Quilting Work in Progress

I have three projects on the go at the moment - never let it be said that as a beginner quilter I am taking on too much. I am linking this post to the Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday. The first are three scrappy log cabins at 12 1/2 inches as part of Ellison Lane Quilts Scrappy Stash QAL.

I have enjoyed creating these as they do not need as much precision cutting as other projects and I can mix and match fabrics as I go. I have chosen to repeat my fabrics a few times as I like the look of this and I have a small character in the centre of each block. I intend to make a rainbow coloured quilt for charity with this one. I am also going to try a quilt as you technique show on Maureen Cracknell's blog.

Row 4 of Bee in My Bonnet Row Along in Progress

Rows 1 to 3

The next project is a Row A Long by Bee in my Bonnet. I have completed three rows and am working on row 4, the instructions are super clear but require precise cutting and seams which I am still getting to grips with. I am improving with each row though.

The final project is a quilt for mum which she wants to be mainly duck egg blue. I don't think it would work so have found some bright pink and beige colours with a cream dotty background. But which pattern. I have both Elizabeth Hartman's books and am favouring the Small Plates pattern but after playing with logs I wonder about a skinney border between the square and log surround.

Art Journal - Dangerous Words

These pages are about the words and feelings I have been experiencing in the last few weeks.  Mum is still in hospital with more complications and infections but we did mark her month anniversary by getting her an ipad and that has made her life less boring. My life is one of those groundhog days of get up, work, visit hospital, home late and sleep. I now have a week's holiday for  half term which is good but we had to cancel our original holiday plans due to mum's hospital stay.  I was able to pass our week in holiday cottage onto good friends who are also having a bad time at the minute. I remind myself constantly that many people are much worse off than me and plaster a smile on my face.
These pages have been evolving in my very limited spare time. It began as an experiment with alcohol inks being thrown on the pages as I have had these for ages and very rarely use them. I also put some random letters on the pages using gesso and a stencil.

When I blotted the page I turned the letters into a splodge and the page sat waiting forlornly, for days, for more input. The other evening grabbed some white and black posca pens and began to doodle everywhere. I then found a stamp a little like an art noveau shape and scattered this on the pages. 

As the page was very uneven due to gesso and ink layers it was not a flat surface for stamping. I have a lot of feelings about my current circumstances but did not want to vent too much on the page so resorted to my dictionaries and tore out words and meanings I was feeling and experiencing. I swiped these with distress stains and added these to the pages and outlined and circled the words.

Looking at the words I thought they were quite suggestive and added "Dangerous Words".

In between hospital visits (and the endless telephone conversations that you seem to have afterwards to keep family and friends up to date) I am planning some sewing and journalling and maybe even some more blogging. But don't hold me to that as life recently has had the habit of disrupting any plans I make.

Never mind the quilt what about the scenery?

My sister came up this weekend which gave Lens Guy and me the chance to slip away to our favourite beach whilst my sister took over hospital visiting. After 7 weeks of hospitals etc it was great to escape and turn off the phones. I finally finished sewing the binding on my quilt and took it to the beach to photograph. (Please excuse the many photographs but I think the beach and scenery are stunning).

As this was the first quilt I started it became a trial quilt for the later granny square quilt I made for my niece as I tried to "perfect" techniques (long way to go still) and was abandoned as I had a birthday deadline to meet.

The quilting is very wonky as I was trying it for the first time and some squares are not perfect as I have yet to master the perfect 1/4 inch seam. That being said I do like this quilt as I feel a huge sense of achievement just making it.

Lens Guy did a great job occupying Jaspar whilst I threw the quilt over sand and rocks.

Yes the sand really is that white.

Every time I walk down these steps I feel I have reached my own piece of heaven.

This is the view from the top of the steps out to Rhum and Eigg. This beach is beside Camusdarach beach, North West Scotland.

Get Better Soon Mum

Mum came home from the Nursing Home on Monday and I went to stay with her at night after school. Wednesday was her birthday and after a lovely dinner I got her to bed and crashed out myself. I was woken at 1:15 am by her calling to discover she had fallen getting into bed. I tried to move her but could not get her up and called an ambulance. We spent the night in A&E and she was admitted to a ward with a broken hip. They operated later that day and she is now in hospital. I can't believe she only managed 2 days home before something else happened. I have no idea what will happen now and where we go from here. Her friends and mine say she can no longer live alone but she is a very independent lady. We have discussed granny flats and other options before but she has always been adamant she wants to say put. I am still struggling to catch up on missing a nights sleep and think I was the grumpiest teacher ever on Friday but I am sure my pupils will cope.
I quickly made the card to cheer mum up before going to the hospital for first visit of day. I used distress inks, paper artsy stamps, dylusion inks and layers of card. Photo not great as I was rushing as always to get out of house to hospital.

Our dreams are free - so fly one today

In my last post I had explained why I was missing and my lack of time but as I wrote it I began to think I was just making excuses and if I wanted to craft I would have to find a way. I pulled out my journal and found this background I blogged about back in July and decided to see what I could do sitting with family, journal and some pens. I began to doodle around the sprayed images and create shapes and then added the border. At this point I liked the page (did not take photo) and left it there for the evening thinking perhaps I could find ways to be in more than one place at a time.

 I had decided that today after domestic stuff was done I would have some me time and pulled out the page again. I felt it was missing something so added the "Head is a machine" text stamp from my Studio 490 Steampunk set. Then I dug out my old dictionaries and the word conundrum just seemed to fit how I was feeling. Finally I stamped the Queen of Hearts from Octopode on some TH paper and coloured her in. To make her seem part of the page and not the afterthought she was I then doodled the page border onto the cut out stamp.

