Pizza delivery

These arrived in a pizza box - aren't they yummy? But just like pizza I think a little goes a long way (apart from the fact they cost a fortune!), and this is just enough to tile the windowsill in our kitchen.

I'd love to be able to capture the colours and the iridescence in a quilt.

Back in the land of the living

I haven't felt up to posting recently as I've been recuperating after an operation. But well on the mend now! One of the advantages of slacking on the sofa is that I got the opportunity to finish of my second quilt.



I made this using the pretty much the same techniques as the first one (diamond quilting and self-binding). It was intended for another grandchild I have on the way (expected in July) and from the start I was intending for it to be unisex. But I now have doubts and think that it's ended up looking pretty boyish. I think it wasn't too bad until I foolishly added a light blue pattern fabric as the backing (and the binding). What was I thinking?



Anyway as Sod's law will have it I've since found out that the future arrival is a girl. So I'm thinking I'll start over using more girly fabrics and put this one into storage until the next baby boy enters our lives. Anybody got any good tips for safely storing quilts?

My First Quilt

Made for my brand new granddaughter Molly, I'm so pleased with the way this quilt has turned out. I know it's not perfect but it's so much better than I thought I'd be able to manage for my first one.

One of the main things I've learned is how essential accuracy is for the piecing. I was happy with the cutting out of my pieces but things kept going awry when it came to piecing them together on my machine. I'm not an experienced sewer so I'm hoping that this will improve with practice. I've also now bought a 1/4 inch foot so we'll see if that makes a difference next time.

When it came to quilting I finally opted for straight lines using a walking foot. This was after several practice runs at freestyle 'meandering' quilting (again more practice required!). I toyed with the idea of 'in the ditch' but decided it might be more interesting to do a diamond pattern.



Finally, I completely chickened out of making and attaching a separate binding and went for the self binding method - folding over the backing fabric.

New Arrival

Last night my daughter Jade gave birth to a little girl. Her name is Molly Ann and I couldn't be more thrilled. I haven't seen her yet but we are heading over for our first visit later this evening. I got to work on the finishing touches of her cot quilt; adding the label.



I followed the instructions for this part of the quilt from this excellent tutorial on Patchwork Pottery and I'm really pleased with the results.