Saturday 2 April 2016

Smile.....be happy

There's  a wee quilting/fabric shop on the isle of Anglesey called Copperfields and once a year there is a massive sale there. I say wee and I mean wee (being the Scot that I am!) The whole shop is no bigger than my garage but stuffed floor to ceiling with fabric and yarns! Fab. This is an annual day trip  for myself and a few friends. Spending money on fabric followed by a lovely pub lunch. My kind of day!! So I bought a pack of pre cut squares(not like me) (and other fabric for my stash!)and made them in to a couple of cushions. I embellished them with a little stitching.
Here are the end results. I stitched 'be happy 'on one and 'smile'on the other. The quilting pattern is a series of radiating circles. A bit of fun. Now gracing my sofa.

Tuesday 1 March 2016

Wedding quilt

We have just returned from a family wedding in Glasgow. My nephew Craig married Emma and they both had a ball. We did too. Cerys my granddaughter was a flower girl too so what not to like!
Last Autumn I asked if they would like a quilt as a wedding present ( my daughter thought I was mad to ask. 'Of course they'd love one of your quilts' she said!) and right enough they were very excited at the prospect of a throw to drape over their sofa or snuggle under when watching tv.
I had been to The festival of quilts in Birmingham earlier in the year and was inspired by the colours in a miniature quilt I saw there. So that was good at least I knew the colourscheme roughly. For the design I thought 'checks' might reflect a kind of Scottish influence. And then a little bit of retro on the back of the quilt.....sort of Mary Quant flowers! There you have it. I completed the quilt two days before the wedding. They were delighted with the quilt I'm pleased to say but then again I don't suppose they would tell me differently!!



Friday 22 January 2016

From this...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending an informal workshop on 'free machining' with a few quilting friends. We had a great if somewhat exhausting day. Most importantly though my sewing machine and I became good friends.
I have always been wary of lowering the 'feed dog' and throwing away(not literally) the sewing foot to experiment with free machining. I wasn't good enough. It wasn't perfect. But do you know....it doesn't matter. I can't draw. It doesn't matter. There are ways and means and that's what I learnt yesterday. So vroom vroom away I went stitching around my traced picture( that's why you don't need to know how to draw!) and then we 'coloured in' by using acrylic paints within the framework of our picture. Amazingly the paint does not 'bleed' beyond the stitched lines! Then we did more stitching on top...such fun. I think I was exhausted because I was really absorbed over a long period of time. Anyway here's a few piccies.  Mr Fox is the completed 'work of art' and the practice piece is....well the practice piece!
Have fun. Till next time......keep stitching.
                                                           
Mr Fox