Not quite a wasted day!

Projects are still piling up and creativity is still non existent.

This morning I was woken at 6.30am by Rosie (mini Yorkie dog) baying at the moon. I guess the moon wasn't out but you get the picture-----head back and mouth held in a perfect circle like a cartoon dog. Why she did it I do not know just out of the blue like that but of course I couldn't sleep and had to go downstairs to see what was the matter. Once up I stayed up, even though it was an hour and a half too early for me. By 8.20 we had walked to town and bought the paper and by 11.30am I had to crash on the sofa and catch up with a half hour "power nap".

The weather was a bit damp and dull and not conducive to gardening so decided to take a trip to DIY superstore for suitable stuff to make a design board. I decided that that was definitely the root cause of not being able to do anything -even though it has never stopped me before!

Once there we checked to see if there was some sort of easily prodded material in sheet form of the right sort of size. There wasn't so easily distracted we drifted over to look at various floor coverings for the conservatory (two years old and still got the floor paint on that we put down whilst we thought about floor) There was a range of flooring that called for a particular underlay. Of course when we looked at the underlay we spotted the other underlay next to it!

It was foam board in manageable sheets!!!!!

I then found myself choosing flooring that would leave enough foam board to make a design wall. This is very silly way to choose a floor that you will have to live with , so we put off the final decision-again! On the way home I remembered we had some sort of underlay from a previous floor we had laid. Sure enough hidden away under the spare bed was a roll of this stuff resembling compressed foam.

A hunt in the garage for a sheet of suitable plywood, two sheets of bathroom laminate floor underlay and the old pink flannelette sheet I had been using on the ironing board , a bit of glue and lashing together at the back and it is done! I have a design wall that it easily lifted, will hide behind the door, that is never shut ,when not in use and can be propped on the radiator horizontally when in use.

Still haven't started designing these quilts but I have all the threads and fabrics, I know the final dates for entries and I even have a design wall so I have no excuse not to get on with it now, have I?





Design wall finished. The blue mark is something that I had dyed or painted blue and was ironing dry!


The back of the board showing the lovely hand sewing !

The foam underlay.

A lot of thinking going on!

Not sure if it is the season, the weather or just me but I can't seem to get myself into gear to get on with stuff. I keep pulling boxes and drawers out and ratching through them looking for I know not what! I do keep going out and working hard in the garden but this lack of productivity within has lasted 2 or 3 weeks now!

Anyone else feeling like this?

I know it will pass and I will be sewing into the small hours to meet deadlines again soon. Perhaps I just need a certain length of thinking time or a set amount of pressure to get me going?

.
All the entry forms are here for competitions later in the year and a tempting collection of Hoffmans and batiks are on the surface----

so why am I designing and cutting out stencils?



It's okay there is no need to answer that as I can't expect anyone else to explain

At first glance this is a very nondescript picture but if you click on it so that it enlarges you will hopefully spot the red squirrel that had just jumped down from the plum tree. This is the closest to the house that we have seen one. We are incredibly lucky to have red squirrels in Cumbria.
Much is being done to encourage them and to keep the grey squirrels out of the area.
Later in the day we saw another one at the bottom of the garden.

UFO is now an FO!!! :o)

Well it has taken thirty years but it is now complete. It has been quilted, washed,blocked and bound.
It is done!!! I can't believe that I have actually finished it, after all this time.

The colours had got quite dull over the years but now that it is freshly laundered and the trial markings have all been washed out it looks like the tmaterials were just bought this month.

It is the first time I have made a sort of traditional type of quilt and certainly the biggest quilt I have made, so I am feeling very pleased to have done it. Moving it around the sewing machine, to do the quilting, wasn't a problem as the machine is set onto a 6' x 3' table.


I did have a problem crawling around to block it out on a spare bedroom floor.
At one point I got really bad cramp in one foot and couldn't get up or down and the quilt took up the floor space so couldn't lie down and moan either!!!

Can't understand why quilting isn't counted as an Olympic sport considering the contortions we go through

A prize :o)

In January Sewing World magazine ran a competition.

Using Gutermann Sulky threads in a decorative way a small hanging ( about 8"square) had to be made with a loop for it to be hung up. I showed the work in progress earlier in my blog but this is the finished object.

You can imagine how delighted that I was to find earlier this week that I have won First Prize!

The prize arrived today (the packaging is still on the table )

There is £300 worth of Gutermann Sulky threads of all types, plus prewound bobbins, elastic etc and a Starter Kit of Gutermann Sulky stabilisers, complete with an enormous Hobbygift work basket to keep them all in.

It feels like my birthday :o)))

Froggie in the window

As you may have gathered, from previous posts, when sitting on my computer chair I look out onto a bank, in the garden. Over the years we have seen all sorts of wildlife out of this window. Rabbits and bank voles are there all the time but occasionally we have also had other visitors e.g. pheasant, kestrel, stoat etc.
This morning my eye was caught by movement and eventually I spotted this fine fellow.

He must have been hibernating somewhere. He has tucked himself into the fronds of last years fern so should be insulated from the cold snap forecast for the next few days.