I feel the pages sum up my feelings at this point in time and I like the colours which are not my usual go to greens and purples. In the spirit of I can do this rather than I don't have time to do this I am off to finish machine stitching the binding on my quilt so I can take the quilt and finish the hand sewing off when I stay at mum's for the next few days. I am not promising I will keep this up but I will try. I have also found a Quilt along, Row along at Bee in the Bonnet and might see if I can keep up with this. I think this is what I need as a beginner quilter, if you are interested you can find the details here.

http://beeinmybonnetco.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/announcing-bee-in-my-bonnet-row-along.html

Every cloud (and disappearance) has a silver lining

These are my silver lining

It's been four weeks since I last posted fully intending to post in a few days and show my finished quilt with binding (binding only partly on now) and some new journal pages (backgrounds done). I had ten days left of the school holidays and I was planning a very crafty time.

Unfortunately mum fell that night and badly injured her hip muscles and lay stuck on the floor overnight not wanting to bother anyone. She did phone in the morning and I rushed to her house with a small overnight bag. Needless to say the next ten days I became her carer 24/7 as she could not even get out of bed without help. As the days to return to work came faster and faster I hounded her local doctor and health team asking for help, explaining that once I was back at school I could no longer be there to care for her. I would just like to say that they were wonderful and the Reach team made up of doctor, district nurse, physio and occupational therapist came and assessed her. They agreed she needed 24/7 care and found a Rehab bed for her in a nursing home ten minutes from her home. This was great (only problem is that it is 80 minutes from my home and 30 from work). My solution has been to stay some of the time in her house and arrange a team of visitors including my lovely other half (thank you Lens Guy) to visit and help out.
As a result I spend my days waking up saying it's Wednesday I must be at mum's, or home, or school or a combination of all three. Back to school is always a whirlwind and this year I am teaching additional Advanced Higher courses (sort of like super A Levels) which is challenging and fun but means my workload is very full.
That's my rather sorry excuse for my absence. But what is the silver lining you ask? Stop wittering on and get to the point. My silver lining is that I won a wonderful bundle of Lotta Jansdotter's new Bella fabric. I always enter blog giveaways but never seem to have any luck, but this time fate felt I needed cheering up. The lovely Kerry had a wonderful giveaway. Please check out her blog VeryKerryBerry as it  is inspiring and makes me want to try out paper piecing. She was given the bundle by Annie of the Village Haberdashery which is a wonderful online store I visit and wish I had money to spend on all the lovely things there. You can also see Kerry's pattern for a duvet using these gorgeous Bella fabrics. I have 18 fat quarters and now just need to find time to make something beautiful with them.

Time might be a little in short supply. Mum  has had great care and is being discharged  on Monday with carers coming in once a day and a newly installed mex alarm so she can get help immediately if she falls. However I think she is going to need even more support and help and I imagine as I triangulate my life between home, mum and school I might not have enough time to craft. But I will try as it really does keep me sane.
Finally after what has become a long and wordy post...I would like to say thank you to the NHS as they have been fab.

First Finished Quilt and WIP

I had to use this photo showing the islands of Eigg and Muck in the distance.

I am linking this to Freshly Pieced WIP and I have one finished quilt and another in progress. I have finished my first quilt, which was the second I began. It is called Lily Rose's Granny quilt and I made it for my gorgeous niece who was 6 last week. I created a range of Granny squares in 4 colour palettes and made 8 squares in each palette - with four different versions. I completed this whilst we were at Camusdarach (without internet) so these are progress photos showing design ideas and the start of the sashing. When I came up with the idea for this I was going to sash it in white and use the blue and green polka dots on white as my backing.

Granny top under assembly

I took my machine away with a a limited amount of material which was the best thing I did as I like how it turned out in the end. I ran out of white and decided to sash with the polka dots which I was not sure about at the beginning but luckily I grew to like it. Once I finished the top I turned to the back and decided that as I only had a little polka dot left I would have to get creative and for some reason I decided (a total quilting beginner) that I would create her name on the back of the quilt. I drew out a few ideas and then had to work out how to create half square triangles for some of the letters. When I gave the quilt to Lily yesterday she loved it especially the fact it had her name on it so it was worth it. Once I had pieced the letters together I hunted for some fabric to make up the rest of the back and used more of the Lotte Jansdotter Echo and some Moda Marble fabric that I made into tube station brick panels (at least that is what I had in mind) when I put them together. The binding is from Riley Blake.

The Binding, Point of Sleat above the the quilt, the back and an attempt at an arty shot....

I love this quilt even though the points disappear, the quilting in the ditch is wonky and generally it is not perfect but I am still learning...

Lily Rose's Granny Quilt,  42 inches x 82 inches

My work in progress is what began as my first quilt which is a Jelly Roll Taupe quilt. I have quilted it and now it just needs the binding which I plan to cut out tonight. The quilt lines in this are very very "organic" (read wonky and wrong) but this was my first attempt at quilting and stupidly I picked black as a backing fabric and grey as a quilting thread. I wanted it to look a bit like plaid... Lens Guy loves it and wants us to keep it which is just fine as it too wonky for anyone but us and we will treasure it.

Thank you for dropping by. I am trying to decide on my next project which will be a quilt for Siblings Together, some pillows, a table runner, a lap quilt and lots more.