Admitting it.

Here?

The stash that I bought at the weekend has led to a question from a non-quilting friend on a forum I spend a lot of time on. I mentioned I needed to put it away, she suggested I could use the bottom of my wardrobe. Now, I don't know about you out there, but my stash would almost fill my wardrobe if I ever got it all in one place.

In here?

Which led to the question of how much I've actually got...I know there's 18.5 yards left from Saturday, I know I've got 2 FQ bags full, an ottoman full, boxes of scraps, bigger scraps in plastics boxes and assorted hessian bags with oddments in. But...how much does it all come to?

2 Drawers and the left hand cupboards in here?

I'll make a start on measuring it this morning, and hopefully finish tonight. Anyone care to guess what my final tally will be? I'll start with 60 yards....how about a prize for anyone who posts the closest to my total?

2 boxes under here

A few baskets and boxes in here too

I've been bad!

So much for only buying more fabric if it was for a specific project, and trying to downsize my stash! This weekend, I went to Step by Step up in South Molton, and came home with this haul:



From left to right, we have 2 metres of purple mottled fabric with gold highlights, a metre each of cream (perfect for backgrounds), a light grey/taupe with small Japanese motifs and a light orange with circular motifs. I also got some variegated green to brown thread Yaaayyy!! King Tut, as I was advised by so many people. I picked up some purple variegated as well which I'll use for the one block wonder, and the amazing gold rayon you can see. How cool is that?? I'll use it for hyperquilting, but can see it overpowering a piece unless I use it sparingly.

The book was written by the two ladies who own and run the shop and has 10 Japanese inspired projects in it. When I was at the South West Quilters' Christmas talk, I bought a charm pack with the idea of making a bag out of it, but then couldn't find a suitable pattern. There's a perfect one in this book, so I'm going to try that out soon.

Apart from the trip to the quilt shop, I stayed overnight in a fab little farmhouse barn conversion. Mike and I realised both the children were sleeping at friend's houses, so we could actually take a day out for ourselves. It was idyllic, very peaceful and relaxing, just what we both needed I think.



We went down to the local pub on the Saturday evening (note to self: don't go for weekend away while on January Pledge). The walk back to the barn was hilarious, very icy and moonlit, so no need for the rechargeable torches that were provided, we were giggling all the way up the mile long walk between the village and the farm.

Once we were up on the Sunday morning, Mike went to scrape the ice off the car...40 minutes later after breakfast there was 2 inches of snow on it! We left quite quickly after that as we didn't want to get snowed in!

Hopefully this week I'll be able to finalise the design for my Round Robin quilt, it's the group AGM next week and I'd like to take it along to show and tell. Once again last minute Lulu.

Another quilt show

This time in England.

We got home from the US on Friday afternoon, I can't believe it took longer to drive from Heathrow than it did to fly from Boston! Nose to tail with cars all the way down from Bristol. I saw quite a few cars pulled in on the hard shoulder with bonnets flung open, so I'm guessing lots over heated in the queues. We picked up the children from Exeter on the Sunday. I was really excited to see them after our break away, but that only lasted about as long as it took to load the washing machine with the first of many laundry loads.

The following weekend, August 22nd, it was the Plym Piecemakers' trip to the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham. We had to be at the carpark for the coach leaving at 6am. EEK!! I was still jet lagged, and I never sleep well if I've got an early start...fear of over sleeping means I wake every hour. We got there on time and a quick 4 1/2 hour journey and we'd arrived.

I decided to take Mike's approach for viewing the quilts and Pat, Margaret and I all dutifully trooped up and down the first section of the exhibition. We managed to view this side in about 2 hours, and I was confident we'd seen all the work on the left hand side of the entrance hall by the time we split up and started heading fot the vendors!! I had a budget, but once again it was a very generous one. Of course, I'd not really planned anything to buy, but had a few ideas of what I fancied.



