OH ,THE SHAME.

Embarassingly, I have been trying---with the encouragement of my friends--to machine quilt,and its every bit as difficult as i suspected.Oh the pain ,in my neck and hands the results are painfully embarassingly too! I bought a cot panel for a friend w ho is actually due any moment,

, I thought -good opportunity to have a go at machine quilting how hard can it be?Very hard actually, time to unpack that brand new juki and frame and start practising I think. with the help of some kind friends I hope--hint hint.

Cheeky chickens

My cheeky chickens are moulting ,and still laying every day,must be the steady diet of slugs and snails and the occasional frog ! dont you love their beady eyes.

Windy days.

winter is well and truly here, especially out here on the fen,the blackbirds are franticlly trying to gobble up the last of the grapes,all the leaves are gone and the chickens are on a mission to eat every thing in my flower garden.

MARMARIS

Corner detail.

Marmaris

I folded the overlap forwards and dug out the valdani threadsand began to stitch YESS!

Marmaris

After rinsing ,washing, and drying, the results are lovely,some light some dark ,and some, like the silk and scrim , turned out quite greenish.I always make a small quilt first to get the idea clear in my head, and to iron out any problems ,before I embark on the biggie, also as a point of referance for later, so that I dont get distracted and go off on a tangent and do something strange half way through .SO I am going to start this little quilt in a very free manner . I am going to tear some pieces of my blue fabrics, and lay them out and start stitching, just let the quilt tell me what it wants to be.I am going to post each stage as it happens so follow me and see where we go!

bluedying

We used procian dyes and a really big cat tray and simply layered everything in it pouring the dye in at the ends to allow it to seep through and hopefully give me an uneven colouration , photos of this are on expeditionquiltart , our shared blog. I also dyed a bigish piece ofwadding

Blue dyeing

Rainy days and mondays. Well I have certainly got the Blues, but not because of the howling winds and pouring rains(normal for the fens) but because we have just had a dyeing day and I am so delighted with the results.I have had a notion to make a blue quilt, based on the beautifull blue sea at Marmaris. I found a charming little cotton skirt with sequins on it in a charity shop and it just transported me to the Aegean sea.I have an idea of a long thin wobbly sided silver sequined wall quilt, so I have collected various pieces of cotton and muslin and thread and scrim and stuff,and with a lot of help from Angela dyed them blue.

rememberance

In a peacefull corner of the village churchyard we remembered.

waverunner

HELLOH to you. this is my first post on my new blog .So here we goI.am going to show my collection of blocks for my waverunner quilt,which i am doing as a quiltalong with bumblebeans , not made all the blocks yet, a few to go It was really scary cutting into fabric without the aid of a ruler goes against every thing i`v learned but it was really exciting once i got going and i`m already thinking about the quilting design! I may get really brave and machine quilt it . never done that before.I always hand quilt but i`m beginning to feel that my life is slipping away whilst i slowly han.dstitch so i have bought a quilt machine frame thing all i need to do now is work up the courage to get it out of the box!