BLOG 191

 

What a week it has been! I can reduce mine to these words: sunshine, Center Parcs, Auntie Blod and oil pastels.

The sunshine was enjoyed country-wide and it really did lift the spirits, although my spirits rarely need lifting as I am a quilter and a naturally happy little soul! The garden has taken up much of my time as I need to get on top of it before the weeds take over. I love flowers and they are the basis of my activities with fabric so I garden for inspiration, it’s a means to an end.

Center Parcs in Cumbria was the destination of my daughter and family this week and we joined them for a couple of days. They are wonderful places for families and activities and the sunny weather made our visit special. We walked and skipped and played and even saw red squirrels.

Auntie Blod, a very favourite aunt and my mother’s only sister, died on Friday. She had been frail for some time so it was not entirely unexpected. She lived along the coast from us in N Wales in the town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwryndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (and yes I can pronounce it!) and we will be attending her funeral next week.  

Oil pastels were used In the art class this week to great effect. We coloured in a picture using the pastels, blending colours and scratching designs into the surface. The whole picture was then covered with black (Quink) ink and here is the result. You may be able to pick out the scratched designs in the garden areas; these are designs I would use in free motion texturing on a quilt. I enjoyed this technique as it pandered to my love of colour and use of black; I feel a quilt coming on!!

                                              Pastels and ink

 I have completed two more flower embroideries, Nasturtiums and Fuchsias. For some reason I am really dragging my feet on this calendar quilt, unsure of what to do next and I am trying to understand why. I used to sew very intuitively when I had a limited amount of time to spend on a piece of work and always worked at my best under pressure. I can only assume that because I am not working at speed, I am thinking about each stage too deeply, desperate not to get it wrong (why I ask myself). I can easily find other things to distract me as an avoidance technique. But I must resolve where I am going with this quilt and soon. Perhaps I need to set myself a dead line and go for it; it has always worked for me in the past.

                                                Nasturtiums

                                                   Fuschias

STRINGING THE STARS

I have made more progress on this scrap quilt, and here is the construction of the star block.

Arrange the pieces for the star block beside your sewing machine. Place a constructed block alongside for cross-reference. (The strips of my centre and corner squares all go from SW to NE and this will be consistent throughout the quilt.)

                           The squares for the block

Join the smaller squares together in pairs as shown.

                                            Join in pairs

Make sure that there is a ¼” space beyond the tip of the point. This will be taken into the seam when joining he blocks together to give a sharp point. Join the pairs together to make the top and bottom rows and join the remaining pairs to either side of the larger centre square making sure that the joins are crisp and accurate.

                                       Accurate seams 1

                                    Accurate seams 2

 Join all the rows together to make the block.

                                      Row to row

I have joined some squares together to review progress and to see whether I like the results. This will spur me on to make the quilt as from now on it is sheer slog! Here’s the story so far. This will be going on in the background all the time and I intend to have it completed for the Gresford exhibition this year.

                                          A string of stars