Post Holiday Activity

So last week, we were on holiday down in sunny (yes!!) Warwickshire. Making Stratford Upon Avon our base, we visited with several old friends in Worcester, where we lived in another lifetime, for 15years. We have a great fondness for the place where we had our babies............
We visited Warwick Castle, owned by Tussauds of the waxwork fame, all a wee bit Disney, but none the worse for it.
Am I the only one that keeps looking up and seeing quilts everywhere?

Back home and it was time for me to get going with my Bee a Brit Stingy blocks for May. Karen had asked for two strips of isosceles triangles in LV with navy and a hint of peach. Despite my teaching I have never really encountered a lot of triangles created from templates. I have stitched numerous HSTs and more than a few foundation pieced triangles, but was a bit of a rookie with these babies......hope they are ok.

Before I went on holiday I found out I had won a giveaway over at Nellie's Niceties - Reene & Yvonne, who blog there are just so generous with their giveaways and often include some hand made treasure. I won this delightful little cushion which has one of Reene's Hexiestars on it, and a pile of quite vintage style Lecien fabric. Thank you ladies. There was also a super card included, made by Reene's daughter Jess. There is a lot of talent coming out of that family!!

 

 

I think the fabric pieces might be destined for a Princess quilt - I think someone agrees.

I got some blocks done for Alison's Soy Amado today. If you have the time, I thought I'd explain them a little.

This first one was a sample block from some years back, a little too small for Soy Amado, so I added a border.

This four patch has two charms in it from my very first charm pack, before such things were called charm packs and it came all the way from the US, must have been about 1999 ish...again, brought it up to size with a border.

I think I made this block as part of my City & Guilds course, I think it might be called Sister's Choice & it will date back to 2003. Added a border again.

More recent block, from class when we did a Scrap Happy game - I added a border, made it wonky and trimmed to 12 1/2 ".

These next two were not made by me but are also orphans - Roisin used to come to my classes way back when I started in 2004. Sadly she has given up her sewing due to arthritis and gave me all of her books, equipment etc to use in my classes in some way. Most of it was sold at our Open Day and the proceeds given to charity. There were a couple of blocks, made in class that were fully bound & when measured were about 13" square, so I thought might be just the job for Soy Amado. They were gently hand quilted so I took the liberty of adding a bit of machine quilting and the Soy Amado embroidery, & then trimmed them back, just to keep them in line with others. So these two orphan blocks will hopefully make it into quilts and bring a little pleasure for many more years to come.

And finally, I made progress on one of my Princess quilts, this one was made by Janet as a bit of improv practice and she thought it might suit the Princess & the Pea project. I thought I might practice my FMQ on it and I was pretty happy with the result.

 

So, getting things done! Tomorrow it's a workshop - Intro to P & Q and then Saturday I am off to the Loch Lomond Quilt Show. This fabulous show has been going strong for ten years but sadly, mainly due to ill health, the organisers are calling it a day. 

End of an era.