All Ready to Go

Having problems getting the lace insert to lay flat due to the seam direction so will need to think about a solution using embellishment - can't wait to get started now!

Just read about the 2010 Quilting Arts Magazine Calendar Contest - looks exciting!

Decisions, Decisions

Having decided on a colour scheme and a crazy quilt block for my Stitch Along project, I have been sorting out my fabrics:

Furnishing weight fabrics

Cotton & similar fabrics

Fancy fabrics

(I rather like this composition!)

Selecting which fabrics to use (I found Crazy Quilting Lessons and Crazy Quilt Patchwork helpful) and positioning them was time consuming but I think I'm quite pleased with the result.

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Dyeing Day

Yesterday was spent doing one of my favourite things - replenishing my stock of hand dyed threads.

Why so many turquoise? Well, two were teal but it had been made up for a long time - possibly up to a year - I never throw leftovers away. The turquoise and blue had also been made up for some time and they were fine but teal, not being one of the primary colours, can be a "funny" one. I can always do more if they don't turn out just as hoped!

I plan to use some of these in one of my next projects - Sharonb's Stitch Along.

My Coral Reef

Solution ................... stitch scrumbles to a painted calico background. The colours in this photo are much more true - I've no idea what happened to Monday's picture!

Scrumbles

My adventures into crochet have been rather limited to say the least - granny blankets whilst at primary school, a sleeping bag of sorts for an action man and the odd finishing of baby garments - certainly nothing for quite some years but having learnt of an exhibition currently on at the South Bank Centre in London is that about to change? I hope to see the Crochet Coral Reef at some time during the summer but in the meantime have been looking around the web and stumbled across some beautiful freefrom crochet and the art of scrumbling.

The plan was to crochet them together to form rectangles for a bag but I should have given a little more thought to the shapes as I really can't see how I could get straight edges .............. there's rather a lot of movement in the frilly bits and some of the fancy yarns hide the working stitches. The learning of some more stitches might help as might joining pieces together as I work rather than ending up with lots of rather circular bits.

A Giant Tower

I don't usually work to a larger scale but having enjoyed making Helen's towers so much, thought I'd have a go at a giant one.

It looks quite at home in the flower bed but I don't think the elements would be too kind to it!