A little hand sewing

Just trying out blogger on my mobile. Here is a wee pic of some handsewing, my cathedral windows cushion. Well half of it :-)

Heart to heart

I love a challenge but sometimes things are more challenging than others. If you have seen any of my quilts you will realise I like bright bold colours. I don't do a lot in green and I hate 'muddy' tones and hues.
So when I got this fabric:

My heart sank, bit of a pun there as the fabric is part of a heart to heart challenge run by a friends local patchwork store. We have to take this fabric, add other bits and make something they can sell at an auction to make money for the British Heart Foundation. Now I love the BHF, my stepfather had chronic heart disease and lived a long life due to the wonders of medical science, so I really want to help.
But oh dear me, this fabric is just not me. It has kicked around my sewing room glowering at me, moved from table to bed to bookcase all in the hope that inspiration strikes.
With the deadline looming inspiration struck. My good old trusty braid runner. Take a look at the tab called table runners, you will see this pattern used a fair few times, it's my go to pattern when all else fails.
So, I decided to use muddy fabric as accent fabric, pulled out some scraps and started playing about:

It grew:

And now is sitting on the machine getting it's ditches quilted :-)

I quite like it now and the added bonus is I have used up a lot of batiks which were kicking about too.
Linking up to WIP wednesday

Community work

It sometimes feels as if the world has gone mad. I have only rarely unfriended anyone on facebook (far prefer the mute filter :-) but if someone posts about Enoch Powells Rivers of blood speech, well that's a no brainer. Sad though, my twitter feed is full of English Defence League, mostly anti EDL, but the mere fact it is there saddens me.
So I take refuge as ever in sewing. This week it was particularly appropriate, I went round to a friends house to discuss our entry for the Rurals (Scottitsh Woman's Rural Insitute) entry for a community work competition. There were six of us sat around a kitchen table talking craft. I really really cherish these moments, calm sanity in a crazy world, the homemade cake helped too!
So the theme is black and white, I decided to do a small mat/table topper using the curvy block from Heather Hastorpes Moonshine pattern. I like it, and I like community work too.

My granny used to say ...

My grandmother was a wonderful cook. All plain and simple but fabulous, what that woman could do with a chicken was unbelievable :-) She always used to say that the cooking could tell if she wasn't in the mood for it, scones wouldn't rise, she would burn things. Well sunday was like that for me, as we say in Scotland I was off my stott (out of sorts)
Soooo spent the day ripping sewing unpicking, sewing ripping some more. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of sewing I have on the go at the moment, I admire people who have large piles of WIPs some going back years, that would just stress me, mind you I am reminded of my silk quilt which has languished in the cupboard for almost 2 years now ...
But I'm not a quitter, I did eventually get the chev n hex block for the skill builder BOM done. Some of these seams have been ripped out 3 or 4 times.
It's not perfect, and English paper piecing is never going to be my favourite technique but it's done, so now to move on to the other piles of stuff waiting to be done!

It's very very green

Hmm, I think I like this but it's a bit out of my comfort zone if truth be told. The green setting fabric seems to dominate, but maybe the blocks can hold their own in there. They were scrappy which again is out of my comfort zone but I think I like it :-)

Catching up

A week off meant a week of catching up on stuff, or so I thought. I was going to get all up to date with BOMs, farmers wife etc. Instead I just became a bit manic about trying new stuff, well nearly new stuff.
I blogged about making the shadow box quilt, I really loved making this not least because it came together so quickly, I still need to decide on a final border though, here is the finished top so far.

I then started on what I thought was going to be a very quick quilt to make -hot chocolate. I have made this one before

it was always one of my favourite quilts. The fabrics had been chosen for well over a year and lurking around in a drawer. There was one fabric missing so I replaced with an oriental style one.

Its second from left in the fabric pile above, I love the way it totally changes the whole quilt top.

But then .... Disaster. I had chosen a sweet little orange 30s print for the final border, the addition of the oriental style fabric meant this was really not suitable any more, it needed something with more punch. I found a great green and red fabric, just the right combo, I cut The four WOFs I needed and then was going to trim them to size, I wasn't thinking and trimmed the wrong edge, the folded edge ... So I now had 8 pieces each exactly half the measurement I needed, there was nothing I could do. So I cut up those strips for binding. Now I just need to find something else for the final border - sigh. More haste less speed.
Linking up as ever to WIP Wednesday

Bloggers BOM

I was rootling about in my patchwork room and found my bloggers BOM 2012 blocks

I had totally forgotten about these wee things, very scrappy. I had bought some green fabric as sashing for them, must look it out and see what I can do with it. This is a year of getting stuff finished ... Famous last words.