A few days to myself!

I have a few days to myself this weekend as TK has gone on a residential trip with his school. I was glad to hear that they had arrived ok as there is a storm coming which only hits these shores every 50 years or so!
They have a wonderful time on these trips doing all kinds of exciting things as well as the fun of being away from home. Its an important step for them. Although its quite emotional seeing the kids leave on their coach, its also a wonderful moment as the rest of the school come out to wave them off on their adventure.
This year we had the fun of an absolute downpour just as the kids were getting on their coach. They of course managed not to get too wet, but pity the poor parents who got absolutely soaked! Still I suspect the kids will get a little wet and muddy over the next few days. I am sooo not looking forward to see his dirty washing when he comes back on Monday!

So while I have these days to myself I have decided to try and be productive. I do try and set myself goals when I am on my own but somehow, as I don't have my usual routine, I manage not to get much done.

Today has been good though!

A few months ago, I worked on a modern quilt design inspired by the tiles in my bathroom.

They are rather styish aren't they?

So I have created a design based on this. Today I re-drew the design on squared paper which is a novelty for me as I ususally draw things out in Quilt Pro. I'm going to put some fabrics together tomorrow and it should be very quick to put together. It will take me a while to quilt it although it is probably only going to be 24" by 30" !!

Talking of quilting, I'm thinking about teaching myself to do FMQ. There are quite a lot of tutorials on the web and like anything practice makes perfect. I just need to get myself a darning foot for my machine. Not sure if I will have any problems getting one though as my machine is probably 20 years old!

Next on my to do list was to work on a design for my red and white fabrics which I blogged about earlier in the year.
I had a eureka kind of moment the other day in the bath and decided I wanted to do a New York Beauty kind of quilt with the fabrics.
So I did a bit of drafting today, both on the pc and actually drawing and have come up with a basic design.
It seems to me that a lot of NYB quilts have lots of different versions of the block in them so I think I will be designing the blocks as I go.
I was so keen to get started as usual and have made the first block already

And yes I know it is all white fabrics!
I want to create a white centre and then gradually introduce the reds. I’m quite excited about it. The arcs are foundation pieced.

 

So all in all it has been a good day today! I was planning on capping it off by doing some quilting but this post has taken me longer to write than it should have done because Blogger is being stupid over the positioning of images and I have transferred over to MS Live Writer.

Let’s hope I be just as productive tomorrow!!

Jubilee Weekend

Its the Queen's Diamond Jubilee this weekend with a double bank holiday today and tomorrow, which makes it a very short week workwise! Yesterday's events were a bit of a washout with the deteroriating weather. I had been looking forward to seeing the Thames River Pageant but it was completely ruined by the absolutely abysmal coverage on the beeb; the images were fine but the inane comments especially by the 'presenters' in the studio made the whole thing really tiresome. The only bits I liked were the Gloriana boat and the 'arts and crafts' bridge where twenty painters were painting the scene. In fact it would have been lovely just have watched them!

This evening is the Jubilee concert being held in front of Buckingham Palace and hopefully this will be as good as it sounds!

Being newish to my street still, I had asked some of my neighbours if they ever held street parties but was met with a resounding "no.......not unless you want to organise it!"
Part of me wishes I had stepped up to the plate and organised a little get together but on other hand I'm on my own for a few days while my son stays with his dad, and really this sort of thing is for the kids isn't it?
At least I have put some bunting up! And I'm tempted to leave it up while we enjoy this wonderful summer (when it arrives) of European football, wimbledon and then of course the London Olympics.
I think there are still some tickets available for Olympic events. The torch relay passes near here in a month's time that I will drag TK out to see and we just found out the Queen is visiting Hitchin in 10 days so will take him to see her drive past too!

And what about my quilting?
Well yesterday was a bit of a washout creativity-wise too. Half of the day has usually gone by the time I have driven to the ex's house and back to drop TK off and I just didn't seem to have any interest in doing anything, although I did manage some piecing of our SBS blocks in the evening.
I have however created a couple of new quick quilts for kits. The first uses fabrics from the Grandeur collection.

I'm quite pleased with how it has come together. The second quilt isn't quite finished yet as I need to add a dark marble border to balance it. Its made with fabrics from the Imperial Collection 8 from Robert Kaufman.

The good news is Ferret has finished quilting my layer cake quilt! I haven't seen what she has done with it yet, but not long to wait as she is handing it back to me at Sandown in a few weeks.