all the right sort of water channels and river and acres and acres of densly planted gardens.....wild wood land, orchard, veggie garden, propogating area and the best borders I have seen for a long while, and then little secret places with a bench by some water so you could rest and admire the flowers and views. - |Marvelous!  Unfortunatly the mill itself is not working and looks as though a lot of money needs spending on it but you could see it all from outside and inside.  Oh - yes! and there was a an area outside the house, attached to the mill, to sit under a pergola with clemetis, passion flowers and other sweetly scented flowers climbing over it, and have something to eat and drink - we had our one and only cream tea of the holiday there - homemade scones clotted cream and home made strawberry jam.  Yummy!                                                                                                      

We were up early enough to catch the sunrise on Tuesday morning - what a sight! I just had to share it with you!

Since we come home we have been very busy tryng to get the garden tidy and things done before this lovely spell of weather breaks and we are in to autumn proper. Brian has repaired the grouting between the paving on the patio, I have cleaned the greenhouse out and disposed of the detrius that collects  in there. Washed flower pots and stacked away those I wasn't going to use this year now.  I potted up into bigger pots the seedling echinacea that will be over wintered in pots and planted out in the spring once the bulbs have flowered and gone over.  These were the seeds that came free from the SAGA magazine this spring, the other seeds have given me a wonderful display of Cosmos and Asters all summer.  hopefully we will have some seeds for next year from these plants.   This was what they looked like in July, but they have grown twice as tall and the flowers have kept coming and coming.

a bit of catching up

I have at last finished the quilt I have been making for the last ......years! It is a pattern from Paula Doyle and started in a workshop with her to try Dawn Cameron Dick's method of Invisible machine applique.  I was not very successful with it and finished the applique in my own fashion.

These are the tomatoes we have picked so far this week! lots were eaten by the hungry hoards at the weekend family  barbeque at my youngest daughter Sarah's house on Bank holiday Monday.  Those in the right hand bowl are those picked this morning.  We have had such a glut that I have frozen loads for to use for making soup during the winter. 

Bottom draw of the freezer is nearly full of tomatoes!

These are the things that I either bought or had given to me during my visit to the FoQ last month. I bought 4 yards of cream on cream for the back ground fabric for some material given me by a friend - she told me to make something with this! Not sure what to do yet but I have 'Jacobs Ladder' in my mind, but some of the fabrics are so strong in design that I am not sure yet!

 I found a great pattern by Lesley Brankin to use Japanese patchwork to make a Kimono quilt.  I needed some more of those clever pens by Clover that give you a white line on dark fabric and I needed to know how to care for an old quilt for a swimming friend of DH.  Then I was sent, via a friend, some patterns from Amy Butler, with a lovely message from her.  I attended her lecture last year at FoQ and recommended her to a friend, who did a workshop with her this year!   Then I re-newed two magazine subscriptions and recieved jelly rolls as a thankyou gift, I reckon that my subscription to those magazines was more than halved by the jelly rolls, and some threads from aurofill.

While we were staying in our caravan in Coleshill.  DH and I thought we would go and look at Coventry Cathederal again.  We had last seen it when it had just been opened to the public and was very new!  We were disappointed that the 'New Cathederal' was looking very shabby!  the stones were and windows and metal work were very dingy!  Some of the displays we had seen years ago of holograms were not to be seen anywhere! The beautiful Graham Sutherland tapestry is fading due to the sunlight coming through some of the windows.  All in all a very big disappointment.  On the other hand the Old Cathederal was very moving......there were lots of plaques of commemoration and there are services held in the sancutary every month.  

We had a great day on Bank Holiday Monday - daughter Sarah did a barbeque for the whole of the family and these three monkeys had a great time - here they are at the top of the climbing frame eating home made ice pops!

I have brought my sewing machine down to the dining room table - and with the ironing table as well, to help support it, I am attemtpting to quilt Jackies quilt!  The chairs are there to help stop the quilt from falling to far off the table!!

   

As you can see from this picture, I have done cross hatching down the 'chains' but there are now a lot of ends to sew in!  I tried  one of the designs I have drawn in the plain patches but I think I will take them out again - not sure if I like the thread I used on them. I think that the sewing machine might be on the table for some weeks - given my progress this week!

I have not been feeling well - had a dreadful cough, nothing else! and have been feeling very tired because of it!  We go away for a weeks holiday to Bude in Cornwall in a week or so amd I am not taking this quilt with me! I thought I would be far enough along with the quilting to be able to put the binding on, but I don't now  think I will be!