November's furtle!

im trying to do this from a travel lodge in Harrogate! This could all go very wrong 😂😂 so November what's been happening? Well this fir a start. My cogs and thistles quilt started at a Pappersaxsten, Jenny Haynes class, it needed to get done.

and it did! Little bit of fudging but we got there, my lovely chum Sheena is having a quilt drive for the charity she works for. This will go there.

Carry4on in the pappersaxsten vein is my version of her spruced up pattern

cute huh!

Wot else?? Oh yes a couple of zip up trays... I do love this pattern so much but ay yay yay sewing on the binding... But they are pretty

so I'm down in Harrogate for the knitting and stitching show, really enjoying it, shortly heading off for food with the lovely Ruth and Sheena!

I'll finish off with todays flat white at Betty's tearooms 

I just wiped out 2 years...

Well that was fun! I'm off sick with the lurgy, yet again. Horrible cough so I can't lay down or sleep so I thought I would bite the bullet and get rid of Flickr. Since they started charging last year for over a 1k pictures I knew the time had come to part ways. Problem was I had about 4 years of pictures on the blog linked out to flickr... The subscription is due in December so I started plugging away at it. After getting 2 and a half years done I decided what the heck and just deleted all of 2014 and 2015.. And it was fine absolutely fine. Sadly I seem to have lost some pictures in the transition, all of the pictures of the making of my silk quilt, a work trip to Athens, I was sad about those. But hey as life catastrophies goes these are minor! I'll never use a 3rd party app for the blog again this is the 3rd time I've had to redo things because of one. Hey ho lesson learned. 

Anniversary

Honestly blogger!!! this is from 2016 why you put  it here! i  was updating it!
I love my country, it's beautiful, that is all. It keeps me sane, gives me peace and serenity.   Anniversary in Pitlochry 6 years eh? Fabulous.

My Scoobs in front of the fire in our favourite hotel, he proposed here, we honeymooned here, I recovered from chemotherapy here. It was Buds favourite too.

Still rocking it 😊

 

Dugald Stewart a life in books

Honestly blogger!!! this is from 2016 why you put  it here! i  was updating it!
In s previous life I was a rare books librarian .... Rock n roll! I loved it every minute. I did my masters thesis on the Library of Dugald Stewart an 18th century Scottish philosophe and mathematician. Fascinating man.  Anyhoo to my eternal shame he lived for a large part of this life not far from me. I have never been there till last weekend! And it is beautiful, Kinneil estate near Bo'ness. The inventor James Watt also live there and he and Dugald knew each other.

 It's taken me a while but I will be back.

Zen chic

Honestly blogger!!! this is from 2016 why you put  it here! i  was updating it!
You know when you have one of those utterly fantastic weekends when all the planets align and the moon is in aquarius? yep one of those. I have adored Zen Chic fabric for years, the text, the colours, just everything really. So I was sooper sooper excited to hear that Brigitte was coming to Biggar for a weekend, trunk show on the Saturday night and class on the Sunday. How utterly fabulous!  

I had never done anything with Biggar Stitches before so was excited to see how they set up the event. I wont say that there weren't some communication issues in the run up to the event, or lack of communication issues. But I know Kim took all feedback on board and boy did she more than make up for any inconvenience! I would not hesitate to go back to another event run by her! The weekend started off with Kim giving us a lovely lucky dip discount on all purchases, but im a member of the quilt guild so I get a whopping 205 discount anyway! Bargain! What a lovely shop, great selection of precuts and lovely bright fresh fabrics, well I had to buy some, would have been rude not too! The main event on the Saturday was the dinner and talk in the evening by Brigitte. This was all in the municipal town hall in biggar, great location for the event. Brigitte and Kim had it set up so that they would sit on one of our tables for either the starter the main or the dessert. Lovely food, all gluten free so I was happy! Kim had told Aurifil about it and we all had a spool of thread on our table for us! Much nicer than place names!! I met so many lovely ladies from the Borders modern quilt guild, Lesley and Charlie and Charlies mother. The lovely Angela Stockton gave me her hotel room as she couldn't use it and we were all sharing the same hotel! Great fun. There was plenty wine and then there was the star of the show – Brigitte.

 

What a lovely lady. I have been at a few other events where major quilting *stars* have been a lot less gracious. Brigitte was open she was funny and then there were the quilts … drop dead gorgeous, go to her website to see them, please don't let my rubbish photography put you off! And what a great story to tell! Single mother of three, took to quilting later in life, when she was fifty she did the sums and took the plunge to give up the day job and launch her collection at quilt market. By the end of quilt market she had three offers from major fabric companies and the rest is history. One or two wee (rather large) glasses of wine later we retired to bed! Up bright and breezy the next day for the MAIN AND BESTEST EVENT EVER!!!! Yep I was sooper sooper excited. Doing the globe class with Brigitte Heitland???? Who wouldn't be.

And lunch was provided! What a super class, all round fabulous, Brigitte is a brilliant teacher, the pattern is challenging but once you get it, it does come together smoothly. The main thing is the fabric choice, I went for my usual solution of “throw more colour and pattern at it …. I adore the result.

 And more free thread from Aurifil! Plus enough 80/20 wadding from Kim to make the whole top as way of making up for any communications issues. How flipping generous was that!

I came away totally exhausted but determined to finish off my quilt top which I did! Just got to quilt and bind it so I can show off at tomorrows modern quilt guild im nothing if not over ambitious.

Pant wettingly funny, 7th time lucky??

Honestly blogger!!! this is from 2016 why you put  it here! i  was updating it!  

Flipping heck! There is something wrong with these pictures, this is my 7th attempt to write up the QGBI region 16 area day in march! It kept on crashing loosing everything ...

I am determined to write this up, it was a fab day. I got to hang with Ruth and Sheena which is always fun. And we got to hear these  these two amazing ladies.

First up was our very own Jo Avery. Who better to give us a talk about colour theory? I have seen these quilts so many times but see something new in them every time!

Next, the one,  the only Jennie Rayment!! How much love do we have for this amazing lady?? Loads i tell you loads. She is incredible, and yes she stripped 😊

 

 

Small pieces

Honestly blogger!!! this is from 2016 why you put  it here! i  was updating it!
I had a major breakthrough on my jelly roll quilt this weekend. It's the square dance quilt form Pam and Nicky Lintotts Two from one jelly roll book.
I wrote about this for my first WIP Wednesday post. At that point I was still slogging my way though putting together the little nine patches.

I got these finished the previous weekend so this weekend was spent putting them all together, there are 146 of the little blighters they are 3 inches square. Laying out was fun, but I daren't breath when they were on my very flimsy design wall (basically a bit of flannel hanging from a curtain pole)

I managed to get one corner sewn together, I am usually very poor at working with small pieces, they annoy me and require far more attention to detail than I can usually muster, but this time I was more patient and am pretty chuffed with progress so far.

so all in all a very productive weekend am looking forward to finishing this one
Linking up to WIP Wednesday

Budsmam n Scoobs 9th wedding anniversary

9 years !!! how time flies, so thats 

After a somewhat fraught couple of months it was great to chill with my scoobs up in Oban for a weekend.

Dunstaffanage Castle has lovely grounds.

Oh dear these pictures are all out of order but I'm doing this on my mobile so they will just have to remain that way.
I was well chuffed I could still totter to Eeusk in these babies, the arthritis seems to be targeting my tootsies just now... So tottering in these was probably not wise but very satisfying!

Thank you Oban you were lovely!