Playing about

I have been playing about, making more changes, feeling restless. The digital photography course was good, but ... I am not a good photographer. It doesn't come naturally so I will keep trying to perfect it but I have a loooooong way to go.
So I will just plod along trying to make my photos better. The main thing I have been doing is catching up with my Flickr stream. Goodness I had been neglecting it a lot! And the more I had to upload the less inclined I felt like to do it.
Plus it wasn't helped by the completely useless apps for the iPad for Flickr. I have to say that's been my main bugbear with the iPad, the complete and utter useless photography apps. There are some great apps but you can't join them up? You can't access the photos in them from any of the Flickr apps which only seem to go to the official iPad photo storage. I may be missing something but this seems bonkers.
Anyhow, I found a new Flickr app, flickstackr I had to pay for it but it was under two pounds and it has just paid for itself. You can edit quickly and easily in upload mode, organising, tagging sorting is a breeze and it has a lovely flipboard style interface. Double plus good.
So here, apropos of nothing are some gratuitous photos, just because I can and they are all now lovingly sorted in Flickr.

The finished quilt from Bunny hill designs
scrappy Dresden quilt along.

My first two mini quilts from Moose on the porch it's a mini quilt along.
Now all I need to do is catch up with my naming of my farmers wife quilt along blocks ...


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Digital photography course

Well if you have been reading my blog (you haven't I've seen the stats :-) you would know my shame at my appalling photography skills, my non existent photography skills!
So I went on a course, digital plant photography at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh to be precise. Now what on earth do I know about plants? Sweet nothing is the answer but I figured plants ... Fabric ... What's the difference?
Soooooo what did I learn?
First thing is, don't get lashed into the wine the night before, always make sure you know exactly where you are going, saves on those pesky taxi fares *sigh*
It was a great course, fab tutor, really knew her stuff, was great with all the participants. I had been reading the manuals before hand but after today they make more sense. I now realise that my wee compact is probably a bit too simplistic and husbands big SLR thingy is a bit too complicated.
Now I am not going to talk confidently about ISO, depth of field etc, but neither will I feel like a complete numpty if someone else talks about them. I do now know what all of the buttons on the cameras do.
Having looked at my photographs, I now feel way more confident about experimenting, using different settings, i need to translate this into the quilty world, but all that need is practice!
I would thouroughly recommend this course to anyone in the Edinburgh area, if you are from further afield then have a look around and see what is out there, look at colleges, local camera clubs etc. Cameras are not cheap and I now feel I may just be starting to get  my moneys worth.
Here are a selection of pics from the day, it was a 2 day course so these are the ones I am taking back next week for the tutor to critique.

Ch, ch, ch, changes

I must come across as a bit fickle, only two weeks ago I was rhapsodising about my quilt class now I am on here saying it is all change!
I thought long and hard about going back, it costs a fair bit, about £65 for a seven week block so its a fair investment in both time and money, one night a week is a lot out of my schedule.
This week I went and didn't really enjoy myself, my (smaller light weight) machine was playing up, wouldn't feed in the fabric on point, kept on chewing it up. The ladies at the class are nice, they are not unfriendly, but I didn't actually speak to any of them, they were busy catching up with each other. Fair enough but it got me thinking what am I getting out of this? I am certainly not an advanced piecer by any means but I would say I am a fairly good intermediate piecer, I haven't needed any help from the teacher, the quilt is nice but one I could easily make from a book or magazine.
So I am cutting my losses and not going back, there were only two more nights to go.
Instead I got in touch with the Stirling Castle Quilters, their second meeting was last Thursday so off I trotted.
What a lovely bunch of ladies, made me feel so welcome. It's £20 for the year so I don't feel I have to go to every meeting, but I think I will. They only meet twice a month which is more in keeping with my schedule.
Sometimes you find yourself doing things out of habit, I need to question what I do more often, I am looking forward to these changes!
Just so I can add a picture of what I have been up to here is a pick of the latest bloggers block of the month from the BOM by Canton Village Quilt Works.

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Falling in love again

I have totally fallen in love with the Farmers Wife quilt along. I did manage to do three blocks last week, two fairly easy and one more tricky one, but, if I stick to the templates and don't rush at it, I seem to end up with some pretty accurate blocks, now how did that happen :-)
Motto of this tale is read and follow instructions and take your time.
Here are my wee beauties:

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Farmers wife and being organised

I seriously need to get organised, use my time more productively. I have stalled with the poor farmers wife quilt along, I have about 35 wee blocks done, not insubstantial but still only about a quarter of the way through. How do I fit these into my already insane schedule? I figure if I can get some cut out, maybe about four cut out at a time then I can use the half hour in the morning when I used to walk Bud to get them done, if I aim to do two a week I could get another 30 done by Christmas, I would be well over half way then. Anyhoo, here are some pictures of my finished blocks to try and inspire me.

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Moving with a purpose

Right, we are getting organised in the patchwork room, farmers wife templates looked out for next three blocks. I was horrified to see that I have only done twenty six blocks instead of the thirty or so I thought I and done ... Not good!
I also want to participate in the It's a mini quilt sew along from Moose on the porch. I was so lucky to win this book in the Hello Sun BOM by April Mae designs.
I have more charm packs than you can shake a stick at so I really want to use up some of the ones which have been languishing at the bottom of my charm pack box.
There is one which I got from the 2010 Birmingham quilt festival, I attended the Fat Quarterly design challenge (at which I was dreadful, can't design at all) anyway I got this charm pack, it is so not my colours, they are dark and very muddy. So this poor charm pack has been feeling very unloved. BUT inspiration hit when I paired it up with this perfect fat quarter, I have decided this will be the first mini I do from the book for the sew along, don't you love it when a plan comes together!
Here is the (now loved) charm pack and it's very own fat quarter.

well that picture was lost, thanks blogsy!


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On point, or not as the case may be

I thought long and hard about going back to my regular patchwork class n a Wednesday evening. I had to stop going while I was having chemo. I hadn't been able to go for a few months before that due to work. I have been thinking long and hard about why I quilt and what direction I want to take with it. I will never sell my quilts, I always want to remain doing them for pleasure, but I don't want to stick doing the same old stuff with different fabric. My illness allowed me the freedom to explore a bit more, be more adventurous. Which I thoroughly enjoyed.
So did I want to go back to a class where we do tend to stick to the more traditional techniques?
Well on balance I would say yes, I had such fun last night, lovely seeing old chums and so relaxing just pootling away at blocks I know well.
Also I realised I still need to work on my accuracy, as these quarter square blocks show:

One on the left I am pleased with, the one on the right, not so, but I'm not going to take it out .... It's not that bad :-)
So roll on class, it is actually quite a clever quilt which uses flying geese units to create the illusion of it being on point. Progress pics will be posted.



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