Sew Slowly
Thursday 14 March 2024
A quick gallop through the last 4 months
Thursday 12 October 2023
Another finish
There's a lovely mix of patterns in these shirts, including the Indonesian-style one, which adds to the festive feeling for me, a slightly subdued Hawaiian one, with blue and red flowers, and that red tartan, which I had pretty much concluded I was never going to use. Just goes to show every shirt has its home, in the end. I often fall out of love with something as I work on it, but that never happened with this top: I liked it then and I like it now.
The wadding is organic cotton, the thread was from stash. Next time I start a quilt I will be buying thread as I am almost out, but it's been years since I've had to do that, so it's probably about time.
Monday 11 September 2023
Time Slips Away: Done and Dusted
The first of my two recent finishes. This is Time Slips Away, the last quilt I started before covid struck and the last quilt I finished in my old house. Also, thanks to covid, this is my least blogged quilt ever. I just about managed to sew and was thankful for it, but blogging was mostly beyond me. As a result, it is a piece of work that I have generally overlooked. When I pulled it out of the drawer to sandwich, I realised I didn't have a strong sense of it at all, but fortunately, looking at it after all this time, I rather like it.
I started piecing on 11th March 2020 and, despite lockdown and consequent home schooling, finished piecing 25th June 2020. It was the last quilt I pieced in my old house and the last thing I sewed at all until the December. I have to admit I don't know when this went into a hoop. I have been working on another one and this has taken the longer of the two, so probably since around the beginning of the year, on and off.
The wadding is organic cotton and as usual I used whatever perle cottons I had that were a close enough fit. This is a habit I will have to reassess soon as my store of half-used threads is growing smaller and smaller. The binding is a grey print from stash - again, I will have to reassess eventually, but for now there's still plenty of fabric in the boxes. In fact, given how long it is since I bought yardage it's a bit scary how long my boxes are lasting. I am given maybe three or four half yards most years, but given that I use them for both bindings and in quilt backs, I had expected to run out ages ago.
My favourite parts of this are the lines created by the black triangles, the pinwheels, which happened accidentally at first and then accidentally-on-purpose, and the way I had to use teeny-tiny pieces to get to the end. I have done this lots since but this was one of the first times it got so close to the wire and I was both relieved and a bit pleased with myself when I got to my finish.
Tuesday 22 August 2023
Catching up
Not sure where the last month went. Well, that's not true; I have a pretty clear idea of what I've been doing with my time but it's not interesting enough to go blogging about it. Apologies to everyone whose last comments I failed to get to, I won't make a habit of it, honest.
I have been quilting a lot, rather than piecing, for practical reasons, and have two quilts finished but am having issues with photos, again for reasons I won't bore you with. However, before I put my machine into hibernation, I did manage to get Wild Things across the line.
I thought, way back when I last posted, that I was happy with the length of this, but when I looked again I felt it needed just a smidge more, so I added plain chunks top and bottom. You can tell this is reaching the end, since instead of saving these few final pieces in case I want to chop them up, I am happily using them as they are.
And just like that, I was done. The finished top looks like this.
Monday 24 July 2023
Repeating myself
Here I am, still short of time but plugging away when I can.
Thursday 6 July 2023
A bit of progress, I think
So, the stripes came out and the crosses went in.
And I started to play with what might happen around the edges of this first chunk. More crosses? More claws?Maybe more of both. Or maybe that, plus some stripes.