The Shipping Forecast: done and dusted

A few weeks ago I said I was closing in on a finish or two.  Here is the first.  It's hard to believe but I started this in September 2017!  It took a long time to piece but even longer to quilt.  I started it last year but fell out of love with the quilting process, not helped by the Covid blues and only came back to it after several months of looking at it and muttering under my breath.  It is big, which didn't help!  However I have stuck to it this time and now it's done.  Big sigh of...relief?  There are a lot of things I like about this: I like the shipping forecast that I printed and I like the feeling of waves that all those little triangles give.  I like the lighthouses.  It's a shame I didn't love every step of the journey, but maybe that's in the nature of these strange times rather than a reflection on this poor old quilt. 

I quilted it with a wavy sort of pattern, not planned or marked, just made up as I went along.

The details:

Started piecing September 2017, finished on 30th January 2018. It is 93"x72"

Started quilting 1st September 2019, stopped and started, finished 30th June 2021.  That is by a country mile the longest it's ever taken me to quilt something.  

This is made mostly from scraps and shirts.  The wadding is organic cotton and it is quilted with a mix of threads, mostly variegated Sulky 12wt, though there are some bits of Aurifil wool thread in there too.

End of summer catch up

Well that was the summer.  Already here the air smells of the coming winter, but I shall try to enjoy the autumn and not fret too much about the fact that in a month or two it will be unpleasantly cold and dark.

The last few weeks have not been entirely unproductive.  I learned from last year and packed myself a little kit to take on holiday, as a result of which I have another lighthouse ready to be backed.  

I have used a different bird fabric this time and opted for piecing in with other blues rather than using it in bigger chunks.  I like how this looks and it also makes the bird fabrics, of which I have limited stocks, stretch as far as possible.  

Since I came back I have also been trying to press on with the quilt currently in the hoop.  It's a bigger quilt than the last few I've done, so I can quilt and quilt and still not really seem much further on. as a result I'm finding it rather hard going but know there's nothing for it but to carry on. 

I am full of good resolutions about hitting the ground running this month, both with my sewing and blogging.  The last couple of years I have struggled to build momentum after the summer and I don't want to follow that pattern again.  Let's see how that goes!

In the meantime I'm linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching.  

A lighthouse moment

No movement on my sugar and spice quilt, but I finished the last of the cushion (or pillow) covers that I started last summer.  Or rather I thought I had finished but now that I look at it on the screen I am thinking I'll go back and add some stitching to the light.

My intention is to make some more of these; I have at least one more lighthouse quilt in my head, but I rather enjoy picking a single lighthouse - this one is South Foreland.

The back is a shirt.

It all needs a good iron, but of course I don't know where my iron is.

A quick detour

I am still thinking about my map quilt, but haven't done much.  Instead I have been putting a bit of extra time into the hand sewing, since I have a quilt heading towards done.  I have also made two cushions (or pillows).  I've never tried this before but it's been kind of fun.  

Here's one with a pillow (or cushion) pad, though not one that's quite big enough, just one that was lying around.

 And a second one, which is smaller.

I have one more of these in the works, but I'm still quilting it.  

Back to it, almost

When I was younger I liked spontaneity, impulse and the sense of freedom that they can bring, but as I have grown older I find, more and more, that I also love routine, the rhythm of ordinary day-to-day living.  I have come to understand that, for me at least, it is this regular pattern to things that allows me to keep going and to fit in the things that are most important to me.  To be explicit, I am not talking about the regular, humdrum, family life stuff, although I think it holds true there too.  I am talking about how it is that I find the time to exercise (swim Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1pm, yoga every possible evening at 6pm and so on), or learn a language, or sew. Not only that, but the habit then keeps me going when I might otherwise stop.

Holidays, of course, break these routines and that is a good thing, in that time away can give an opportunity to look at things with new eyes.  It can also be a pause that it is hard to escape from.  When I am in my routine I just keep ticking along but sometimes, as now, I find it hard to step back into it.  The sheer effort of picking all that up again seems too much.  So I come back from my break (if you want a tiny taste of what I've been doing you can check out the AHIQ blog) and look at my piles of fabric then just wander off to make a cuppa.  I know I'll be fine once I'm up and running, but it's clearly going to take a few more days to get there.

In the meantime, I have at least a small bit of quilting to share.  I took my individual lighthouses away with me and thanks to a particularly nasty wasp sting which left my foot too big for my shoe, I have almost completed one.

At some point soon, once my sewing mojo returns, I will try turning it into a cushion.

Last but not least

This is the third lighthouse and I'll be stopping for now, though I've found making these smaller pieces much more enjoyable than I expected. 

