Done and dusted

The jelly roll quilt is done! Yea! Happy dance, many many happy dances, it will be a long time till I wrestle with something this small again ... But I do love it.

Close up of back with funky chicken pattern

Big not small

After wrestling with all the teensy tiny pieces in the Jelly roll quilt I wanted to do something BIG, not necessarily a big quilt, but big blocks. Huge blocks even so I dug out this quilt which has been patiently waiting in my to do pile for well over a year.
The pattern is shadow box from Mountain creek quilts I loved this ever since I saw it in Seattle quilt company in Aberdeen.
I had picked out 7 FQs for the twin sized quilt well over a year ago, also bought some dark purple solid for the shadow part.

I was always a bit worried about the purple but decided to stick with it. I then needed to decide on sashing, I really didnt want to buy anything new for this one, I wanted to get going NOW. Patience is not a virtue I hold.
So the following were short listed:
Orange batik?

White with black pattern?

Or just plain old white on white?

I felt there was really enough colour in there so stuck with good old white on white.
I loved the fact there was almost no wastage from the FQs, although there was a fair bit of solid left over.

Cutting was quick and easy and boy did it come together quickly:

I have to put inner borders on then choose an outer border, that I think will be the tricky part.

Linking up to WIP wednesday

Calico quilt

I have been trying to pull all my photographs of quilts together in Flickr, and in true librarian fashion label and tag them. It's lovely because it brings back such fond memories, memories of making the quilts, memories of giving them as presents.
Most of my quilts I give away, our house has many more quilts than it will ev need. Some though have been kept and this is one of them.

I call it the calico quilt for the obvious reason that it was made primarily with calico. It was a block of the month kit, my friend Irene spotted it at the Festival of Quilts, probably about 2009. She and I both signed up for it. I love quilting along with friends, we egg each other on and keep up a healthy dose of competition to see who can get things finished first.

I loved most of the blocks in this quilt although it did confirm my dislike of crazy patchwork. I just can't do crazy patchwork, too unstructured for me. I particularly liked the textured and tucked blocks, very simple but very effective.

I don't think I would make a quilt from calico again though, I can see areas on it now where the seams are pulling apart and I don't think it's all down to my wonky stitching! But we keep the quilt because it is one of my husbands favourite ones, he really can't cope with the amount of pattern and colour my quilts usually have but this one is right up his street :-)

I don't do scrappy

I find scrappy quilts, well, difficult. I like order, I like a plan and scrappy quilts never seem to me to have much of either of those.
I'm a Librarian, I do order, it's in the genes.
So I surprised myself when I decided to do the sew a sampler quilt from Popular patchwork. I started on it while up at my chum Irene's a few weekends ago.
Here is first row, quite neatly uses up a whole pile of 2.5 squares I had laying about.

Here are rows 2,3&4 a bit loud, but those are my scraps, they are loud!

And row 5

I am just about to put row 6 together, it's a bit more muted as there are appliquéd flowers and stems to go on there, I want them to stand out.

I got two bias makers in a shop sale last year, been itching to use them and making the stems for the flowers on row 6 will be an ideal opportunity.

My space

I often think about my space, my sewing space. I always give thanks that I am lucky enough to have a whole room I can dedicate to sewing. Also give thanks for a wonderful husband who doesn't mind :-). Here I can keep my machine up, make as much mess as I want to and can just close the door and not worry too much about tidying up. I know how lucky I am.
A friend is having problems just now and it made me think about how much of a sanctuary my sewing room has become, unconsciously I seem to have surrounded myself with comforting things.
My patchwork and quilting books, c'mon I'm a librarian! There must be books. In author and height order in case you wonder. All catalogued on good books.

Fat quarters, in colour order, all to hand ready for a quick fabric pick if necessary.

Boxes, I love boxes, the box with hearts contained a wedding present from best friend, the shoe box contained my wedding shoes, a present from my wonderful sister. All now contain fabric, or projects. I make a beeline for biscuit boxes from M&S brilliant size for patchwork block, the jubilee was a great year for boxes.

The bed (well it is technically a spare bedroom ...) very handy for laying out quilts in various stages of development, cross stitch cushions, probably about 20 years old. The black object in the red bed, is a knitted dog, a lovely lady made him for me when my beloved dog Bud died, mini Bud is so much comfort. He even has his own mini quilt :-)

Things, just things, Jo Malone bag holds pens and pencils, came with a present from my sister, I love my sister. Small jar holding clover wonder clips and boy are they ever wonderful. 3D kangaroo, present from friend (the one who is having difficulty just now) she gave it to me when I had cancer, she told me that I was the baby joey and I had to hop into the pouch of my family and friends, she was right, I hope now to try and be her pouch.

Fabulous card from fabulous friend, the writing says it all. The red cupcake box at the back is an empty hand cream jar from another good chum. Chums are the best, don't know where I would be without mine.

My sewing machine, a rather rash purchase last year when I finished chemotherapy. Do I regret it? Do I heck as like :-) love it to bits.

finally view from my sewing machine, I made these during chemotherapy, they make me smile and remind me of what is really important.

So that's it, my sanctuary. For this and so much more I give thanks.

Keeping it in the cloud

This whole demise of google reader really got me thinking. What should and what shouldn't I keep in the cloud? Then I happened to use an old laptop I hadn't used in a while, found some old pictures of quilts I hadn't seen in ages. I am changing phones and found again lots of pics on the old phone I had forgotten about.
This is what annoys me, lots of stuff all over the place, I am a librarian, I love order damnit! So I spent a fair chunk of time migrating pictures from various devices over to Flickr, then I deleted them from the various devices.
Flickr don't you dare die on me now *stern face*
Ok so I want to chronicle everything on here as well, as a back up and if google ever kills off blogger I will go and hit google with my big stick.
Next phase is making sure I have everything on here as well and I keep everything up to date on here. Full of optimism as ever eh Sheila :-)
Here are some of the old pics I found:
A quillow I made for my mother years ago, I think I had labyrinthitis while I was making this, might account for wonky stitching.

Some Bargello runners I made for mum from Christmas fabrics, no excuse for wonky stitching on these ...

Google reader

Well if you follow me on twitter you will have seen much wailing and gnashing of teeth and the demise of google reader. Honestly google, know your fan base please! You are keeping google+ and getting rid of reader??
Anyhoo, it got me thinking, lots of folks were warning about keeping our 'stuff' for want of a better word in the cloud.
Well if the cloud were to spontaneously combust tomorrow I would be stuffed about my stuff!! Most of my stuff is in the cloud, this blog for example. This is where I document, or try to, all of my quilting projects, keep pictures and a running commentary on them. Ok so the world won't end without my blog but I would be a bit miffed to say the least. Flickr too *gulp* everything is in Flickr and I mean everything ... Working across multiple devices it's impossible to keep up with what pic is where, so Flickr is essential. Since Flickr is a paid for service (well the premium version anyway) there might be less chance of it going. I am now dipping my toe into Instagram, I know I know, keep up Sheila. So what happens with all that stuff? Although I get the feeling Instagram is more ephemeral in nature? Who knows, well I will once I have dipped my blooming toe in the water :-)
So those are my musings, no conclusions, but I feel there never will be.
And since this is supposed to be a quilting blog have a random picture of a quilt.