Playing with Strips

Today I quilted my third Journal quilt and then gave myself permission to play with strips:

Chevron strips

 I had some jelly roll strips but not enough so I cut some more from stash. I organised them into colours that blended and stitched them together in pairs. They were chopped into squares and laid out on point. Some strips were a bit short and I ended up remaking 5 blocks. I quite like the chevron effect but I'll have to look for a larger piece of fabric for setting triangles.

Winter sun

I'm not sure how big this will end up, but will probably make a single bed size Linus quilt unless one of the grandchildren likes it.
I've been revisiting what to do with strips and squares as I have been asked to teach my beginners course again.


The low Winter sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the world! The iPad takes a reasonable photo when required..
The was an incredible rainbow after this with a very high arc and I found I was driving towards it - magical.

Doris's quilt

Here's a bright batik quilt made by my friend Doris, she brought it to group and was looking for a name for it. I saw crescents, but everyone else saw eyes!

Doris had one of her quilts chosen to head up a webpage for the Quilters Guild.

Crosses together.

They look better now they are stitched together!
This measures 30" long and 28" wide - strange how often my work comes out square, or nearly square in this case.
I'd like the next one to be much freer with narrow strips crossing squares and cut much more randomly, but it will be a while before I can tackle anything like that.
The design wall is coming down now as the house needs to be tidied up for Christmas.
Family are coming and the "sewing" room where all my boxes are stored has to reconvene as a bedroom.. A chance to sort out some of my fabric over the next few days.

Interesting Wooden Objects

Some more of the interesting things made of wood at East Ruston Vicarage Garden:

 This is the table top of a rustic wooden table in a conservatory space. Wonderfully worn beach combings and such soft subtle colours. The table is below and had equally interesting legs!

Rustic table

Giant insect house?

And this fabulous stack of wood was huge, nicely roofed and possibly the most enormous insect, and toad, house I've ever seen!

Crosses quilt

I spent the day cutting lots more pieces for the Serpentine Curves blocks, but with each fabric I cut a 2 1/2" strip to make some more crosses. Eventually the crosses took over!
I made it about square by adding in some part blocks and this is how it finished up:

As the pieces are just laid on the design wall they look a bit wonky, but that is because the seam allowances get in the way, and of course I can't properly reach the ones on the top! Now to get it sewn together...

New make.

Here's a picture of what I've been working on over the last couple of days. I found some plastic card holders in the Post Office in the village and thought that they would make good Christmas presents. My good friend Helen made me some great cards with ten different pictures of my quilts.

You need an embroidered or quilted panel to start with (this one given to me by my good friend Jackie), and then attach lining in two pieces leaving open where they would join. You turn through there and insert some card stiffeners, then slip the card holder in.

Card holder 1

Inside no.1

It is a tri-fold with a button and
hand-stitched loop fastener.




The next one is embroidered on some of my hand-dyed linen.

I think I'll make one that says
"I stitch therefore I am"!!

 And here are some of the Mini quilts we made as tree decorations, on display in the Church.

Winterton Quilters Christmas Tree

Tree with wobbly angel

Serpentine Curves

Here is Ruth's quilt, she has said I can show it, it should help my thinking as to the direction I want mine to go in. I bought another piece of batik today to add some sparkle to my Serpentine Curves Quilt, or maybe just add to my boxful!

Meanderings, by Ruth

Meanderings is an apt name!
I've got a long way to go before mine is this big, but as before I love Ruth's colour combinations and unusual fabrics - lots of stripes in here.

I had an excellent day at April's house printing fabrics, a follow-up to last Wednesday when I went on a course  with Yvonne Brown, printing with thermofax screens. I used Decolourant discharge with screens for the first time and got some interesting results.
I'll add some pictures later.