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.

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