Winners have been picked

From past experience this is now the tricky bit of giving things away on a blog. I’ve sent out the emails and I will wait for replies. If I don’t hear by the end of the week I will pick again on the grounds that the address I’ve got hasn’t worked. Once I have managed to get in touch with three people I will let everyone know who got the gift vouchers.

Two posts in a day – am I ill

No but my shoulders ache so I am taking a break. I was pointed in the direction of this blog post. It has a great picture of what happens to a sewing machine needle after a few hours of sewing. Take a look, this is why I press students into changing their needles, I am really not on commission from any of the needle companies

The Quilt Show – Yvonne Porcella

I’ve finally had time to watch The Quilt Show Legend episode for 2010. The name Yvonne Porcella didn’t ring any bells so I hadn’t been desperate to see it. As the show started I was a bit disappointed, I’ve really loved the other years legends. The problem was most of the quilt just didn’t talk to me. However, as the show went on I did get more into it. She is just great. Sorry but I can’t see me ever loving her work (except the one in the Smithsonian) but her attitude and the things she has done really appeal. She has done her thing her way and been recognised outside of the quilting world. I find it interesting that the least promising show (for me) has turned out to be the most inspiring one too. I wasn’t too interested in the techniques, but still came away with some things to try and I’ve learned a lot about how I want to move forward. You never know where the next good idea is coming from.

If you are not already a star member of the Quilt Show and would like to try it, I got a couple of gift certificates free when I renewed. If you would like one leave a comment and I will pick some people to gift them to.

Holiday project off the frame

I decided to take a bit of a holiday this year. Of course I wasn't going to stop quilting, that's not fun, but I did do unpaid work and I've tried to stay off the computer. I'm not sure why work I don't bill isn't work but that's how my head sees it so it works for me. The quilt is a sample for a new pattern. The top was made for me a while ago and has been waiting for me to have time to quilt it. I have now accepted I will never have time so must just fit things in as I can. I won't post the whole quilt until the patter is printed but these pictures give you an idea of the quilting. I felt it took a surprisingly long time but I guess it is quite densely quilted.For the first time I decided to count how many bobbins of thread I used. I wondered after reading another quilters updates. She recently uced over 70 on a quilt a little bigger than this one. That sounded like a lot to me, but I had no real idea how many. Well I used 19 bobbins, prewound masterpiece. Bear in mind I think this quilt has quite a lot of quilting. The one the other quilter did may have had 1.5 times the area of mine but even so she has done twice as much quilting! That really is a lot.

Sewing and snow.

Well I know a lot of people don't like this weather but I love it. Especially [as we had to go shopping today. I was not looking forward to the crowds. The snow solved my problem, Watford has been busy, but more like a summer weekday than a Chrismas weekend. A massive improvement. All the present shopping is now done and we are slowly making our way home.I've been quiet the last week as I've been quilting as much as possible. I've got 9 done despite my machine having a strop. There was a bright side to even that. i got chatting to a new friend who turned out to be an APQS service engineer, and a very nice lady. I still have a lot of quilts to do but I can move in the house now. The quilt in the picture belongs to one of my students. I like her quilts as they as well behaved, but this one had quite challenging instructions. There were areas I had to avoid. That left me with some very odd shapes to quilt. The back shows quite clearly what I came up with. We were both pleased with the result.

Pretty winter scenes

And cheap DVD are what keep me going. The tree isn't snowy, it's just a very heavy frost. I toook the picture about 3pm. The sunset I saw at Toddington services. I think it was a bit too cold for my phone but hopefully you get the idea. It really was very pretty. Now I am sitting in a car park waiting for the quilters to arrive. I made decent time despite accidents and heavy traffic. Fortunately I didn't bring the van as the car park has a height restriction on it. It does mean there isn't much I can do except blog and watch a movie.

Can you tell what it is yet?

This was my Thursday afternoon project. Lots of cutting. Hopefully this week I will get a fair amount of it sewn. It is my second sample of speed 5. It is rare for me to have them ready this early in the year but this one has really grabbed me. I can see so many possibilities for it.I have been working steadily on customer quilts and finally decided that if I am going to be getting this much work I have to have more storage space (20 quilts take up a lot of space) so today I rented a bigger storage unit. To give the business more room we are going to evict more furniture. Sofas take up a lot of room but don't add much so they have to leave.Saturday I had a great class. I was teaching machine quilting, which I love so it's likely to be a good day. I got really lucky this time and got a whole class of students who really took to it and allowed me to cover far more than I usually get through. I'm still grinning and I hope the students are too as it will mean they are more relaxed and will quilt better. Keep in touch ladies, I want to see where you got from here.

Speed 4 and a tidy store room

Last things first one of my students from last weeks speed quilt class brought her finished quilt in today. The pictures show the front and the back or the quilt. It's come out well hasn't it? The other picture shows the shelves in my storage room. I went fabric shopping at the weekend and to make space for the new fabric I had to tidy up. I have had to evict some of my wadding to the storage unit but now I can get to my fabric. I love the way shelves full of fabric look.Monday the weather held off enough for me to get to my next frame quilting lesson. Two more ladies have discovered the joy of freehand quilting. I love spreading the fun of quilting.

Darn and other words

There is something in the air and my computer has caught it. My main desktop machine has developed an interesting and very annoying fault, probably hardware but it’s going to take us a while to find it and get it fixed. I haven’t lost any data as that is all on the server, but I am stuck with trying to use the laptop for everything. I will be very slow with email and everything computer related until we have my machine up and running so if you have an urgent request please please call me. My number is on my pencils and my website.

I guess this gives me a good excuse to work on my next speed 5 quilt though. I made the first one on Thursday and I am really very pleased with it. I had been wondering when I could get to it’s big brother and it seems the answer is now.

I am aware I have a few people waiting for things via email and I will get to them as soon as I can.

UPDATE – looks like a dead machine. I was hoping it was just the memory, but no such luck. Also internet access is being quite variable too. Yay, watch my universe fall apart.

What year is it?

I’ll admit I’ve been busy, and yes keeping track of the day of the week can be a challenge to me. I will even admit to getting the year confused when it first changes, but right now I am fairly sure it is 2010. This was part of my change this evening. It is one of the new olympic coins. I always look at my coins to see if I’ve got an interesting one, or a really new one. This is the first time I’ve ever had next years though. Anyone know if the Royal Mint have actually released next years coins already?