Not abducted by aliens!!!

Oooops, can't believe it's been so long since I've posted on here. I've been in a bit of a quilting rut, haven't been able to settle to any one piece, and couldn't find anything to inspire me to start on. My Torbay Half race seemed to have affected my more than I'd realised, as I simply couldn't face running, training or anything to do with keeping healthy.

So, nearly a month on, a huge update. I finally got a diagnosis from the endocrinologist: goitre, but none malignant, and no need for further investigations by his team. The mysterious lump is now due for another ultrasound, with needle aspiration, scheduled for early next month. He's expecting it to come back as bone and connective tissue. Only thing is I'm not sure now if I'm automatically referred to the orthopods, or if I'll need to go all the way back to "start" and my GP!

Running-wise, I did another race at the weekend, but it was incredibly hilly, and very hot, so struggled quite a bit with that too. I decided that I really want to improve my running, so went along to the club's track session yesterday. We had to do 5 x 800m with 2 1/2 minute recovery in between. I didn't bother timing it, but felt that I'd worked hard. Next week is hills...so onward and upward

The quilt show is getting closer now, but I'm finding it a bit frustrating to be honest. At the last group meeting, they hadn't been able to get in touch with the person who was booking the hall for the show, so weren't sure how much space we were going to have...or even confirmation that we were showing at all! I had a phone call from a friend in the group and she'd heard from someone else we're still short of stewards...I can't due to work and not driving, I guess everyone else has the same reasoning. Seems a shame that as at other groups and organisations there's a few people pulling out and doing and many more sitting back and watching!

Anyway, show or no show, I've got 3 quilts all completed, hanging sleeves on and 1 labelled. Tomorrow I hope to do the rest of the labels. The one that's holding me up, is the one that always holds me up, my night garden! I marked a good lot more of it over the weekend, and today I've quilted most of one of the pieced blocks. Not the greatest photo, the colours are much brighter in real life, they seem a bit washed out on here!



There's also 2 new pieces in the planning stage. Firstly a string pieced lemoyne star for the coffee table. I just need to get some Kona Black for the setting pieces. I'm not sure if I'm going to piece a middle border in strips of the main colours with another black border around it or not. The beauty of making something quite simple is I can plan it as I sew. As long as it's large enough to cover most of the table it'll do fine. I'm planning to quilt it using some of my newly acquired FMQ skills.




The next piece planned is a Christmas sofa quilt I saw in QNM last December. It's a wide and narrow curved piece which together make the block. What makes it a bit special is you assemble it at 60* so the wavy lines aren't straight up and down. I bought a 2lb pack of Christmas scraps from craftconnection.com and have been able to use most of the pieces. I'll still need some more reds, but I'm off to the Festival of Quilts in 3 weeks, so should be able to pick up some there!





Final project which doesn't even have a photo of the fabric or blocks is an experimental piece using the Kona Black once it arrives. I read about cutting a masque from wallpaper lining paper using a plate, taping it down and spraying it with bleach to create a moonscape...Looking forward to seeing how it will turn out!