What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

My house is 230 years old and is built from granite blocks that have been covered up with an ugly concrete render. When we moved in 20 years ago there was a tiny damp patch near the back door but now there are several quite serious damp areas, not helped by the fact that old field drains run under the house. It was my mission this week to tidy out the worst cupboards and wipe down the mould. Obviously, everything snowballed and I ended up having a full-blown deep clean. I can’t remember when that ...

It has been a weirdly quiet week here without Nella at home. She seems to be doing OK in Norwich, finding new friends and looking after herself. I had to do a couple of projects on the Bernina L890 so I spent 2 days filming / making and 2+ hours editing for two short videos, both of which were less than 10 minutes long. I made “boho” bunting using scrap sari fabric from bags that my dungarees arrived in and a crazy-ish patchwork heart-shaped cushion that Nella had started. The trickiest part of that was constructing the cushion but ...

Happy Monday Quilters!!!   If any of you know Lynn Schmitt from a different box of crayons, then you know she does the most fabulous BOMs every year.  They are saturated with color, with texture with all sorts of materials from quilting cotton, to silks to home dec fabrics.  And this is Kim Rogers version of San Marco.  If you know Kim, you know there's going to be a beachy vibe and this one did not dissappoint. She changed up the center medallion, the bird and the border and made this her own.  Wow, the silks shimmer and shine don ...

Well its been a little over a week and San Marco,  a BOM from A Different Box of Crayons, is not done, and the table is no longer clear!  But I can show a few progress pics.  I do hope to have it finished today or tomorrow for some Fresh off the Frame picks on Friday.  I will have a finish!!!  I won't be denied!

look at the shimmer of the silk, I'll have better pics the end of the week.

and the rulers, why why why do I have to pull out so many rulers when I ...

 Ok, it took me until Wed to share my messy unorganized design wall.  I really wasn't going to share for a couple of reasons.  One it really doesn't look like who I am as a quilter.  But then I thought, wait a minute, there were no little quilt fairies that put that stuff up.  But if there are quilt fairies, I must say I have a list of things they can do!! And number two the projects that I really want to be working on aren't there.....maybe this can be a goal for a future Design ...

Like many quilters, I am acutely aware that I accumulate far too much stuff that I don’t use so I sold my Bernette Funlock (coverstitch machine) on Ebay and sent it off to its new owner with a courier. The new owner tried it out but the handwheel was jammed. Since it worked perfectly before dispatch, I think it got dropped in transit. Now I have to waste time and do battle with the courier to get compensation. 

I was encouraged to purchase a gimbal for my camera by some enthusiastic YouTube videographers. I followed the tricky procedure to ...

 Jeanne does such wonderful applique.  I've tried a few different ways, and ugh mine looks like well maybe I should just say it doesn't look very good. So when I get a change to quilt with  exquisite applique, I enjoy every single minute of it and this was no exception.  The spools have so many different fabrics, it was fun to look at them all. But this baby is done!!

Variegated Spools - Laundry Basket Quilts - Pieced by Jeanne McGill

Some details on the quilt 

Pattern - a modified Variegated Spools from Laundry Basket Quilts (I love the two birds ...

What is it about having a long To Do list that makes me want to start something new? I came back from FoQ with plenty of things to do or finish but then decided that my filing cabinets looked drab and needed a facelift. I used to enjoy painting furniture to give it a new lease of life but I really did not enjoy this job. I should have emptied them, taken them outside, sanded them then given them a quick spray-paint. However, I decided to leave them in situ then paint with primer and ...

 I just love the thought of "finished or not Friday"  no pressure, sometimes you have a finish and sometimes, like this time it's really close.  This is Friday morning and just maybe, if the quilting Gods stay on my side, it just might be finished today!!!!  I'll have more details on batting, thread and rulers used on the final reveal coming soon....

Jeanne's Spool Quilt - FMQ and ruler work all hand guided

This is a quilt made by Jeanne, she does fabulous applique and her spools, wow!!  I don't think there are two fabrics alike.  I ...

Hello!!!  Is there anyone still out there?  It's been so long since I've blogged on a regular basis, 2018 ish????  And to be honest I've been using a lot of social media, facebook and instagram.  I just can't get into tic tok right now but I hear there's a boat load of stuff on there for quilting and crafts as well.  How do people do it all?