It's not quite finished.  You can see that it's still in two pieces and  I will probably add one more strip at the bottom.  The lighthouse in this one is quite squat (based on South Foreland) so the balance isn't quite right at the moment, but I think that just that extra bit below the lighthouse will sort it out.

I've pieced the sky to try and stretch the bird fabric - there's barely a snippet of it left now, but it's done three lighthouses, which seems like pretty good going.

So two more seams then I'm off to contemplate maps.

AHIQ challenge day and a bit of an update

First things first: the new AHIQ challenge can now be found here and Ann's come up with something really interesting.  I would normally put up a post on the AHIQ blog too (this being the 4th Tuesday) but it seems more appropriate this time to let the challenge post to be the focus, so I will content myself with urging you to go and check it out.

While Ann has been dreaming up new vistas for to explore, I have been pootling along making my little lighthouses (and arguing, endlessly, with BT - for those of you in the UK).  It has occurred to me that if I sort out some wadding and backing these would be the perfect thing to roll up and stick in my holiday suitcase, since Mr SewSlowly tells me very firmly that I can't take a whole quilt with me (and we are flying, so I guess that's fair enough).

I have finished no. 2

 and made a start on a third.

In case you are wondering the strange state of my cutting mat is due to having stencilled on top of it without remembering to put down newspaper. 

This will be the last one for a while, as I want to take a run at the new challenge.

I am still quilting too, every day, with dogged determination.  Why is it that some quilts seem to be done surprisingly fast while others take forever.  I swear that after a week of quilting I have barely dented the amount still to be done.  Ho hum.  Nothing for it but to keep going.

Repeating myself

I liked making one little lighthouse enough that I am persuaded to go again...

I've just noticed, too, as I enlarged this photo, that all three of the little seagulls in the water are tilted at the same angle, which is funny given the random nature of my piecing.  I'm hoping to sneak enough time over the weekend to get the top on this.

One little lighthouse...

I had a play around with some alternative fabrics

but decided to stick with the Charley Harper for this one and this is how it went.

 I've ended up with this.  

Clearly it will need a back and possibly, though I don't much fancy doing it, a zip, but I am thinking I would also like to add a little bit of quilting.  Never having done this before I'd welcome any words of wisdom!

Detours

I'm not sure where the last week has gone, though I know there have been detours for duck fleas, tick bites. a dead starter motor and quite a lot of sport.  There's a detour too in the sewing.  I don't want to start something new before Ann issues the next AHIQ challenge at the end of the month, so have been giving some thought to undertaking a smaller project.  Yes, I know, I'm always saying I don't like making small stuff, but here I am, for the second time this year, doing just that.  I've been asked about the possibility of making a cushion-sized lighthouse piece so I'm giving it a go.  In fact, I'm giving it two goes, since it seemed to make sense to piece two lighthouses at the same time.  

A couple of pictures, then.  The first is lighthouse number one, the second shows pretty much where I got to by end of play. I've got two half-made lighthouses, some little HST-based sea bits and vague ideas about the sky.  Not much is cast in stone yet, but it's a start.

The Shipping Forecast: done for now

Phew!  Extra borders are on and this can join the quilting queue. No more HSTs for me for a while, that's for sure. 

All at Sea: done and dusted

The good thing about not being quite able to get all your binding stitched down before you go on holiday is that you're really, really close to a finish when you come back and pick up a needle again.  All at Sea is finally finished, probably two months after I first thought the end was in sight, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

This is a long quilt and I nearly despaired of getting a picture of the whole thing in one go; even my trusting washing line wasn't quite up to the job.  The two best shots I've come up with are on kitchen floor,

and this one, behind which lurks a husband, balancing on a stepladder and telling me to hurry up because his arms hurt.

Here's the back...

...the binding...

...and a couple of close-ups.

Details:
48"x 72".  

Quilt and backing made from stash fabrics.  I think most of the prints that leap out at you are Janet Clare (some Hearty Good Wishes and some Nocturne).  As a side note, Janet Clare is one of the designers whose fabrics I particularly miss while I'm just buying organic.  

Wadding is Hobbs wool.  Handquilted using Aurifil Lana (again) but also Madeira Lana, which was new to me and is pretty much like the Arifil but came in a couple of pleasing variegated threads.  I'm not sure anyone will notice that, but I know and it pleases me.

I pieced this between 9th May and 22nd July 2016.  

Quilting started 14th May, finished 5th September 2017.  Now that I see those dates I am thinking, 'blimey, this one took me ages' but the previous quilt got done really fast, so I guess it all balances out in the end.

I should also mention that this quilt would never have been made without the inspiration of Julie's book, 'The Free Pieced Barn Project.  It has it's own blog, so if you want to learn more, you can check it out here.

Linking up today with NinaMarie for Off the Wall Friday and TGIFF at Devoted Quilter.