BLOG 224

 

Do you remember from an earlier blog that I said that my Bernina sewing machine of 25 years had died and then I found out later that it wasn’t repairable? It just stopped, with not so much as a cough or splutter, when I was attending a Richard Box workshop. I had to continue the workshop on his even older Bernina.

And do you recall many moons ago that I showed a quilt called ‘Red Equus’ on my blog? It was for the ’In the Red’ challenge organised by Chris Porter. Well, these challenge quilts have been touring the spring and autumn quilt shows run by Grosvenor and apparently, unbeknownst to me, the quilts were accumulating votes for Viewer’s Choice.

YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT!! ‘Red Equus’ won and the prize … wait for it … is a Husqvana Opel 670 sewing machine. In December, I will be presented with this machine. What timing eh, I’m absolutely thrilled!

                                                                          Red Equus

 And now, down to earth again, I am continuing to complete on-going projects. The main priority is the felted wall hanging for the ‘restless room’. This is needle-felted and it started off with background  layers of colour to create a distant panorama.

                                  Background panorama

Detail was added to the foreground to include poppies, daisies and foxgloves.  I am now at the stage where I would like to add machine stitching in order to enhance and define the foreground detail.

                                          Foreground detail

                                                         Left

                                                     Centre

                                                Right

 

A chum has her birthday today so I wanted to make her smile. So what do you do? You find a stone and felt it. This is a first attempt following an internet tutorial.

                                          Felted stone

 

Then what do you do with the felted stone? You make a bird to stand on it!

 

                                           Bird and stone

 

Here’s a close up of the bird showing layers of fabric and stitches, something I learned with Suzette Smart.

 

                                            Bird detail

 And here’s the end product, ‘Birthday Tweets’ from on bird to another!

 

 

                                                                        Birthday tweets