I retired this year  (hehehe so I can quilt more!! )and there are a number of occasions where I sat down and wanted to find out what regular ...

For most of this week it has been scorching hot weather again and I don’t really like it! However, I bought an ice cream maker and had a go at making vegan ice cream. So far I have tried strawberry, cherry and blueberry. I am still working on the perfect recipe without dairy but I think the most successful one used vegan condensed milk. 

Nella was away in Orkney with her friend so I pretended I was on holiday and just pottered around. I filmed a couple of short overlocker demos and with my Editor in Chief away, I ...

I have been busy figuring out how things work. I felt that the time was right to go back to posting my silly short daily news videos and I have been attempting to film demos on the Bernina L890 that are aimed at quilters rather than garment makers. Because I have not used all of this techie stuff for a while, I am a bit rusty and had forgotten that I could use a wireless mic with my phone. My Gopro was annoying me because it seemed to drain the battery in just a few minutes. Hopefully I will see ...

 This is Leslie's beautiful Build a Quilt project from Angela Walters. This is the Stay Wild fabric and a quilt we both did. Of course, Leslie's is quilted and mine <gasp> isn't!!

If you're not familiar with Angela's BAQ program, you should check out her website. Basically, she designs three quilts around ten blocks in three colorways. Each month you receive a block and then at some point near the end, you decide on a finishing kit. Once its completed, she even sends you a "roadmap" for quilting.

I had so much fun with this ...

I seem to have had a very busy week! I completed the small Warli quilts, added some prairie points then blocked them all ready to be bound. At first I could not figure out how 4 quilts that all started off at 30” x 40” ended up at different sizes until I remembered that the quilting would make a difference, Doh! Hopefully the differences of up to 1” won’t be too obvious when they are hanging.

I had a hexie customer quilt with a too small back so I bought a large, flat sheet and dyed it bright yellow ...

I wish there was a happy medium of summer weather in the UK. England has been sweltering in a heatwave while Scotland has been coolish and grey. I don’t actually like to be hot so my ideal weather would be around 21C, sunny with no wind:) My garden roses look and smell fantastic and I have no idea how they do it. They get hacked back in winter, never get fed or debugged and their soil is poor. I can barely see out of my window because “Geoff Hamilton” is blocking the view. I ...

It has been a truly epic week, starting out in Glasgow where Nella and I went to stay with Freya to see a band which cancelled at the last minute. At any rate, we went out for tea, followed by ice cream and stayed the night so Nella could get a train the next day to stay with her lovely cousin in Exeter. This was a huge adventure for her, having not been anywhere unaccompanied since she was about 14. She managed the long journey and had a great week experiencing life as a student, partying, playing bingo and making ...

I have spent many hours this week trying to work out a definitive method of placing borders onto a quilt using Bernina Qmatic. In fact, I have been like a dog with a bone testing things out. This is because I want to be able to explain how it is done for one of my Zoom pupils and I always make a summarising video with notes after the lesson. I have figured out how to get the designs to line up beautifully and ...

I have caught up with all of my customer quilts for now so I had time to finish a few things off in the caravan. The dead battery finally got recharged and I was able to get the water pump going at last. I now know how to get the gas going so I practised making toast in the grill. I thought it would be fun to be able to lie in bed and get Alexa to turn gadgets on so I invested in a couple of smart plugs. I can now command Alexa to switch the kettle, heater and ...

I have to remind myself that I have been away from home for the past 3 weekends and psychologically that is busy, even if there is no major project going on. I worked slowly on a couple of customer quilts, had a half-hearted attempt at making pleated facemarks (Nella’s request), and had a lovely, overdue catch-up with Mo who has wire-haired dachshund puppies. 

There was a full day without electricity for some sort of maintenance and I really wondered what I was going to do all day without power and wifi. I determined that I would learn how to ...

I made a concerted effort to catch up on a few customer quilts this week in anticipation of going on my first longarm teaching trip since 2019 (apart from FOQ last year). The quilts were not very big so I made good progress and completed 4! 

I was slightly nervous that I had not taught pupils in real life for a while but it was just like getting back on a bike;) I had to fly to Birmingham to launch a new longarm studio with Frank Nutt. The studio space is great – light ...