getting closer...

This is the current position on the night garden quilt. I've got all the main cabling done now, just 3 short ones and 4 Vs to do. Should be no reason why I can't get them finished today. I'm still not sure whether or not to go round each section again as an echo. DH thinks it's fine as is, but I'm not convinced. I think what I'll do is get it finished for the show and see what happens there, then once I get it back I can make a decision before I get it to its final destination.

Back off to the sewing room as soon as I've finished my drink.

working hard...

...on that quilt. Today I've gone almost all the way round the outisde of the main part of the cable design. Just one inverted V to do. Then I've got to go round the inside of it all, and do the short Vs and shorter straight cables to close each square. All going very well so far.

Yesterday I spent the day at the Truro record office, looking for ancestors hiding in the paperwork. I manage to locate around 20 baptisms of people I had in census returns, so more gaps filled in there. Tomorrow we're all off to Camborne parish church to see if we can find any memorial stones...hope it's in better trim than Illoga's was last year.

I did my hill session on Monday, it was a lot more gentle than I'd expected, a 3 hill loop done twice. The hills were more slopes than big hills, so very much a confidence building exercise for me...even if I was last to finish, I didn't take any walk breaks, and got all the way up each hill without too much of a struggle.

Very quick update

Panicked phone call from my friend who is also finishing quilts for the Princetown show...it's all Go go go!!!!!! She's taking her quilts to a collection point this week. I've got 3 all finished, labelled and hanging sleevs attatched, neatly folded and covered. The final one, the one I'm hoping to sell, to fund a new machine is still only about half quilted. Today I've finished marking most of the remaining sashing strips, and only have 1/2 of one of the pieced blocks to quilt.

Tomorrow was reserved for sorting out my family tree notes before a trip to the record office, but I'm going to have to quilt instead. Looks like my lie in has gone too!

Last night was the Cornwood 10K, which I can only say wasn't as bad as the Ivybridge one! Very hot and almost as hilly, but I did it faster than Ivybridge. Managed to get a photo taken where I almost have both feet in the air:



The other one I have of me looks llike I'm blessing someone off shot. In fact, as I was just finishing, the rest of the club were at the finish zone, cheering me home, so I was waving to them. Tomorrow, apparantly, I'm doing a hill session

Could use the unfinished quilt as an excuse....

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!

Races and quilts

Last weekend was the Torbay Half marathon. I'd not expected it to be as hilly as it was, and what was worse, all the hills were concentrated in a 1 1/2 mile stretch that we had to cover 4 times. They seemed to get steeper each time I apporached them, and I ended up walking most of them. Great boost to see some people from the running club, I'd not realised just how great it was to see someone with the same vest as me! The eventual winners overtook me twice, first within the first mile loop, and then again as I was finishing my first lap and they were part way through their second.

A bad case of runners trots saw me rushing off to the loo twice, and it did cross my mind to hide then re-join the race later on to chop some of the distance off. I did the full length of it however! No matter how bad I felt at the end, I can take comfort from the fact that the M25-29 I overtook on the line must have felt worse ;-)

Got to running club on Thursday, and told them I'd got a personal worst, and was surprised to get a round of applause! DH later told me he'd been told they liked my spirit and attitude that I wasn't too depressed about being rubbish! Still another 60 points for the grand prix!

My plan for that is to enter as many races as I can that are far enough away not to attract too many other people, but close enough to get over 3 ladies.

Jane's Pilgrimage is finished!!

I can't believe after over 2 years, I've finally finished my Dear Jane quilt. This little gem has been sewn in hand and machine quilting, hand and machine applique, strip pieceing, and a fair bit of judicious colouring in where some bits didn't quite meet! If I reckon on each block taking an average of 30 minutes to make...some a LOT more, it's taken 112 1/2 hours, or close to 5 days of solid work. That's just for the piecing. Then a couple of hours for layering and basting it, plus all the machine quilting, then nearly 3 hours to hand sew the binding on, and a couple of evening's work to sew all the ends in!!




Even though it's not quite big enough to drape on my king size bed, it fits great as a topper, and sets the room off nicely.



This close up shows the quilting detail on the first block I completed. I'm still not 100% convinced I've done enough on it, but as I'm planning to show it in August, I didn't want to miss the deadline for getting them to Brenda. I might go back to it after the show and put some more work in on it.

Of course with all this UFO completing, I'm running out of things to work on, and despite all the books, magazines and patterns I've got, really can't find anything that screams "make me" at me. I've got 2 more projects on my UFO list so maybe I'll just have to get my head down and finish them. By the time I've done them, I'll have been to Birmingham, so will be brimming with new ideas.

Bristol quilt show

Can't believe how long it is since I lasted posted anything! I've not fallen off the planet, just been busy.

So I was planing to go to Bristol to see a quilt show last time. I went, saw and loved it!! Some amazing pieces there, including 2 by Sandie Lush, whose work I really adore:



can you imagine how long it took to applique all those berries??



The main reason I wanted to visit another quilt group's show was to see how well my own work would fit in with theirs. I was hoping that mine wouldn't stick out like the proverbial sore thumb! Anyway mine would have looked right at home there, so I don't need to stress out over that. Because I've only been to the national quilt shows before, even though I've had lots of compliments about my work, I'm still a bit unsure about showing it in public, where strangers can see it.

Once I'd browsed the show for ideas, I came out for a drink with my phone full of pics. I loved the black and red drunkard's path, whcih was displayed right at the end of the hall so you could see it straight down the aisle:



What a fabulous colour scheme. Just imagine that on your bed in winter!

Once I'd left the show, it was a nice stroll down back into town, via a bike shop to pick up some new cycling shorts. I'd not expected to pay £40, but they look and feel great. Just need to find the time to get the bike out now!

Lunch was at a Thai restaurant on the main street between the school and town, then s quick mooch round bristol and on to the train home.