Festival of Quilts 2012

Squeee! It was another lovely one. I went with Mum again and we both had a great time. Here she is rifling through the Liberty scraps with the greatest concentration.

As was I of course, except to pause and take a sneaky photo without her noticing. Here are the ones I picked out.

It's the amazingly fine lawn cotton and the perfect size for lovely little somethings.

The quilts were of the usual excellent standard and variety. I loved the Miniature Quilts section last year and this year it was definitely my favourite. Pictures of some are hard to take given the light and the number of people. This was the first place winner.

You see how perfect that is? It's about 5 inches across. There's a close up of the detail here. The workmanship was just amazing. I actually preferred her second one - which came second. Yep, she got first and second place in this category. Here it is.

Bit fuzzy but yes, she made miniature 9 patch stars. I can't even do them full size. Phew. Detail here.

My favourite was this one:

So clever. I would *love* to have this on my wall. Other favourites from all the categories:

It's made up of these wavy blocks and hand embroidered:

Beautiful hexagons. There were quite a few hexagon quilts plus a miniature one that was amazing.

An amazingly textured pictorial quilt of Venice.

A gorgeously vibrant silk quilt.

The detail on this was beautiful - the whole thing seemed to glow.

And then I was also very taken with the aerial map type quilts which can only have been by the same person (I *will* get a catalogue next year). There was one full size one.

And then a tiny miniature one.

So cute!

As well as the Liberty scraps I got a few other things. A selection of fat quarters.

And two jelly rolls.

Rather moderate for me I thought! And I came in £10 under budget. Holla!

Since then I have of course been to Nickerjac's wedding which was amazing. I just need to have a word with someone before posting about it though. I'll tweet as soon as all the pics are ready for viewing. In the meantime all of my Festival of Quilts photos (all 127 of them) are here.

Learning in Action

I have learnt several things recently. One was that ring cushions often have ribbon on them to tie the rings in place to make sure they don't fall off.

I made this last night using the waistcoat lining as the main fabric and a smidge of petrol blue organza as the overlay on the top.

I kind of swirled the organza and caught it down with a stitch or two and a bead or so. This project also taught me what this kind of needle is for.

I'd always wondered. It is for adding ribbon after you'd sewn it all up.

Ta da!

Shawl! Shawl! Shawl!

In WWE there is a finishing move called The Spear and when the wrestler does it (it used to be Edge but Christian inherited it when Edge retired) the commentator shouts "SPEAR! SPEAR! SPEAR!". So now you know.

In the same way when I finally unpinned the shawl from blocking and wrapped it around myself I could hear a voice in my head shouting "SHAWL! SHAWL! SHAWL!"

Blocking it was quite a mammoth task because it is humungous.

It is the same width as my two person sofa and rocking chair in a line. Fortunately it dried overnight as it was taking up most of my floor space.

I do love the pattern though and it was pretty easy. Especially after my first abortive attempt. I'm very pleased I redid it.

The pattern is Gail or Nightsongs and is free. It is going to match my dress perfectly. And....ta da!

I've also entered it for the Lace Longjump but haven't been to the podium for that yet.

Yesterday was pretty hectic - fabric shopping in the morning followed by 5 hours straight sewing - the results of which will be seen next weekend. During the shopping part I did find a few fairly odd things in the pound shops of Lewisham. I do adore those shops. You never know what craziness you'll see. The winner this time was undoubtedly the pet tombstone.

Yours for just £1 plus postage. Let me know if you want me to pick one up for you.

Limpics

This week I spent a day at the Olympic Development Authority's offices at Canary Wharf. It was for work - filming some interviews.


We were there to use the view as the background.


You can see why that would be desirable. The 23rd floor gives you quite a view. To spot the Park it's easiest to look for the red Orbit Tower then you'll see the Stadium next to it.

Sadly the best laid plans... After a few days of dull skies it came over all sunny. Too sunny. With that in the background no amount of light could prevent our interviewees from looking like Crimewatch informants.