So here we have some vegetable FQs, a couple of yards of gingko fabric for the corners of the Japanese snowball quilt, a 6 yard piece of dark brown and blue for backings, a couple of half yard pieces of kimono fabric, a new rotary cutter, bobbins, a stitch in the ditch foot and fancy threads bobbin case and a double DVD from Patsy Thompson about free motion quilting.

I feel that I've been in a bit of a rut with my quilting recently but haven't known how to break out of it. I'm not finding as many challenges as I used to in my work, and so I was looking to the FoQ to inspire me anew. I let my photographs dictate what I wanted to buy for future projects...looks like it's art quilts on a smaller scale rather than bed quilts. Having decided that, I bought a couple of books as well.



I'm looking forward to trying some of the landscapes, the author has broken down the technique into manageable steps, and it seems quite do-able. As for the Art Quilts book, I've flicked through it a couple of times, but really need to spend more with some fabric and the machine and work through some of the things they suggest. I'm also thinking of reserving Quilting Arts magazine for more inspiration.

Now behind the stash pictures and the books, can you see what else I bought? It's a portable design wall! The first time I put it up, it took less than 10 minutes and there were no problems at all. It's made from a flannel fabric so my blocks just stick onto it with no pinning!! It's great!!

Only a couple more posts to go and I'll be all up to date. I've got quite a few photos of what I've been working on since returning from Birmingham...naturally lots started but nothing completed yet!

First update, and scavenger hunt stash

So as promised here's the first of a few mass updates which I'm planning to post in the next week or so to get the blog up to date again. The only thing is, I'm now so busy with more quilting, I'm going to be either blogging, or sewing non-stop for the rest of the month.

In one of my online groups, we had a scavenger hunt swap. Basically, we had a list of items and a budget (whatever that words means!) and were allocated a swap partner. Here's my box of goodies when it arrived in July:



How exciting does it all look, nestled in the blue tissue paper? (yes, I kept the paper as well, for wrapping other gifts later). In here I had lots of quilty loveliness: needle grabbers, gold fabric, a bracelet and thimble charm, notelets, plastic guides for wrapping fat quarters round, bias bars (my old set got a bit melted, so good timing!), wrist pin cushion, needlecase and needles and a miniature quilt made with tiny yo-yos. When I say tiny, they measure about 1cm across and are all hand sewn together! My swap partner has far more patience than I have, that's for sure!



I've made good use of the wrist pincushion so far and keep getting the gold fabric out to stroke! It was a really fun swap, and a nice challenge to try and keep within a relatively small budget for everything. If I was going to join in another one, I'd definitely make more use of my own stash rather than going and buying so many new things. I just need to keep an eye out on the online group for notice of the next one.

Also round about this time, I was back up and down to hospital for another battery of tests for my thyroid issues. This time it was a couple of injections, a radioactive injection followed by a whole body scan and culminated with a blood test at the end of the week. All went well until i got to hospital for the radio injection to be told the courier company had lost the isotope! A bit worrying, but eventually I was given the go-ahead to have a slightly different injection and proceed with the scan. This all came back as clear, which was great news to hear!! The blood test on the Friday came back with a slight positive reading for one of the tumour markers, so I'm repeating the injections an bloods at the end of September. If it's still raised, there's a possibility I'll have to repeat the radio-iodine and 3 day isolation, but I'm having to wait and see until then.

More quilty gossip coming up with my next update: I think I have a BOM, some baby quilts and the Plym project to cover.

April quilt progress

I've finally got back from holiday. This time it was a week long narrowboat trip between Alvechurch and Stratford on Avon up in the midlands. We had a fab time, very relaxing, and even managed to get through the locks without too much trouble. By day 3 we'd realised that if you wait a bit longer than you think you really need to, anyone can open the gates.



