My finished ALQS4 offering.

Getting there!

I'm in the middle of a very busy couple of weeks so I haven't managed as much sewing or blogging as I would have liked.

The priority last week was to finish the Quilt which I did do on Saturday. I will give it a quick wash, and finish ( see it's not finished really !) hand sewing down the hanging sleeve.

But I am away for the weekend and would like to send off the photos to Kate tonight.

I have been looking at the 21 Quilts loaded so far - have a look if you haven't and have started my "would love" list.


My husband has a Harley Davidson and has wanted to do a "road trip" - well tomorrow he is off. It's not as grand as riding across Amercia as
a) We live in the UK &
b) I can only take a week off work to do the school run instead of him.
He wanted to do Europe but time, money and the sheer practicality of "who gets the kids to and from school if you're off for a fortnight" put the stops on that one.

Perhaps when they're older we could go off together to do it. (Note to Andrew - fit a bigger seat for wife before then).


I am taking the boys to Norfolk to see a friend this weekend - and we will get to the coast at some point.

Seminole

I keep all the offcuts of wadding, so for this mini quilt I pieced the wadding. Here it is tacked to the backing which I stretched out using my new clips. :)

I tacked either side of my seams, just to make sure it all stayed put.

The first 2 strips sew on.

The third strip sewn on to the top of the first 2. You can see the chalk line on the wadding showing the middle of the quilt. It's an important line as I need to try to centralise all my strips.

I wish I could say that having centred all the strips to the line the 2 side edges were the same - but no. Even if you scrutinise the picture below I don't think that you'll see the problem with the top strip. Just take my word for it, I had to draw several chalk lines on the front whilst deciding where to sew the side border strips.

I can't post any more photos until I charge my camera.

I did all this at Saturday Stitchers, I sat next to Jacqui and discovered that we go to the same Chiropractor. I am not suffering as much today as after last time as took a big fat pillow to sit on and I used the heat packs last night, and ensured I did the leg stretches. This is how I have to manage it - it won't go away so I just have to learn how to live with it.

Clamps ideal for stretching out for sandwiching.

In Aldi now, £3.99 for this set - 20 Spring clamps

2 x 210 mm

2 x 160 mm

6 x 108 mm

5 x 86 mm

5 x 63 mm.

OK the baby ones won't be of much use but the others will all do the job.

These are one of Aldis' special offers - available from today. I'm going to buy another pack.

I used someone elses a while back and I can honestly say it the results were very good - nice smooth backing.

Mine will get their first use on the ALQS4 quilt.

I have my final arrangement - I tried to use just the fabrics I've already used in the Pattern sets, but I had to use another dark brown print I have - so I'll use that for binding, or a border.

I've been sewing the spacer strips to the patterned strips. I'll do the seminole method of quilting which is to tack the wadding to the backing, and then sew the strip sets to the wadding, quilting it as I go. So I need to wash my wadding and brown backing fabric then I get to use my new clamps to stretch out the fabrics so I can tack them together.

We went to a wedding yesterday - someone from the local Harley Davidson club. We met up in Market Harborough, attached the ribbons to the bikes and about 14 bikes rode down en masse to Northampton. After a pint of Lemonade we met up with others before riding to the church.

I must say that some car drivers are just mad. If I see a lot of bikes riding together I wait - I don't try to cut into the middle. After being cut up a few times the lead riders obviously decided that on roundabouts the best thing to do would be stop in the road, so any subsequent oncoming cars would have to stop, whilst all the other bikes went through together. And I have to tell you it felt good. I'm not really a "group" person, I'm on the edges of groups rather than being in the middle but I did enjoy it.

The bridemaids wore Harley Davidson colours - Black and Orange!