But it was still a great view. Especially with the DLR trains underneath.


Like nothing more than a giant train set.

I've been doing a massive amount of sewing this week but nothing much to blog as I don't want to giveaway what the Groom is wearing before the wedding next weekend. Suffice to say he'll look snazzy.

My Games Teacher Would Never Believe It

I am excessively excited.

Never before has so little meant so much to so few.

The Virtual Quilt Museum

I am utterly gutted to be too ill to visit the American Museum in Bath today. Had I done so I would have been enthralled and inspired and taken photos. Instead here are some of other people's photos to inspire and enthral me.

Let us begin with a scrappy spiderweb.

I do tend to be drawn to the quilts with small pieces of fabric making the body of the design. I have a bit of a phobia though about things that join many points in the centre of a motif like this one does. 8 sections? How do you get the centre to lie flat when it collects all those seam allowances and joins together? Something I need to work on. Even in something like this next one - where you have only four corners coming together - it could be an issue.

Source: finitegeometry.org via Alex on Pinterest

Now isn't that impressive? All those designs are from one square made of two triangles - one black, one white - and joined on the diagonal. And the pattern will look different again when you join multiple blocks. Do non-maths people think about iterations? It's a basic method for solving equations although thinking about it I guess dyers must use it a lot too. Although dyeing is basically an equation I guess.

Something I've never invested in but will be looking out for at the Festival of Quilts is a jelly roll. 2.5" wide pieces of fabric that are 42" long - the width of the fabric itself. Strip piecing gives you lots of options. For example...

Source: scientificquilter.wordpress.com via Alex on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Alex on Pinterest

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

Source: craftster.org via Alex on Pinterest

(Although that last one is apparently made out of t-shirts and not a jelly roll.)

Then there are quilts which use machine techniques to give the appearance of a paper pieced quilt. Hexagons for example.

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

Very clever and I would rather  like to do this on a bigger scale so you get a quilt seemingly made up of great big hexagons - perhaps 8" across? When you do a simple shape on that scale it becomes more about the fabric than the design. Like this one perhaps.


Finally (because even typing is wearing me out today) there are those quilts where the piecing is creating a bigger picture. In some cases a very big picture.

Source: funthreads.blogspot.com via Alex on Pinterest

I 100% admire the technique but it's not something that I would want to do. I'm not very good at light and dark which is why a jelly roll interests me as it will have selected the fabrics for you. Or perhaps something like this, although really this is appliqué.

It is definitely the quilting that makes it though. Free arm quilting is again not something I have mastered although I do like machine embroidery. You do need a long arm machine for it though unless you are making a miniature quilt. But this one is something that interests me.

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

I have a fascination with little houses. This one is done in small blocks and then assembled. I can imagine having a lot of fun with this, and with the little trees, and with embellishing with buttons. Maybe one day...

I hope you enjoyed the virtual quilt show. I have to go back to coughing and sneezing til my ribs ache now.

A is for Actual, B is for Battery, C is for Chickens

When Mater got her chickens she was told they could take quite a while to recover. They are ex-battery farm and so their first year of life was not the most pleasant.

Three weeks into their residence there are new feathers growing where they were previously bald but there are still surprisingly bright red and pink areas on chests and bottoms.

Rather uncomfortable to see as I can't help thinking of them as 'oven ready'.

There has also been some difficulties as the other five tend to pick on one. They have been separated for now but it's not ideal.

Within the next week or two they'll have a section of the garden fenced off for their use. Until then they have this rather extraordinary hutch thing to romp in. Plus of course the chicken house which has roosting poles and a nesting box in it. And now you see the reason for the egg picture in my last post.

I'd have thought they wouldn't start laying until they had settled in but they've been producing 4-5 eggs a day since they arrived. Everyone in the village has shared the eggy bounty.

As ever I am taking full advantage of my proximity to the cat, Artemis.

I have never known a cat wash themselves as much as this animal. When she comes in from a few hours hunting she'll settle down to 30+ minutes of all over cleansing. It also amazes me how tight a ball she can curl herself into since she's not a small, skinny thing.

