More Retreatings

Mandy's quilt, Den Haan and Wagenmaker fabrics. And detail
People are getting stuff finished.

More Retreat Quilts

 Carrie's Quilt

and Julie's Pixelated Wedding Ring - she was up till 1 am doing this!

On retreat

I'm away from home on quilt retreat, at Belsey Bridge. There is so much home cooked food I couldn't face supper and just ate half a banana!
I have made great progress with the Winding Ways quilt and now have half of it sewn together.

This started life as bunting at a wedding, and is now going to be a quilt for the lucky couple!

Making progress.

The top two rows are completely joined now and the third row joined to itself. Subsequent blocks are placed to check fabric variety, but also I am trying to make sure that the lovely pale blue accents are scattered across the quilt surface. I am looking too at the value, checking that I am including blocks where the darks are sometimes medium, and the same with the lights. In fact the same fabric in some instances is placed both as a dark and then as a light in different blocks. This is how you get movement in the design, so that the large dark circles pop out as you look at the quilt and then the large light circles appear as your eye moves over the surface. So lots of considerations but an enjoyable process.
I am surprised by how dark it is overall ...

Design Wall

Hooray hooray! I have got my temporary design wall installed so I can work on my Winding Ways blocks. Each block has 12 different fabrics in and I need to lay them out so I can check that adjacent blocks do not have the same fabric in them. I probably won't entirely manage this but it's the aim!
My husband put a couple of curtain pole brackets up and a length of copper pipe (the curtain pole was not strong enough) and I put up a length of brushed heavyweight cotton bump. The blocks stick to it but need a pin or two when they've been joined together. The whole thing can come down quickly and easily.
Now to get some more pieced..

More Pattern..

I saw this amazing spotty leaf at Felbrigg when I went on my Fungi hunt. I suppose it has some kind of virus, I don't remember seeing anything like this before!

 And here are some more pattern pictures from the East Ruston Vicarage Garden - it's a treasure-trove of design ideas.

The beautiful birches

Contrast in colour and shapes

View through..

The garden is designed so that there are lots of viewpoints to catch the eye. There are holes in some of the hedges so you can catch a glimpse of Happisburgh lighthouse.
Grandchildren gone home now so back to the sewing machine!

Hallowe'en and Hearts

Pumpkin lanterns

The grandchildren are here and carved pumpkins last night. They are definitely more scary with the lights out!

Lights in the night!

Pincushion with scissor pocket,Mandy Shaw design

Hearts are the theme for next year's FOQ Tombola and here's some I made earlier which I've posted off to Jan Allston in Region 2.

Embellished wool key-rings

Linen Heart

Woven ribbon heart

Heart pincushion