Yellow

Yellow Daffodils, Yellow Chicks, Yellow Primulas, Yellow sunshine - nice and bright and cheery so Yellow it was for the binding.  Seems appropriate for spring time. Is it really spring it was so cold today I'm not sure! I finished this little one off this week and enjoyed the peace of sitting hand stitching for a wee while.  All done and ready to be donated, I think you will agree it does look colourful.

Back under the table to that box again and I found these strips which I have duly cut into triangles.

You might remember our Group Challenge last year was Illusions and I made kaleidoscope blocks with this fabric which featured 3 tumbling blocks falling from the top corner (its in the gallery if you can't remember it!)  Well I have joined these together and am now in the process of making another quilt.  I won't have enough of this fabric to make a good sized quilt but........

 I am going to combine them with some of these

                 

Cut from this fabric

Well that's the plan anyway but as always the plan may change as I go along.  I've had another play on the quilting frame too so all is good in my little quilting world this week.  Hope you have all had a lovely weekend and you haven't eaten too much chocolate!!

From the Box Under the Table

I dipped into that box again - you know, the one with all the scraps and came out with eight Jelly Roll Strips left over from the 'Seaside' Connecting Threads quilt aka Steps and Stairs. (the photo is in the Gallery page).  I cut them in two and stitched them all together making a nice ladder quilt which I bordered with a neutral grey with a bright yellow spot.  A speedy small quilt which was intended to become a little ones charity quilt.  

Borders on, it was then loaded on to the frame and free motion quilted, here it is almost all ready to go

.......and part of the way through when my bobbin ran out.

I only broke my thread once, and that was when my bobbin thread ran out.  Some of my shapes have sharp edges, some overlap, there was slight stretching, but I can remedy that next time.  All in all I think we have a success and I do think it is pass, but I could do better.  Its a start and it is all about gaining confidence and learning new shapes and skills.  Slowly slowly I am determined to get there this time.  I have even ordered some different colours of threads in anticipation.  This is one thing I haven't worked out yet - how much thread does it take to quilt a quilt.  I think its anyones guess just like How long is a piece of string?

Here we are all trimmed and ready to go and choose a binding.........What colour will it be?

Sunny Days .........

.............Are Happy Days!  Its been a lovely weekend here with the sun shining most of the time but a few rather heavy showers in between.  We spent a lot of our time over the weekend in the garden tidying up fallen leaves which we hadn't managed to pick up before now.  The grass was cut and we swept paths and patios, repotted some lovely polyanthus which had been forgotten about at the back of the border and pruned and manicured some of our acers and roses.  All in all a very productive weekend and a much tidier neater looking garden........ for a wee while anyway until the weeds start appearing.

I think a few of you know that I have a Grace Frame for my quilting.  I bought this a couple of years ago with all good intentions.  It was to help me master free motion quilting and allow me to lay out a quilt and quilt it with my Elna 740 which is a mid arm domestic sewing machine with a slightly larger than normal harp space.

Excitement overtook me and as always when in a rush to try a new piece of kit I didn't spend the proper amount of time researching it all before jumping head first into this new to me method of sandwiching and quilting quilts.  Techie helped me build the frame which was great, however I now know it wasn't set up at the correct height for me.  The thread I was using kept snapping, needles kept breaking and my tension was all over the place with loops appearing everywhere on the quilt.  Then family life took over and I was too busy doing other things to spend the time needed to get things right and practice did not happen.

I joined the Facebook page for Grace Frame owners and lurked there, reading up on everyones tips, what tension they used, what threads were best etc etc.  I also spoke to a lovely lady when I was on holiday last September who gave me a tremendous amount of tips and ideas to try and how I should go about getting things just right so that I could actually enjoy the process.  So since last September when Techie moved to his new home I have gradually been sorting out the room where my Grace Frame lives.  I started all over again.  The height has been adjusted, it now has locking castors, so I can move it with ease should I need to.  My machine has been fully cleaned, needle changed tension fixed, feed dogs lowered and this week I took the plunge (special thanks K for giving me that final push and encouragement).

I loaded up a quilt sandwich - no it wasn't a real quilt, just calico for the top and an ikea fabric for the back and an offcut of warm and natural.

The thread is Glide, yes its a polyester and the needle is one the lady in Canada suggested I try Inspira Topstitch 90/14.    Well all I can say is Thank You everybody!  it worked like a dream - none of the previous issues and best of all I had Fun!  Here is the proof.

I know I have a long way to go but at least it is now looking brighter and I know I can do it all I need is practise.