A Capital Day - in all senses of the word

Early morning in Sladden Park, a place I know so well as this is the duck pond/boat launch area opposite the swings where I used to take my grandchildren when they were younger.  Phil went for an early morning walk - I just love those shapes and reflections.

Yesterday was the meeting of Capital Quilters, I was a bit late arriving after teaching at the prison - I was able to take along four tops made by one of the Shut-in Stitchers and showed them to sincere applause - I was then given a large piece of fabric to take with me next week - it's very pink so will be much sought after!  I forgot to ask for permission to share those photos, so maybe next post.....

Anyway, last month's block of the month was on the design wall -

I like the look of it on point, what do you think?

The block for next month has a decided 'modern' look with all that white and the pastels -

On a sales table at a recent meeting was an old book I couldn't resist -

Do you remember it?  published in the early seventies - it was in this book that I saw this quilt -

with full instructions on making it by hand.  I made the template out of very thick cardboard then drew around it on the wrong side of the fabric -

These are the hands of my granddaughter Amy who acted as model for me to show how to drag the pencil at an angle to save moving the fabric - and that's one of the original blocks.....

I well remember when a friend, Flora, who had been making quilts for many years, told me the importance of marking the corners of the block to ensure all seams met, this was done by twisting the pencil to make a dot - that way it was no problem to get accuracy by joining the dots!

When I came to put the blocks together, the very busy example in the book just didn't work for me, so I arranged mine in colours  - I might have shown you this before........

I'd like to take a moment to thank some of the people who have recently helped the Shut-in Stitcher programme - Sue has helped in many ways and recently at a meeting she handed me a large piece of black and gold fabric, already it's been used on two quilts to good effect;  photos will be shown soon!

 Today a friend and I went along to Yvonne's to check out the new supplies and have Devonshire Tea next door - I went to buy some embroidery threads in black and purple for the young woman whose quilt I showed earlier whose next project is a crazy quilt - and Yvonne kindly donated them.

To close here's another marvellous [biased? who? me?] photo taken in the "Rapa" after the recent rains; love those clouds -

and a quote from Katharine Whitehorn, "Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it"  

Nice talking to you, thanks for checking in
June