Thursday 30 July 2015

Pitter Patcher

A little of this, a little of that, a lot of nothing, really! My head is absolutely FULL of ideas these days, but as usual there's little action. I managed to cut out some mug rugs. No pattern for these, just playing with them, so far.
For the cat silhouette, I cut out triangles, then drew (free-hand) and cut the heads and tails. The plan is to use fusible webbing to attach them to the mug rug, then  quilt (the wadding is cut to the size of the mug rug), then bind with the red fabric at the top of the photo. 

Two more projects already in the pile are a sewing machine cover and a bread basket. Oh, and my In-R-Form Plus arrived from the U.S. so I'll also be making the tote bag shown here with my jelly roll. See what I mean about no lack of projects?!

On top of that, I just joined a quilt group online. It's at The Quilting Board in the "Blocks of the Month" sub-forum. We're using a book titled The Farmer's Wife 1930s Quilt Sampler, which just arrived this morning from Amazon. It has instructions and a CD for making 99 blocks for a quilt.

I've wanted to tackle a full-size quilt for some time, but all the ones I see are just plain intimidating. Beautiful, but involves lots of coordinated fabrics and skills that are probably a bit beyond me.  These blocks are only 6" square and seem do-able. The finished quilt will look similar to the one on the front of the book and are obviously just made from scraps, not necessarily coordinated fabrics. The project begins 4 August, so I'm away and running.

I really wanted to go to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August, but after our holiday in Wales last week, I've decided it's too far and I'm frankly too much of a newbie to get enough out of it. Maybe next year... and I hope that by then my knees and ankles will be better. Our Wales holiday has just about put me out of commission and into a wheelchair. Our cottage was unbelievably uncomfortable and full of steep stairs, suitable for a mountain goat.

So watch this space for some updates on my projects.