Sunday 11 September 2011

Where did the ten years go?

I feel that Forget-me-nots are appropriate for this day - don't know about you but Nine Eleven is so vivid I have great difficulty accepting that it was ten whole years ago.

My alarm is set to switch on the radio, I usually manage to sleep through quite a lot of talking but that particular morning enough permeated my dreams and when I heard the announcer say something about sport or weather, I sat up in bed and shouted at the inoffensive piece of machinery to stop rabbiting on; how can you mention sport when a plane has hit a building!  where man, where?  So I leaped out of bed and turned on the television - and stayed glued to it for the rest of the morning.  I think I knitted, I did something to keep my hands busy.

I hope you have enjoyed your weekend, quilting at the prison went well, very busy.  I must check and see if it is ok for me to post photos of some of the quilts the women have made.

Floribunda is finished, well it is a top and I have changed my mind about the backing, the table cloth was too thin so I have found some vintage pieces that I think will look great - I actually had thoughts about sandwiching it this weekend........


I like the batik as a border, sort of echos all the colours.  I used mainly vintage fabrics from my stash, this one was actually a dress - and not pure cotton - but I loved it and have photos of me wearing it on my trip to the UK in 1980!



And this one is a fabric my 12 year old granddaughter bought a few years ago at an Open Day - then decided a few weeks ago that perhaps I should have it, she doesn't want to make another quilt at the moment -



When I showed the blue string quilt on my bed, you might have noticed the quilt on the wall over the bed.  This was made English paper pieced method, a good idea as I was using silks - old ties and offcuts of dressmaking fabric.  The background is a furnishing fabric, I just loved the colour - so here is "Ties in the Sky:


The next quilt is a sort of warning that labels are very important -  I made it from pacific fabric and love the design, Jewel Box - I took it along to one of the group stitch-ins, laid it on the floor and put the fabric that is the inner border down as a full border - a friend walked past and said Yuk!  She was of course quite right, I was being lazy and knew it needed a pieced border, so on went the checkerboard which I do like.

It was long arm quilted for me by a friend who wanted to learn, she was working in a shop at the time and they put in the batting  -


It looks ok here, I shall take another photo later, because they used wool batting and I forgot, so when I washed it - well, crinkled is putting it mildly.

Always something more to learn, as Anton Chekhov put it "I expect I shall be a student to the end of my days." or maybe I'm just a slow learner!

Nice talking with you
June

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