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. 

Little bits, they all add up

I've made a discovery this bank holiday weekend; that you can kid yourself you have accomplished a lot by spending a shorter length of time on more activities.

Yesterday I felt like I had got a lot done.

I cut the grass.

I did some weeding.

I did some sewing.
Hell I even did some ironing before I went to bed!

And even though I maybe only got to spend less than an hour on each activity, when I looked back on my day I felt that I had achieved a lot.
I could have spent most of the day sewing, or spent longer working in the garden but then one of the other things that I wanted to do that day would have remained undone and would have been nagging at me.

So I think this will be my new philosophy.

Two days ago I started work on designing a new quilt using a layer cake. I've never used a layer cake before. In fact I've only used a pre-cut once when I summoned up the courage to open a Bali Pop to make a Jelly Roll Race quilt, and believe me the hardest part is opening them. Its not that the packaging is difficult to open, its just that........they look so perfect all wrapped up like that!
I really enjoyed doing some design work for a change. Its not a complicated design as it is going to be featured in British Patchwork & Quilting. Judi and I have been challenged to make a quilt using a layer cake which is going to be the subs gift for the magazine.

The layer cake we have been given is Hello Luscious from Moda.

So this was something new for me to tackle first..........working with Moda fabrics which aren't my usual thing.
However it is also quite hard designing something knowing that you have a finite amount of fabric.

Once I came up with a design I made a test block to ensure it worked.....well I couldn't afford to waste any of the fabrics in the layer cake!
I can't show a picture of the block just yet because of it going in the magazine but here's a sneak peak

The plan is to have our quilts on display at the Festival of Quilts in August with one of them appearing as a project in the Sept issue which will be out in time for the show. Seeing as that is only just over three months away, I have been busy piecing this weekend!

So it has been a good weekend

That creative urge........

I think its only other creative people who can understand what it is to have the urge to create something. It almost eats away at you..........this need to create. Its hard to explain.

I have a real urge at the moment to start something new and I know I won't be happy until I do! The problem is.........I need more fabrics before I can start!!
I think my next quilt is going to have to be the red and white quilt that I have been collecting fabrics for but I need more red AND white prints for some mid tones. Luckily Quilts UK in Malvern is only a few weeks away so hopefully I can find some more fabrics there. If not I will either have to wait until the Festival of Quilts in August (not that I have any time to look around there!) or I will have to do a bit on searching online.........
I guess because I have my own fabric store, I haven't felt the need to do that before. Can you believe that?!

As usual I don't have much to show for the last few weeks. I really need to get my arse in gear and stop wasting my evenings on my laptop and spend them sewing instead. And I think the reason for this is because I don't have anything new to work on.

I've done a few more blocks for the SBS quilt and we are up to C9 now but I think because this is just working for a book and not strecthing my creativity that much, that this is just something to pick up and do every now and then. I need to check which blocks I need to photograph and post pics of.

Of course there is my Kaleidoscope quilt that I supposed to be quilting, but I have hit a brick wall with that. Once I break through that, I will be off and running again. Maybe I should make that my priority?

eBay

I've sold items successfully on eBay through my business for several years now mainly on buy it now listings. This weekend I've seen the positive and negative sides to selling by auction listings.

On the positive side I sold two beds. The buyer contacted me about arranging payment and collection before I had the chance to send her a message, within 5 minutes of the listing ending! The beds were collected this morning. Cash was paid. All was good. This is how eBay is supposed to be.

On the negative side, I also sold an American style fridge freezer. It went for quite a good price. I emailed the buyer within a few minutes of them winning the item to arrange collection, but I'm still waiting for them to respond.........and I have a feeling they aren't going to. The buyer had only joined eBay the day before so they had no feedback. It isn't a good start. Something doesn't feel right.
Ordinarily this wouldn't really be a problem, but I needed the freezer to be collected by tomorrow and its now looking that this isn't going to happen. So I have to wait until 4 days have elapsed to open an unpaid item case and then wait a further 4 days before I can close the case.............and then I have to decide either to offer it to the next highest bidder or relist it.............so much for it being collected promptly.

So this is the flip side of eBay...........the time wasters. I've since found out you can stop certain types of buyers bidding on your items which I have now set up and if this person doesn't ever pay they will be going on my blocked bidders list too. I guess before I have only sold items to quilters......and guess what? they are almost always honest decent people.

Its a shame more people aren't like quilters!

But then you read about the recent copyright dispute between a fabric designer and a publisher and you wonder maybe its just the world we live in today...................

Weeding Time!

This unseasonably warm, some might say hot, weather we have been having this week has meant I have had time to get out into the garden a few times.
Today I have been weeding. As I've said before, I am loathe to do too much digging around as I'm not sure what a lot of the things growing in the garden are, but there are definitely a lot of weeds in the flower beds now so I spent a lovely hour or so tidying up one bit in the early evening sunshine. I had a constant companion the whole time I was working and he was right by my side bless him, though of course he disappeared to find some better sun when I came to take a photo!

Think I can fit in a bit more piecing this evening. Yesterday I joined the last blocks on to the rest of the row so tonight I'm cutting out the pieces for C7 :o)

I told you so!

See! I told you I did some sewing the other evening! This is block C6 for my SBS quilt.
When I pick the fabrics for the next block, I lay out all the other blocks so that hopefully I am getting a balance of colours throughout the quilt. Seeing as I hadn't done any piecing for a while, I also hadn't looked at all my blocks for a while either..............for a moment I thought I didn't like any of the colours!!!!!!
This was my problem with my Dear Jane quilt that I started. I had nearly finished the first row when I decided I hated the randomness of the colours and decided I wanted to make it in a more limited palette. Don't worry that has been put definitely to one side while I make this SBS quilt!

So onwards and upwards to the next block :o)