So cute. She prefers to have a paw over her nose. But then don't we all.

Following some lovely weather on saturday it looks like the rest of my holiday here is going to be cloudy and rainy. Such a shame. I was able to take a few pics though when I went to a Boot Fair.

"Clouds Over the Caravan Park" although the view in the other direction is pretty good too.

I do adore clouds. And that grey sea we used to have in Herne Bay when I was growing up. And then a little undergrowth for the vegetarians.

Later this week I will be venturing to Bath with Mater to visit the American Museum and finally see all the quilts there that I keep hearing about. Festival of Quilts is only three weeks away so this will be a good warm up. Then after that...

Curtains. I know this is a blind, but I'll be making curtains for four smaller windows once I feel the Olympic Shawl has made enough progress.

Cluck cluck.

Singing and Dancing

...in the rain.



Holiday in Somerset, staying with the parents. But ou est le sunshine?

Using the time to get into phase two of the shawl. Phase two being "knit the fecking thing the right way round" and as part of the Ravelympics or whatever one is supposed to call it.



I will explain the large number of eggs next time.

"The Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink!"

I can't help it. I love Boris.

Shawl Disaster

I thought I had done so well. Over four weeks I had knitted the Gail/Nightsongs Shawl and was in plenty of time to block it before Nic's wedding. I cast off with joy in my heart and spread it out on the bed to find this.

Some of you may be thinking, "Hmmm, why has Lixie taken a photo of it upside down?" But no. That's the right way up. Blocking! I thought. BLOCKING. A good block can solve most things. Maybe. Then I looked closer.

Strange how there were those bumps between the middle leaves down the centre line. In the pictures the centre had spread out nicely. I took another look.

Strange how those edge leaves were spreading out nicely and not looking like a robust edging.
...

...

...






I had actually knitted the shawl with the edge in the middle and the middle on the edge. I'd knitted the entire shawl - four weeks knitting - like that.

....

....

No amount of blocking was going to solve this one.

I've frogged the bugger. I have thought about it a lot since I discovered my mistake on saturday and I am going to knit the same shawl again. Only, you know, the right way round. Having seen how beautiful the pattern looks in this yarn I can't imagine it as anything else.

And in a moment

Underground, overground, wombling free.



But do you stay or run?


Hmmm.

Bloody Well Get on With It

It annoys me how few people give blood. Well done to thos of you who do, and commiserations to those of you who can't. But for the rest of you - shame on you.

I did a quick poll in the office and got the responses

• "I know I should"
• "I did once"
• "I'm not sure if I can"
• "I don't like needles"

Well let's look at these...

"I know I should"

...and so? No one who lives in a city has any excuse for not giving blood. Especially london. There are permanent sites all over the place and temp ones pop up regularly. Just type your postcode into the website and away you go. I expect you'll find somewhere you could donate within 24 hours. People in less rural areas do need to plan ahead but even there you'll find somewhere you can donate within the next month. Go! Do it now!

"I did once"

Well fecking well go and do it again. Once doesn't make you some sort of hero. Women can donate every 16 weeks and men every 12. Type your postcode into the website and book to go again online now. 

"I'm not sure if I can"

Are you waiting for someone to spontaneously tell you you can? There is a donor health check online. Go. 

"I don't like needles"

I sympathise. I don't like needles. I would suspect that very few people give blood because they like needles.  Only a very select element of the population like needles. If you have a real life phobia then fair enough. But for everyone else...do you dislike needles so much that if you needed a life saving blood transfusion you would refuse it? If you would be happy to accept a transfusion you should give blood. Tell the nurse you don't like needles and they will reassure you. Don't be selfish. 

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I have been a blood donor for a few years now but am afflicted with tiny veins. I've only been able to donate 50% of the time because they couldn't find a suitable vein the rest of the time. I would willingly give blood every 16 weeks if I could, despite my dislike of needles, but I can't. I hope at least one person reading this will make an appointment to donate.