Reasons to be Cheerful

1. Charlotte won the Great British Sewing Bee and watching her progress and her eventual win was feel good tv. Congratulations to Charlotte.

2. Andy Murray is in the Wimbledon final - the mens' quarter finals possibly shaved moments off our lives but it was magic to watch - just wish there was a slightly longer gap between the high profile matches so we could at least get the tatties on!

3. Sewing - yes, for everything else, there is always sewing.

I have completely ignored my BOM and will return to it later.

Ayrshire Quilters are having an exhibiton in Rozelle House, Ayr, in September/October. We have been asked to make a piece of work, no bigger than 20" square, inspired by Rozelle.
The house itself stands in large parkland, fringed by woods, only a stone's throw from where I live - We are very lucky to have a second large park / golf course almost adjacent to Rozelle so  we often take a walk through both parks in our efforts to make our 10,000 steps!

In the last year, some of the wooded areas have been cleared and the most wonderful tree sculptures have appeared, to commemmorate WW1, the work of someone very skilled with a chainsaw!

That is my Rozelle - and I came up with a wee plan to represent my "Walk in the Woods"

The basic plan was 20 little log cabin blocks, each finishing at 4" square - Lots of greens with a brown "path" of 5, four patch blocks running through diagonally.

In the top right section, the logs were made up of slightly bigger, and therefore fewer, strips and had centres of pale blue - the sky!

All the other log cabin blocks were made up of skinnier strips and had centres of fuchsia or purple - these colours remind me of the beautiful rhododendrons that are so prolific in the park in early summer.

The bottom left corner consisted of four log cabin blocks, pieced in a more considered fashion, marrying brighter greens with creams/whites and arranged to produce a central area to accommodate a bit of applique.

The applique is a simple silhouette of the Scottish soldier - I printed off the picture of the soldier, fiddled about with the size, then traced his outline on to Bondaweb, then used some plain black fabric for the actual applique. My daughter thinks it is a woman, my grand daughter thinks it is a dolly........

And here is the top, all stitched together. At this point, like many of you I am guessing, I instantly feel I am going to spoil it by moving on to the next stage - the quilting! But I plodded on. I quilted all the green/brown log cabins in my twisted log cabin quilting pattern, and the four patches with my usual, unimaginative "Sheila's Star". For the applique area I did some straight line quilting and then decided to fill in with seed stitching by hand - I haven't finished this yet but decided to go on to straighten and bind yesterday while I had the time. I used a magenta batik from my stash to bind and also popped a hanging sleeve on.

I have really enjoyed the process of taking this challenge from an idea to a quilt. For those of you interested in such matters, all of the fabric came from my scrap stash - I might have finally wiped out my green scraps.........I used the following threads to piece, and quilt -

L to R - Aurifil 2325 (so useful, blends with lots of colours), Gutermann 9938, Aurifil 1240, 

Aurifil 5023

Which leads nicely on to a question for you - what is your favourite Aurifil shade, considering the huge variety available, that is a tricky question. But, is there one that you consider a staple for you, one that you return to again and again? For example, I wouldn't be without col 2600 - Dove - such a pale grey I use it sometimes instead of white if I can't be bothered changing bobbins or top thread.......

Another one that I have grown to love is Col 2847 - Bright Grey Blue. I have long considered grey thread to be so clever, blending with many colour themes. It often is the answer to your quilting thread dilemmas. 2847 takes it to another level, blending with so many colour schemes. I only have it in stock at the moment in 40wt. 

And just a reminder that there is free shipping on orders of £25 and over (UK/EU) in my shop.

Have a great weekend and...........C'mon Andy!!