Short but sweet

Just a quickie before dinner time, here's my BQL monthly challenge for June. Can't believe I've finished it by the 2nd. I'm 4th in the photo gallery for the group too. Nice easy one this time, for the quilting, I used my walking foot and just did squiggly lines in a Madeira Lana thread I got in a goody bag at the FoQ last year.



The thread broke a few times, mainly when the machine was tying off at the start of lines, but the texture is lovely. I used a slightly longer stitch length and took it nice and slowly. I don't think I'd use this on a big machine project, but it would be fab for hand embroidery and it worked well in this small piece.

Quilt group tonight with a sale table from Janet so hoping to buy some green and some red from her. When I was in Exeter, I bought some Japanese charm pieces, and finally decided last night what I wasnted to make with them. Obviously a charm quilt, but I didn't want to go for just sewing them in rows. I found an old quilt I'd designed on EQ6 with snowballs and think it'll work well with these squares and the green/red borders.

Another race, another quilt!

So last Saturday evening was the return of the Ivybridge 10K. I did it last year in my slowest ever time, so I had a date with that big hill going towards the viaduct. You do about a mile, then the second one is vertical! I just took it easy and didn't try to run the whole hill, but I ran a fair lot of it doing run/walk. I'd been timing myself and the K that the hill was in was a full minute slower than every other K in the race. My unofficial time was 50 seconds slower than 7 minutes per kilometre, so I know exactly where I have to make time up next year!



This shot is of the club before the start, and



This one is of me with less than 150 yards to go.

Still nothing with both feet off the ground!

And today I've been working hard on finishing my block of the month from my online group. It was a machine trapunto block, so I was keen to have another go at the technique. I loved doing it, but on reflection, the quilting pattern has mad my fabric look a bit like lizard skin. Ooops



My other finish this week is the next of the Plym Piecemakers Round Robin. No sneaky peek yet, as I've got to press the blocks for a final time, then another close close-up so the person it's for can't tell what it is.

I'd love to know what mine's looking like...as long as there's no Sunbonnet Sue, I'll be thrilled with it. I put the lime green fabric in my bag in the end, so each row will have some of it in there.

This time next week, I'll have run my 3rd Plymouth Half, and my 5th Half Marathon ever!

April challenge completed!

This is my April challenge quiltlet from the BQL online group. Paper pieced handbags, hand embellished and machine quilted with random loop de loop squiggles and hearts. Although I didn't particularly enjoy the hand embellishing, the final piece is OK. I'm waiting now for the password for next month's piece...hope I feel more inspired than I have been with this one!

The reason for the particular FMQ design was I've just finished piecing the pink and white log cabin quilt for H's ballet group raffle in June. I'll be quilting it using the same FMQ idea, and hopefully using a pale pink thread.

This weekend I'll be working on a small wallhanging which will be going to my mother in law in August as a thank you for looking after B and H while Mike and I are in Boston. Win, win both ways, I get to try a new technique that's not really "me", and give a gift to Margaret, and if she doesn't find it to her taste either, she only has to hang it if we visit her!

And I got my number for the Plymouth Half last night...eeek!

Second post within minutes!

So while I've been off sick, what have I been up to?

My DH bought me a book on machine Trapunto for Christmas, so here's my first attempt:



Naturally I ran out of thread 3/4 of the way through, but I quite like the effect. The FMQ-ing is coming along nicely too! I love the tiny stipple, but this is going to be one for small pieces, I'm not sure I'd have the patience to do something that tiny (even for background)on a full size piece.

Here's a much nicer pic of Hannah's Christmas quilt (we ended up buying a new camera as the old one threw a hissy fit and kept dying):



She loves it, but I'm going to have to borrow it to take to quilt group tonight. I stippled it in a bigger stipple than the Trapunto sample, and added in a freehand flower in each of the pink squares. Every time I remembered, I drew a leaf in as well.

I joined in a block swap with one of my online quilt groups:



These are going to be made into a table topper ready for next year...arrived too close to this Christmas to do anything with!

I've made blocks for a Jacob's Ladder swap with the same group. I posted them this morning, but have these 2 left over ready for a baby quilt:



Finally, I've joined in a mini quilt of the month challenge with the same group as had the bag challenge last year. So far I've completed January, and pieced the top for February. I'm heading to the sewing room to quilt Feb right after writing this!