Daisy Quilts Xmas Decoration Swap

Kaaren from The Painted Quilt made these beautiful decorations for me for the Daisy Quilts Christmas Decoration Swap. Aren't they just delightful!! The sheep has been lovingly crafted from cream and black wool, and the snowflake is very fine crochet.

Here is a closer look at the snowflake.

Some little embellishments all wrapped beautifully in snow flake tissue and organza!

Thank you Kaaren, I'm so lucky to be your swap partner!!

Ros

A lunchtime visitor!

For several days we have had a wonderful lunchtime visitor overhead. Today I managed to get a photo of this magestic Red Kite swooping around over the house on the warm air currents. What a beauty!

If you want to know more about this protected bird,
here is a good website to check out:
http://www.redkites.co.uk/
(this little photo is courtesy of redkites.co.uk)

Ros

Using up scraps

I had a pile of left over 5" squares which had been sitting around for a while. I sewed them into half-sqaure triangles and they made a really bright little quilt. An impatient teenager helped me out with the photo (have you noticed his quirky taste in shoe laces?)

Thank you all for your good wishes while I have been suffering the after-effects of the flu. I am feeling so much better now.

This last week has also been a trial for me.

Last Friday, my father-in-law passed away, peacefully at home. I did get a chance to see him in the last days but it is never easy saying goodbye. I know he is with the Lord now, free from any pain and at peace.

Last week also my daughter was given a repossession order on her new flat. She is in her last year at uni and had just settled in with a new flat mate and life was good. Then, out of no-where they were given a repossession order with 2 week's notice. Common sense would say this cannot happen, but when we made enquiries the previous tenants and the landlord knew all about this and had chosen to keep it quiet! The cause was a combination of the credit-crunch and a greedy landlord. We've managed to get an extension of 28 days on compasionate grounds and at a cost (£££) but we now have a bit more time to organise some new accommodation before the beginning of next term.

Here's hoping for a bit of calm . . . !!!

Ros

Festive Table Toppers

I made this little table runner with a few Christmas fabric scraps. With hindsight I could probably have put a narrow green border around the outside but that would have been a trip to the shop and I was trying to be frugal!



The red background has a lovely gold sparkle, and the green has sparkly gold stars. It seems to be quite a challenge to get these fabrics to photograph properly - does anyone have a tip for how to achieve this? These photos were all taken in daylight in our summerhouse with doors and windows open for maximum light.



I was rather pleased with the corners on my binding - I seem to have got the hang of this at long last!!



This mat was made from a 20" block. The instructions can be found here on Library Gal's blog. This again was difficult to photograph - I used a white fabric with silver sparkle for the centre. Although it is quite plain, it would be a lovely mat for the centre of a table.

Ros

Even more blocks!

I've really enjoyed making blocks recently, so here are a few more which I have made this week.

The Basket Block is this month's Friendship Block Swap for Alison. She want pieced baskets from us all, so she can fill them with flowers. This little paper pieced block came out at 9" so I've put a leafy border around it to make it a little more substantial. I shall look forward to seeing the flowers she fills it with.


The next few blocks are from Friday Block Party - I have a little bit of catching up to do here! The yellow block is Cross in a Cross, though to me it looks more like Tea for Four. A pile of these blocks would make a good quilt (one suggested pattern was on-point which I thought was neat).



This green block is Hope of Hartford, which was fairly simple. The little block in the middle required a bit of patience. I'm guessing the name comes from the University, but as I'm from the UK, Dreaming Spires might be an alternative name! (Dreaming Spires = Oxford).



Album Star is just 8" so would be great with a little picture or siggie in the middle. I just loved the colours of this one - it reminded me of delicious blackcurrants. My favourite yoghurt at the moment is one from a local dairy (greek yoghurt with blackcurrants - yummy).

Last block is Fool's Square, which would make another quick quilt.



Now that the quality of the daylight is diminishing it is more difficult to take good photos of these blocks. The solution I found was to make a little quilted mat from calico and to use it for a background - the colours now stay true. These photos were taken on the kitchen floor with the outside door open for extra light.

Friday Block Party

Sewing this week has been a bit limited as I've probably had the swine flu. Symptoms were not particularly bad, but feeling oh so tired all the time. Making blocks is about my limit!! The first one is called game cocks (which according to wiki is a type of chook and in the US an athletic team). This came together beautifully, even with all those tiny pieces (10" block).



My second block, blindman's fancy, (12") was quite a challenge! My 3 & 11/16 inch centre (can you believe that measurement!) was too small so ended up being re-cut at 4". I then needed to adjust the white inner border to match the outside border. The light outside was fading so I had to dash into the garden to get the last few rays! But glad to get that one finished. Both patterns came from Quilters Cache.

Ros

Summertime Mini Quilt

I received this beautiful 'Lady of the Lake' mini-quilt from Debra in Toronto. She grew up by the lake and has some wonderful memories. These tiny triangles are less than 1" square and match perfectly! Thank you Debra for a truly splendid mini-quilt.

Ros

Janice has just asked me the size of this mini-quilt - it is 18" square.

Busy making blocks

Friday Block Party - Flight of Swallows

A Gift of Quilts, 2012 Olympic Quilt

Twenty of us from the PP Forum were given a teacup to incorporate into a star block. I thought this looked like a summer picnic. Everyone else seems to have used a blue theme. Trust me to have done something different! Read more about it here

A Basket of Flowers for Terry's Quilt
(see button on sidebar)

And finally, a Basket of Grapes for Jo
Friendship Block for October ("Purple")

This was a challenge - I had very little purple in my collection and its not a colour I would choose on its own. The purple basket is a glitter fabric and the background is tiny lilac sprigs.

Ros

Summertime Swap

Here is the summertime quilt which I made for my swap partner, Melanie in Australia.

A close-up showing the sparkly centre of the sunflower.

I was rather pleased to find this piece of batik for the back!

Ros

Friendship Block Swap

September's block goes to Anita in Bonnaire, Netherland Antillies. Anita asked for flowers or birds on a blue or green background. I loved the challenge of doing a bird, but when looking for patterns I couldn't find much at all. Then I remembered that when Anita sent her block to me back in May she enclosed a beautiful postcard of flamingos, which are native to her country. That was it!

After a lot of searching I came up with this paper pieced pattern from Margaret Rolfe's book 'Quilters Ark' which had been sitting on my bookshelf all along.


It reminded me of the patterns I wanted to make when I bought the book, but as a beginner I just didn't have the range of fabric scraps needed to make these. I have bagfuls of scraps now, so here is a good reason to use them!! Here are some of my favourite pages from the book.


Ros