I even managed to get a few snaps of some paintwork that will go into my inspirations file for possible trapunto or applique designs:





Once we got back, I knew I had to put a lot of work in on the outstanding projects so I can have time to do some paid sewing work. On Sunday I pieced the Jacob's Ladder blocks. Originally I was going to make them into a baby quilt but not for anyone in particular, so they've been made into a table runner instead. There's a couple of spare blocks that I'll make into pot stands.



I did some work on the Plympiecemakers Round Robin. Not too much detail in case the person I'm making for reads this:



Finally, I went round to a friend's house last night, and accidentally came home with 5 metres of fabric OOOPS!!!! I've not started stealing people's stashes, she sells it. Her workroom/stockroom was amazing, lined on one wall with bolts of fabric sorted by colour, then boxes under counters with pre cut FQs, more with threads, but these could have been her own, and rolls of wadding hanging on wooden poles from the ceiling. Talk about envious!! Here's my haul:



The cream is just for stash enhancement, you can never have enough light neutrals. The pink stripe is for the binding on the raffle quilt for Hannah's ballet group and the hand dye look alike is for the stash.

Sorted!!

After we'd got back from Bath, I realised I had far too much fabric to fit into my boxes. I sent DH to the local homestore to buy a couple more, then set to sorting all my fabric out. I tried banning everyone from the lounge while I did it, but they kept creeping in anyway!! (Usually when the stash was looking its worst)

I threw out a carrier bag full of tiny pieces. I mean seriously small...less than 1" square, or 1/2" wide strips. The rest was re-sorted into boxes.

1. Pre-cut strips. This is in a panettone box from Christmas a few years ago
2. Paper piecing sized pieces. In an old hat box that was stuffed with baby gifts from when DS was born.
3. Large scraps, less than FQ size. In a plastic tub
4. Fat quarters. In 2 specialised FQ storage bags
5. Small yardage. Pieces bigger than FQ size but not full yards. In a plastic box
6. Large yardage. Pieces bigger than 1yd. In a big plastic box.
7. Orphan blocks, sample pieces, pre-cut squares and WIPs. In another plastic box.

I've been out running twice in the last week as well, must be feeling better!! My blood results came back with the T4 slightly high but the TSH at .5 which the consultant seemed happy with. I'm booked to do two races by the end of March, but DH has just been diagnosed with a detached retina so I've no idea if he'll be able to drive me there!

Bath shopping trip

Half term holiday and B in Austria, so the three of us planned a shopping trip to Bath. Last time we were there it was so horrid and rainy, we didn't get time to see any of the sights...of course there was also the small matter of a half marathon too! This was a chance to make up for that, and also to meet up with C and her children from my running forum.

Much nicer weather, perfect for sightseeing. We were a bit rushed as we were meeting for lunch at noon and only arrived at 10:30. We parked the car behind the Royal Crescent, where Hannah showed us how strong she is:



Once we'd dashed into the town centre, I found the first quilt shop of the day, Country Threads. Half an hour later, and I'd bought the fabric for Hannah's teacher's baby quilt. I was determined not to make it "baby", so we settled on lemon, pale green and teals. A bit "boy", but there's some pink roses in each of the colours so will work easily no matter what she has:



The piece top left is more teal than it looks, and the pieces that look peach are lemon yellow. This green is for a narrow border, and the cream is for the sashing and also for prairie points.



I've pieced the main body of the top already, just the prairie points to do. I'll press the squares tomorrow and baste them on in the evening.

Once we'd met C, (yummy Chinese buffet at the Ocean Pearl) we pottered around the shops. We were going to "do" the spa, but the queues were a bit too long for us. Anyway, I had another quilt shop to visit, Midsomer Quilting, outside Midsomer Norton. There's a vast selection of fabrics, including my favourites, a whole section of half price ones! There's a man creche in the centre, so M was left there while I browsed.

Here's my haul from there:



The pink is an Anna Griffin, the cream is for backgrounds, I'm always running out! The florals are "just because". My last temptation are these fat quarters:



How cute are these?? I'm going to make them into a grocery shopping bag!