I'm Back!

Okay, where did the summer holidays go?? Can someone please tell me? It has just gone so fast and now we are getting ready for school again - crazy isn't it?

Holidays in France went well, but again, too quickly. We got home on the Thursday evening and I headed straight up to Birmingham for the Festival of Quilts on the Friday - too soon, didn't have time to recover from the journey home - won't be making that mistake again. Not only that, but it took me five hours to get there - a journey that would normally take two hours, two and a half max. Loved the festival though, enjoyed the Sunday much more which might have something to do with the fact that I slept the Saturday night (didn't sleep much at all on the Friday!).

I was very restrained with my shopping as well. This is my haul:

Told you I was restrained didn't I? Had to have one charm pack though, and the Liberty/V & A fabric was all on special offer on the Sunday ie. half price!! I bought the top set of fabric on the Saturday and the other set on the Sunday and it wasn't until I got home that I realised how similar they are - I was obviously in a blue/green mood.

GCSE result day went really well for our eldest; an amazing 3 A*'s, 4 A's, 2 B's, 1 C and two others pending which look like another A and another B. We are very, very proud of him. Now he has been kitted out in a suit and new shoes all ready for the next phase in his life - A levels!!

The other two go back to school on Thursday - would I be a bad mother if I said I was quite looking forward to it???

Green Squares

Hey, I think I like this regular blogging lark. It's amazing, you blog and you actually get comments!!! Thanks to those who have commented. Okay, so what if two of you are family or like family - it is still a comment. I did think about putting one of those counters on my site, but decided against it as I think I might be upset if I knew there were only three of you looking at it.


Thanks for the comments on the FQ challenge. I would like everyone to please note that I didn't put anything in the rules about not buying any more. I have been on a fabric diet for a while and I have been doing quite well, only buying what is necessary (background fabrics mainly), but I think that all those fabric stalls at the Festival Of Quilts may prove to be too much of a temptation. No, my aim is to try and use some of those FQ's that have sat there for a few years; like many quilters, my taste has certainly changed over the years and rather than waste those FQ's I want to try and use them. My other rule is: the pattern has to be fairly easy and quick - I am not into really fussy, overly difficult patterns - don't want much do I??

Anyway, here's to the first one. This is a pattern from ohfransson, a freebie on her site:


There are a complete mix of fabrics, and quite abit of Oakshot too.



This pattern used nine FQ's and about two and a half yards of background fabric. It is slightly different from hers as in she put her extra blocks in the backing, whereas I put an extra row on the front. It measures approx. 53" square, and as you can it just fits onto a double bed. I am thinking about putting a couple of borders around it to bulk it out abit. I like the effect, but it was quite fiddly to make, lots of seams to match up. I had to enlist the help of one of the kids to lay it out and make sure we didn't have any matching fabrics, but even then we didn't quite manage. The seam ripper had to come out to sort it out!!

These are the Japanese fabrics that are up next. Some of them were a gift from my mate Tracey, who has a new blogsite up which looks good.



I saw this quilt at the Festival of Quilts a couple of years ago and asked the stall holder if I could take a photo, and they kindly said yes.

I quite fancy having a go at something like this with them. The yellow would go in place of the red. What do you think, would it work?

Fat Quarter Challenge

Things are getting out of hand! I mean really out of hand. The following photos show, probably a large percentage, but certainly not all of, my fat quarters. Three trays full of fat quarters.

One:
Two:

And further up the stack, three:

Please do not think that is all of them either, there are fat quarters in baskets, bowls, bags, cupboards and wardrobes. Some thing has to be done as they are weighing me down; knowing they are sat there unused is driving me nuts.

So I have issued myself with a fat quarter challenge - I am going to use them up. I am going to use as many fat quarter patterns or books as I can and try and reduce their number. So if you know of any good patterns to use up FQ's - let me know.

My Rules:

I am aiming to make at least one a month if I can.

I will blog about them; the pattern used and the quantities of FQ's.

The quilt does not necessarily have to be finished to blog about it - a complete top is good enough.

I will clear out the FQ's that I know I will never use and donate them to someone/some group that will.

First up are a group of Japanese FQ's that have been collected over a number of years.

Forgive me...

Okay, okay, so I missed yesterday - please don't hold it against me. I did try, but the day just got away from me, something to do with that two hours of constant ironing I did, and anyway I am here now!!!

Where does all that ironing come from? A family of five manages to produce a huge amount of ironing and yes, I should be encouraging my children to step up to the mark and help out, but you know what? I think I might be too much of a control freak to do that - they just wouldn't do it right! So I shouldn't really complain should I? And in all fairness DH stepped up to the mark in their place and did help out too.

Although he wasn't in my good books this morning. Just because he still has to go to work and isn't on holiday yet, he still feels he has to wake me up at 7am with my cup of coffee. I know that I am very lucky getting a cup of coffee in bed in the morning, but 7am people???? Not only that but he then proceeded to pack around me for his little overnight trip this evening and wondered why I was grumpy when I got up!

Enough complaining, time for some quilts:

This is a coin quilt made for DD. In truth it was made last summer, well the strips anyway. It took me until her birthday in May to get the top pieced together and finally this weekend, it was bound and then washed. DH has a new lens on the camera, which I am going to take off as I can't get on with it. You wouldn't believe it was a sunny day here would you?


Luckily she loves it. All her favourite colours - orange, orange and just a touch more orange! There are all sorts in there from Amy Butler to Denyse Schmidt. Machine quilted on the frame and bound in Denyse Schmidt. I will try and get some close ups of the quilting tomorrow.

We meet up with loads of family a few weeks ago at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and this one was handed over - again a bad photo and I am going to blame that lens again (that lens that someone picked up for us a car boot sale for £5 and is probably great, but not for me). This was the original and was based on a quilt I saw in Country Threads in Bath.

So, yes I have finished two quilts recently. I even managed to piece a little top over the weekend, more on that later though - don't want to show everything in one go do I??